Latest / Pod Save America / Trump Goes Bananas

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Trump Goes Bananas · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 3: Right now, we are living through some of the most
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: tumultuous political times our country has ever known. I'm David Remnick,
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• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Dan, I like your new setup.
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: All we did, Jon, was we just moved the desk
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: back a little bit and we got some new lights.
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: It's a whole new world in here.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: For those of you who are just listening, you're going
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: to want to check it out on YouTube because you're
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: going to see Dan in a whole new light.
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: Just literally a whole new light. Several new lights, in fact.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: All right, Dan. On today's show, we got Epstein. We
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: got redistricting wars. We got deportation news. Quick check-in with
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: the brothers Cuomo. They won't be here. We're just going
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: to check in on them. It's very important because people were.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: And we got Dan's interview with Michael Osterholm. a vaccine
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: expert about RFK Jr. 's decision to cancel funding for
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: mRNA vaccines. But let's start by just stepping back for
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: a second. Because we are all well accustomed to having
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: a deranged sociopath running the country, it's easier and probably
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: better for our mental health to avoid freaking out about
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: every crazy thing Donald Trump says and does. But since
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: the economic news has gotten worse, His deportation regime has
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: become unpopular and his Epstein scandal has split the MAGA movement.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Trump has been on the defensive and whenever he's cornered,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: he gets even crazier and more destructive, which has especially
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: been true this week. And I think it's worth paying
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: attention to. We're going to talk about a lot of
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: it on the show. Just a sample. Trump said he's
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: happy to hear that his Justice Department has launched a
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: grand jury investigation into the make-believe crimes case. of Barack
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Obama and Hillary Clinton and Obama's administration. He is purging
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: the Justice Department and FBI of more senior officials because
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: of January 6th, while we also just found out that
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: one of his current top DOJ advisors turns out to
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: be one of the rioters who's on video screaming to
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: kill cops. So that's who we got at the DOJ
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: as we're purging the people who prosecuted the rioters. He's
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: slapping huge new tariffs. Liberation Day has come and gone.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: August 1st is coming on. He's still slapping huge new
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: tariffs on prescription drugs, electronics, anything that comes from India.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: No rhyme or reason. And here's a few other choice
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: comments from Trump this week.
• 4:22
  Speaker 5: You know, people that live in the inner city are
• 4:25
  Speaker 5: not doing that work. They're just not doing that work.
• 4:27
  Speaker 6: And they've tried.
• 4:28
  Speaker 5: We've tried. Everybody tried. They don't do it. These people
• 4:32
  Speaker 5: do it naturally. Naturally. I said, what happens if they
• 4:36
  Speaker 5: get it to a farmer the other day? What happens
• 4:38
  Speaker 5: if they get a bad back? He said, they don't
• 4:41
  Speaker 5: get a bad back, sir, because if they get a
• 4:43
  Speaker 5: bad back, they die.
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  Speaker 1: Mr.
• 4:44
  Speaker 6: President, what are you doing up there?
• 4:46
  Speaker 7: Taking a little walk.
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: Are you considering taking over the D.C.
• 4:52
  Speaker 7: Police?
• 4:52
  Speaker 6: Is that an option on the table?
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  Speaker 8: We're considering it, yeah, because the crime is ridiculous. Fallon
• 4:58
  Speaker 8: has no talent. Kimmel has no talent. They're next.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: They're going to be going.
• 5:02
  Speaker 6: I hear they're going to be going.
• 5:03
  Speaker 8: BLS overestimated job creation by 1.5 million jobs.
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: That's a gigantic error. And I don't know if she's...
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: It might not.
• 5:13
  Speaker 8: Have been an error. That's the bad part.
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: If it was an error, it would be one thing.
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: I don't think it's an error.
• 5:18
  Speaker 8: I think they did it purposely.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: So just because that was a lot, that was Donald
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Trump on CNBC talking about how undocumented immigrants who work
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: on farms are genetically suited to do so because they
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: don't hurt their backs, because if they hurt their backs,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: they would die. That was Donald Trump on the roof
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: of the White House walking around, I guess, to check
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: out plans for his his new ballroom that he's going
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: to build in the White House. He was talking about
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: having the federal government and perhaps the military take over D.C.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: This is based on a single carjacking, news of a
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: single carjacking. And then he finished up there with an
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: event today, Thursday, in the Oval Office, where he brought
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: in quack economist Stephen Moore with a bunch of charts
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: to show that these are the new numbers. These are
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: the new jobs numbers that Donald Trump deems true. Forget
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  Speaker 1: about the BLS because he fired the BLS director. So
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: now we're having made up jobs numbers. How are you
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: feeling about all this, Dan? Do you think things seem
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: to be getting worse? Do you think voters think things
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: seem to be getting worse? Are we all just boiling
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  Speaker 1: frogs at this point?
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: I think the frogs are pretty close to boiled here, John.
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: I mean, you can watch all of this and you
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: can either cry or you can laugh. And sometimes it's
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: good for your mental health to laugh at the absurdity
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: of Trump. But I think we should be crystal clear
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: that we are seven months into this. We have three
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: and a half years to go. I don't think I
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: am surprised by how bad Trump is. We knew he'd
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: be terrible. I don't think I'm surprised that the people
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: around him in this administration are so much worse than
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: the last time. We kind of knew that was coming.
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: I'm not really surprised that the Republicans in Congress are
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: just kind of going along and cheerleading everything. We knew
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: that would happen. But what I think is perhaps most
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: surprising and alarming is how meek the resistance to what
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: Trump is doing has been. Like in this week, we
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  Speaker 4: had Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, in the Oval
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  Speaker 4: Office for an announcement with Trump where he presented him
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  Speaker 4: with a fake 24-karat gold award.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: It was real gold. Real gold.
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: The award was fake. The gold was real. That's very important.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Gold was real, yeah.
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  Speaker 4: And so Tim Cook's the CEO of Apple. Apple is
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  Speaker 4: the most powerful company in the world. If there's any
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  Speaker 4: person in America who could resist having to debase themselves
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  Speaker 4: in front of Trump, it is Tim Cook. I'm not
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  Speaker 4: saying that Tim Cook and Apple should turn, you know,
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  Speaker 4: that Tim Cook should turn Apple into the resistance HQ?
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  Speaker 5: No.
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  Speaker 4: But you can at least avoid this embarrassing display where
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  Speaker 4: you give a fake award to the mad king and
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: you slather him with praise so that he will give
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: you better tariffs. Like take Harvard, right? Harvard, there's one
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  Speaker 4: institution in America that has the power and the war
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  Speaker 4: chest with their massive endowment to stand up for the
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: First Amendment and academic freedom. It is Harvard. And what
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  Speaker 4: are they doing? Trying to cut a deal. The Institutional
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: Democratic Party has failed over the first seven months to
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: make themselves a credible vehicle for anti-Trump sentiment and resistance
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  Speaker 4: in this country. You saw this over the weekend with
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  Speaker 4: all these fucking dishonest yahoos in tech and Wall Street
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: trying to explain the firing of the BLS director, is
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  Speaker 4: that this was really just a decision that Trump was
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  Speaker 4: making because of a disagreement over statistical modeling. and not
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  Speaker 4: a lunatic who didn't like the job numbers and wants
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: to create his own reality. And it feels to me,
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  Speaker 4: and I think this is like a really dividing line
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  Speaker 4: in how people are thinking about Trump, is it feels
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  Speaker 4: to me that all these people, Tim Cook, the business community,
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  Speaker 4: even some Democrats, view this as a period to survive.
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  Speaker 4: That if we can just make it through the next
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  Speaker 4: three and a half years, and whatever we have to
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  Speaker 4: do to make it through, right? We'll give him a
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: fake award. We'll pretend like he's not a lunatic. We'll
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  Speaker 4: give money to his inauguration. Whatever we can do to
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: make it through the next three and a half years,
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: it was what we have to do and we'll be
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: better on the outside of it. There is no evidence
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: that what comes after Trump with this Republican party is
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: going to be better than Trump. It may be less ridiculous,
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: but it's going to be no less extreme. It'll probably
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: be smarter and more effective. And so the time to
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: fight is not three and a half years from now.
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  Speaker 4: It's right now. So I got so mad watching everyone
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: this week because every time one of these people who
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: could fight back doesn't, when they give in to Trump,
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: it strengthens Trump and weakens the opposition to Trump. And
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: that is where we are. And I think we are
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: in a very, very dangerous place. And people keep making
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: decisions for their own personal short-term interest without seeing the
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: bigger picture of what is to come. Because today, Apple's fine. Tomorrow,
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: Tim Cook could do something to piss off. They could
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: run the wrong show on Apple TV. And he could
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: come right after him. So if you give in now,
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: he's just going to take and take and take. And
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: it's put us in a, I think we're in a very,
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: very bad place right now.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think your point about like short-term self-interested thinking
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: is the right point. It's the central point here because
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: to build a country, to have a You need to
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: think about the long term and future generations and what
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: might happen down the road. And you need to think
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: about not just yourself, but the other people that you
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: share the country with. And it is very clear that
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: many elites in this country are not thinking of either.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: And guess what? Tim Apple, he got his exemption from
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: the tariffs, right? Trump has decided to have 100% tariffs
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: on microchips. But Apple is now exempted because Apple has
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: made one of those bullshit promises to invest a lot
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: in the United States, which is like no one's going
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: to be able to check. So you can just say whatever.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: And he's given him a gold bar. He's given him
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: literal gold, goes to the Oval Office, hands Donald Trump
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: some gold, donated to the inaugural committee. And Tim Cook's
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: probably like, well, I got a board of directors and
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: I got a bottom line and I got to figure
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: this out. And I got to just get through this.
• 11:05
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: And it's like, yeah, maybe you'll get through this. Maybe
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: you get your exemption. But what happens down the road?
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: What happens to the economy? What happens to like everything
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: in this country that made your success and your company's
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: success possible? What's going to happen there? And the other
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: thing I see is, you know, and I think Democrats
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: can get a lot of shit, by the way. There
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: are some Democrats that are fighting really hard. There's a
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: lot of people who've been out in the streets. There's
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: organizers who've been fighting really hard. Like, I do think
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: some of the people who have been as worried about
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Trump as they have been for the last decade have
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: really been, you know, working hard. What I have noticed,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: and I don't know what you think, like in my
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: own life, is there's a lot of people who don't
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: like Trump and probably didn't vote for Trump, but... they
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: see everything that's happening and they're like, I've just, I've
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: tuned out. I can't, I can't tune in anymore. It's just,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: it's all crazy. It's like washing over. And some of
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: it's exhaustion. And some of it is like, well, what
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: are we supposed to do? And some of it is like,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: for my own mental health, I'm just going to, I'm
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: going to, you know, worry about myself, my family, my friends,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: and pretend that what's happening in the country and what
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Trump's doing isn't really happening. And so it's this sort
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: of like, willful ignorance or this, this, this hope that
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: maybe if you just like close your eyes, then everything
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: will be fine in a couple of years. And it's
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: just not going to be that way, right? Like we are,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about redistricting and these wars and
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: like the, you know, Trump trying to basically lock in
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: a permanent Republican majority. You know, if you had asked
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: me when Trump first won the second term back in November,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: if I was really worried about the 2028 elections or
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: the 2026 elections, I'd be like, yeah, kind of, who
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: knows it's Trump. You know, you never know what he's
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: going to do, but seeing how they are handling redistricting
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: for the midterms or sort of any challenge to their
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: authority whatsoever, how they've handled the courts, how they've handled businesses,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: how they've handled institutions, colleges, civic society in general. Like,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: I don't know why they would just sit there in
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: 2028 and be like, well, we lost fair and square. So,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: you know, I guess J.D. Vance ran a good campaign
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: or Donald Trump, you know, tried to run for a
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: third term. Forget about Trump.
• 13:20
  Speaker 5: J.D.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Vance ran a good campaign, but he did lose. And
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: so Donald Trump and J.D. Vance and the whole administration
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: will just be relinquishing power and walking out of the
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: White House. I like, I don't, maybe they do that,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: but I don't see why they would if you looked
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: at the last six months of all of their actions.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: And then the question is like, What is everyone else doing?
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: What are we all doing?
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it is like I have the same experiences with
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: people in my life who they're exhausted. They find it
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: too stressful. They have too much going on in their lives.
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: But I think there is one, and I understand all
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: those sentiments. I often feel exhausted. I often feel like
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: I have too much going on in my life. That's
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: how everyone feels.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: I often feel like I don't know what to do
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: about all this.
• 14:02
  Speaker 9: Yes.
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: But I think one of the things that has been
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: tremendously successful in the worst possible ways for Trump is
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: he– and this goes to Tim Cook and Harvard and
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: Democrats not shutting the government down earlier this year is
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: that Trump is convincing people that resistance is futile.
• 14:18
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: And so because what you need to be– it is
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: so hard to care. It's so hard to fight, right,
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: to get up and do all the things that so
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: many people are doing, right? Like I very specifically use
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: the term institutional Democratic Party. Because there are people all
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: across the country, including Democratic politicians, who are fighting their
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: asses off. I was speaking more about– it's not even
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: each individual member of the leadership. It's just the fact
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: that the parties as an entity is in the toilet
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: in terms of approval ratings. But is that until we
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: can convince people that there is hope for something better–
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: and that's what fueled– that is what fueled the resistance
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: in 2017 was if we can just win the House–
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: We can do a whole bunch of really good stuff, right?
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: If we win the House, then we can stop his
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: legislative agenda. We started to hold hearings. He got impeached
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: for whatever that was worth. And then it's like, if
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: we can win in 2020, then we won in 2020.
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: We did all the things and he's still here. And
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: so that is going to require someone, right? And it
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: may be a bunch of people who are running for
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: president in 2028 or a bunch of people who are
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: on the ballot in individual states in 2026 to provide
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: hope for something better, right? That there is a way
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: out of this, that there is something on the other
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: side of this that is not just more Trump.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: I also think that the way people are getting information
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: about what's happening, I mean, you know, you and I,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: we've been a broken record on this forever since we
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: started this company, this podcast, but like, it's so broken.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: It's like even more, it's exponentially more broken than it
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: was even in 2020 through 2024. Like, you know, it's
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: just like, there's, Twitter is garbage. Blue sky. No one
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: knows what's going on over there. Sorry, all your blue
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: sky people.
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: But like, there are your mentions.
• 16:04
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Well, you know what? It's, it's pretty minuscule.
• 16:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: The membership there. And you know, I'm on it too,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: but like nothing, you're all talking to yourselves there. Cable
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: ratings are like just shockingly bad. Like half the ratings
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: of like this, an average podcast, pod, save America, like
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: in prime time for some of them, like CNN, it's just, it's,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: it's wild how that, and, Network news, we were talking
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: the other day, we're like, who even, who anchors the
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: network news these days? It's just like, it's like, that's all,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: so television stuff is broken. Papers, Washington Post, like a
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: mass exodus from the Washington Post. New York Times is
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: doing well, but it's basically just the New York Times.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know, Politico. It's just really hard for, so,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: you know, I criticize people who are like turning away
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: and not knowing what to do, but also it's sort
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: of like hard to get good information about what the
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: fuck is happening right now. Yeah.
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: I mean, that is a huge part of it for sure.
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: Like most people can go about their lives and know
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: none of the details of what we're talking about here,
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: unless you opt into political news. I mean, all the
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: things you just mentioned about the state of the media
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: is something I've been working on a message box for
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: a couple of days about this, which is what I'm
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: going to just give, I will preview it now, which
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: will now force me to finish it, but is that
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: we've been sort of like talking about the change in
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: media for a long time. And it sort of always
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: seemed like Sometime on the horizon was the end of
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: the old media order. Well, that time is now. We
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: have crossed that threshold. Everything is collapsing in and of itself.
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: The New York Times and Dow Jones remain profitable media businesses.
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: The right is ascendant with Fox News. But cable is
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: collapsing faster than anyone imagined. Last month was the first
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: month that more people streamed TV than watched linear TV.
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: And the thing that should scare people is that's not
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: YouTube TV.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: They're not streaming news.
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: Well, they're streaming YouTube on their TVs, which is the
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: big thing. And everyone in their understanding of politics, how
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: they conduct political campaigns, how they communicate information all has
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: to change to reflect that reality because we're still running
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: the old playbook. And it's one of the reasons why
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: people can't get information because we keep running and telling
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: people who have no reach anymore or no credibility anymore
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: and expect it to filter down to the people who
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: are going to make political decisions in this country, or
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: decide elections in this country. That's why we need everyone
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: to subscribe to the Positive America YouTube channel, because when
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: people go to YouTube to learn about politics and news,
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: we want them to see progressive content like we have,
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: not right-wing slop that is currently dominating YouTube.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: And there are asymmetrical implications to this development for both parties,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: or at least for Trump and then everyone who's not Trump,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: because Trump wants us all to be exhausted and turn
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: away and just feel like, I don't know what's going on.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know what's true and what's not like that
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: benefits him. And that does not benefit us. Like we,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: we actually need people paying attention, informed and able to
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: use the many platforms we have to coordinate and communicate
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: with each other to try to figure out how to
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: fight this. All right. And now we just had to
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: talk about our feelings at the beginning.
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: I feel unburdened slightly.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was good.
• 19:13
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• 21:03
  Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about the story most responsible for
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Trump feeling cornered lately, his refusal to release the Epstein
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: files and the subsequent ongoing cover-up. J.D. Vance was supposed
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: to hold a strategy meeting at his residence about how
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: to deal with the political fallout that included the kind
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: of officials presidents usually turn to when they have political problems.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: The attorney general, the deputy attorney general, and the FBI director.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: But once CNN found out that meeting was happening, Vance...
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: in his fucking annoying holier-than-thou way, said, oh, it was
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: completely fake news, and how dare you ask that question?
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Completely fake news. You should get better reporters. Only for
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: CNN to break the story just hours before we started
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: recording that the meeting was real, and it did happen
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: just at the White House, not at J.D. Vance's residence.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: So technically, he was telling the truth.
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: Well, no, because they also said the meeting was canceled,
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: and then it turned out it actually just happened.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Canceled at his house.
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: Canceled at his house, yes.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Well, he said he's like, it was never supposed to
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: be a meeting at my house.
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: Never.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: That was never the case without saying the truth. We
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: also learned this week that in Ghislaine Maxwell's nine hours
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: of testimony to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch, Trump's former
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: defense lawyer, she reportedly said that Trump never did anything
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: with Epstein in her presence that concerned her. Ghislaine Maxwell,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: convicted child sex trafficker, whose word you can always trust.
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: Perjurer.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: And surely those comments had nothing to do with the
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: Trump administration's decision to relocate her from a federal prison
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: in Florida to a minimum security facility in Texas nicknamed
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Club Fed, a move that shocked even Bureau of Prisons employees.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: On Tuesday, Trump finally faced some real journalists and got
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: a question about this from CNN's Caitlin Collins. And here's
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: how he answered. Two questions for you.
• 22:53
  Speaker 10: One, were you aware of and did you personally approve
• 22:56
  Speaker 10: the prison transfer for Ghislaine Maxwell?
• 22:58
  Speaker 6: That your Justice Department— I didn't.
• 23:00
  Speaker 8: Know about it at all, no. I read about it
• 23:02
  Speaker 8: just like you did.
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: Do you believe that.
• 23:03
  Speaker 6: She's credible to be listening to?
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: Your deputy attorney general sat down with her recently.
• 23:08
  Speaker 8: Well, he's—let me tell you, he's a very talented man.
• 23:11
  Speaker 8: His name is Todd Blanch. He's a very legitimate person,
• 23:14
  Speaker 8: very high— just a very highly thought-of person, respected by everybody.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: That seem right to you, Dan?
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: Didn't really seem to answer the question there, at least
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: the second part of the question.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: He did say at one point, like, oh, it's normal.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: That happens. That's a thing that happens. No, it's not
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: a thing that happens. You don't move convicted sex offenders
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: to minimum security facilities that are known as club fed.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: That just doesn't happen.
• 23:39
  Speaker 5: No.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: No. No explanation.
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: I mean, when you read through the things that have
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: happened this week, the fact that there is some sort
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: of potential, assumed quid pro quo between the Trump administration
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: and and Glenn Maxwell for a testimony that is favorable
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: to Trump. There was a meeting of the people in
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: charge of the investigation to plot political strategy for one
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: of the close associates of the child sex trafficker at
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: the heart of this investigation.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Loretta Lynch said hi to Bill Clinton on a tarmac.
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we had a special counsel out of it who
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: gave us Trump.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Great. An entire fucking roadblocked coverage on Fox News. Straight
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: news reporters, pundits, the whole thing, and mainstream outlets too.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: It was the biggest scandal of those couple months. Bill
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Clinton saying hi to Loretta Lynch on a tarmac.
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: I am going to keep screaming into the void about this,
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: but we have lost all capacity as a society to
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: put what Trump does into a larger context. I'm just
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: going to use these sentences to describe what is happening
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: here and just take Trump out of it. Take the
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: words Jeffrey Epstein out of it. Just think about how
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: the political world would react to it. The president of
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: the United States was a longtime friend with America's most
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: notorious child sex trafficker. It is discovered that the president
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: is mentioned many times in the files that came from
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: the investigation into that child sex trafficker. And now the
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: entire federal government, including the Department of Justice, is working
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: to do everything they possibly can To prevent the public,
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: the media, and Congress from learning about the nature of
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: the president's relationship with America's most notorious child sex trafficker.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Including launching a criminal investigation into the president's predecessor and
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: his administration based on absolutely nothing.
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: Congress had to go home because they couldn't answer questions
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: about it. Because they were so afraid to take a
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: vote that would force disclosure of files that may once
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: again disclose information on the president's long-term relationship with America's
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: most notorious child sex trafficker. And now the president's personal
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: defense attorney is potentially granting special favors to the co-conspirator
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: of America's most notorious child sex trafficker in order to
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: generate favorable testimony to protect the president.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Who, along with the vice president, who hosted the meeting...
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: with the attorney general and the FBI director and everyone
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: else spent the campaign that they just won voluntarily promising
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: to release the Epstein files. Right.
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: This is where we fall into the trap is that
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: like people want to make this about hypocrisy and broken
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: campaign promises. It is about child sex trafficking. That's what
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: it is. And this is a scandal and people are
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: going to think this is hyperbolic and nuts. I've said
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: this a couple of times now, this is a scandal
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: as big as, as Watergate and Iran-Contra.
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: At its outset. Like, the fundamental proposition here is a
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: massive government conspiracy tied to covering up information about child
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: sex trafficking. That is what is happening. Seems like a
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: big deal to me.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, Trump said he was worried this
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: week about the people who might be mentioned but aren't involved.
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: I'm sure he is.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: But aren't involved and who could be hurt by something
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: that would be very, very unfortunate, very unfair. to a
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: lot of people. Again, you know, let's take Donald Trump
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: at his word here. And none of those people that
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: he's worried, including himself, about everyone else finding out about
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: in these files broke any laws, right? So the cover-up
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: is just trying not to embarrass a bunch of really
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: rich and famous people, including the president.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: And there's a workaround to that.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Still a pretty big scandal.
• 27:49
  Speaker 9: Yes.
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: And there's a workaround to that too, which is just
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: release the mentions of Trump's name and redact other people,
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: if that was really your concern. Also, as a note,
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: according to reporting from ABC News, Todd Blanch asked Maxwell
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: about 100 different people in the meeting. So I'm pretty
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: sure if they release the transcript, they will not be
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: redacting those names. So they're not that concerned about it.
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: There is a speed bump on the way to trying
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: to protect Donald Trump from any sort of political fallout
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: from this relationship.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: Well, Dan, they don't have to redact... all hundred names,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: they only have to redact the names of the people
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: who are Donald Trump and Donald Trump's closest friends and associates.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Of course, yes. If you're a Democrat, they don't have
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: to redact your name.
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: I'm sure they won't.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: If you're just some famous person who might seem like
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: a Democrat or maybe is a rhino Republican, they don't
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: have to redact your name. It's just Donald Trump's name
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: they have to redact. So our old buddy Norm Eisen
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: has FOIAed records relating to the transfer decision on Glenn
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Maxwell through his group Democracy Defenders. Any chance we ever
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: learn more about the mechanics of this?
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: I think there's a chance we'll learn more, although I'm
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: not sure it's through FOIA, because I just don't trust
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: that the administration that's driving a Mack truck through the 1st, 4th,
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: and 14th Amendment is going to adhere to the letter
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: of the law when it comes to the Freedom of
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: Information Acts. That seems.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: But there are like... That's where the... There's sticklers there.
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: It does seem that a lot of people had to
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: be involved with this decision, and people seem deeply uncomfortable
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: with it. There are still... There are quotes from Bureau
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: of Prisons employees to reporters off the record or on
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: background suggesting how strange this is. So I think we
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: may discover what happened here, hopefully sooner rather than later.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: So the House Oversight Committee, they're getting involved too. The
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: James Comer, he subpoenaed testimony from a bunch of high-profile
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Democrats and Trump detractors, including uh bill and hillary clinton
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: robert muller jeff sessions eric holder anyone missing from the
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: list there who might be able to shed some light
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: on uh maybe past secret deals that jeffrey epstein received
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: from government officials.
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: I mean one person i would just mention which i'm
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: sure this was an oversight um is Alex Acosta, who
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: was Trump's labor secretary, who was the U.S. attorney, who
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: cut the very specific deal that allowed Epstein to leave
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: prison six of the seven days a week because he
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: was on some sort of strange work release program and
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: served almost no time for sex offenses, child sex offenses.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: Well, he is very busy now on the board of Newsmax,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: the right-wing television station that has leaned the hardest— in
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: the direction of maybe Ghislaine Maxwell is actually good.
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: But he also said like there was reporting around the
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: decision and things he said that really deserve more explanation
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: about how it was said that he was really connected,
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: had high up friends, which is why this deal, what
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: he was told to cut this deal. He claims he
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: made a reference to the, him being connected to he
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: is like, it is comments from Acosta that are the
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: heart of the idea of that Epstein was somehow connected
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: to intelligence. Like he suggested that at some point, Israeli intelligence.
• 30:59
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: Um, and so it's like, he's, he'd be the first
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: person on the list. If you really wanted to get
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: some answers, because had he not cut this deal, imagine
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: all the people who would have been spared what Epstein
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: and Maxwell did. Cause it was another decade before more
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: than a decade before, uh, he was actually brought to
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: justice or arrested before, uh, dying in prison.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: So you wrote a message box about all this Epstein
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: stuff Thursday, about sort of why it's important to make
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: sure that Trump doesn't distract us and move on to another,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: move on to the next scandal or whatever he wants
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: to move on to. How do you think we should
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: go about that, making sure that he doesn't distract us
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: from this?
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: I think we have limited, for all the reasons we
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: said in our long diatribe about the broken media ecosystem,
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: But I think we should just have to continue to
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: keep the pressure up. I think when Congress comes back,
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: that Democrats have to, at every opportunity, demand a vote, right?
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: Use every platform they have to do it. And I
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: think it really gets back to just focusing on the
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: core proposition about what is happening here. And it is
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: just help people understand why this is a big deal
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: and just keep hammering at it, keep hammering at it,
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: keep putting pressure on the press to do it. There
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: is still great reporting happening on this. All the things
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: we mentioned are CNN, ABC. But you can kind of
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: feel the– like the investigative press is working. The political
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: press is starting to get their August wandering eye to
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: other stories because what is really interesting to the political
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: press– because they're not the ones like digging deep into
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: the Bureau of Prisons to find who signed the transfer order.
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: It was two things. One is Congress, right? With like
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: what's happening in Congress? Like how does this affect this?
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: They can talk to the members about it. They're out
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: of town. But the other one is tension in the
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: Republican base. And that tension still exists. The polling shows
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: it still matters with voters. But some of the most
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: prominent voices have been brought to heel by Trump. And
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: so that takes away from the political press. But I
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: think we need to keep making this a political story,
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: keep talking about it, just keep putting pressure on people
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: as much as we possibly can. Because I really do believe,
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: and maybe I sound crazy, I think this is a massive,
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: important scandal, that at least we need to pull every
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: thread to get to the bottom of. If we get
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: through this presidency and we never know what the Epstein.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: File said about Trump, That would stink.
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: It would be a massive failure of civil society.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: I at least want to know before America ends. It's like,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: what's going to happen first? The end of the Republic
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: or releasing the Epstein file?
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: It's like when a TV show gets canceled before they
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: can bring the story to close.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. I want
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: to get to the finale. So there continues to be
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: real world evidence that the Epstein thing actually matters to
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: real people. Nebraska Congressman Mike Flood made the audacious and,
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: for a Republican, increasingly rare decision to hold an actual
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: town hall in his district this week. Here's what it
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: sounded like when the subject of accountability for Epstein came up.
• 34:02
  Speaker 6: Why are you covering up the Epstein files? I am
• 34:08
  Speaker 6: for the release of those records.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: All right. All right, Mike Flood. We love that. Reporters
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: who were there said that everyone in the room, even
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: the Republicans, were cheering for more transparency on Epstein. But
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: on basically every other subject, things didn't go so great
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: for Flood.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: Let's listen.
• 34:26
  Speaker 6: Next slide, please. No taxes on overtime. And more than anything,
• 34:39
  Speaker 6: I truly believe this bill protects Medicaid for the future.
• 34:49
  Speaker 6: I can tell you, we're going to see an influx
• 34:52
  Speaker 6: of money into Nebraska hospitals.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: Sounds like a good time. What do you think they
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: were chanting there at the beginning?
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: Wasn't it tax the rich?
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: Tax the rich. Thank you. Thank you, Austin. Thank you, Dan.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: I couldn't hear. I'm getting old. So put on your
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: strategist hat for a second. What were your first thoughts
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: seeing that town hall?
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: I think it does highlight what I believe to be
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: probably the most under-discussed story of the first seven months
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: of Trump's presidency is that despite obvious dissatisfaction with the
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: Democratic Party, high disapproval ratings, polls that show that we
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: want new leaders, that despite all of that, the grassroots
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: anti-Trump movement is as fired up as it has been
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: since the beginning of the Trump era in politics. You
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: saw this with the No Kings rally. We've seen this
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: in other town halls have happened. People are much more
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: fired up. The resistance was a big story in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020.
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: The press doesn't cover anymore. It doesn't get attention, but
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: it does exist. It is real and people are fired
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: up about what is happening and just pretty fired up
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: about the Republican budget bill and the cuts to Medicaid
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: and the tax cuts for the rich. I think that
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: can drive a lot of good political outcomes in 2026.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: And to be clear, the people I was talking about
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: earlier who are turning away, it's not the resistance, it's
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: the normies, right? And I think that you're going to
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: need to get, bring in some of the normies into
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: the anti-Trump resistance movement who we didn't have before, just
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: because the level of danger right now is so much
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: higher than it ever has been, that I think you're
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: going to need a bigger movement than we've ever had before.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: But you're absolutely right that I think the energy, and again,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: we're not hearing about this energy as much. We're not
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: seeing it as much because all of our information channels
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: are broken, but it's, it was good to know that
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: it's certainly there because in, you know, they're like, Oh,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: it's Democrats that showed up. It's like, great. I don't
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: care who shows up. It's a random guy in Lincoln, Nebraska,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: random Congressman decides to hold a town hall and it
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: gets packed like line. Annie Carney of the New York
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: times was there. So like lines out the door around
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: the building, like it was a presidential campaign of people
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: trying to get in. So, Whether that's, you know, Democratic energy,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: anti-resistance energy, anti-Trump energy from, you know, former Republicans, whatever,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: it's great to see. And, you know, just a reminder,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: if you want to help out folks that are going
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: to these town halls, if you want to make sure
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: the Democrats take back the House in 2026, then just
• 37:28
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• 37:30
  Speaker 1: America are ready to help you do something about it
• 37:32
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• 37:35
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• 37:38
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• 37:50
  Speaker 1: brought to you by Strawberry.me. The clock is ticking. The
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  Speaker 1: days are rolling by, turning into weeks, months, years. We
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• 38:05
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• 38:06
  Speaker 2: And say things like, I've already put years into this place.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: Crooked media. What if the next move is even worse?
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: I went to the Daily Wire.
• 38:13
  Speaker 9: I can't afford to take a wrong step. Oh no,
• 38:16
  Speaker 9: I'm co-hosting a show with Benny Johnson. And isn't everyone
• 38:19
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• 38:23
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• 38:26
  Speaker 2: No.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: There's a difference between reasons for staying and excuses for
• 38:29
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  Speaker 9: So don't leave your career to chance. Everything's a conspiracy, John.
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  Speaker 1: Head to strawberry.me slash crooked to claim a special offer.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: That's strawberry.me slash crooked. Stop settling. Start building the career
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: you actually want. John Lovett, he did, and he's not
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  Speaker 1: here anymore.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: Where'd he go? Is that a word for Tucker? It's
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: my dream job.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: So Republicans are responding to angry voters showing up at
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: town halls by trying to pick better voters. Trump and
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: the rest of the MAGA establishment are hard at work
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: trying to lock in a permanent Republican majority by rigging
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: the congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterms. Trump thinks
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: this is the least we can do for him, as
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: he said on CNBC this week.
• 39:41
  Speaker 5: We have an opportunity in Texas to pick up five seats.
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: We have a really good governor and we have good
• 39:46
  Speaker 5: people in Texas. And I won Texas. I got the
• 39:48
  Speaker 5: highest vote in the history of Texas, as you probably know.
• 39:53
  Speaker 5: And we are entitled to five more seats.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: He's entitled. The entitlement apparently extends way beyond Texas to
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: any state with a Republican majority. Conversations are happening in Missouri,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: South Carolina, Florida, Ohio, and Indiana, where J.D. Vance visited
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: on Thursday to pressure the state's Republican governor, Mike Braun.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Politico reports that Republicans think they can get 10 or
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: more House seats just by redrawing the maps. As we've
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: talked about, Democratic states are threatening to counter with California
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: in the lead, but it's not clear which other states
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: can make it happen or when or how many seats
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: there are left to squeeze out of those maps for Democrats.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: And in response to Texas Democratic legislators making the completely
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: legal decision that has precedent to leave the state and
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: deny Republicans a quorum to redraw the maps there, Texas
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: Senator John Cornyn asked the FBI to hunt them down
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: and drag them back home. And apparently the FBI said, sure,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: no problem. So that's where we are. Now we're using
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: federal law enforcement to scour the country for Texas Democratic
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: state legislators so that you can forcibly bring them back
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: to the state legislature so that the Republican governor can
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: redraw maps to hand Donald Trump five more seats so
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: that he can keep control of Congress. Sounds very democratic,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: doesn't it?
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, just it's what the founders had in mind.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: Thriving, thriving democracy. Everything is completely normal. What do you
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: make of all this insanity?
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: It's quite concerning, I'd say. I mean, look, Republicans know
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: the Democrats are favored in the midterms. Right. The map
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: is harder than I think a lot of Democrats think.
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: But given how Democrats turn out in midterm elections, given
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: Trump's approval rating, just given the general thermostatic reaction where
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: the country reacts to a new president and they go
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: the other side. There was always this segment of the electorate,
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: even if they voted for Trump, who wants a check
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: on power. And so you would imagine that we're favored.
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: So what are they doing about it?
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: And the polls are bearing this out.
• 41:48
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: And not only bearing this out, but the margin, the
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Democratic margin on the generic ballot in polls has gotten
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: larger over the last couple of months.
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: And it's not where it was in 2018, but it's
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: certainly well within a place where you would expect the
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: Democrats to have the majority.
• 42:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: So Republicans had some options here, right? They could, Trump
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: could try to do more popular things. Trump could try
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: to stop blowing up the economy. Republicans could distance themselves
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: from the unpopular president to try to improve their brand.
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: They're going to do none of those things, right? What
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: they're basically trying to do is to rig the election,
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: to take this very extraordinary step of mid-decade redistricting to
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: draw new maps to benefit them. And they've given up
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: all pretense of coming up with even a reason for
• 42:32
  Speaker 4: why they're doing it. It's just that Texas Republicans are
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: doing it because Trump said to do it and Trump's
• 42:37
  Speaker 4: doing it because Trump thinks they deserve it. Even if
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: it means you fundamentally do not understand math to think
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: that you deserve it because that's not what the election
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: results show in Texas or elsewhere. You get this a
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: lot from people. Every time I write a message box
• 42:49
  Speaker 4: that is how something could hurt Republicans in the midterms,
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: the response you get from a lot of people on
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: our side is, well, the Republicans will just cancel the midterms.
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: And it's hard to imagine how you actually cancel elections
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: in a country where elections are run by states. is
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: that's like kind of hard to fathom, but this, you
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: don't have to do that. You can just pick the
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: voters for the election in a way that helps you
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: maintain power. And that's what they're doing. And it's brazen
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: and aggressive and it's quite dangerous.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: What do you think about the potential for widespread public
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: blowback to these moves? Because, you know, we've process arguments.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: They're hard to make. They are, you know, process arguments
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: about democracy and elections. You know, we've been down this
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: road before. They're important to make. They're hard to make.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: They are hard to break through. For people who are
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: not paying as close attention to politics, they're sort of
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: hard to understand. I bet if you polled people on like,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: you know, do you think politicians should get to choose
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: their voters? They would say no. But what do you
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: think about, what do you think people know about the
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: extent of what's going on?
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: I think they know very little about the extent of
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: what's going on. I think Democrats can use it as
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: a data point in a larger argument. How about Republicans
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: have become representatives of the broken political system where politicians
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: only care about power for themselves. I think you can
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: use that. The argument, like I support the democratic state's
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: responding because I think brute force is the only viable
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: response here. But it does make the message more murky.
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: Because you can say, well, Democrats do it, Republicans do it.
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: This is all just- They're all doing it.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: They're all doing it. No one's going to look into
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: who started it.
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: And I don't like, we'd have a cleaner message if
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: California wasn't doing it, but we'd also have fewer seats.
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: And so I would pick the latter. I would pick
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: having the seats rather than the cleaner message.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: I don't think this is something to campaign on. I
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: think this is like an inside fight that we just
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: have to fight, you know? It doesn't seem realistic to
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: expect any Republican-controlled state to resist Trump on this. I
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: don't know if you disagree. And what's your current tally
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: on who comes out ahead here?
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: Oh, the Republicans almost certainly come out ahead. It's not even,
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: I don't even think it's close because California has to
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: go through extraordinary measures themselves just to do this. New York,
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: like as you guys talked about on Tuesday, Governor Hochul
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: is talking a strong game, but it is very hard.
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: Experts do not believe they can get this done before
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: the 26th midterms. Illinois is already a state where it's
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: very hard to get more seats out of without putting
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: more Democrats at risk. Maryland can get one seat. You
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: can get a couple seats out of Missouri. You can
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: get five seats out of Texas. Florida is looking at
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: possibly getting five seats if they push forward in response
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: to California. Indiana can get a seat. So I think
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: Republicans would come out ahead.
• 45:30
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: It seems like California can neutralize Texas, but then You know,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: that's why J.D. Vance went to Indiana and that's why
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: Missouri is thinking of moving ahead. So, I mean, I
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: guess if California neutralizes Texas, it seems most likely that
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: then they come out a few seats ahead. You know,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: we've talked about this before, but Florida has some challenges
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: in redistricting in time for the midterms and some of
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: the other states. But it seems like the most doable
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: for them are Indiana and Missouri.
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And Ohio.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: And Ohio, right.
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 46:03
  Speaker 4: Ohio is another one.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: So that sucks.
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: But like they currently– what do they have? A currently
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: two-seat majority or whatever? Like every seat is going to
• 46:10
  Speaker 4: matter in this situation.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: But as we've said before and I brought up your
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: point here on Tuesday's pod, even when they– in Texas,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: if they gerrymander new seats that they think are Trump
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: plus 10 or Trump plus 15 from the 2024 results,
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: that's not necessarily the case in 2026 when Latino voters
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: are already shifting away from Donald Trump. by pretty significant margins.
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: And I think in Texas, the long-term, the medium to
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: long-term is even more, it's likely devastating to them than
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: just the short-term. Because they had the opportunity, in Texas,
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: they had the opportunity to draw these districts in 2021.
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: They specifically chose not to because they didn't want to
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: dilute the Republican electorate across too many districts. They were
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: like building, they basically didn't come in protection because they
• 46:56
  Speaker 4: saw changing demographics. The changing demographics were not entirely Latina related.
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: They were also suburban, you know, growing suburbs, growing exurbs
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: and those becoming more democratic. But, I mean, there is
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: risk in this for Republicans in the right year. The
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: wave washes over the dams they build.
• 47:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: Adding to the chaos, Donald Trump's announcement on Truth Social
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: Thursday morning that he's ordering the Commerce Department to conduct
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: a new census and that, quote, people who are in
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: our country illegally will not be counted. If this sounds familiar,
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: it's because Trump tried to include a citizenship question on
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: the 2020 census and a 5-4 Supreme Court majority said no.
• 47:32
  Speaker 8: So.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: Blatant violation of the Constitution to do this, which says
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: that all persons should be counted. Supreme Court ruled against
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: him six years ago on this. What's he doing here?
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: He's going to try again and try. He's got a
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: slightly different court this time. So, you know, will that matter?
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: Oh, I guess because it was Roberts and the four liberal.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: I guess because it was Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: So could he get a 6-3 out of this? Or
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: 5-4 in the other direction?
• 47:57
  Speaker 8: Maybe.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: I will say if he... If he somehow gets away
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: with not counting, you know, violating the Constitution and not
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: counting undocumented immigrants in the census, you know, places like Texas, Florida,
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: probably lose seats as well.
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: As California or New York or whatever his target is.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: So it's not clear that not counting undocumented immigrants absolutely
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: benefits Trump. It does completely, by the way, fuck up
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: social services.
• 48:23
  Speaker 4: That's the bigger deal here. There's been some studies of
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: this which show that it would have, over the course
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: of time, a very limited change in how House seats
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: and electoral votes are allocated. But the bigger thing is,
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: is it would just radically screw over people, screw over
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: states and communities who have high undocumented populations.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: Yes. And not, by the way, not just the undocumented population.
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: No, no, the schools. Like your school funding is based
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: on the population in your community. If you cut out
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: a bunch of.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: Citizens on Medicaid.
• 48:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's bad. It's not bad. It's bad for everyone,
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: but particularly American citizens in states and communities that happen
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: to have a decent number of undocumented people in that community.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: One last thing on district maps. The Supreme Court is
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: considering a challenge to Louisiana's congressional maps and asked for
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: a briefing on so-called majority minority districts, a longstanding practice
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: under the Voting Rights Act. Can you explain for people
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: what's at issue here and what the consequences would be?
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: This is a five alarm fire because section two of
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: the Voting Rights Act says you cannot deny someone or
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: dilute political power based on race. In its most nefarious way,
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: in the past, they would draw the districts in a
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: way to dilute the black vote to the point that
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: it was spread out so thin over every district that
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: there was no political power. And the way that this
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: was remedied when people sued these maps for violations of
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: the Voting Rights Act was you would create a majority-minority district,
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: which is why in these southern states like Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas,
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: that are very Republican but have large black populations– their
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: Democrats have a couple of seats because they've drawn these
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: majority minority districts. Like Alabama has two democratic seats. Mississippi
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: has one democratic seat. Just to give you, like, I
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: don't think people realize how large a part of the population,
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: these Southern states, black people are. One in four people
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: in Alabama is black. One in three people in Mississippi
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: are black. And so if they strike down, if they
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: say that majority minority districts are a violation of the
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: equal protection clause, then we will lose seats, almost every
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: Democratic seat in the Deep South, because they will just
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: divide the Black vote up in a way that suggests
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: that there will be no representation for the Black community,
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: no representation for Democrats from these. It is a huge,
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: huge deal. And it would be the complete fall of
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: the voting rights act. It's like the last thing remaining
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: is the Roberts court has chipped away at it year
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: after year after year. If they take this down, that
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: will be the.
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: End of it.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I guess the only potential reason for hope is
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: that they have looked at Voting Rights Act stuff before.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: And as they chipped away at the whole Voting Rights Act,
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: they have not touched this yet. But again, maybe, you know,
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: I don't know if we've seen a case with this court,
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: with this composition yet on this. So who knows?
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: But it's quite concerning. That's what I'd say.
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: So Trump isn't just trying to stop counting immigrants. He's,
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: of course, also trying to deport as many as possible.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: Here in L.A., ICE agents are now jumping out of
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: the back of Penske rental trucks at Home Depot's To
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: arrest any brown people they suspect of not having papers,
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: which Mayor Karen Bass says is violating a court order
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: prohibiting the government from racially profiling. The Trump administration has
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: now asked the Supreme Court to take a look at
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: that temporary restraining order so that they can go about
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: racially profiling all that they'd like. So stay tuned on
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: that one. In Texas, the new Fort Bliss detention camp
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: is about to start holding at least 1,000 people in
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: tent-like facilities and will ultimately hold up to 5,000 making
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: it the largest detention camp in the country. Defense Secretary
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: Pete Hegseth has also approved the use of military bases
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: in Indiana and New Jersey for the same thing. The
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: Trump administration is also bringing back their family separation policy
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: by telling parents they have a choice. They can either
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: be detained and deported without their kids or leave the
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: country with them. The New York Times has found at
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: least nine cases where families have been separated. The administration's
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: also now targeting pro bono immigration lawyers for the first time.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: DOJ is currently trying to sanction Joshua Schroeder for the
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: crime of challenging the deportation of his client in court.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: So now they're sending a message not just to the
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: big law firms, but to lawyers who are doing pro
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: bono work for immigrants. And Ice Barbie herself, Kristi Noem,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: announced this week that there's no age limit, no more
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: age limit or college degree required if you want to
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: mask up and joined Stephen Miller's secret police force. The
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: Department of Homeland Security actually tweeted, quote, serve your country,
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: defend your culture. No undergraduate degree required. One person who
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: signed up to defend his culture, actor Dean Cain, last
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: seen playing Superman on a series that ended in 1997.
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: He said he'll be signing up to serve ICE. So
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: Dean Cain, newest ICE agent. Dan, are you ready to
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: defend your culture?
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: Admits the freak out of the Sydney Sweeney ad where
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: everyone was talking about the Nazi eugenics. The use of
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: the term culture here is, that is not coded language.
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: That is as explicit as you could possibly be about
• 53:39
  Speaker 4: what we're talking about.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: I thought we were talking about crime. I thought the
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: whole thing was we want to protect our borders. We
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: want to keep Americans safe. Or maybe we want to
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: make sure that you know, if you're further to the
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: right on immigration, you want to make sure that these
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: undocumented immigrants aren't taking jobs from American citizens or benefits
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: from American citizens. But that was an argument at one point.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: Now we're just straight to culture. What culture do we
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: defend it? What culture do they think we're defending?
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a real, it's a very interesting follow-up question
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: here for the people who tweeted this out and the people.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: Who believe this. Please describe the culture that you think
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: we're defending. Is it a, is it Stephen Miller's culture?
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: Is it Donald Trump's culture? I guess it's like the
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: culture of just making a bunch of money off your
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: public office. Is that the culture?
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: It's the culture of white Christian people. That's what it means.
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: White Christian people, right? Billionaires, is that the culture? People
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: who can take as much as they can possibly get
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: based on how much power they have?
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: I mean, it is a very common phrase used by
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: people pushing neo-Nazi, white supremacist, eugenics-based ideas. Like, that is
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: what they're saying. It's like, it's not even, like, we
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: used to do a lot of, like, oh, he's winking
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: to the Proud Boys. It's like, that's not even that. Like,
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: the people, they're not winking. Like, this is what they believe.
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: This is not, like, some clever political signal to get
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: the Proud Boys to support Trump. This is just the
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: people in charge now believe this. Like, it doesn't even
• 55:05
  Speaker 4: occur to them to not use this language. Like, it
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: is what they, there's no subtlety here.
• 55:12
  Speaker 5: I know.
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: And it's not like, A random Republican politician is tweeting this.
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: It's not even like some White House staffer. This is
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: the Department of Homeland Security. The name, Homeland Security. It's
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: supposed to be about keeping America safe, not about defending
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: your culture. A culture that, if anything, is about a
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: place where anyone can become a citizen and where a multiracial,
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: multiethnic country of 300 million people. I thought that was
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: our culture. Apparently, Stephen Miller thinks no. I'm going to
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: preview of my conversation with Pete Buttigieg this weekend on
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: the Sunday show. I showed him a clip, a very
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: disturbing clip of a J.D. Vance speech that he gave
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: at the Claremont Institute over the July 4th holiday, where J.D.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: Vance actually says that the Declaration of Independence and the
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: ideals of the Declaration of Independence are over-inclusive, over-inclusive. And
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: that should not be, America should not just be thought
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: of as a creedal nation based on an idea, based
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: on a belief. Because if you believe in the Declaration
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: of Independence and what it says in there, that could
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: mean a billion foreign citizens trying to come into America
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: just because they believe in the ideals of America. And
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: we can't have that. It's fucking wild, man.
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: There's a longer conversation to be had about J.D.
• 56:31
  Speaker 5: Vance.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: I know, I know. There's a lot going on there.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: I started to have it with Pete, but I could
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: have a much longer conversation about J.D. Vance. Also this week,
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: by the way, Trump said he is the most likely...
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: heir apparent to the MAGA movement. Though then he made
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: sure he got into Marco Rubio mention because he, you know,
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: likes to play reality TV host there and he's setting
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: up the competition for 28. But he did say he's
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: the most likely heir. So we'll be with, unfortunately, J.D.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: Vance will be around for a while. Hard to believe,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: but we've saved what's potentially the most dangerous news of
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: the week for last. Secretary Brain Worms Jr. announced that
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: Health and Human Services Department will be pulling the plug
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: on federal research into mRNA vaccines. that are currently being
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: developed for the flu, COVID, cancer, and other conditions. Kennedy
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: claimed that mRNA vaccines aren't effective against upper respiratory infections,
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: despite the fact that they saved millions of lives during
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: a pandemic that was about an upper respiratory infection. Donald
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: Trump used to take credit for mRNA as one of
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: his signature accomplishments. Here's how he responded when reminded of
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: that this week.
• 57:35
  Speaker 6: You were the driving.
• 57:35
  Speaker 11: Force behind Operation Warp Speed, these mRNA vaccines that are
• 57:40
  Speaker 11: the gold standard. Now your health secretary is pulling back
• 57:44
  Speaker 11: all the funding for research. He's saying that the risks
• 57:48
  Speaker 11: outweigh the benefits, which puts him at odds with the
• 57:50
  Speaker 11: entire medical community and with you.
• 57:53
  Speaker 6: What is going on?
• 57:54
  Speaker 8: Research on what?
• 57:55
  Speaker 6: Into mRNA vaccines.
• 57:56
  Speaker 8: Well, we're going to look at that. We're talking about it,
• 57:58
  Speaker 8: and they're doing a very good job. And, you know,
• 58:00
  Speaker 8: that is a pest. With Operation Warp Speed— was whether
• 58:06
  Speaker 8: you're Republican or Democrat, considered one of the most incredible
• 58:09
  Speaker 8: things ever done in this country. But, you know, that
• 58:12
  Speaker 8: was now a long time ago. And we're on to
• 58:16
  Speaker 8: other things.
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: So one of the many, many experts sounding the alarm
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: about this reversal, that includes Trump's first surgeon general, was
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: tweeting about it this week as well. But one of
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: the other experts is Dr. Michael Osterholm, the director of
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: University of Minnesota. and the author of the upcoming book,
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: The Big One, How We Must Prepare for Future Deadly Pandemics.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: He spoke with Dan just before we recorded. Here's that interview.
• 58:47
  Speaker 4: Mike Osterholm, welcome to Pod Save America.
• 58:49
  Speaker 12: Thanks. Appreciate being here.
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: So earlier this week, the Trump administration canceled $ 500 million
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: in grants for the development of mRNA vaccines. You called
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: this one of the most dangerous public health decisions you've
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: seen in your career. How will this set us back?
• 59:06
  Speaker 12: Well, it actually sets us back in several ways, but
• 59:08
  Speaker 12: let me just land on that. the most important and
• 59:11
  Speaker 12: one of real significance. And that is that today we
• 59:15
  Speaker 12: are really poorly prepared globally for an influenza pandemic. If
• 59:19
  Speaker 12: we were to have a really, truly big one like 1918,
• 59:22
  Speaker 12: it would exceed anything we saw with COVID. And There
• 59:28
  Speaker 12: is a way to get better prepared, and that is
• 59:29
  Speaker 12: to have vaccines that you could quickly make and deploy.
• 59:33
  Speaker 12: Right now, globally, our capability of making flu vaccine is
• 59:38
  Speaker 12: at about 2 billion doses in 15 to 18 months.
• 59:42
  Speaker 12: And what I mean by doses, I'm talking about two
• 59:44
  Speaker 12: vaccinations per person. So basically, three quarters of the world
• 59:49
  Speaker 12: would not have vaccine in the first 18 months, and
• 59:52
  Speaker 12: some of them would never see it. That's just because
• 59:56
  Speaker 12: we have this very outdated 1950s technology for making flu
• 59:59
  Speaker 12: vaccine and chicken eggs. Well, along comes RNA. And the
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 12: mRNA right now that we see is a perfect candidate
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 12: for making flu vaccine. And some of the early research
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 12: surely supports that. If we had that vaccine available at
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 12: the time of the next pandemic, we could probably make
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 12: enough for the world within 12 months. which would fundamentally
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 12: change the whole game around an influenza pandemic. That now
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 12: has pretty much been thrown out the window with this
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 12: new change, as the US government will not be basically
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 12: supporting overall mRNA vaccine work. And more importantly, they continue
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 12: to support a type of research that has been going
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 12: on since the 1950s. Salk himself was involved with it.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 12: And it's really unfortunate because we just don't see a
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 12: lot of upside on this particular vaccine, but that's what
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 12: they're now counting on at NIH.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess that's my question, right? The critics of
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 4: RNA vaccines or mRNA vaccines say that they don't catch mutations,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: that there's questions about them, and they want to go
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: back to whole virus vaccines the way we used to
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: do it. One, how do you respond to the questioning
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 4: of the efficacy or safety of mRNA vaccines, and what
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: are the downsides of going back to the old way
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: of doing it?
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 12: Well, first of all, the old way of doing it
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 12: was no longer used because it didn't work all that well. Actually,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 12: believe it or not, a split-cell vaccine, which we have
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 12: now is where we break the virus up a bit,
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 12: actually provides more contact with different parts of the virus
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 12: that would otherwise be protected as a whole virus that
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 12: gives you a better immune response. So we abandoned host
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 12: cell 40 years ago because it was not providing us
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 12: with good results. Somehow, I think there are some that
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 12: now believe that just because it's in the hands of
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 12: the current leadership at the NIH, it's suddenly going to
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 12: change and be different. We don't know how. Our center
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 12: actually is responsible for tracking all influenza vaccine work in
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 12: the world. And we have a website that's maintained that
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 12: actually today you can go on it and find out
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 12: exactly every product that's out there, where it's at in
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 12: terms of its research performance. what phase is it in,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 12: what it's dealing with. And so we really have some
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 12: expertise in flu vaccine evaluation. And I can tell you
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 12: that the virus from the NIH at this point does
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 12: not even rank anywhere near, you know, of interest to
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 12: most researchers at all.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: You know, obviously $ 500 million is a lot of money.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 4: Can the private sector step in here? Are the pharmaceutical
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 4: companies continue to develop these vaccines? Or do they need
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 4: government support to do it?
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 12: Well, this is where it gets more complicated. And I
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 12: say that because, number one, is that there was about
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 12: $ 500 million already put in by industry. And that, I think,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 12: is going to evaporate quickly because the handwriting is on
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 12: the wall. Why invest in something for which the U.S.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 12: government is not going to support or move forward? And so,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 12: if anything, we've lost a lot more than $ 500 million
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 12: in in terms of research dollars. The second thing is,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 12: it's just going to have a dampening effect, I think,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 12: on a number of biotech sides in the United States
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 12: because they see this uncertainty. We've heard people talk about
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 12: the business impact of the terrorists. It's about the uncertainty. Well,
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 12: now there's even more uncertainty about what this administration will do,
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 12: not based on science, but largely based on ideology. What
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 12: will they do? And so I think you're going to
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 12: see a lot of companies that would otherwise be in
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 12: this business actually getting out or moving to a country
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 12: outside the United States.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: And so you've brought up influenza several times here. We
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: are right now watching very carefully bird flu in this
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: country with obviously fears that it could be communicable to humans.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 4: I assume this affects our efforts to prepare for that
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: as well.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 12: It does. And it's really important when we talk about influenza,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 12: we're talking about all the viruses, whether it be bird
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 12: flu or seasonal flu, whatever that goes on and causes
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 12: the pandemic. But let me also remind people, as much
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 12: as they don't want to hear this and they surely
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 12: don't find it necessarily moving because they just don't believe it,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 12: but one of the concerns that we've had is that
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 12: the kind of coronavirus that we had with COVID was
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 12: not the worst of the worst.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 4: Of the viruses.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 12: This particular virus actually was highly infectious, but actually killed
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 12: at about a rate of about one to one and
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 12: a half percent of the population that it infected. If
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 12: you look at SARS and MERS, two other coronaviruses, SARS
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 12: hitting in 2003 in China, spreading around the world somewhat
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 12: and brought under control. MERS taking off 2012. You know,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 12: we saw it too. Those viruses killed between 20 and
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 12: 35 percent of the people. but they weren't that infectious.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 12: And so we were able to contain them. It was
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 12: like dealing with a wildfire. It wasn't like dealing with
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 12: the wind. Well, in the last few months, we've now
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 12: identified a new coronavirus in a bat in China that
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 12: actually has the characteristics of transmission like COVID and has
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 12: the ability to kill like SARS and MERS. So it's
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 12: got the two worst things you'd want to see in
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 12: one virus. That virus could be the cause of a
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 12: pandemic tomorrow, which Imagine instead of having one and a
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 12: half percent of the population dying, you're now talking about 20, 25%.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 12: That is not just scary talk. That is real. You know,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 12: nobody wanted to believe the COVID pandemic was going to occur.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 12: Look what it did. And now I'm telling you, we
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 12: need to be better prepared just for what could be
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 12: a much worse kind of pandemic.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 4: And is it that this technology, like, would you start
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 4: developing a vaccine for that now? Or it's just when
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 4: that possibly became a pandemic, the capacity to quickly spin
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 4: up a vaccine goes down because we are not supporting
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 4: the development of these vaccines?
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 12: The answer is yes and yes. What I mean by
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 12: that is that our goal with both influenza and coronavirus
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 12: vaccines is to get ones that are more universal. They
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 12: would cover a broad brush of them. And that's actually
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 12: part of this work that we've been doing with the
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 12: Vaccine Roadmap. And so wouldn't it be ideal if you
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 12: had a vaccine that you could take and eight years later,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 12: suddenly a pandemic breaks out with a totally different virus,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 12: but you still have protection. So we're working on that
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 12: very thing. In the meantime, if you can't get that,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 12: at least what you want to have is the capability
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 12: of making an effective vaccine against the virus that emerged.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 12: And you can make it in such quantity quickly enough
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 12: that you can actually have an impact around the world.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 12: You know, we say often, and it may sound trite,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 12: but it's really critical that Vaccines are important, but not
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 12: that important until they become a vaccination. And so the
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 12: key feature is going to be, can we get people
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 12: to take it? Which was actually the third point I
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 12: was going to make about Mr. Kennedy's comments. He, again,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 12: created fear in the minds of many people by what
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 12: he said. These vaccines aren't safe. The benefits do not
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 12: outweigh the risks. You leave people with statements like that
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 12: are just factually not true. Of course, that's going to
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 12: diminish interest in the vaccines.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 4: If there are people out there who are, you know,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 4: we now have the federal government of the United States
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 4: spreading anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, anti-vaccine misinformation. If people have questions,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 4: you know, concerns, like where should they go to get
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 4: good information about vaccines right now?
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 12: Well, this is one of the challenges. The federal government
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 12: agencies used to be one of the most reliable sources,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 12: NIH and CDC. You can't trust them now. You can't.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 12: There's some very incredibly qualified people who still work there.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 12: Not everybody's gone. But the problem is that the leadership
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 12: in both cases are now ones of people who are
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 12: inserting into whatever they put out, ideologic information, not scientific information.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 12: And so, That's a challenge. I think it's going to
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 12: be places, and I surely don't want to sound self-serving here,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 12: but our center, for example, has a major website presence
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 12: where we have news every day. It's current every hour.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 12: And so there's places you can go get that. The
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 12: information is linked, not just what's on our site, but
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 12: whatever credible information is out there. So we kind of
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 12: do the actual evaluation of should this information be linked.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 12: So there are places like that. There are centers at...
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 12: At Brown, there's a center. At Johns Hopkins, there's our
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 12: center that are providing, I think, the information that people
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 12: can count on and use.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 4: Well, Dr. Osterholm, I would say when I heard this announcement,
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 4: I thought it was bad. But now after talking to you,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 4: I realize it's really, really bad, and I'm quite concerned.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 4: But thank you very much for this information. It's important
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 4: for our listeners to know the consequences of these decisions.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 4: coming out of HHS.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: Thanks, Dan.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: We're going to go to a quick break, but one
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: reminder before we do that, if you need an outlet
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: for all the rage you're feeling processing the news, highly
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: recommend Hysteria's YouTube series, This Fucking Guy. Every month, Hysteria
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: hosts Aaron Ryan and Alyssa Mastromonaco take a deep dive
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: into the worst people in politics. This is the copy
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: they told me to read. Uh-oh, haven't read it yet.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: Think of it like a true crime series, where the
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: crime is always someone who sucks having too much power
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: and influence. That's awesome.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 4: Great copy.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: The show has covered Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Stephen Miller,
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: my buddy, and lots more, but the new episode of
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: This Fucking Guy is all about DHS secretary, ICE agent cosplayer,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: and noted dog killer, Kristi Noem.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 10: Wow.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: Exciting. Also, Check out this week's South Park. Great, great
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: Kristi Noem content, which we covered on our YouTube channel,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: the Pod Save America YouTube channel. You should check it out.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: Subscribe to the Pod Save America YouTube channel because, you know,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: when people are searching for Sidney Sweeney discourse, we don't
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: want Megyn Kelly's show to come up. We want Pod
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: Save America to come up, right?
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 4: That's the genius behind your Twitter fight.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 9: Pod Save America is brought to you by Rocket Money.
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  Speaker 4: Go today.
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  Speaker 2: That's rocketmoney.com slash crooked. rocketmoney.com slash crooked.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 7: All right.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: A few hopefully lighter items before we go. Starting with
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: a quick check-in on what those zany Cuomo brothers are
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: up to. So there's Andrew. who's refusing to take no
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: for an answer from the voters of New York in
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: his quixotic mission to run for mayor as an independent.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: And we learned this week that he may get some
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: help in that mission from another New Yorker who doesn't
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: take no for an answer when he loses, Donald Trump.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: The New York Times reports that Trump is considering getting
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: more involved in the mayor's race and that he and
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: Cuomo spoke by phone after the primary. Cuomo, who's trying
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: to sell himself as the hard-boiled vet who can take
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: on Trump, also told business leaders this week that he
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: actually doesn't doesn't want to fight with Trump, and he
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: thinks they'll basically see eye to eye. So Dan, I'm
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: no political expert here. Is Donald Trump's endorsement the one
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: you're looking for when you're trying to win over the
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: voters of New York City? Is that a helpful endorsement
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: in New York?
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump made gains in New York City in 2024,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: but he still got his ass kicked. And so it's
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 4: sort of a crazy thing. It just speaks to the
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 4: absolute cynicism of Andrew Cuomo. which is his path to
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 4: victory is essentially being the Republican nominee who then gets
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 4: a slice of the Democratic electorate. And so that's why
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 4: he doesn't want to fight Trump anymore. He's trying to
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 4: get Curtis Sliwa's votes and some of Eric Adams' votes.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 4: That's his goal. There is no path for him as
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 4: the candidate of independence in some Democrats. He knows he
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 4: can't win with Democrats. And so he's completely changing his stripes.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 4: He ran as the one guy who was tough enough
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 4: to take on Trump. But now that the voters said,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 4: no way, he's changing entirely who he is in a
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 4: last-ditch pitifully desperate attempt to win election.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: How excited do you think, uh, Zoran Mamdani is about
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: Trump potentially getting involved in this election?
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 4: He did a little press avail about this and the
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 4: excitement seemed palpable, I would say.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: Their campaign must be like, yes, more, please come campaign
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: for Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams or both or neither.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: Just come to New York, say nice things about him.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: So unfortunately that wasn't the only Cuomo, uh, in the
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: news this week. Andrew's equally brilliant brother, Chris, uh, former
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: CNN anchor, now News Nation anchor. He attacked AOC on
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: Twitter this week over a video of a speech she
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: gave on the House floor about the Sidney Sweeney jeans ad.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: The only problem? The video was a deepfake, clearly identified
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: as such, and only sounded like a real speech if
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: you're an absolute fucking moron. Here's a sample.
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 7: Sidney Sweeney looks like an Aryan goddess, and the American
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 7: Eagle Jeans campaign is blatant Nazi propaganda... I mean, fuck.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 7: Watching that sultry little temptress squeeze into a Canadian tuxedo,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 7: three sizes too small, with her bouncy little fun bags
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 7: on the screen staring at you, piercing through the core
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 7: of your soul with those ocean blue eyes that could
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 7: resurrect the Fuhrer from his grave in Argentina.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: Honestly, it gets better, worse, better, funnier. So the younger
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: Cuomo posted an outraged reaction. Reading nothing about Hamas? What?
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: Or people burning Jews' cars? But Sweeney Jean's ad? Deserve
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: time on floor of Congress? What happened to this party?
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: I'm just, I'm speaking like this because the spellings were
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: all over the place. Lots of typos. Fight for small business,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: not for small culture wars. He really unloaded a lot
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: in one tweet. After being mocked by the entire internet,
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: not often the entire internet comes together for something anymore,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: but they did for this. Called out by AOC herself,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: Cuomo replied with a sort of apology, not really, reading
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: in part, quote, you are correct. That was a deep fake,
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: but it really does sound like you. No, it doesn't.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: Before doubling down on the Hamas thing, demanding that she
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: send him a video of her demanding that Hamas surrender immediately.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: So that's it. We just all got to, everyone send
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: your videos of you calling on Hamas to surrender immediately.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: to Chris Cuomo by EOD. Thank you.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 4: So I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I watched a
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 4: three-minute clip of Chris Cuomo from his show addressing this controversy.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 4: Now, I watched it on the internet because I would
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 4: not know how to find.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: You're a real sicko. I appreciate that.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 4: If you told me that the winning lottery numbers for
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 4: tomorrow's Powerball were going to be a broadcast on News
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 4: Nation tonight, I would not be able to get that.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 4: I would not be any richer. So, but I watched
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 4: it and I would say, I know Chris Cuomo a
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 4: little bit because I used to do political commentary.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: You used to spot him at the gym.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 4: He never invited me to the gym. I was not
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 4: a spotter for him, but I used to do CNN.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 4: Like I was a CNN political commentator for a few years.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 4: And like the, like America's centrist gym bro shtick is
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 4: a lot, but I actually really thought he would just
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 4: like genuinely apologize and just say like, I fucked up.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 4: Like that is something I think in the past. He
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: might have done before he was fired from his job
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 4: for advising his brother on his brother's scandals while he
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 4: was at CNN. But it's in here or there.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: But he didn't.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 4: The three-minute clip is basically that tweet. He says, I
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 4: messed up. It was a deep fake. It was AI.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 4: But it sounded like her. And then he went on
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 4: a tirade about how she has not demanded that Hamas surrender,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 4: which is the one thing Hamas has said they're waiting for.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: I'm telling you, they are in the tunnels and they
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: are like, if enough people on social media, libs especially,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: call for us to surrender, we're coming out of those
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: tunnels with our hands up. That's it. The war could
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: be over. Un-fucking-real. Speaking of the Sidney Sweeney controversy.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 5: Oh, yes.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: We here at Pod Save America, we found ourselves in
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: the middle of a right-wing discourse on it this week.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: My fault. I started it.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it is your fault.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: Please enjoy the following clip of Megyn Kelly and Charlie
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: Kirk appraising our merits.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 10: My own thought on it is, having engaged in a
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 10: back and forth at length with one of the Pod
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 10: Save America guys last night, again, who remains a mystery
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 10: to me, the only one I know is that Tommy guy.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 6: I don't know the other ones.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 10: And this guy seemed genuinely hurt that I didn't know
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 10: who he was after arguing with him.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 6: And then even one of the other guys.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Tommy Vitter or something, I think.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 10: Maybe one of these days you'll solo a show and
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 10: then I'll learn your name. But until then, you're just
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 10: one of the Pod Save America guys.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 5: Sorry.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: Not everybody can do it. It's just such a low
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: testosterone group of complainers and whiners. But please continue, Megan.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Where do you want to begin there?
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know why I didn't ask him this today,
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: but Tommy, what's going on?
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I asked Tommy.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: What's the backstory?
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 4: He refuses to disclose.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: Oh, does he?
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: And the way she said Tommy, it was very loving
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: in an otherwise pretty tough couple seconds for Megan. It
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: was like, except Tommy.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: I know Tommy.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's very strange. I would also say what I'm
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 4: most am i outraged by the low testosterone thing no
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 4: no what i'm outraged by is that she does not
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 4: know about the fucking hit podcast offline with john favreau
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 4: a solo podcast with your goddamn.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: Name in it This isn't a big thing either, but
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: we're using solo as a verb now? We're soloing?
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's a verb. I think when you
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 4: are in music and podcasting, I think you solo.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: She's soloing? Okay, I'll give her that then. I will
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: say her bit to me about not knowing me, like
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: I don't give a fuck if Megyn Kelly ever knows
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: me or I talk to her or whatever. It just
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter. But the bit just seems really weird and
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: forced to me. She spent a good part of her
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: day responding to me on Twitter saying, A person she
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: has followed on Twitter for years and has replied to before.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: And the reason she knows my name is because it's
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: right there in the Twitter account that she was replying
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: to for several hours.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 4: I mean, that was a wild use of your time.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: Well, you know what? I don't get into Twitter fights
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: anymore that I don't think I can win.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 4: And this one.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: was so fucking ridiculous because it started with Megyn Kelly
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: lashing out at Beyonce in a Levi's ad. And the
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: people who told us for a couple weeks that the
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: left was losing their mind over Sidney Sweeney and jeans
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: and how fucking crazy, she decided to then go crazy
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: over Beyonce in a Levi's ad. Called her fake, called
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: her fame fake, called her success fake. Beyonce, who has
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: just like one of the most talented, successful people in
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: the world. And it's like, you can, you can not
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: like her music if you don't want, but what, what
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: are you doing? And my only response to Megan, which
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: wasn't really a response to her, but I was like,
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: here's the thing. You take a poll of the country
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: and I don't know, 80, 90% of people would be like,
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: I like the Sydney Sweeney ad. I like the Beyonce ad.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: I like both of them. Or at the very least,
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: I don't dislike either of them because most people are
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: fucking normal and Megan Kelly is not. as are all
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: the people fighting about this online.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 4: I sent you some polling that buttressed your argument with
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 4: Megyn Kelly. Did you use that? Did you reply with that?
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: No, because then I saw the New York Times story
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: did a whole, they did a analysis of social media
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: about this that just a Times story just ran. And,
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: you know, my whole contention was this isn't a real fight.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: This is a couple people on the left posted TikToks
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: and tweets about this. The right then saw those lefties
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: posting I don't even know if they were lefties, the
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: people who complained about the Sidney Sweeney ads who were
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: saying it was, you know, eugenics or Nazi or whatever.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: And then the right found those. And then they decided
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: to do a couple of weeks of roadblocked coverage of
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: this quote unquote scandal. A bunch of media outlets wrote
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: about the scandal. They did not necessarily criticize Sidney Sweeney.
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: I believe that in terms of media outlets, it was
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: like one MSNBC op-ed on their page and like one
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: Washington Post story. That's about it. And then everyone else
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: wrote about the controversy. So the New York Times said,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: in fact, by the time right-wing users were in an uproar,
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: only a few thousand posts on X mentioned Ms. Sweeney,
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: according to data by Tweetbinder, a social media analytics company.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: Fewer than 10% of those expressed clear criticism of the
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: actress or ad, according to the analysis by the Times,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: which used AI to help flag posts for review. Lovely. Overall,
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: there were three times as many posts supportive of the
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: campaign and Ms. Sweeney on X is there were posts
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: critical of them in the days after the campaign began,
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: an analysis by the Times showed. Nearly three quarters of
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: posts that were critical of Ms. Sweeney or the ad
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: had fewer than 500 views.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 4: Here's my question to you. Why are you telling me this?
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: Why are you telling your listeners?
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 4: Why aren't you telling Megyn Kelly this?
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: Well, I did. I call her Laura Ingram now. Actually,
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: today I called her Ann Coulter because I'm just going
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: to do that now. And so I did post the
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: screenshots from the piece in my last exchange with Megan
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: right before I came in here. I know.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 4: So you don't know if she's been replying to you?
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: I don't know, no, I don't know. That's exciting. Jane Koston,
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: our What A Day host, came into the office yesterday,
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: came into my office yesterday and said, please stop, stop
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: arguing with Megyn Kelly. And I promised Jane I would.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: But then the Times story came and it was too
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: good not to post. And also, I wasn't going to
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: talk about this. And then Megan did what Elijah predicted
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: she would do And decided to talk about the whole
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: Twitter controversy on her show with Charlie Kirk. Left me
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: no choice.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's fair. I just would like to remind our
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 4: listeners that every year we do our New Year's resolutions.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 4: And we all had different things we were planning to do.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 4: Mine was related to my physical and mental health. I
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 4: think I love it when I read more books. I
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 4: can't even imagine what earnest thing Tommy had. And yours
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 4: was to post more. And you, for the first time,
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 4: are crushing it. I've never.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: I've never made a New Year's resolution that I have
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: kept more than this one.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 4: Well, which is a great bounce back from your I'm
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 4: going to volunteer more from last year.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: It's like giving up broccoli for Lent, you know? Yes.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 4: You just like lean into it. Next year will be
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 4: drink more.
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: It's perfect. That's our show for today. Thanks to Dr.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: Michael Osterholm for coming on. I'll be back on the
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: feed on Sunday talking with Pete Buttigieg and answering some
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: of your questions. Be sure to check it out. Have
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: a great weekend. If you want to listen to Pod
• 1:24:19
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  Speaker 1: leaving us a review to help boost this episode and
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: everything we do here at Crooked. Pod Save America is
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illich-Frank,
• 1:24:42
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• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Cherlin is our executive editor.
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• 1:24:51
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