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Will Trump's Postal Service Seize This Mail Bag? · Pod Save America

• 0:00
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  Speaker 1: write in Pod Save America in the How Did You
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Hear About Us survey to let them know we sent you.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Don't forget, there's no safe like SimpliSafe.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Happy Labor Day, everyone. We took Monday off but wanted
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: to give you a pod because we love you, which
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: is why we're going to try to answer all of
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: your burning questions about the midterms, 2028, and Dan's skincare routine.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Hey, Dan.
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: What are we doing?
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: What's our peptide situation?
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Peptides?
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: No peptides.
• 1:47
  Speaker 5: Is that skincare related?
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not skincare related, is it?
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: Oh, boy. Guys, we'll talk. I don't know what a
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: peptide is. I feel like it could be anything.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, I need to know what it is now to
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: put it on my skin every day?
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: Well, it's like we're in LA where everyone's vain.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: I thought you injected them or something.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: There's topical peptides.
• 2:04
  Speaker 4: Oh.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: But Dan's in San Francisco where all the life hackers are.
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: What's that guy's name?
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Brian Johnson.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: The one who's measuring his boner.
• 2:10
  Speaker 5: I think he's pivoted off longevity just being fit now.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: Oh, I see.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: That's good.
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: Uh-huh.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: It's probably better for him.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Great.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Anyway.
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: Great.
• 2:19
  Speaker 5: We'll even answer questions you didn't ask.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: That's part of it. And then after we answer some questions,
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Shaniqua McClendon, our fearless leader of Vote Save America, will
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: talk through the best ways to volunteer to help take
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: back the House and Senate now that we are in
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: the final midterm sprint. Can you believe it? All right.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: You guys ready to answer some questions? Anyone can say yes.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: First one comes from Vanessa on Facebook. Is there anyone
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: that can stop this orange piece of shit? Three exclamation points.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Vanessa from Facebook. I just thought I'd put that one
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: first because that's just a tenor of the questions we
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: get from Facebook.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: Iran's doing a pretty good job.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: So far.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: I think the answer is no.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: Like heart disease has always got a shot.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: Father time will get there eventually.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Sort of, you know, the hardness of the veins sort
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: of gets us all in the end.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Anyway. You know, it's 2026, almost 2027. So pretty soon
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: we won't be asking that question. Hopefully, you think.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Then what happens? We get real jobs?
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, probably.
• 3:31
  Speaker 6: All right.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Subscriber Katzo, one of our subscribers. What are going to
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: be the main things you're hoping to learn or have
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: tested in the midterms as we head into 2028? This
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: is a great question. Great question.
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: Tommy, what do you think? I think there's a bunch
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: of things that we're all kind of watching for. For example,
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: data centers. It's a thing people are talking about. It
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: seems to be really politically salient.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: What? No, this is funny.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Data centers. A thing people are talking about.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: That's funny.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: That's why you said it.
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: Accurate.
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: It's a real like hot button issue in politics. And
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: I think we'll find out if it's a thing people
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: are voting on.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: I think we'll find out if there's a progressive penalty
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: and if so, how much. Whether, you know, kind of
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: how DSA candidates or left candidates do against the national average.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: And then everyone will look at those numbers and then
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: use them to confirm their priors going into the 2028 primary.
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: We'll figure out about online scandals, populism versus moderation, right?
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: We have populist, like Rob Sand out in Iowa, more
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: of a moderate.
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: It's a lot of interesting things we learned from elections,
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Dan, what are you looking for?
• 4:35
  Speaker 5: I think Tommy hits on the real problem, which is
• 4:39
  Speaker 5: this is a election that we hope is taking place
• 4:41
  Speaker 5: in a democratic way. A lot of people who may
• 4:43
  Speaker 5: not win in other years could win this year. That
• 4:45
  Speaker 5: will then be used to suggest that everything that.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: They did is right.
• 4:49
  Speaker 5: As we know, it's obviously easier to learn from the
• 4:51
  Speaker 5: elections you lose than the ones you win, although that's
• 4:53
  Speaker 5: never the outcome you really want. I'm interested in some
• 4:56
  Speaker 5: more granular nerdy stuff about testing new relational organizing strategies,
• 5:02
  Speaker 5: field strategies. There's a lot of talk about Democrats out
• 5:05
  Speaker 5: there experimenting with new ways of communicating, new ways of organizing,
• 5:08
  Speaker 5: and having ways to measure the efficacy of that to
• 5:10
  Speaker 5: see if it actually Worked and moved numbers.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Love it. You got any?
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I think you all hit on it.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: There's been more discussion about ending the Senate than why
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Democrats can't compete in rural areas. And I do think
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: we'll learn about whether a candidate that is center left
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: but not running as a Democrat, what does that teach
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: us about competing? What's going to happen with Dan Osborne?
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: How does that look versus what happens in Iowa? I'm
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: interested in that and where the Democratic brand stands at
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: the end of this.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: I think I said most of the ones on my list,
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: but I have how close Dems will be to a
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: trifecta if we win the White House in 2028. What's
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: the upper limit on a possible majority? What's that looking like?
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: And just as part of that, how important is John Fetterman?
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: And how much does he become the main character of
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: our politics for a while?
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Turnout, level of enthusiasm among Dems. which demographic groups
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: swung back to Democrats since 2024, if any, hopefully, um,
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: very interested to see what happens in Texas, the state
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: of blue Texas, um, to Tommy's point about is there
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: a progressive penalty, just like Abdul's performance in Michigan, um,
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: I think is key. Like, does he, you know, if
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: he wins, does he win by the same amount that
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: other Michigan Democrats do or other national Democrats do or not? Um, Also,
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: if there are any states that maybe are not thought
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: of as competitive, tough states now or competitive swing states now,
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: but maybe long shots worth investing in for the 2028 campaigns,
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: like if we suddenly pull out a win in Iowa
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: or Alaska.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, right.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: So I'm kind of looking at that. And then just
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: on the Republican side, Trump's approval in the exits, Republican
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: drop off from 22 the last midterm. And then, you know,
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: if there are Republican candidates who surprise us and either
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: do better than expected or outright win competitive seats, like
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: what's their formula? What do they look like? What should
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: we be worried about for 2028?
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: It'll also be funny to see how much of Trump's
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: super PAC money he spends. He has, what, $ 400 million?
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: That is hilarious if you spend just $ 0.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a fun one to look for.
• 7:19
  Speaker 5: The thing you mentioned, John, that's interesting is what's Elections
• 7:22
  Speaker 5: like this can tell us what are the next states
• 7:24
  Speaker 5: to come onto the presidential map. Because in 2006, we
• 7:27
  Speaker 5: won Senate races in Virginia and Indiana, which we would
• 7:30
  Speaker 5: then go ahead and win in 2008.
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: Smart.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: So this will be really interesting to watch.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Subscriber shibbles and bits. Good man. Very good. A handful
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: of candidates in statewide races, Texas, South Carolina, Tennessee. have
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: refused to debate their opponents. Do you think the importance
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: of the election debate is waning? Dan, start with you.
• 7:55
  Speaker 5: This is a bit of a paradox, but I think
• 7:56
  Speaker 5: the penalty for skipping debates has been greatly diminished as
• 7:59
  Speaker 5: the power of the traditional media to hold candidates accountable
• 8:02
  Speaker 5: has drained. But the opportunity cost for not doing debates
• 8:06
  Speaker 5: has gone way up because it's so hard to break
• 8:10
  Speaker 5: through to have any event you do, any moment in
• 8:13
  Speaker 5: a campaign that can actually Break outside the political media
• 8:16
  Speaker 5: bubble and debates are the best opportunity to do that.
• 8:19
  Speaker 5: So you could definitely get away with it. Like people
• 8:23
  Speaker 5: can dress in chicken suits and say you don't want
• 8:24
  Speaker 5: to debate and that won't– you won't be haunted the
• 8:26
  Speaker 5: way you have before. But you're leaving a lot of
• 8:28
  Speaker 5: opportunity on the table if you don't debate.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: Anyone disagree or have anything else to add?
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: I mean the argument for– it was a primary. But
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: the argument for debates not mattering at all is that
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: Darlene Graham won because she gave one of the worst
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: debate answers ever. I've ever heard, which was, allow me
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: to flip open my notepad. I don't know the foreign policy.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Katie Hobbs skipped all those debates. Remember, that was like
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: she was dogged for a while. Wasn't there an issue
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: of Katie Hobbs? I'm misremembering. Katie Hobbs was dodging debates
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: and we were like, why is she not debating? And
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: it worked.
• 8:58
  Speaker 5: And for Darlene, the Darlene Graham one is interesting because
• 9:01
  Speaker 5: it's counterfactual. Would she have won by more if she
• 9:06
  Speaker 5: hadn't just absolutely face-planted in the debate? Because you did
• 9:08
  Speaker 5: win by a fairly small margin in a state that
• 9:12
  Speaker 5: you know, in a very Republican state with Trump's endorsement.
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: You have to assume she was declining. And in fact,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: if he had had another week, would he have been
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: able to kind of do it?
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: Of that list, I find it, Texas is the most
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: interesting to me because South Carolina and Tennessee, I mean,
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: South Carolina, you can argue Darlene Graham is, you know,
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: polling ahead of Annie Andrews. And that's why she's not debating.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Same thing with Tennessee. But Texas, like pretty tied race,
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: if not Tallarico a little ahead. And the idea that
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: Paxton is just not going to Yeah. Not going to debate.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Do you think that lasts?
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: Have you seen him speak? Yeah.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: I know, but like.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: If Kent Paxman was my best friend, I'd be like,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: do not debate.
• 9:47
  Speaker 6: Yeah, right.
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: If you're the strategist, you're thinking, huh, given my candidates
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: record rap sheet and face.
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: Maybe we shouldn't do this.
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Look, you have your, your, your public acts and private
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: acts are disgusting. uh you're terrible at defending them you're
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: not particularly smart you're not charming.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Just wild to get away with it in a race
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: that big yeah and that close you know um all
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: right megan from twitter asks uh how does the party
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: message to voters that even if democrats win back the
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: house and the senate change will be very incremental until
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: we have a Dem trifecta come 2029 and still keep
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: people engaged and hopeful. Love it.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: Take it away.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Look, we just, you know, tell people the truth and
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: everybody will have a kind of reasonable discussion about it
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: online and understand the limits of democratic power and not
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: resort to assumptions around DNC being co-opted by billionaires being
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: the reason we've not achieved any of our goals and
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: And that you say, oh, if Democrats are so good,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: why don't we have Medicare for all when they control
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: the Congress? That kind of a thing we'll have for
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: a while. I think we have to, I think that
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: the fight over Hakeem Jeffries and meeting which Eric Kushner
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: was revealing, not because I found the debate particularly interesting
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: about that specific meeting, but because of what it says
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: about people's low expectations of Hakeem Jeffries, right? The problem
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: in that moment was not that he had a meeting.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: The problem was that people don't trust him to have
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: a set of goals, a resolve, like a clear kind
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: of moral compass that's guiding his strategy. And so we
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: have these two years, and I think sometimes it gets
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: boiled down to like, will you fight?
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: Are you a fighter?
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Are you willing to fight, right? But understanding what the
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: democratic goals are when they're in the minority, what are
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: the investigations they're going to launch? What are the message
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: bills they're going to pass and try to shove down
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Trump's throat? Or if we don't win the Senate, kind
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: of lock in the Senate, right? Like, Those are the
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: places where one lesson over the last several years is
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: that you can't just have a message. You can't just
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: have even a policy. You have to pick fights and
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: have big controversies that underscore the difference. And to me,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: if we can do that successfully over the next two years,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: while Democratic candidates are campaigning and competing to develop the
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: platform for the presidential race, I think that puts you
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: in a position to say, if you go with us,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: this is the future that.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: You can have.
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: Don't we think voters realize that Trump is still president
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: and there's not going to be any change? Like I
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: feel like it's like a harm avoidance message to the midterms.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: And then 2028, if we win, that's when the like
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: you got to deliver problem gets really hard.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I certainly would hope so. I mean, that's what
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: I've been thinking. And look, for less engaged voters, maybe
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: it's like an important message for all the candidates to deliver.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: So it's not to raise expectations. But yeah, like we're
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: not passing anything.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: But the issue is not– right. We're not passing anything.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: But the question is like who will own the failure
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: over the next two years, right? And there will be
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: budget bills that like– That is the one place.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: The government funding budget bills is where rubber meets the
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: road on this. And do you shut down the government
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: and we're going to be back into the shutting down
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: the government fight? And look, in fairness, this time we
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: have more leverage than when we talked about shutting down
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: the government over the last two years. And there's still
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: a lot of pressure to shut down the government, even
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: though Democrats clearly did not have the leverage that Republicans
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: had because we don't control Congress. So now we do
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: control Congress. So what do you do? Do you shut
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: down the government over, you know, you can't really do
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: it over ICE funding because ICE is like now separately
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: funded and good for several years. But like Medicaid cuts
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: or ACA credits or, you know, do you try to
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: demand something, the reversal of some terrible Trump policy? and
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: threaten to shut the government down over it if you're
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: the Democrats in charge.
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Like, I think the point that Tommy's making is right
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: about why aren't we achieving the big changes we're promising
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: to do in the future?
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: But in terms of owning the current state of the economy,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: making things feel better, not ideologically, but just cost of
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: living and just like kind of the daily stakes in
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: the economy, like how do Democrats avoid taking ownership of
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: that when they're kind of sending bills for Trump to
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: veto or sending bills in the Senate?
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: I actually think it's harder. It's hard.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: Dan, you want to jump in?
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 14:03
  Speaker 5: I'm kind of with Tommy that I'm not– this is
• 14:04
  Speaker 5: a thing I'm not overly worried about for a couple
• 14:06
  Speaker 5: of reasons. I don't think it's possible for– and there's
• 14:09
  Speaker 5: not a lot of history for congressional majorities in divided
• 14:14
  Speaker 5: government to take real ownership over the economy. Like I
• 14:17
  Speaker 5: just– like you can– the only way to do it
• 14:19
  Speaker 5: is to– would be to shut the government down in
• 14:21
  Speaker 5: a very, very destructive and stupid way like Newt Gingrich
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: did in 1995 and 1996. And I think you're right, John,
• 14:30
  Speaker 5: that the cases where the pressure will rise on funding
• 14:35
  Speaker 5: at the moments of government funding and where people will
• 14:37
  Speaker 5: get pissed is if budget deals are cut to avoid
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: that government shutdown, even if it is probably in the
• 14:42
  Speaker 5: long run, most politically advantageous to us to avoid it,
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: you know, and depending on how it looks at the moment,
• 14:47
  Speaker 5: people will be pissed about that. And it's not about
• 14:50
  Speaker 5: whether you can pass anything. It's about what you can
• 14:52
  Speaker 5: stop from Trump. The other factor that I think is
• 14:55
  Speaker 5: worth remembering is this is a This is not just
• 14:58
  Speaker 5: like 2019 and 2020 where the Democratic candidates are just
• 15:02
  Speaker 5: campaigning and then there's a whole other show over here
• 15:05
  Speaker 5: with Trump and the government. It's an open primary on
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: both sides.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: And that's going to suck a lot of oxygen out
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: of the air. Huge. No one paid a lick of it.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: Huge factor.
• 15:13
  Speaker 5: Once the Democrats took the majority in 2007, there was
• 15:16
  Speaker 5: a bunch of attention early on on some things they did.
• 15:19
  Speaker 5: They actually got Bush to sign a minimum wage increase.
• 15:21
  Speaker 5: They really pushed some ethics stuff, which Obama was involved in.
• 15:25
  Speaker 5: But once you got to the end of 2000, once
• 15:27
  Speaker 5: you get to the end of 2000, really the middle
• 15:30
  Speaker 5: of 2007, everyone was talking about the presidential campaign and
• 15:33
  Speaker 5: that will likely happen here too.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: I know all this discussion about like Jeffries and Schumer
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: and they write for the moment and this and that,
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: like no one's going to care over the next two years.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: It's not going to be any of the tension is
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: going to be focused on Congress. It is going to
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: be 100% Republican primary successor to Trump. The 50,000 Democrats
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: duking it out in Congress will be a backdrop. Just
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: in terms of I'm not saying it should be that way.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying that's what matters. But like, in terms
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: of the attention it will get, that is probably what's happening.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder also, the other part of this is
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: the way Trump uses military funding. Trump is saying, let's
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: say Trump says, I am vetoing any budget bill or
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: any funding bill that does not increase funding for the Pentagon.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: Now we're in a fight over funding for the war.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: You have Democrats in the House breaking and joining with Republicans.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: I do think that there are some big thorny fights
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: in which Democrats start to kind of own thing the.
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: Fun was the supreme court justice dies we're all like.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Let's steal the fucking seat back and some moderate democrats like.
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: No no no the norms say that.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: We need john this is where this is where the
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: difference between 51 and 52 is going to be enormous
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: uh okay and this meanwhile as we cruise towards saying
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: that out loud and not knocking on wood as we
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: get to 49.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah well because we want everyone to be healthy right
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: uh no no.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: No no yeah he was the majority.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: Just kidding nick from twitter asks, Trump's made quite a
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: few damaging remarks about high prices and data centers this year.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: Would it be worthwhile for some Democratic PAC to highlight
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: these comments and national TV ads? How much should Dems
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: prioritize a national media message during these midterms? Dan, what
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: do you think?
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: This is a little bit like, should I drive a Ferrari?
• 17:10
  Speaker 5: It'd be nice if I had the money to do it,
• 17:11
  Speaker 5: but I don't.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: We simply do not have the money to run a national....
• 17:19
  Speaker 5: Campaign at this level, but let's live in the hypothetical.
• 17:22
  Speaker 5: There would be an argument for doing it, not a
• 17:26
  Speaker 5: always on set of democratic ads or just running national ads,
• 17:29
  Speaker 5: but picking a few high leverage moments with like big
• 17:34
  Speaker 5: football games, Monday night football, college football games, where you
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: would run like some national ads that I think it'd
• 17:41
  Speaker 5: be less about Trump's like trying to drive Trump's numbers
• 17:45
  Speaker 5: down from 32 to 31 and more about tying Republicans
• 17:48
  Speaker 5: to Trump Like that's sort of the message you would want.
• 17:51
  Speaker 5: You would want to have Trump and Republicans be out
• 17:54
  Speaker 5: of touch and doing nothing about the.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Cost of living.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: I feel like, Dan, don't you think you could find
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: the money to run not like a fake ad buy
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: that's just like you run the spot once and then
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: it's only on digital and you're just trying– it's basically
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: a glorified press release. But a real national media buy
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: that is like really smartly targeted. Like every cycle you
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: read about how one campaign, the winning campaign, was targeting
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: swing voters on the tennis channel. And it was this
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: great cost-effective way to have a national bias. You buy
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: some sort of national cable buy, use some targeted stuff
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: like Tennis Channel or Bravo or whatever the hell it is.
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: And you just try to drive the conversation and the
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: salience of this issue up and kind of force it
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: into the zeitgeist a little more. I feel like that's doable.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, you're right though, like an LSU game, like
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: that's going to be a tough buy.
• 18:41
  Speaker 5: Well, I think the hard part is the diminishing returns
• 18:44
  Speaker 5: of linear television. And so the way you would have
• 18:47
  Speaker 5: to do it is you would do connected TV spending.
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: And I guess the one theory, the couple approaches here,
• 18:55
  Speaker 5: one would be sort of national message, other would be,
• 18:58
  Speaker 5: you know, relatedly national branding, or you could theoretically pick
• 19:03
  Speaker 5: a group of people and try to drive an issue
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: with that group of people using very, very targeted spending.
• 19:09
  Speaker 5: I think that is probably relatively cost inefficient. when those
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: people are spread out in districts and, you know, all
• 19:15
  Speaker 5: across the country.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Do you think it's prohibitively expensive to run an ad
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: during the, uh, like the NFL games, the nights of
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: the Republican convention Thursday and Friday, where you do like
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: one example, I agree with you, Dan, on tying Trump
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: to Republican. So, um, per Nick's point, you could, um,
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: have Trump comments on data centers and talking about how
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: wonderful they are and great. And then you could let
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: people know that every single Republican that voted for Trump's big,
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: beautiful bill not only voted for Medicaid cuts, but voted
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: for tax cuts for AI companies. that build data centers
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: in rural America, which is a fact that probably a
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: lot of people don't know. And it would educate a
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: lot of folks.
• 19:58
  Speaker 5: You would need to run it many times to get
• 20:00
  Speaker 5: people to actually recall it. But you could do it
• 20:03
  Speaker 5: and then try to, it mostly becomes a glorified press release.
• 20:07
  Speaker 5: You only can do one of the football games because
• 20:08
  Speaker 5: I think the second one's on Netflix.
• 20:10
  Speaker 6: Right, right, right.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: It is. You have to do Wednesday night. That's the
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: Seahawks game.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is a place to do it.
• 20:15
  Speaker 5: You get a lot of attention for it and then
• 20:17
  Speaker 5: you could find like a tail effect where you're running
• 20:19
  Speaker 5: in other places. But the big issue is here is
• 20:21
  Speaker 5: we're going to be massively outspent. We are really like–
• 20:24
  Speaker 5: and every– this isn't like we talk about the DNC
• 20:26
  Speaker 5: and that's obviously a specific problem. But the NRCC, the
• 20:30
  Speaker 5: NRSC all have more money in our companions. And then
• 20:32
  Speaker 5: the Super PAC money, presuming Trump spends his money, is
• 20:35
  Speaker 5: just like an ungodly spending advantage. And so that money
• 20:37
  Speaker 5: is coming from somewhere else, right? That's coming from an
• 20:41
  Speaker 5: Ohio buy, an Iowa buy, an Alaska buy.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: Damn.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: It's rough out there.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: It's rough out there.
• 20:55
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  Speaker 2: All right, the next question is a voicemail message from
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: one of our Crooked subscribers.
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: Hey guys, this is Ethan from lovely Lawrence, Kansas here.
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: I am calling for the mailbag episode. I've been seeing
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: an online trend of people posting their favorite campaign ads
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: and the time has come for transparency, for truth. We
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: need to know who is responsible for the Big Bird
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: ad from the 2012 campaign. On the same topic, are
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: there any Obama-era ads or maybe not Obama-era ads that
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: you are particularly fond of or not so fond of?
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: What are your favorite political ads of all time? Thanks,
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: and I approve this message.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: I didn't remember this ad.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: Dan, you must remember.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: You have a better memory than all of us.
• 23:57
  Speaker 5: This was after the debate where– the terrible debate that
• 24:00
  Speaker 5: Obama flubbed against Romney. And in that debate, one of
• 24:03
  Speaker 5: the things that came up was Romney's– position that we
• 24:07
  Speaker 5: should defund PBS. And so we did an ad with
• 24:10
  Speaker 5: big bird attacking him for defunding Sesame street.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: And it was basically like, like the, the idea of
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: the ad was like big bird is a criminal mastermind. And, uh,
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: you don't want to like, like he's, he's like menacing.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: And so we've got to cut PBS and the things
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: that we made big deals out of back then. Huh?
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: It was just, you know, we didn't dog on a car.
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: Uh, favorite ads, least favorite ads from everyone.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: You know, I was remembering today was, uh, the Mike Gravel,
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: the rock ad.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Mike Gravel. Oh yeah.
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: So don't, don't steal my punchline. Mike Gravel stares into
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: the camera silently for like 45 seconds. And then he
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: walks away. He throws a rock into a lake and
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: then he walks out of frame. It's like a minute
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: and a half long. And this was Mike Gravel. He
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: ran into in 2008. And then later you ran again.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: Then like later, these two teenage kids took over his
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: Twitter feed. They were posting all this kind of like anti-establishment, anti-corporatist,
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: anti-money in politics kind of stuff. And earlier this week,
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: we learned that they took jobs at OpenAI.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow. The Gravel kids took jobs at OpenAI.
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: That's awesome.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: They lived long enough.
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: Gravel teens are now working for Sam Altman.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: You die, Mike Gravel, you live long enough to become
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Sam Altman.
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: Dan, you were saying you love the Tim Horton ad.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Oh, sorry.
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: Willie Horton.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: I love it. I love an ad about a Canadian
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: fast food restaurant. Oh, because he was saying, I thought
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: his favorite ad was the Jesse Helms white hands ad.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: That's your favorite ad. You like the white hands crumbling
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: up a letter about not getting a job.
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 25:47
  Speaker 5: I'm not unfamiliar with the ads you're talking about. The
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: best ad of the Obama era and possibly this entire
• 25:53
  Speaker 5: modern era politics is the Mitt Romney singing America the
• 25:57
  Speaker 5: Beautiful ad.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: Oh, good one.
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: Really good. Is that a Super PAC ad or is
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: that us?
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: That was us.
• 26:03
  Speaker 5: And it's Mitt Romney saying America's Beautiful at an event.
• 26:07
  Speaker 5: And I would say not the appropriate key. And so
• 26:11
  Speaker 5: it's just a video of him singing it with all
• 26:12
  Speaker 5: these headlines of, you know, Mitt Romney's firm sends jobs
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: to Mexico and China. Santa Massachusetts outsources jobs to India.
• 26:22
  Speaker 5: He has a Swiss bank account.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: The sound effects, the sound effects in the ad, it
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: was because it's him singing and then it would cut
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: to those facts and it becomes a sort of echoey
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: hollow version of it. It's excellent.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: Empty factory.
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: Reverberation.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: And a big empty room.
• 26:39
  Speaker 5: And then it ends with Mitt Romney is the problem,
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: not the solution, which is the exact right, like just
• 26:44
  Speaker 5: nails the message of that election so perfectly.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: I was just remembering the Hillary Clinton 3 a.m.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: Ad.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: Good one.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: Remember that?
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: It was so good.
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: Mark Penn.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: A Mark Penn ad. Really good ad.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it worked.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Well, hey, hey, everything a losing campaign does isn't wrong.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: Basically, for those of you, you can all look it up.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: But it's someone's getting a call in the middle of
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: the night. And you can see that they pick up
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: the phone and they're just like it's like a normal
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: person in a house. And then but the whole point
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: of the ad is like when something happens at 3 a.m.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: in the world, some scary thing that happens. Who do
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: you want picking up the phone? Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton?
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: And it was supposed to be obviously Hillary Clinton. Yeah.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: It was in the strength plus experience equals change era.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Which of course leads to my favorite fact, which is
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: change divided by strength plus experience equals one.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: I don't know that.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: The one that was most controversial, well, from the McCain side,
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: it was Barack Obama is the biggest celebrity in the world.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: And that was viewed as some- Britney Spears, Paris Hilton.
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: It's dumb.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: It was a terrible, that was so stupid.
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: And it was just like completely uncontroversial. But then on
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: our side, We did one about how John McCain is old.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: And it was like, John McCain doesn't know how to
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: use a computer. And it's like him attempting to type.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: And Joe Biden. I was very involved in that one.
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: That was a real project of mine.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: And I stand by it to this day.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: That was great.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Right. And then it turned out he couldn't use the
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: computer because. Because of the torture he experienced. He was like, well,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: I can't use a keyboard because I was fucking tortured
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: for this country piece of shit. And I'm like, that's
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: a botch buyout. Take that one down. Take that one down.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: It was very effective at the moment. I was like.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: It is– when I think of like the most effective
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: political ads though, I just do think of Republican attack ads.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: Like I think of the– The Wolves. The Wolves ad.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: That Wolf.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: From George W. Bush.
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: George W.
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: Bush, 2004.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Against John Kerry. Watch that Wolves ad. It is chilling
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: and it is a disgusting bit of misinformation because it
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: basically relies on people to not understand that there were–
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: or not even consider that there were two attacks on
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: the World Trade Center. So it says something, I'm going
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: to paraphrase it, but it's something along the lines of, like,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: John Kerry didn't support security funding after the attack on
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: the World Trade Center. Oh, that's so sad. And it
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: was meant to be about, and it's clearly meant to
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: imply 9-11, but it was actually about the 1992 bombing
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: of the World Trade Center. So it was just a disgusting,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: it's just a, George W. Bush gets the kind of
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: patina of not being Trump now, but man, that campaign was.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: They were despicable.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: They did blame Saddam for 9-11 too, so we should have.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: Been ready for that one.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Whoopsie.
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: Wow. All right. Next question.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Subscriber NH603er. How do you guys view the rise of
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: the alt-right groipers that seem to be gaining popularity with
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: younger men? The James Fishback race in Florida fizzled out,
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: but he made real strides with younger voters. Should Democrats
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: try to paint the GOP as a party embracing those
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: folks going forward? It feels like a very real phenomenon, unfortunately. Tommy?
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: I think it's a huge problem. I mean, Nick Fuentes,
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: the kind of leader of the Groypers, he was barred
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: from CPAC maybe, or maybe it was TPUSA. He was
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: like barred from TPUSA events and really ostracized from the
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: Republican Party. As recently as like 2021, 2022. And then
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: he had dinner with Trump and Kanye. And then later,
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: much later, went on Tucker Carlson show. And now that
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: kind of like fringe right wing has been normalized. And
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: Fuentes is trying to sand off his edges. But I
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: think his listeners know it's a game and he has
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: a big and growing audience. And I think it was
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: sort of embodied by Fishback in Florida and his candidacy
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: that got, what, 10% or something like that. I mean,
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: it did quite well in that primary. Fishback also, I think,
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: openly praised and associated with Fuentes. There was that Trump aide,
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: Paul Ingrassia, who said, I have a, quote, Nazi streak.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: I think he's still employed there. I think there's a
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: conservative journalist named Rod Dreher who said that he believes
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: 40% of MAGA staffers are Gropers. So I think the
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: political piece that's important, though, is I think it's important
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: not to paint all Republicans or all young men as
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: kind of fringe nuts like this. I think Third Way
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: has a poll out from a while back that has
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: Democrats winning young men overall. This is a problem of
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: radicalism within the hard right, and it is not one
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: unique to the United States. In Germany, the AFD is
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: getting like a quarter of men under 25. Um, in the,
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: that sort of similar levels, uh, it's like in the EU,
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: like 21% of men under 30 across the EU back, uh,
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: right-wing populists or far right parties, uh, whereas younger women
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: are breaking hard to the left. So I think we, um,
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: need to think about, yes, you know, creating a political
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: cost for Republicans being associated with these far right fringe groups,
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: but also think about the issues that are driving people
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: into these parties, whether it's anti-establishment thinking, whether it's anti-immigrant sentiment,
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: and think about how we calibrate to better reach these people.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately, because we are in a moment where some of
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: these people say such extreme things, you know, Fishback said
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: during the campaign that the biggest issue Republicans aren't talking
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: about is white genocide, just said that. He also said,
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: if you want to set our kids up for failure,
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: you would feed them the absolute goy slop in our cafeterias.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: That is basically a term that neo-Nazis have made popular.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: Conspiracy that Jews are feeding non-Jewish masses by giving them
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: low quality food. That's what he did there.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: Which we haven't even started rolling out yet. We're still
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: testing it out.
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: Wait, so goyslop is actual food? It's not just like
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: dumb information?
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: Well, it's both, right? Oh, okay. I think, yeah, there's
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of different ways you can- Crazy, yeah.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: But I think the point is, I don't think there's
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: a need to characterize or editorialize or label these people's
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: just use their words just use their words to your
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: point on me because i think sometimes i think also
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: unfortunately you're calling someone racist anti-semi like it has become
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: so frequent over the last several years and in politics
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: sometimes uh people use those terms and like maybe that
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: you don't know like the severity of what the person
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: has said and these are so severe that i think
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: just laying the statements out there Using these people's own
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: words is probably the most important thing to do without
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: just shortcutting it or just editorializing it. You just put
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: it out there for people.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I also do think sometimes, especially for people that
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: are just hyper engaged in politics, we tend to get
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: the direction wrong between behavior and points of view, right?
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: We think, oh, if you persuade people that there's a
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: climate emergency, maybe they'll ride a bike. But actually, the
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: best way to get someone to understand that the climate
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: is important is by getting someone to ride a bike
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: and by their behavior, they come to kind of reveal
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: their preference and kind of take in the idea that
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: what they're doing is part of their identity. And so like, yes,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: you can try to persuade people and I think we should,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: but also the path to the kind of online right-wing
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: extremist path is also just like a path to misery
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: and loneliness, right? It isolates you from women who want
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with you. It leaves you in the
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: kind of the throes of the Andrew Tate's of the world,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: trying to convince you of something that just simply isn't true.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: And it's like, if you want to live a happy life,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: you just have to get away from this stuff. And
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: once you start coming out and sort of engaging with
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: the world and being open to people that you might've
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: thought otherwise wouldn't be, you know, sort of part of
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: your community, all of a sudden you'll realize how stupid
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: and terrible these other views were too. And just getting
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: people to realize like, forget what you, forget what your
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: ideology is. Aren't you unhappy? Doesn't this suck? Aren't you
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: miserable being online and angry all the time?
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: Susan on Facebook asks, if you were advising a Democratic
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: presidential campaign, how would you recommend they talk about foreign
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: policy in the world? Should they be talking about improving
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: the United States global standing after Trump? I'm going to
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: go to Dan first on this one.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Dan. What do you got, buddy? This is an
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: easy one. One word answer. don't.
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: I thought I'd go to Dan first. So he would
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: say that.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Dan actually drafted the Darlene Graham answer. He said, here's
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: what you say. You say, you don't know about foreign policy.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: You're going to win. I promise. People are going to create,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: make fun of you online. They're stupid. If she say,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: I don't do foreign policy, you're going to beat this
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: fucking Congressman.
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: You know, it's funny. I bet there's a version of
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: that answer where she's like, I don't give a fuck
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: about this boring crap. You know, that's like more effective
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: actually that people would have liked, but whatever.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: She is. You can't say I don't do foreign policy.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: You're currently a senator.
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you're doing.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: You're not just applying for the job.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: No, she actually said one point. She's like, I'll read
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: up once I get there. And it's like, once you
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: get there, you're there.
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: I believe you're on some very important committees.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny.
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: I mean, really, really briefly, I think I would just
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: the number one thing is we got to take back
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: the mantle of being the anti-war party. It's crazy that
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: we lost that to Donald Trump, especially given what we've
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: seen him do in Iran.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: We need.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: Some sort of smart version of what a newly rebuilt
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: USAID would look like. I don't think that you can
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: just run it back the same way. It's got to
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: be different. And then there will be– there's going to
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: be a big conversation about what a democratic party trade
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: agenda looks like that I think is very relevant to people.
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: But I don't know what that is. It's not going
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: to be tariffs.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: But will it be repealing the tariffs?
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: I mean I think so.
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: It should be.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: I mean– You heard Jeffries the other day.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: I heard Newsom the other day being like, I couldn't
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: guarantee that I would repeal all the tariffs.
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: Maybe not all of them, but like 50 percent tariffs
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: on Canada for no reason.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: I feel like there's a there's a kind of catch
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: all answer for this kind of question right now, which
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: is we're not going to do you know, we're not
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: going to repeal things just because Trump did them. But
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: we're going to we're not going to leave in place anything.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Anything that he did was dumb and stupid and destructive
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: to the economy. But there are some cases where long
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: before Trump, we all would have agreed that we need
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: to do something to protect American manufacturing.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: That's not an unreasonable answer.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: So your point, Dan, about don't. I wonder if there's
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: a political case, just pure political poll-driven case, that this
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: election in 2008 will be similar to 2008 in that
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: you have a president who had just gotten us into
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: an unbelievably unpopular war and hated or at least not
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: liked around the world. And we actually saw in that
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: election that it was not just the right thing to
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: do but politically useful. to talk about foreign policy and
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: restoring respect for America and ending stupid wars and investing
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: more in home. It does feel like this is going
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: to be an election where it would be beneficial for
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: the 2028 candidates to talk a little bit about foreign policy.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: I don't know necessarily about rebuilding our NATO alliances.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: We don't have to. Joe Biden saved NATO.
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 37:37
  Speaker 5: Let me give a real answer here. I always joke
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: about this because when we were in the White House,
• 37:42
  Speaker 5: Like you could watch it in focus groups and dial
• 37:44
  Speaker 5: groups that every time Obama was– in the midst of
• 37:46
  Speaker 5: a financial crisis, every time Obama was doing something on
• 37:48
  Speaker 5: foreign policy, that wasn't ending a war or making America safer.
• 37:53
  Speaker 5: Like people– the dials went down. People got mad. It
• 37:57
  Speaker 5: was a– like you could see it in all the
• 37:58
  Speaker 5: state of the unions. It was just like it was
• 38:00
  Speaker 5: a thing. It was a constant battle in the White
• 38:03
  Speaker 5: House about how much foreign policy versus how much domestic
• 38:04
  Speaker 5: policy you do. I think you are correct, John, that
• 38:07
  Speaker 5: in a campaign– Especially if we are still in a
• 38:09
  Speaker 5: war in Iran, foreign policy is going to matter. And
• 38:11
  Speaker 5: you have to, to Tommy's point, be the anti-war party.
• 38:15
  Speaker 5: We have to– like there is a space in this country.
• 38:18
  Speaker 5: And there is particularly in the campaign, especially given who
• 38:21
  Speaker 5: a lot of our candidates are and the levels of
• 38:22
  Speaker 5: experience they have. There's a threshold you have to meet
• 38:25
  Speaker 5: to have people believe you can actually do that part
• 38:27
  Speaker 5: of the job. And so you're going to have to
• 38:29
  Speaker 5: talk about it.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: Dr.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: Guy Montag from Twitter asks– What do you think the
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: pod accomplishes given the audience already agrees with you slash
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: votes Dem?
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: It's nice to hear from Spencer Pratt's father-in-law, first of all. Dr. Montag.
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: Oh, Dr.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: Montag.
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: It's actually a character, like a Ray Bradbury character. But anyway, Dr.
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: Guy Montag. I mean, I guess I'd direct you to
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: the comments if you think that everyone agrees with or
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: likes what they hear on the show.
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: That is not my– Good point. Those will quickly disabuse you.
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: I think over the years, I've heard from a lot
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: of people in real life that they're like, oh, I
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: listen to you guys sometimes and like Tucker sometimes or
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: Ben Shapiro sometimes or fill in the conservative blank because
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: a lot of people do kind of want to hear
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: from the left and the right. But I mean another
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: big goal of the show is not just to like
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: talk to people about what's happening in the world but
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: get them to get involved in politics, be activists in
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: their own lives, knock on doors, donate. So that's a
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: really big part of what we do here and why
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: it matters, we think.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: Also, the audience doesn't agree with itself. It doesn't always
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: agree with us and we don't always agree with each other.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: And I think if you turn on, say, Fox News
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: right at this moment, you'll probably see a big picture
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: of Hasan Piker and in between Abdul Al-Sayed and maybe
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: a trans swimmer in there once in a while. But like,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: And even in the mainstream media, right? I think Jonathan
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: Martin is a great reporter, but when he is asking
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: Rob Sands if he wants Kamala to campaign, he has
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: a different interest than we do in building a big
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: democratic and successful electoral coalition. And so there does need
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: to be a place where we can have these intra-party,
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: intra-movement conversations in a way that are productive and constructive.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: And that's, I think, part of what we try to
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: do with our guests here. That's what we try to
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: do with CrookedCon. And there does need to be a
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: place for that. And that is valuable, even if a
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: lot of the audience does largely agree and vote Democratic.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: Subscriber ZZ asks, best reasons to attend CrookedCon? Fab said
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: there will be drinks. I want to hear more. What
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: more is there? There's drinks.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: She wants to have their apps. Yeah.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: Will there be canopies? Yeah.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: There'll be also K and ayahuasca. Like, what do you think?
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: It's good.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: There'll be various kinds of cocktails you can get. Are
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: your hands shaking? Is this a Pete Hexeth burner account?
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: You could meet a cute ICE officer or National Guard. Oh, yeah.
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: To Washington to keep the peace.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Sure.
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: Suppress insurrections.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: Some great panels. Everyone wants a great panel.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: Good conversation. Dan, what do you think?
• 41:02
  Speaker 5: When I suggested this question, I said this would be
• 41:03
  Speaker 5: a great place for an organic plug for CricketCon.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: Let me try that. By the way, hitting it out
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: of the park down.
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: Whenever you say organic plug, it really helps.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: I also just did an organic plug for CricketCon. I
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: fucking did. I read the brief.
• 41:18
  Speaker 5: This would be my pitch to anyone about why to
• 41:20
  Speaker 5: come is if you are a person who works in
• 41:21
  Speaker 5: politics or wants to work in politics, there is no
• 41:24
  Speaker 5: better place to be to meet the people at all
• 41:27
  Speaker 5: levels of politics who are working in their communities nationally
• 41:30
  Speaker 5: on Capitol Hill. to actually bring change. It's a great
• 41:32
  Speaker 5: place to network. It's a great place to learn. You
• 41:35
  Speaker 5: said there are going to be incredible panels. It's going
• 41:37
  Speaker 5: to be a lot of fun. So like this is,
• 41:40
  Speaker 5: it is a, there's a real opportunity there.
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: So organic.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Also, I wanted some music under that.
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: We're also like the next two months, we're all going
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: to be going crazy about these midterms. I mean, nervous,
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, looking at the polls, hopefully be volunteering. And
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: what a great opportunity after the midterms to just like
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: get together with a bunch of people and be like,
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: all right, so we all just went through that together.
• 41:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah, we could all be together and wait for the
• 42:01
  Speaker 5: votes in Alaska to come.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: I was about to say, we can talk about the
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: elections we won, the ones we lost, the militia we're
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: going to put together to rescue those voting tabulators from Wyoming.
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: Positive America is brought to you by Bombas. Summer is
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• 43:35
  Speaker 2: This one is from subscriber not Elijah. Sure. Cool. What's
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: your worst compulsive news consumption habit?
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: Opening tabs.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: I would say trying to inhale news via Twitter while walking.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: A lot of walking and then sometimes going to the bathroom.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: That was going to say a lot of tabs, but.
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of times where I'm just like, well,
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: I'm like, stop, you're walking somewhere. Just walk with the
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: phone in your pocket. Yeah.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: Walk with the phone in your pocket. I have too
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: many tabs open and I often never come back to
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: the ones I have open. I'm just sort of always
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: falling behind my tabs. It's the, my biggest regret are
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: the longer articles that I've never gotten to. Like, as
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: I sit here, I'm like, oh, I never read that, uh, uh,
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: atlantic story by the person you had.
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: Offline tyler austin harper tyler austin harper was like i
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: had that open the episode so.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah so i got the gist of it for sure
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: for sure and i heard you prepping for it right
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: like you were next to me prepping for it so
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: by osmosis i feel like i kind of got the
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: gist but uh yeah because you're like i remember you
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: turned to me and you can you believe this and
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: that's really call you that's the main takeaway from it
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: uh can you believe this and so i feel good
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: about it mine is too many twitter alerts.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah you i i I've been with you when
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden your phone's blowing up with like
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: 10 Twitter alerts. I'm like, do you really have that
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: many notifications from Twitter?
• 44:46
  Speaker 5: I do because I try to spend less time in
• 44:48
  Speaker 5: the actual feed, which I found to be very bad
• 44:51
  Speaker 5: for me mentally in a lot of ways. And now
• 44:53
  Speaker 5: it still kind of sucks. And so this way I
• 44:55
  Speaker 5: am trying to optimize my news consumption for the people
• 44:58
  Speaker 5: or the things.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: I care about.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: That's good.
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: That's smart.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: No, it's not smart because you're constantly under fire. Under fire.
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: B Coletta from Instagram asks, uh, any recommendation for podcasts, newsletters,
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: et cetera, to better understand what's happening on the right.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: Tell me, I feel like you've got this.
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, Will Summers false flag newsletter at the bulwark
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: is a great way to have someone curated all for
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: you and explain it for you and kind of unravel
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: and unpack all the insanity and the relationships and why
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: they all hate each other. Um, but then you got
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: to decide if you want to dive in the pool
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: yourself and start listening. That's, that's a different, that's a
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: different beast. Do you want to go down the Tucker
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: road and, Catch that monologue.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: I've always, I just have always enjoyed, he can be
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: an asshole about Democrats. I think he wrote a book
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: called Liberal Fascist that tells you where his head was at.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: But I just always found Jonah Goldberg to be a
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: really entertaining writer. I just always have.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: You've been consistent on this.
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: I have.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: And he's anti-Trump. He doesn't like us much either. He
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: doesn't like much of anything. But I enjoy his content.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: Brianna from Instagram asks, I want to become a speechwriter.
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: Where should I start?
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: And Isabel on Instagram asks, any advice for new college
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: grads looking for campaign jobs?
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: So when I, I watched the West Wing and wanted
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: to be a speechwriter, but I didn't know real plan
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: or understanding for how to make that happen. So as
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: you can see from my, if you're familiar with this program,
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: I sort of careen, do a lot of careening in
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: my life. But I volunteered on the Kerry Edwards campaign
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: in 2004, unbeknownst to me, John was upstairs as a
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: junior speechwriter. Um, and I just volunteered to write anything.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: So they needed up regional op-eds in regional newspapers. Newspapers
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: were these things they printed all across the country and
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: people could, could read about their area. Uh, and so, uh,
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: you would always have these surrogates that would be publishing
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: local op-eds, Congress people, pastors, whatever. And I just would
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: jump in and sort of do the draft of them
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: and they'd go through the up the chain and other
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: people would edit them and fix them and make them
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: make sense. I didn't know what I was doing. Um,
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: and then there were like several hurricanes that year in 2004,
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: there was Ivan and three or four others. And so
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: someone was always like, oh, we need somebody to draft
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: the John Kerry thoughts and prayers hurricane victim statement. And
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: I just ended up doing a bunch of those. And
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: the people that I was writing them for remembered that
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: I could put a sentence together when they were looking
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: for someone to be in a junior job on Capitol Hill.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: So for me, it was like just as an intern
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: slash volunteer, kind of just jumping on those things.
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: Work in the press office, communications office, if you want
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: to be a speechwriter, because that's usually the best way
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: into it because they'll get a chance to write. It's
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: hard to just like apply to be a speechwriter without...
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: previous writing and campaign experience. Dan, Tommy, what about getting
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: campaign jobs out of college?
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, I just think like, don't think you can
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: select your job, take whatever job you can get and
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: don't worry about it not being a policy job or
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: a communication job or the thing you want to do.
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: Just get in the door, meet the people, work your
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: ass off. People will notice if you are a hard worker,
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: that's smart, that's capable, that gets stuff done for them
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: when they ask and they will give you the next thing.
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: Hmm.
• 48:02
  Speaker 5: If you suggest that you want to be a speechwriter
• 48:04
  Speaker 5: or work in the policy office, I would immediately toss
• 48:07
  Speaker 5: your resume in the waste bin. Like you want people
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: who are just going to come in and do whatever
• 48:12
  Speaker 5: and then find their place and get there the way
• 48:15
  Speaker 5: Lovett did by just taking an opportunity and being good
• 48:18
  Speaker 5: at it.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: But there's always a warning.
• 48:20
  Speaker 5: Sign when someone says they want to do policy as
• 48:22
  Speaker 5: a 22-year-old getting out of college, going to work on
• 48:24
  Speaker 5: a house campaign.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: Usually they've come right from Harvard, Princeton, somewhere like that.
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: Love it.
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: You have some questions.
• 48:33
  Speaker 6: Oh, yeah.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: I have a few sort of hypotheticals that I'll put
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: in front of you. And I'll also just sort of
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: thought starting questions. There is a button in front of you.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: If you press it, you lose a month of life
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: at the end of your life, but you gain a
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: week of your life at the current age. Do you
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: press it? And if so, how many times?
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, you can press it multiple times.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: Multiple times. Well, you lose a month in your senility.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: So then you have two months.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: So you start- Well, you don't know when the end
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: of your life is.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: No, but let's assume you're going to live to an
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: old age. So this is sort of in your sort
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: of decrepitude, your kind of declining moments. You'll have less time,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: but more or less time than you would gain having
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: more time. So what am I gaining? Is it now
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: a 53-week year if I push it once? You are
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: younger for longer. You have more years of your current
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: youth and vitality, be it. as it were. But time
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: doesn't freeze. No, time does not freeze. Everything continues. You're
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: just going to be younger for longer, but not as
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: much as you'll lose at the end of your life.
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: If we're talking about being like between 90 and 90
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: and a half, I'm hammering that button.
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: That's not a good time.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: I'm not pushing it.
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: Not once, but because we don't know, I'm not pushing
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: it ever.
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I, I went through it and I was like, yeah,
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: I'll push that. And then I'm like, if you don't know,
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I want to push it.
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, you're, you know, you're, you're, we're all at
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: the point where we're likely to live deep into our eighties.
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: That's really based.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: On the, based on the, based on, I mean, it's
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: just what the table say, you know?
• 50:00
  Speaker 5: I mean, the hard part is if you're an old
• 50:03
  Speaker 5: parent with young kids and, you probably want to save
• 50:05
  Speaker 5: all that time at the end.
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point. Or you want to be
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: more vital now.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: This is the challenge.
• 50:12
  Speaker 5: Or, I mean, why don't you just eat healthy and
• 50:14
  Speaker 5: work out and then keep that extra month?
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, press the button in the fridge, in a sense. Okay.
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: The button is called GLP-1.
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: Are you pressing it?
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: No, I'm not pressing it.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: Dan?
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: Nope.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: Tommy?
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: No.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: Not pressing it. Next question.
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: Are you present?
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: No. I'm committed to the idea that uh, being old
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: and falling apart is just part of the experience and
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: you got to do the whole ride.
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: It's true.
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: You know, uh, do you eat off the floor?
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: Uh, five second rule. I usually do a five second rule.
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: It depends on where the floor is.
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: If something just drops quickly. I mean, when you say,
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: do you eat off the floor?
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: I imagine like, or what are your rules? So for me,
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: I think if it's wet, no, no wet food comes
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: back up, but dry food. Yeah, for sure. No problem. Inside, outside.
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: I don't care.
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: But if it's outside on a sidewalk, I don't know.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: Hmm. I don't know.
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: Or like if I'm in like an airport.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: Airport's tough. Airport's tough. But home, we're reading a lot more.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: Home for sure.
• 51:04
  Speaker 6: Great.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: Oh, God, yeah. Next question. You go back in time.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: It's the year 1907. You're in Vienna, Austria. And there
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: he is, the source of so much pain and misfortune
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: and death, the artist and professor who rejected Hitler's application
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: to the Academy of Fine Arts with the following note, quote,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: sample drawing, unsatisfactory, too many heads. Do you kill Christian Gripenkerl?
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: Gripen.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: Kill Christian Gripenkerl.
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: Why are we killing him?
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: Because he rejected Hitler. If he is dead and Hitler
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: is accepted to the Academy of Fine Arts.
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: Oh, so the presumption is Hitler gets accepted. Yes, he
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: is the person.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: He was the reason he didn't get in.
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: What if someone else wasn't going to get him in?
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: That's under the assumption that killing Christian Gripenkarl allows Hitler
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: to become an artist.
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: John wants more information on the admissions process.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: Is there somebody we could call? Is there a way
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: to get him on the tennis team? Yeah, do I
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: know anybody on the board of the Vienna Society?
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: Get him an NIL deal?
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: I don't want to be killing this guy if Hitler's
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: just going to get in anyway.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: Well, that's the question.
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: Let's blow it on your hands.
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 52:04
  Speaker 5: What if the person who spot Hitler takes becomes a
• 52:08
  Speaker 5: worse Hitler?
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: That's interesting.
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: Too much of a bank shot.
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: I don't think I'd do it. I feel like Lovett's
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: guaranteeing it.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: I'm saying Hitler– the rise of National Socialism is certainly
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: dependent upon Hitler not becoming an artist.
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: So I think you can safely say– didn't become an
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: artist or if Hitler did become an artist, he wouldn't
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: have found his way to Nazism somehow.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: And then you just killed just a persnickety.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just trying to save the sky.
• 52:43
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, there is an argument for can't justify this,
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: you know, because you'll just be going to jail for
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: the rest of your life in Austria because people will
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: be like, why did you kill him? You're like, you
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: have no idea.
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: Now I'm stuck in jail in 1908 in Austria. Yeah,
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: that's a bummer.
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: Next is the voice in your head in the first person,
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: second person, third person, or does it shift? In other words,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: Do you say– if you say something stupid, do you say,
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: why did I say that? Do you say to yourself,
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: why did you say that? If Dan does a good
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: job in the pod, does he say, I really crushed
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: it today? Or does he say, Dan really crushed.
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: It today? Please tell me no one says the third person.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: Some people, it's not mine. I don't speak– I don't
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: think of myself in the third person.
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure I'm a you.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: That's interesting. Yeah, you're a second person. You speak to yourself.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: What do you do, Dan? First person. Yeah.
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: It's funny. It's funny. love it previewed this this one
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: question to me and tommy and i started thinking about
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: it and i was like i don't think i do.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: Either there you did your first person you just did.
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: It and now i'm talking right now you're talking but
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: i was like i don't know if i identify myself
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: like there's definitely a voice in there but i don't
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: know if it's saying like john you did this or
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: i did that like i think i would lean towards
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: i but i'm not sure that i do this at
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: all for.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: Me i think it's back at next mailbag it's mostly
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: for me i it's mostly i i but every once
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: in a while i'll be like god you're fucking moron
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: Like I'll definitely throw myself a punch.
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: Do I do?
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: I bet I switch up between first and second. Definitely no.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: Never a third. Tommy, hungry.
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: Don't some people not have an internal monologue? Isn't that
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: a thing that we know about?
• 54:11
  Speaker 5: Yeah, they become president of the United States.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: Final question. A wizard punishes you for being disloyal to
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden.
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: It's the wizard.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: It's a wizard.
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: Some kind of a wizard.
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: You are suddenly trapped in the body of a dog
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: in your family home. And as part of the spell,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: your family accepts that you are a beloved family pet
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: and that you, the actual you, are on some kind
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: of extended work trip and fine. How would you try
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: to communicate what is happening to your wife? And do
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: you believe you could successfully... Tell your wife that you
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: are a human trapped in a dog's body and in fact,
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: her husband. And what would your strategy be?
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: Just, I would give up. There's no way Emily would
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: ever be able to figure that out, nor would Leo
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: be able to communicate that to Emily if I was Leo.
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: But no, but you're you. You're you.
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: I know I'm me, but like, I'm trying to think
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: of- You have your full brain.
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: You have your full brain in there.
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I know.
• 55:07
  Speaker 5: And knowledge.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: But I still have, I still have a dog's body.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: And I cannot speak.
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: That's where you can bark. You have the power of
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: barking and paws.
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: To me, what I was trying to get to is
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: can I get to a point where it is clear
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: that one bark is yes, two barks is no. Because
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: once you've got yes and no, you're off to the
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: fucking races. If you could do number, you can do numbers, right?
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: There's ways. It's like you're an alien trying to figure
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: out how to communicate with a person. I think my
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: strategy would be to find paint. And then use my paws.
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: To write a note.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: Wow. Get some tomato sauce. Oh, my God. That's so smart, Dan.
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: Now you're like, you know, you're like.
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: I was thinking of just like things on the ground.
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: Before you were about to say paint, just like there's
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: plenty of toys in my house. Just like move them
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: with my paws to spell I am John.
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: That's great. And by the way, freaky. Emily's in a panic.
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: Emily's like, did I take the right? Am I mixing things? Fuck.
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah what the fuck did I what did I take
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: the challenge here is having Hannah be open to the
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: universe of this communication happening and I feel like that's
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: far more my role that thinking the dog would talk
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: to me well.
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: Now yeah now I'm trying to play it out because
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: the first I would be like oh my god Leo
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: just or this dog whatever it would just spelled out
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: I am John so she texts me and then I
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: don't respond because I'm on an extended work trip and
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: then you spend the things to then the wheel start
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: rolling is this a movie.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: It could be. It could be a movie. It could
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: be a movie. All right. Well, that was all I've got.
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: Well, that's food for thought.
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: Food for thought, everyone.
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: Great work.
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: There are a bunch more great questions that we didn't
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: have time to get to today. Reid is going to
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: field a bunch of those in this week's Open Tabs.
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: That's exciting. Love it. Have you sent something to Reid
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: for Open Tabs?
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: You bet.
• 56:53
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• 57:00
  Speaker 2: episodes of all of our great crooked pods.
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Listeners,
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• 58:04
  Speaker 1: of finding applicants who are qualified and interested easier and
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: finding the right people easier. one of the hardest parts
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: about having a company, but you already know that. So
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: you've got to go to ZipRecruiter.com slash Crooked to post
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: your job for free. Once again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash Crooked. Oh,
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: and if you forget where to go, don't worry. You
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: will hear another ad soon enough. The ZipRecruiter ads will
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: continue until morale improves.
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: I am very excited to welcome back to Pod Save America,
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: the president of Vote Save America, Shaniqua McClendon, great to
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: see you.
• 58:42
  Speaker 6: Good to see you too.
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: How you been?
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: How's DC?
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: It seems a little steamy there maybe?
• 58:46
  Speaker 6: It is very hot. I think it's 90 something degrees
• 58:49
  Speaker 6: today and Donald Trump still lives here.
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: It's all the takes burning up the place. We wanted
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: to talk about Vote Save America's work this cycle and
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: your plan to take back the House and the Senate.
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: No pressure. This year you guys launched a program called
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: the Crooked Dozen. It's an effort to flip 12 of
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: the most beatable and most annoying Republicans in the House
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: of Representatives. Tell us a little bit about the Crooked Dozen.
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: Tell us about the effort.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 59:15
  Speaker 6: So when we were coming up with this list, we
• 59:18
  Speaker 6: weren't just thinking about what are the most competitive races
• 59:20
  Speaker 6: out there. We were thinking about who are the worst
• 59:23
  Speaker 6: candidates out there, the worst Republican incumbents who just will
• 59:27
  Speaker 6: like get their constituents blood boiling and want to get
• 59:29
  Speaker 6: them out of office. And so we were thinking about
• 59:32
  Speaker 6: people who might seem like they hate their constituents, like
• 59:35
  Speaker 6: Congresswoman Miller Meeks. She's opposed to capping insulin prices, which
• 59:40
  Speaker 6: seems crazy. And she actually has gotten into a lot
• 59:42
  Speaker 6: of arguments with her constituents. So she might just literally
• 59:46
  Speaker 6: not like them. And only won by, I think, around
• 59:49
  Speaker 6: 700 points last time. So she's someone who has made
• 59:51
  Speaker 6: her constituents angry and actually didn't have a huge margin
• 59:54
  Speaker 6: to begin with. And so But this is part of
• 59:57
  Speaker 6: a larger electoral strategy that we had been thinking about
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 6: for some time. Democrats are largely expected to win the
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 6: House this year. But if Democrats only have a few
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 6: seats that they have a majority with. That's not really
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 6: a governing majority. You will have some people who might
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 6: vote with Republicans sometimes and just make things more difficult.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 6: So we're thinking about how can we create a governing majority?
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 6: So doing that by looking at races that maybe other
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 6: people are not looking at, looking at fewer Democratic incumbents
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 6: and seeing how we can flip more Republican held seats,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 6: which is how we got to some of the crooked
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 6: dozen that we have now.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: Got to hit the gas.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: You know, it's that year. This is going to be
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: a good year. We've got some big momentum behind us.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: I love that you just you mentioned Iowa. because that's
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: also a state where there are two big statewide races
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: where we have great Democrats at the top of the ticket.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: You've got Rob Sands running for governor. I want to
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: govern for a day. We've got a great Senate candidate,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: Josh Turek. There's an amazing New York Times piece about
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: Josh Turek today, Friday, September 4th, that's worth your time.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: So I think it's really smart for you guys to
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: focus on some of the down-ballot races that maybe are
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: not getting the national attention or the money but need
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: our help. Another one we should just talk about for
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: a second is Max Miller. It's pretty obvious why he's
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: on the list. We had Brian Poindexter on this show,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: his opponent. Good iron worker from Ohio. That feels like
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: another exciting race. We have a good opportunity for a pickup, right?
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 6: Yeah, on both sides. Brian is great, but Max Miller is,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 6: I mean, he's just awful. He's been in the crooked dozen,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 6: will continue to be in the crooked dozen. We haven't
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 6: gotten as lucky with him. Two of the people who
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 6: are actually in the crooked dozen already have.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: Been kicked out.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: What happens?
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 6: You know, that it kind of sucks for us because
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 6: I would have loved to beat them. But one of them,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 6: Andy Ogles, he was just too extreme and he did
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 6: not make it out of his Republican primary.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: Can you imagine being too crazy for the current MAGA
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: primary base?
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: Anyway, continue, sorry.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 6: Yeah, which I think says something that could be exciting
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 6: about at least just having normal Republicans in Congress again.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 6: And then in North Carolina 11, I'm not from North
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 6: Carolina 11, but I am from North Carolina. So this
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 6: got me excited. Charles, sorry, Chuck Edwards, which I guess
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 6: his name is Charles. Yeah, he just had some weird
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 6: harassment scandal. I think he was censured recently and he
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 6: gave some of his women staffers guns. So just a
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 6: lot of crazy stuff happening in that office. But now
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 6: they're not in the crooked dozen anymore. So we replaced them.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 6: We actually ran a little competition online to see who
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 6: our audience thought the next two additions to the Crooked
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 6: Dozen should be. And those results led to David Valadao
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 6: in California 22 and Gabe Evans in Colorado 8. If you,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 6: you know, if anyone wants to see it, they can
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 6: go look at the post and see some of the
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 6: comments from people who live in those districts and have
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 6: strong feelings about them.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: I love that. Let the people decide. Let the masses
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: dictate to us who gets on this list. We should
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: just say Chuck Edwards, gigantic creep. I believe he harassed
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: his staffers so often that he gave One of them,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: I think, a jigsaw puzzle in the form of an invitation.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: To a date.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: Like, buddy, what are you doing? But, yes, no, I'm
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: glad we removed them and added some new folks to target.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: So let's talk about how. Votes Save America's tactics this
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: year are not the same as they were in 2024.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: How are they evolving? How are you guys thinking differently
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: about these races?
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 6: Something that we– have done since Vote Save America was
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 6: started is always make sure when we are asking people
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 6: to give us their time, attention, or energy, or time, attention,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 6: or money, that we're spending it as effectively as possible.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 6: And so after 2024, you know, I think a lot
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 6: of people listening to this podcast probably went and knocked doors.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 6: They called voters. But if you are existing in today's world,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 6: when you knock on those doors, a lot of people have,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 6: you know, I know Simply Safe is one of our advertisers.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: Ring cameras.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 6: And a lot of people do not want to talk
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 6: to the canvassers who are coming by. And then, OK,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 6: I've gotten mixed answers on this. You have an iPhone.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 6: Are your text messages filtered now?
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, God.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: It doesn't always help, but they are.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 6: But you see a lot less of those like campaign
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 6: texts coming through. So if you have people who are
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 6: calling and it says potential spam, people don't answer that.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 6: And they're just trying to get you to vote. Same
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 6: with those text messages that people aren't seeing. So we
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 6: have been thinking about how do we respond to that?
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 6: And in addition to those changes, we also know that
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 6: people They trust the people who are in their lives.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 6: If they follow people online, they trust the people that
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 6: they've chose to follow online. So the stuff that we're
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 6: doing this year is really focused on how do we
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 6: meet people kind of in their personal relationships, but also
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 6: on their kind of like parasocial and online relationships. And
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 6: that's what we're going to be mobilizing our audience around
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 6: this year. And so I won't go into a ton
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 6: of detail. We actually will be having a call this
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 6: evening if you are hearing this on Tuesday. And so
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 6: you can go to votesaveamerica.com to sign up. We're going
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 6: to go into more detail, but generally we will be
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 6: training the audience on how to map their network into
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 6: the targets that we're focused on so they can talk
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 6: to the people they know in those places and get
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 6: them to vote, make sure they know stuff. Like, you know,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 6: that David Valadao voted to throw a bunch of people
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 6: off of Medicaid, even though he has one of the
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 6: highest percentage of Medicaid recipients in his district. And so
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 6: that's the kind of information we want to make sure
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 6: people have to talk to the people they know. But
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 6: we're also going to go online and make sure that
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 6: we're engaging with some of the content that can reach
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 6: people who might not otherwise pay attention to what's happening
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 6: in politics. But also make sure you can share stuff
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 6: in your group chats and just are meeting people more directly.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 6: And that's not to say that door knocking and phone
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 6: banking don't matter in certain places.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: They do.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 6: But after so many hundreds of thousands of people, over
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 6: a billion dollars was spent in 2024 online. We just
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 6: knew that there were some new tactics that needed to
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 6: be in the mix when we're trying to win these elections.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: You got to evolve. We're like Darwin over here in
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 3: the political world.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: You got to evolve.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: Where can folks go to get involved if they like
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: what you're saying, if they want to be a part
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: of it and they want to toss out the crooked dozen?
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 6: Go to votesaveamerica.com. You can sign up for the call
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 6: that we have this evening. Jon Favreau and Abdul Al-Sayed
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 6: will be joining me and Greta Karnes. So it'll be
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 6: an exciting call. And just generally, you can go to votesaveamerica.com.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 6: One other thing I'll throw in there is, you know,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 6: this work requires a lot of money. If you are
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 6: paying attention to political news right now, a lot of
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 6: donors are still really frustrated about 2024. But a lot
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 6: of Vote Save America's work has been able to continue
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 6: because of the people who listen to this podcast. So
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 6: I want to say thank you for that. And if
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 6: you are in a space to, you know, donate a
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 6: little bit more and through our anxiety relief program, which
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 6: is a monthly recurring donation program, it really will help
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 6: us in getting this work done. And if you don't
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 6: have the resources to do that, your time and attention
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 6: is just important. So if you go to VoteSaveAmerica.com, you
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 6: can find all the ways to get involved.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: Excellent.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 3: Well, thank you for all the work you're doing. Thanks
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: to everybody out there who has donated, volunteered. gotten involved
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: in some way, talk to their friends about politics. Just
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: try to encourage people to care. We got to have
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: some hope people.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: This now is our moment. These midterms knock on everything.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: I feel like they're going to be good.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 6: And it's step one to 2028.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: We got to get some momentum and some wind at
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: our back and then we're going right into 2028. Shaniqua,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: great to see you.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: Thanks for all the work and talk soon.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Bye. Thanks to Shaniqua for coming on the pod
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: and thanks to all of you for submitting your questions.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: As a reminder, You can find a volunteer opportunity near
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: you or donate to the fund to defeat the Crooked
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: Dozen at votesaveamerica.com. Dan and I will be back with
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: a new show in your feeds on Friday.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: Bye, everyone.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: and Farrah Safari with Ree Churlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hefcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: David Tolles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.