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How To Lose An Election · Political Junkie Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: We have a bevy of ultra-processed crops, corn, soy, wheat.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's unfortunately no shortage,
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: which of course has to do with hundreds of billions in subsidy dollars.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that somebody powerful called up someone else powerful
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: after paying out $7.25 billion and essentially saying this is an existential threat.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: We need to call in this favor, and they did, and it's exceptionally upsetting.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: You're
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: telling
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: everyone in town that I don't treat you right.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: You even say I stay away and don't come home at night.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm losing you and you are all I've got.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: We began this segment with Maha influencer Jillian Michaels reacting
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: to Donald Trump's February 18th,
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: 2026 executive order ramping up the production and distribution of glyphosate,
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_03: often sold as the household weed killer Roundup.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_03: Roundup, we know, I think pretty definitively causes cancer.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_03: There was a large settlement around it, which threatened to take it off the market.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_03: And then Donald Trump came out with an executive order and said,
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_03: no, no, no, we need more glyphosate.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: So that's what Jillian Michaels was distressed and upset about.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Claire Potter.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Neil Young.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_03: And this is the How to Lose an Election edition of the Political Junkie podcast.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: And Neil, it's fall.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: Apparently,
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: not really here in Los Angeles,
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: but I'm seeing pictures on the East Coast and looks like the leaves are changing
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: and all that, getting a little cooler in the air.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_03: It sure is.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_03: And we're getting a nor'easter here.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: I'm still on Martha's Vineyard for the next couple of days.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_03: And the question of whether we're actually going to be allowed to leave on Sunday is
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: an open one.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_03: But I think it was yesterday was the fall equinox,
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: which you and I both know is the day that all lesbians and gay men celebrate
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_03: the invention of flannel.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: I had no idea where you were going with that.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: I think that might be more of a lesbian holiday than a gay male holiday.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: And a certain kind of lesbian.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, a Claire kind of lesbian.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_03: All right, buddy, let's get to the news.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_03: Last Friday,
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_03: Chief of Staff Susie Wiles had already left for the weekend
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: when President Donald Trump canceled press pool credentials for MSNOW,
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_03: CNN, and Politico.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_03: Now, the question is, was the president simply left unattended too long?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: Because you know what happens when he gets bored.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_03: In addition to Wiles being MIA, Press Secretary Caroline Levitt had just stepped down.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_03: So there was nobody in the room,
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_03: as far as I can tell,
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_03: but Natalie Harp Or is Trump in a rage about his repeated failures and taking it out
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_03: on the media?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_03: Which one is it, Neil?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: Can it be both?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, isn't it his rage is allowed to go where it wants when he's left unattended?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: Because his rage is doing what it's doing all the time.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: But I think Susie Wiles is spending most of her working hours reining it in.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: But probably once she gets in the car and leaves for the weekend, things like this happen.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know,
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_03: I always liked Susie Wiles,
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_03: and I'd love to put her in a nice flannel shirt,
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_03: but I can't imagine having cancer and having to take care of Donald Trump at
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_03: the same time.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, she deserves some kind of a prize.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_03: That prize probably doesn't exist, right?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, angel wings or something.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we shouldn't mean in that way, but, you know, she definitely is...
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what a thing to have to face both of those, which she finds more challenging.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: What do we think about what's happening here?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's like literally breaking news.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: I saw that
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: a Politico reporter had his hard pass press credential confiscated this morning from
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: a Secret Service agent.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: There's judges issuing orders.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: And where do we stand with it as of this moment?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I would say the good news is that all of the outlets in the press pool
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: and listeners,
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_03: what the press pool is,
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_03: is representatives from different outlets that then get video and audio
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_03: and photographs and do all sorts of reporting for everybody else because
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_03: the press has to pay.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_03: So the press pool is really, really important in terms of everybody's news coverage.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_03: And what was really impressive from my point of view is that the other outlets,
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_03: including Fox News, decided that they were going to boycott the press pool.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_03: Until the White House reversed this or until this was reversed,
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_03: thus depriving the president of his favorite thing, attention.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_03: Now, what did Trump do in response to the boycott then?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: Well, they've launched their own YouTube channel called Trump TV, of course.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I actually clicked on it and had to look.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: Apparently there's three million subscribers, which I don't know if that's a lot or a little.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: I wasn't really sure how I felt about it.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I was like hoping it would be like 42,000.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: And literally as I clicked onto the YouTube channel, there was footage of J.D.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: Vance just, you know, Talking away.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: But then there are all these other like videos you could watch that one is
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: on Betsy Ross, one is on the American Revolution.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, so I guess it's just like constant cameras on the White House
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: and also this like very nostalgic American history content that they're putting out.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_03: Neil,
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_03: I think we could do a great television show about a lesbian and a gay man who go
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_03: to work for the White House making history videos.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_03: I think that would be really popular.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so this is what I think they did with Trump TV.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_03: I think they took the existing White House YouTube channel and renamed it Trump TV.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: Because, of course, that's what he does.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_03: Because there's no way you can get 3 million subscribers that fast, particularly...
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_03: Given how few subscribers Trump has on Truth Social.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: So, okay.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: So on Monday of this week,
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_03: all three outlets sued in federal court citing violation of the First and
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_03: the Fifth Amendment rights, which is freedom of the press.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_03: And people keep saying the First Amendment is free speech,
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_03: but it also guarantees freedom of the press people.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_03: And the Fifth Amendment is due process,
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: that there was no due process for lifting their credentials.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: The White House filed a response.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the things they kept saying was,
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_03: well, this is the president's home and it's his work.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_03: So he gets to decide who comes in here.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_03: But that's not true, right, Neil?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they're arguing that the press access to the president is a privilege.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: I mean...
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: Does the president,
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: does the White House get to determine who's in the room when there's only
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: a certain amount of spots in there?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: Or is that something that historically has been left to
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: the White House press pool itself to determine?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: I imagine it's more the latter, correct?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_03: I think that is correct, although it's the White House that issues the passes.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the things I learned in the middle of all of this is Is that there is
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: a day pass and then there's something called a hard pass.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_03: And when you and I say hard pass, we mean something completely different.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: But the hard pass usually lasts for a year and it means they do
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_03: a thorough security check on you.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_03: And it basically means when you come in the White House, you can go wherever you want.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: So this is something that the Trump administration already litigated in relation to
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_03: the Pentagon and lost.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_03: But what they also said,
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_03: what the lawsuit also said,
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_03: or the response to the lawsuit,
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: was that these various reporters had been violating national security.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_03: And they pointed to a particular story.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't know if you were checking your email before you jumped on,
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_03: but I got something from the New Republic.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_03: The New Republic figured out...
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_03: And they are sticking with the mainstream for now.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_03: So what else happens when the grownups leave Washington, Neil?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we have a lot of Americans who have been kicked off of their health coverage.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: 760,000 Americans have lost their health coverage, J.D.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: Vance and Mehmet Oz.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: I sat in this press conference earlier this week on Tuesday
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: that all these people were fraudulently enrolled in the ACA.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: The administration is also looking at over 400,000 more Americans
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: who they claim require additional verification.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: So this is in addition to, what,
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: one million Americans who've already been dropped from their health care
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: since Donald Trump took office?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: And the vice president has projected that all of these additional cuts are going
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: to save the Trump administration $2.2 billion.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: But what do we make of this?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, so part of it is that they're asserting that these people shouldn't be
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: on health care because they haven't used it in over a year.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: And also that there's a bunch of fictitious names.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, doesn't insurance work in a large part when folks actually don't use it?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_03: You're not supposed to use it when you're younger.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_03: I think also,
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_03: given the fact that they are undoubtedly working from data sets pulled by Doge
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_03: and cross-referenced by Doge, I mean,
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_03: their election data sets were completely wrong when they were saying, oh,
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_03: here are people who are all,
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_03: you know, Non-citizen voters, that turned out not to be true.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_03: So their data is just really, really sketchy.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_03: I would also say, I mean,
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_03: there was this HHS report earlier in the year that estimated that half of
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_03: the 12 million people who bought their policies
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_03: through ACA exchanges were actually ineligible for the ACA.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I just don't believe that.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_03: But let me pitch another television series to you.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_03: A gay man and a lesbian who are political consultants who advise the president
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_03: to kick over a million people off health care six weeks before a crucial election.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: Great idea.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: Let's see how that goes.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: I think it'll really fly.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_03: I think we should send it to Paramount.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_03: I think David Ellison would kill for it.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, well,
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: what we also know is the Democrats,
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_03: in response to this,
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_03: said actually their top agenda is getting everybody back on affordable health care.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know,
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_03: one of the things we know is that it is health care that has really busted a lot
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_03: of otherwise fairly prosperous people's budgets.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: People who,
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_03: had their health care go from, say, $200 to $1,100, going from nothing to $800.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of people are simply going without healthcare insurance,
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_03: but there are a lot of people who are paying for it.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_03: And that extra bite is really a big deal for them,
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_03: much more so than buying a cheaper brand of peanut butter in the grocery store.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: So last week we talked about Donald Trump Jr.'s big fat Russian wedding.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of people talked about that wedding.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: Can you refresh our listeners' memory?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, this Russian oligarch,
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: billionaire,
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'm blanking on his name,
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: but it was incredibly close to Putin,
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: apparently paid for this incredibly extravagant wedding in the Bahamas, was it?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: Somewhere.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_03: There were three islands involved.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_03: Three different islands.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of transportations between islands.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, it was like a three-day private island hopping wedding involving fireworks
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: and rentals of private islands that go for hundreds of thousands of dollars
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: that this guy paid for.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: What I think is really interesting is, well,
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: first of all,
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: the Trump administration is now claiming that the funds have been repaid.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: Why did he pay for them in the first place if Don Jr. was just going to repay them?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: Does this make any sense?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_03: No, it makes no sense.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I also assume
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: this is not true, right?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: And Republicans actually are asking for verification,
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: for proof that the funds have actually been repaid.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: We can all assume that they haven't.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_03: Of course they haven't.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: I mean,
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: Donald Trump is always claiming he's sending money to people that never arrives,
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_03: including money he legitimately owes people.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_03: It just simply never arrives.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_03: The other thing here is there is one observer,
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_03: I think unnamed,
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_03: Who called that wedding a counterintelligence nightmare because there were
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: so many members of the Trump family and so many high-level people who were present
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_03: at the wedding,
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: not to mention the groom himself,
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: that the capacity to collect compromise on people,
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_03: to bribe people, to do all kinds of things, was just staggering.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_03: Senator Bill Cassidy has in fact officially requested evidence that the money has been repaid.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think anybody's heard from him yet.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_03: And Senator John Curtis of Utah has called for
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_03: a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation of this so-called wedding gift.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_03: And the Trump people are just sort of complaining, like,
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_03: can't you give a wedding present anymore without the Senate getting involved?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: But again,
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_03: it's less than six weeks before the midterms,
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_03: and we have this scandal, which is once again pointing the finger at Grift.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: And first of all, I should, you know, point out that both of these are Republican senators.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: Secondly, I mean, which one is it?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: Is it that you've repaid the loan or is it that like you should be able to take
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: a wedding gift and like no questions asked?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, pick a lane here.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: I think, again,
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: the president himself said that the money was repaid,
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: which, again, just begs the question, why was it extended in the first place?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: Was this the plan all along?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: Was it, okay, they realized maybe it wasn't the right thing to do, so they're repaying it?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we'll never get those things answered,
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: just like we'll never get proof that this money was repaid.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: But all of this is just crazy that it's happening at all.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: Terrible timing, you would think, going into an election.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_03: Third television series.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_03: A gay man and a lesbian who are wedding planners working for Vladimir Putin.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, Lord.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: I think it works.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, come on, let's get David Ellison in a room.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_03: So, Neil,
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: let's shift to our news focus for the day,
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_03: which is, to put it bluntly, the MAGA crack-up.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_03: And we've been alluding to this in other episodes, but today we're casting a sort of bigger net.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I was interested in a piece that came out earlier this summer,
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_03: written by Elaine Kamark,
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_03: who's a long-time Power broker in the Democratic Party and E.J.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: Dionne, who's a journalist.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_03: And they noted,
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_03: I think this was in June,
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_03: that the GOP was splintering over Trump's policy agenda
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: with non-MAGA Republicans indicating that they would sit out the midterms.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_03: With little more than six weeks to go before Election Day,
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_03: can I underline that enough,
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_03: independents and even regular Republicans and MAGA influencers seem to be abandoning
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: the party of Trump.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: Before we jump into some of the things that we noticed this week, Neil,
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: why do you think that people stuck with Trump this long
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_03: and now they're saying we can't do it anymore?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's a good question.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I do think the price of the pump issue is a really big one.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: I think the Iran war is also
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: not playing well at all with the American public,
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: really across the political spectrum.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_02: I think Israel has become,
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: in a lot of ways,
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think a surprisingly complicated issue on the right in recent months.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: And all of these things, I think, are And I think people's economic precarity,
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's one thing to give it a moment, right?
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: Give it a year even into the administration.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: At this point,
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think folks are just like they're done with it and they don't trust him on
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: the economy.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: They I think they are seeing him like clearly for who he is after all this period of time.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know,
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: it just feels like one of those things where the momentum is in the direction
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: of people just, you know, moving away from Trump.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I think there's something to be said about, you know, momentum.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: There's momentum that can bring you into office.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: There's also momentum that can just make all your favorability numbers collapse.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: Well, yes, I agree with all of those things.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_03: And it also looks to me,
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the numbers are looking really, really bad for the Republicans right now.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_03: I almost don't want to talk about it because I want this election so bad.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_03: But apparently, what was it?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_03: I think it was in Kansas where the GOP was basically saying to people,
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_03: even if you're 10 or 15 points up, you are within the margin of error at this point.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's just looking really ugly.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_03: But then there seem to be other things happening in the government.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_03: This is not in our program notes,
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: but I noticed in the newspaper this morning that That they're pulling 130,000 pounds
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_03: of beef off the market because it was just rushed onto the market to try
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: to lower prices without being inspected.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_03: It was never inspected.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, talk about a bacteria bomb.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so in the face of all of this,
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_03: Neil, Donald Trump's midterm strategy has been to try to energize MAGA turnout.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_03: You know, pretend I'm on the ballot, blah, blah, blah.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: But as recently as a week before that Dallas midterm convention that we talked about
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_03: a couple episodes ago,
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: vulnerable candidates continue to distance themselves from him
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: and his populist voters.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: What has been some of the biggest developments this week in terms of distancing from Trump?
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: One of them I think is a little bit surprising
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: to me is Florida Republican Byron Donalds, he's a representative.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: He's running in a really tight race against Democrat David Jolly,
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: who's actually a former Republican.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: They're running for the governor position in Florida.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: And Donalds has been pretty much a total Trump loyalist,
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: but he has reduced and obscured references to Trump on his campaign website.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he's in a tight race in Florida and I don't think that
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: that was what he was expecting or
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: the Florida Republican Party was expecting probably even,
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: you know, six months, a year ago.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, the David Jolly thing is fascinating to me because I can't remember who it was.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_03: You probably do, Neil.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_03: There was a guy a few years ago who had been a Republican who switched to
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_03: the Democratic Party to run against Ron DeSantis.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember at the time,
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: just like people laughing at him and saying,
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_03: do you think everybody's going to forget you're just like a run of
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_03: the mill Republican?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: And he lost, you know, in this gargantuan vote for DeSantis.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: And the expectation was that that would be a problem for David Jolly as well.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_03: But it isn't.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: And as a part-time resident of Florida, can you sort of tease this apart for us a little bit?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm totally blanking on that person, his name.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: He was the former Florida governor.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'm totally blanking on his name.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's going to come to me as soon as we stop talking about it.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: But part of the issue was that he was seen as A pretty flip floppy guy to begin with.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: I think he had like not a great reputation as well as someone who is just sort
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: of Charlie Crist, Charlie Crist.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: There's all sorts of Been rumors about his personal life, shall we say.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: He was seen as one of those people that was just like politically ambitious more
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: than principled.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so when he did switch parties to do this,
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think, and also he did it in a moment in which Florida was really, really red.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so it just didn't work.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: Things have shifted a lot in Florida.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: The immigration issue is enormous.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the Latino support for Trump has plummeted.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: We know nationwide it's really showing up in Florida.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: But there's more issues beyond that.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: The price of housing,
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: the fact that homeowners insurance is impossible to get because of
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: the climate vulnerability of the state and nothing being done about it.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's a lot of issues happening in the state.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: And Republican control of that state is tremendous.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: And it's been the case for a really long time.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: So I think the brand,
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: the Republican Party brand is weak and vulnerable in a way that hasn't been
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: in probably two decades in the state of Florida.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: Does that mean a Democrat will win?
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: But if any Democrat can win,
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: I think it might be David Jolly, in part because he's actually really respected.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: He has a real policy system.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: And he seems like the serious person in the room when the other person in the room is Donald.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know,
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: it's interesting because I had always thought Byron Donald was sort of on
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_03: the less noxious side of MAGA.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: Relatively, yes.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_03: You know, he's smart.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_03: He's...
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_03: He seems like a decent person if you take away the anti-trans stuff and
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_03: the homophobia stuff and so on,
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_03: which I almost pay no attention to anymore because it just seems like a gesture now.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: It is so disconnected from anything real.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_03: But David Jolly is within a point.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, this really is...
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: A tight race.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it points to the question of like, this is Donald Trump's fault, really.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's so obvious.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: The party has to be freaking out.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: And obviously they're scrambling and they're doing everything they can to sort
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: of minimize Trump's impact.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: But like the part you live and die by this guy, clearly.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's just not clear yet that they have a plan that doesn't involve making use
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: of Trump and what happens when he is now pretty much completely toxic
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: for most voters.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and he and a number of others keep saying this thing of like, Well,
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_03: this this is what's going to happen after the midterms,
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_03: like fuel prices are going to go down after the midterms.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_03: Like how exactly are fuel prices going to go down after the midterms?
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, Mike Johnson sent the House home.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: The Senate is still in session and
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_03: the Senate is actually Republican senators are trying to put together something
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: that they can pass.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_03: That they can go home and campaign on and they are just failing dismally.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: One of the things that they are trying to do is,
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_03: I think, Trump wants to stop exports of diesel fuel to lower prices here.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_03: But everybody in the Senate is saying, first of all, that won't work.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_03: That's not actually how the oil market works.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_03: They can't even pass that.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_03: They can't even get Democrats to come on board and help them do that.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_03: So we're beginning to see some pretty high profile Republicans breaking
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_03: with Donald Trump in small ways and big ways.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: What was Karl Rove going on about this week, Neal?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: Well, he's been criticizing Trump's strategy of making the midterms all about him.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: That was something he's been saying for a while now.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: And then more recently, he really explicitly denounced racism in the Republican Party.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: I was shocked.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: I was shocked as well.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_03: I was shocked.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: Broken clock, right, twice,
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: but also like Karl Rove of all people,
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: like a strategist all of a sudden being horrified and denouncing racism in
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: the Republican Party.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, good for him for doing it.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: And it's related to a very specific concrete event,
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: which was this horrible person,
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: Beau French, who is the Republican candidate for Texas Railroad Commissioner.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: I want to just say that Is railroad commissioner something that folks really need to vote for?
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: We'll just sideline that for now.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: But is that something people do in most states?
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_03: It is actually kind of a big deal.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I'll tell you why.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_03: This is like one of those things like what is a hard pass that I had to Google.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_03: There are three Texas railroad commissioners, but they don't...
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_03: They no longer just adjudicate things about the railroad.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_03: They are in charge of the oil and gas industry.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_03: So they regulate oil and gas in Texas.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: And so it actually is kind of important.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_03: And I want to back up just a little bit.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_03: What is it that this terrible man actually did?
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_03: Because he's done a lot of terrible things.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_03: But what was the precipitating thing?
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he's a terrible person in general.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: But the latest terrible thing is after...
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_02: University of Texas had this amazing win over Ohio State, number one Ohio State.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_02: There were all these video shots and pictures of the cheering student section,
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: and he tweeted out basically targeting this student section as being filled
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: with kids from
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: Excuse me.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'm from South Asia and basically just made some sort of racist comment about
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: the demographic makeup of the University of Texas and such an ugly way,
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: ugly comment in general,
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: but really so just strategically stupid,
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: I think,
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: as well after a big football victory that that's what he sort of took with it.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's what he made of it.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: And it's gotten a ton of blowback, understandably.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and it was a big football victory.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: Just to pause on that for a second.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_03: Arch Manning,
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_03: who has been touted for three or four years as the next best thing,
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_03: and everybody's sort of beginning to wonder because he doesn't seem to come through.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_03: But he won the game in this really exciting way.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_03: This large group of South Asian students were like jumping up and down and doing
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_03: the, you know, hook them horns, which all of us find noxious.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why people from Texas do it.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_03: And David French,
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_03: the columnist of the New York Times,
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: had this great column where he said,
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_03: people like Beau French,
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_03: no relation between these two men,
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_03: people like Beau French talk about South Asian people as
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_03: if they are completely unassimilable.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_03: In fact,
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: there is nothing more assimilated than being a University of Texas football fan,
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_03: wearing the jersey, hooking the horns, wearing cowboy hats.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_03: And he's like,
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_03: this is the epitome of what it means to be an American,
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_03: is to be out there on Saturday afternoon cheering for your team.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_03: I think you alluded a little bit earlier to how ironic it is that Karl Rove is
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_03: the guy You know,
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_03: Karl Rove was in it up to his elbows with the attack
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_03: on John McCain's adopted daughter.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_03: Remember that one?
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, of course.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_03: And that was, I think, 2004?
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: No, it was 2000.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_03: It was 2000.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_03: It was 2000.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_03: And intimating that this child was an illegitimate child.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_03: Daughter with a person of color.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_03: And so for Karl Rove to come out against racism at this moment,
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_03: it's kind of like the dizzying transformation of Bill Kristol,
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_03: who basically sounds like a liberal all the time now.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_03: But OK, so Karl Rove is sort of creating this permission structure to break with Trump in Texas.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_03: OK, that's a big deal.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_03: Who else in Texas is doing that?
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: And
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: so
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: again,
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: the targeted use of that for a very particular state,
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_02: which was an important primary, right?
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: They didn't do it in New Hampshire.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: So then I just think that's sort of worth spelling out,
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: given again,
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: that he's like clutching his pearls about like Republicans using racist strategies.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: What was the question?
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: What else is happening here?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, there's more happening in Texas because your friend and mine, James Tallarico.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, another television show.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_03: A gay man and a lesbian find a Christian evangelical to run for Senate in Texas.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_03: And the whole show is about that campaign.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think?
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's going to win all the Emmys.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: I think so.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_03: So Tallarico's way ahead.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_03: What's happening there?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: Is he way ahead?
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: What is the latest numbers?
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: Because I was saying it was...
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: Latest numbers,
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: I've seen... ...that he was ahead, but I didn't know it was way ahead.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like four or five points.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: So, I mean, that's really useful context for this latest kind of development, which is...
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_02: Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn, RIP, in terms of his Senate seat.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, he was dumped by Trump in the primary.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: He is out there raising money for GOP Senate candidates all over the country,
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: but not for the candidate right there in his home state of Texas.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, the noxious...
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_02: Very noxious Attorney General Ken Paxton, who defeated him in that primary.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_02: He's characterizing Paxton as lazy and a poor fundraiser.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: Honestly,
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: on the long list of horrible traits that Ken Paxton has,
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_02: I think that him being lazy and a poor fundraiser are like the least of the problems
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: with him.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: But understand that's how Cornyn is going to want to put it.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_03: What do we think about unapologetic adulterer?
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you know, it is one thing to have terrible things happen in your marriage.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_03: It is another thing entirely to just act like it doesn't matter.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean,
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_03: it's just bizarre.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_03: And so John Cornyn has all kinds of reasons to hate Ken Paxton and Donald Trump.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_03: And he's doing a good job of it.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_03: The fundraiser event you're referring to this week was like an alumni reunion for
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: the George W. Bush White House.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_03: And it included the former president.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_03: And Bush has not been out there doing politics.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_03: He's really sort of coming out of his shell and going to work here, right?
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_02: I was a bit surprised by this,
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_02: to tell you the truth, because he has stayed out of politics so much.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: And he's sort of often...
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: Said that he thought that was the responsible, appropriate thing for a former president to do.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I think a lot of former presidents feel that way.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: I also think it was sort of a convenient explanation in the age of Trump
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: when he clearly,
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: the Bush family clearly hates Trump and he certainly doesn't want to do anything
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: to help the current president.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: But it did seem interesting to me that he was sort of back in the mix fundraising
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: for, you know, sort of I was going to say normal Republican Senate candidates.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if anyone's normal anymore, but I don't know.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_02: I was a little bit surprised by this.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: Were you Claire or is this a way of like actually sort of demarcating out
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: the Republican Party he wants to stand for as separate from the Trump Party?
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's right.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_03: It has also occurred to me because the money
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_03: that they're raising is also excluding Mike Collins in Georgia.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_03: It looks like John Ossoff is running away with that race.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_03: And Michael Waitley in North Carolina, Roy Cooper, is way ahead in that race as well.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_03: So there are all kinds of reasons to not...
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_03: Poor good money after bad with these guys.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_03: They are also Trump endorsed people.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_03: And one part of me thinks that there is a group of Senate Republicans looking
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_03: to save the people they want to go into the next cycle with.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_03: And the people that they want to govern with and to weed out as many of the crazies as possible.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_02: I actually think that's- No, but I think that that's very likely and I think it makes sense.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I think most rational folks,
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, maybe I don't need to put that sort of qualification on it, but I think.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: I think that that's a good thing to see.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: I hope that that is the sort of motivation of this because you and I have said
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: on here many times before,
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_02: we need two healthy political parties in this country and also for them to be,
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: normal and norm maintaining and,
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_02: you know, beholden to the Constitution and all that.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think like...
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of us have said,
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_02: where are the Republicans who are upset with the direction this party is going
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_02: and doing something about like lurching it back to to what it used to be and away
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_02: from what it's become.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think let's hope that that's what the spirit of this is and
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: that that's even achieve an achievable project.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_03: Amen to that.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_03: And so we're looking at one kind of split here that may be a kind of managed split
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_03: within the Republican Party in which the so-called normies,
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_03: whatever normies are left, are kind of pulling away from the Trumpies.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_03: But we're also seeing something happen out in the media sphere too.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_03: And there's some big people who have broken with Trump.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_03: Who are they, Neil?
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think maybe the biggest name is Tucker Carlson, right?
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: So he's expressed regret about supporting Trump and he's left the Republican Party
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_02: over the war in Iran.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: He's also said, I mean, this has become a big drumbeat of his.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_02: The Trump administration is putting Israeli interest over American interest.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_02: What else is Tucker Carlson doing that is sort of head scratching?
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_03: Well, there's one piece of it,
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_03: and this also brings us back to Israel,
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_03: which we should probably pause on just a little bit,
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_03: which is that Carlson has defended Abdul El-Sayed,
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_03: the Democratic candidate for Senate,
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_03: who's opposing former Representative Mike Rogers in Michigan.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_03: And of course,
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_03: El-Sayed has been the target,
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_03: not just of Republicans,
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_03: but of Democrats,
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_03: accusing him of anti-Semitism,
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_03: saying he said all these anti-Semitic things in the past, blah, blah, blah.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_03: And Tucker Carlson has both said, that's nonsense.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_03: He said X, Y, or Z.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_03: That does not mean he's an anti-Semite.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_03: And actually, Tucker Carlson, as my mother said, he went to Trin Trin after all.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_03: So he has a way of being able to speak in this sort of headmastery voice.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_03: By Trin Trin, I mean Trinity College people.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_03: But the other thing is he is also criticizing Rogers as a,
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_03: quote, toady to Israel and an enemy of civil liberties.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_03: So can we just pause on this for a while?
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_03: Because it is,
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_03: on the one hand,
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_03: true that Carlson and others believe they have been betrayed by Donald Trump.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_03: Not just with the Iran War,
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_03: but the way we got into the war,
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_03: which is that it was an obligation to Israel and
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_03: that Trump promised he would never do that.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_03: Why is that hard for them now?
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_03: And what are the real things that Trump is navigating here?
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I just want to pause on this sense of betrayal.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean,
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_02: do we really think that Tucker Carlson actually feels betrayed or is this just part
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: of the shtick?
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like the shtick for a while was to ride the Trump wave while it was a big wave.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_02: And now that he sees it's cresting, he's going in a different direction.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, I just have a heart.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_02: we're about to talk about a bunch of folks and I think some
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_02: of them do feel like Trump actually betrayed him.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_02: I just have a heart.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: I just feel like Tucker Carlson is smart enough to have seen Trump for
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_02: who he really is all along.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_02: But maybe I'm just, you know, misunderstanding his own
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: His own role in this, this larger shakeup.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Tucker Carlson is kind of a mystery to me.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: somebody who actually knows Tucker Carlson said nobody ever talks about
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_03: the most important shift Tucker Carlson has made in the past five years,
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_03: which is that he has doubled down on his faith.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so Carlson appears to be wrestling with certain kinds of things like truth
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_03: that didn't really bother him before.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_03: But I would also say,
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_03: when this is not to defend Tucker Carlson,
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_03: on the one hand, people say, Trump told you who he was.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_03: You should have believed him.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I'm thinking about, say, Paul LePage, who is running for governor of Maine.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_03: And no, he's not running for governor.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, he is running for governor.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_03: No, he's running for Congress.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_03: Paul LePage, former governor of Maine, is running for Congress.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_03: And he did this whole thing at a rally the other day saying
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_03: that his son's father-in-law was arrested and deported.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_03: And Paula Page could not have been more anti-immigrant.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_03: He could not have been more on board with tight borders, blah, blah, blah.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_03: And he's saying, but, you know, this man who was in my family was legally here.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_03: And nobody who is legally here should be deported.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_03: And that's a part of me that says, you know, no, you're just screwing with us right now.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_03: But the other piece of it is believe what Trump says,
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_03: except that a lot of the time he's also lying to you.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'm...
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_03: While I think Tucker Carlson was smart enough to peel the lies away from the truth,
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_03: I think he also had this kind of privileged access to the man where he thought,
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_03: well, Donald Trump lies, but he doesn't lie to me.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's why the press should be independent, right?
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_02: And also, like, Yeah.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_03: Or, you know, Maria Salazar, who is now really fighting him on immigration.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_03: People are outraged on X about this, you know.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_03: And in fact, some Republicans are turning on Maria Salazar.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_03: So this fragmentation of the Republican Party seems to have no clear dividing lines.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_03: We've also seen,
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_03: just to return to this question of the media ban,
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_03: that there are the entire Utah delegation,
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_03: senators and congresspeople,
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_03: have spoken out against the media ban,
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_03: as has, I kid you not, Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_03: Idaho.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_03: There is no Trumpier place on earth than Idaho.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_02: What is this about?
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean,
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_02: is this like Republicans suddenly rediscovering their principles and realizing that,
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_02: you know what,
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a First Amendment conservative,
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: and so therefore, this is the moment that I'm going to stand up and say something.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think...
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of the cast of characters we've been talking about today,
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_02: between Karl Rove and these that you've just mentioned today,
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: it's a little bit surprising that they are the ones who are,
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_02: you know, standing up and saying no right now.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_03: There is a piece of me that after all of these years remains cynical more than anything else.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I...
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_03: Also think that the numbers on this election may be far worse than we thought.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_03: And that,
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_03: there is something that some Republicans have said in the past as they were sort
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_03: of being wishy-washy about this stuff,
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_03: which is when the Democrats get in, anything we've done to them, they'll do to us.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think there may be some piece of that that It may be far worse than we know
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_03: and that there are people breaking for the exits.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_02: And you wonder, too,
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: what are folks,
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: especially those in,
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_02: and in Congress,
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_02: what are they hearing from their constituents, you know, directly in their offices?
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_02: If they're getting real feedback in real time that helps them really know, like,
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_02: What the temperature on the ground is in the way that,
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_02: you know, the White House just isn't.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't know.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we'll see in a couple of weeks.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_02: But that's clearly what's happening here with lots and lots of Republicans.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_03: And let's not forget, too,
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_03: that Trump has been really,
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_03: really good for business,
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_03: for a certain kind of, shall we say, independent journalist.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_03: Candace Owens, Joe Rogan, Alex Jones, they've all broken with Trump over the war with Iran.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_03: Megyn Kelly,
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_03: who periodically feuds with Trump anyway,
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_03: she has called the war and the Trump family's economic enmeshment with
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_03: the White House grifty.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know,
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_03: I'm imagining that there are real principles at stake,
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_03: as you were suggesting, Neal,
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_03: It is also true that influencer numbers and the numbers
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_03: in conservative media are just tanking.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, like the Daily Wire is doing really, really badly.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_03: And all of these influencers are losing audience.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_03: People are tuning out.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_03: So they may have their own reasons for turning on Trump that have little to do
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_03: with policy at all.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean,
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_02: I think that,
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_02: first of all,
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_02: obviously,
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_02: they're looking at their numbers all the time,
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_02: and they're doing what they can to maintain them and to, like, stop the bleeding.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_02: And, like, who's to say what the larger explanation of all this shifting audience is?
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: Is it that, you know, the sort of incoherency of the Trump presidency?
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's a whole bunch of reasons,
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_02: but I do think the fact that this is not a man who has a coherent policy agenda or
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_02: a clear sort of ideological position,
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: you know, that sort of incoherence can only hold itself, can only contain
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_02: A diverse coalition for so long.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_02: And it may just be like, this is the moment where the wheels come off.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think that may be right.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I also think just to stick something in that is ridiculous,
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_03: this whole arc de triomphe that he is planning on building and was told,
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_03: oh, no, you can't do that.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_03: And he's like, oh, yes,
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_03: I have to do it for national security,
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_03: that he was going to store drones there and there could be snipers housed there and
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_03: so on.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, really, it's just...
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_03: Cracker Jacks.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: If you announce that you're storing drones in the Ark,
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_02: does it then become like a really great thing for national security
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: if you're like letting everyone know exactly what it is?
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_03: The drones are here.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_02: The drones are here.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_03: We're storing.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_03: New television show.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_03: A gay man and a lesbian who are like top snipers in a Navy SEAL unit who are
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_03: in charge of the drones at the Ark de Triomphe.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think Milo has much of a following anymore.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_03: But it can't be a good sign that all of these people who will be needing pardons
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_03: before Trump leaves office,
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_03: that Trump was just not looking and they deported Milo,
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_03: who was really one of his biggest supporters.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, Milo is one of his earliest and biggest supporters.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_02: I read about this in the book.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_02: He was really at the forefront of bringing Trump into the political consciousness
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_02: of lots and lots of Americans, you know, through what he did at Breitbart.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I think you're right.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_02: Milo doesn't really have an audience anymore.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think anyone is personally outraged on his behalf.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_02: But
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_02: What's more to be said about it?
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it is an interesting look at this time again.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_03: I was just going to say, he was the guy that was getting young people excited long
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_03: before Charlie Kirk existed on anybody's radar.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_03: And it was Milo who was going from campus to campus to campus, making Trumpism look cool.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, if you think it's cool in that way.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_03: But, you know, I mean, like he was at the center of that whole hullabaloo at Stanford.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know,
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_03: it was really Milo that raised the whole question
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_03: of outrageous speech being free speech, racist speech being free speech and so on.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_03: Well, speaking of speech, we're also seeing some interesting shuffling around.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_03: Last week,
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_03: Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders shared a stage at the Pro-Human Assembly
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_03: in Washington, D.C.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_03: Although they differed on solutions,
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_03: both criticized the Trump administration's unwillingness to regulate
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_03: or restrain A.I.,
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_03: Bannon has also given a lengthy interview to Politico in which he depicted the GOP
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_03: as out of touch,
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_03: without ideas or policies,
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_03: and vulnerable to a Democratic Party that seems to be claiming the mantle
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_03: of populism.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_03: But Bannon and Sanders on the same stage, what does that represent, Neil?
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, what strange bedfellows.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_02: That has to be one of the strangest pairs we've ever seen.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_02: What was the question?
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_02: What does this represent?
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_02: I think it represents really the fragility of Trump and the Trump administration
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_02: and also just the real opportunity,
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_02: I think, to steer this country in a different direction.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_02: I think it remains to be seen who picks up the mantle here and who really has...
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_02: You know, who can lead in a different direction.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_02: But I think,
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_02: seeing Steve Bannon in a place like this,
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_02: given his connection to the rise of Trump is really fascinating.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it is really fascinating.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I would also say it gives us another data point,
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_03: which is that one of the few things that Republicans and Democrats agree on is
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_03: that AI is scary.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_03: That data centers are out of control and that Americans are in fact being victimized
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_03: by these tech giants.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_03: I saw an interview,
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_03: I think on the PBS NewsHour the other night of a woman who's a farmer who had
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_03: a data center move in right near her.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_03: And she said, you know, I can't think.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_03: It makes so much noise all the time.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's disrupting my animals and so on.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I had no say in this.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_03: So I also think these two populisms horseshoeing on AI shows that we're going
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_03: to have some kind of realignment about regulation and technology and
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_03: that there does seem to be some kind of Consensus that
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_03: the Trump administration's cozy relationship,
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_03: shall we say, with tech giants has not been for the good of Americans.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_03: So let's just shift back to where we began, which is with Maha.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_03: What is Maha so pissed about?
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_03: They seem to have gotten everything they wanted, but no, no.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they're pissed about a lot.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_02: You mentioned the glyphosate stuff.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the people that I think is,
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_02: really important in this conversation is one of the biggest Maha influencers,
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_02: Kelly Ryerson.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_02: She's actually known as the glyphosate girl.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_02: And she has said that the Trump administration, what a name, right?
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_02: Siding with Bayer in the recent Johnson v. Monsanto case.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_02: And that was where SCOTUS,
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_02: the Supreme Court overturned a civil award to this man who alleged That his contact
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_02: with Roundup was what had given him cancer.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_02: And she's called that decision devastating.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_02: And she and her allies are also opposing this recent nomination from
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_02: the Trump administration of Heidi Overton as commissioner of the FDA.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_02: Again, because of Heidi Overton's support for glyphosate and also food additive deregulation.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, these are not Maha moves, right?
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_02: I found the Maha phenomenon so fascinating because I really thought this is not at all.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, they were big Kennedy backers.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I think like that was a real like,
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_02: that was something that Trump did to sort of appease or to,
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_02: you know, make Maha folks happy.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_02: But everything else he's done has been just pretty much infuriating to the Maha folks.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it has been infuriating.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_03: And I think they thought they could pander with some of the science stuff.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_03: And that probably deserves a whole episode in and of itself.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_03: But that they didn't want to touch the things that
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_03: the federal government actually has power over.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the things Ryerson and others talk about are the vast federal subsidies
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_03: that go to the farm sector.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_03: And that has been true since the New Deal.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it was really one of the first big New Deal programs and one of the few
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_03: that really lasted into the 21st century was the idea that
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_03: the federal government had some responsibility
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_03: for helping farmers regulate their output because there's so much that's uncertain.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_03: The weather is uncertain.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_03: Pests are uncertain.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_03: But also that farmers have to spend a great deal of money.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_03: They have to take out loans.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_03: In order to put a crop in.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think what Maha is saying is,
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_03: look, this is something that the federal government can do.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_03: We can, in fact,
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_03: invest in what they call regenerative agriculture,
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_03: which is a version of what I think we all call organic food,
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_03: that you don't,
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_03: in fact,
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_03: need all of these pesticides and all of these chemicals and I don't know
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_03: whether GMOs are dangerous or not.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that sort of flips into the anti-vaxxer piece of it.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_03: But I think it's also the case that we do know that glyphosate gives people cancer.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_03: This has been proven.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_03: And the guy in the case was like a groundskeeper.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_03: So he had no choice not to use it.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_03: And so part of what happened,
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_03: I think,
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_03: with them is,
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_03: first of all,
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_03: Trump gave that executive order that said,
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_03: we actually have to ramp up production of this poisonous chemical.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_03: And that was the quote we heard at the beginning.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_03: But the only thing the Senate has been able to really put together,
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_03: and they were debating it today, was a farm bill.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_03: But it has cut funding.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_03: When it came out of the House of Representatives, funding was cut for pesticide-free farming.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_03: And there was money to support that.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_03: It delays pesticide reviews and it cuts a provision proposed by Democrats
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_03: that would permit Americans harmed by pesticides to sue.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_03: And which, of course, was curtailed by the Supreme Court decision in Johnson v. Monsanto.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_03: So so basically Maha and these these are people who are in a lot of ways independents.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_03: They're very female.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_03: They're very family oriented.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_03: These are the people you wanted energized to come to the polls in November,
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_03: and they're not going to do it.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_03: So, okay.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_03: So as a sort of final note, we were talking about Maria Salazar earlier in the podcast.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_03: Support for Republicans has gone so soft that 78%
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_03: of Latinos say they would prefer Democratic control of Congress.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_03: That is such a huge shift from 2024.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's ridiculous.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's just a stunning number.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_02: It has to have Republican strategists quaking.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it does.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_03: And actually,
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_03: Salazar is being battered so badly by her own people in the Republican Party
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_03: that Elliott Rodriguez, who's a former TV news anchor, could really win that seat.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_03: So I think The end of all of this is the Trump administration thought it was being
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_03: so clever by doing all this redistricting,
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_03: and they actually haven't done a thing to win the damn election.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think it's like,
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_02: it's going to be really interesting to see how those redistricting races,
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_02: um, play out.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_02: But I think like, that's a very likely possibility that it was all for naught.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that it also just like speaks to how they really misunderstand what it means.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, setting aside what it means to govern,
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_02: but what it means to even sort of,
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_02: um, Have a good strategy for producing voter turnout and winning elections.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_03: Final television pitch.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_03: A gay man and a lesbian who live stream election night 2026.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_02: Can it involve at least a cocktail or two?
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_03: Many cocktails, many cocktails.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_03: And we could have special guests too.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, let's do it.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_03: All right, Neil, what do you want to go viral this week?
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_02: All right, I want to give some love to our friends and colleagues over at Drafting the Past.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_02: Claire, are you familiar with or a fan of Drafting the Past?
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not, but I want to be if you love it.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, bad historian, Claire.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to get you on this and get everyone else on this.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_02: So Drafting the Past is a really wonderful podcast.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's been around since 2022, so about four years now.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_02: It was created by Kate Carpenter.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_02: Kate Carpenter is a PhD student in the history of science at Princeton University.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_02: I believe she's writing a dissertation about storm chasers.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_02: Don't quote me on that.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's something really cool.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_02: She wanted to create this podcast where she interviews historians about books
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_02: that they've written.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_02: And she's been doing that for like four years now.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_02: I had the great pleasure of being on Drafting the Past podcast two years ago
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_02: when my I did a lot of podcast interviews.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_02: This one was one of my very favorite because I love talking about the craft
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_02: of writing and that's really what she focuses in on.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_02: And Kate's just a wonderful interlocutor.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_02: So she's been doing that since You're kidding.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_02: Big books, including The Three-Cornered War, which came out back in 2020.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_02: It was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_02: She has another book, Saving Yellowstone, that was really wonderfully received.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_02: A new book that just came out, I think like a week or so ago, called The Westerners.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_02: Megan Kate Nelson has teamed up with Kate Carpenter to sort of take drafting
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_02: the past into its future,
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_02: which is by beefing up,
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_02: you know, not only the podcast, but really the whole platform.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_02: So they are exploring.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_02: Expanding their coverage of books.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_02: And they really said they want to do this because they have lamented just the sort
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_02: of decimation of the book review genre in American public life.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, lots of newspapers have cut their book reviews sections.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so they want to sort of address that by providing a place
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_02: where they are paying folks to write book reviews
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_02: and they've expanded What they're doing into a Substack and to
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_02: a really expansive website that they're building up right now.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_02: In addition to the great work that they continue to do on the podcast.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_02: So follow Drafting the Past.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_02: Subscribe to their Substack.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_02: Definitely listen to their podcast.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's terrific.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_02: And
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_02: lots of flowers to Kate and Meg and Kate for the great work they're doing over there.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_03: That's fantastic.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know,
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_03: it's also somewhat intergenerational,
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_03: too, because Megan Kate Nelson, I think, is maybe a little younger than me.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_03: She's certainly not a graduate student.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_03: And so having an older historian and a younger historian work together on this,
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_03: I think, is really cool.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_03: I can't I can't wait to take a look at,
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_03: the New York Review of Books was born because,
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_03: back in the 1960s,
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_03: a group of people,
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_03: Bob Silvers and Barbara Epstein thought that, you know, the book review was dead.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_03: So and I love reading review essays and I love writing review essays.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm definitely going to check it out.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_03: Listeners, we're going to link to it.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_03: You should check it out to tell them you heard it here first.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_03: So this is our day, I think, of boosting fellow historians.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_03: The thing I want to go viral this week is a book,
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_03: Mickey McKellia's Liberation Summer,
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_03: The Moment That Changed the Women's Movement and the Future of American Politics.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_03: It just came out this summer.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_03: And the central thing that it examines is the No More Miss America demonstration on
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_03: the Atlantic City boardwalk on September 7th, 1968,
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_03: which is when New York radical women,
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_03: really in about three weeks,
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_03: Put together this count, this protest of the Miss America pageant.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_03: But what Mickey does, and she's a great writer.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_03: This has actually been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_03: This is her second Pulitzer Prize finalist book, which is kind of cool.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_03: But what she does is she puts this in the context of everything that was happening in 1968.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_03: The political conventions, the attack on the protesters in Chicago...
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_03: But also everything that happened before and what happens afterwards.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_03: But throughout, there's this thread of the Miss America pageant.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_03: And she looks at the ways that conservative women,
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_03: evangelical women interacted with the pageant.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_03: She looks at it as a business.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_03: And in particular, which I think is just really, really smart...
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_03: She looks at it as a racial event.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_03: And Miki is a historian of African American history or a scholar of African American history.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_03: And she What was happening at the exact same time as the Miss America protest was
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_03: the first Miss Black America contest,
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_03: which I kind of knew,
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_03: but it has always been sort of brought into the story as,
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_03: you know, everybody knows there was this other pageant, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_03: Well,
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_03: Mickey really digs into it and looks at the Miss Black America pageant as a protest
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_03: against Miss America.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_03: And the ways in which black women through that pageant and through the celebration
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_03: of beauty were actually able to do a kind of radical politics of femininity.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_03: But, you know, Phyllis Schlafly is in the book.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_03: You end up after reading this book thinking there was a lot more to feminism than
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_03: And feminism took different forms in different places.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_03: And together,
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_03: all of these women were debating the politics of appearance and femininity
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_03: and equality in the culture itself.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's an extremely well-written book.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's lots of fun.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody's going to love it.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_03: I'm linking to it in the show notes, listeners.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I think you're going to be really excited about it, as excited as I am.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_03: And by the way,
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_03: it's a really,
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_03: really good history of the sort of basic features of radical feminism and how
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_03: that intersected with other movements.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_02: Sounds amazing.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it is.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_03: And Mickey's a great person, too.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_03: And she teaches at the University of Connecticut after doing her time at
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_03: the University of Alabama.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_03: It's hard to imagine.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_03: University of Connecticut has a wonderful, wonderful history department.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_03: But it's kind of hard to think that's going to be her last stop.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_03: I think she's a star.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_03: So, Neil, this is our last broadcast taped from Martha's Vineyard.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_03: And you're not going to be with us next week.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_02: No, I'm going to be in Tuscany making do.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_02: For you.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_02: I will miss you guys.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_02: For you.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_02: But I'll be back.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_03: I know.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_02: I think.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_03: Think of me when you're eating homemade pasta and whatever else they eat and drink in Tuscany.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_02: Will do.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_03: On that note, Neil.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_02: Arrivederci.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_03: I'll see you in two weeks.
• 1:08:05
  SPEAKER_03: Arrivederci.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_03: And that's it for today's show.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for hanging out with us.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_03: Share this podcast with a friend who loves history, politics, and smart conversation.
• 1:08:25
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• 1:08:31
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• 1:08:37
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• 1:08:38
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• 1:08:40
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• 1:08:44
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• 1:08:49
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• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_03: Our podcast is supported by the New School for Social Research and by paying subscribers.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_03: Political Junkie is written, recorded, edited, and produced by me, Claire Potter.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_03: Today's theme is Thanks a Lot,
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_03: written by Johnny Cash and performed by Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two,
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_03: licensed from Lichty.
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_03: That's all for now.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_03: See you next week.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it looks as if you're just about to win.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_00: No matter what you do, I always will love you.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you will never know how it hurts to see you go.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_00: And for calling me those things you know I'm not.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks a lot.
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks a lot.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks a lot.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks a lot.
• 1:10:09
  No matter what you do, I always still love you.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you will never know how it hurts to see a ghost.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_00: You say I'm happy, but you know I'm not.
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks a lot.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks a lot.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks a lot.
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks a lot.