Latest / Pod Save America / MAGA Media Turns on Trump (feat. David Pakman)

Transcript

MAGA Media Turns on Trump (feat. David Pakman) · Pod Save America

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: There's a new book that I think is particularly timely.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: It's called Control, Why Big Giving Falls Short. Author Glenn
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Gallich offers a rare insider view exposing why billionaire and
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: millionaire donors move so slowly while communities battle urgent crises.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: In Control, Why Big Giving Falls Short, Gallich reveals how
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: our philanthropic system and culture encourage excessive donor control and
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: keep over $ 2 trillion from reaching communities. By prioritizing wealthy
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: donor interest, power, and control, this system doesn't simply slow
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: social progress, it structurally prevents it.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: This is a weird world where you have all these
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: billionaires who sign like giving pledges and talk about all
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: the money they give away and their foundations. I feel
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: like people didn't really think about whether they had ulterior
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: motives for a very long time and just kind of
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: like celebrated them. And then when you really dig into
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: the details, kind of controlling a lot of things. Yeah,
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: it's one of the reasons we have a progressive taxation
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: system in the country. And I don't rely just on
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: billionaire philanthropy. But I'm sure Gallich gets into that in
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: the book. If you care about how extreme wealth shapes
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: our society and how to fix it, this is the
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: book to read. Order your copy of Control, Why Big
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Giving Falls Short by Glenn Gallich from your favorite indie bookstore.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: That's Control, Why Big Giving Falls Short, out now.
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. You're about
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: to hear my conversation with progressive political commentator David Pakman,
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: someone I've long wanted to have on the show. David's
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: been covering the news and talking politics online longer than
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: just about anyone, hosting the self-titled David Pakman Show since
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: 2005 when it launches a radio program at a little
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: station in Massachusetts. We hopped on Zoom to talk about
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: the week's latest news, the Iran negotiations, and the White
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: House's attempt to pivot back to the economy, as well
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: as the growing revolt against the president among the MAGA media.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: We'll get to that conversation in a moment. Before we do,
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: if you want to support independent media, I hope you'll
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: consider subscribing to Messagebox, my newsletter that gives you in-depth
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: political analysis and cuts through the BS to help you
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: understand what you can do to defeat MAGA in this
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: election and beyond. And I have a special deal for
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: Crooked fans. Go to crooked.com slash yes, we Dan for
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: 20% off your subscription. And I hope you'll consider heading
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: over to crooked.com slash friends to become a friend of
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: the pod. You can get this episode ad free and
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: get access to my subscriber show, Polar Coaster. Now here's
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: my conversation with David Pakman. David Pakman, welcome to Pod
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: Save America.
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: We've wanted to have you on the pod for a
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: long time. I'm very excited about this. I want to
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: talk to you about the media ecosystem, how Democrats should communicate,
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: your career, and how you got to be one of
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: the longest serving progressive political commentators, which is very impressive.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: But because this is Pod Save America, before we do that,
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: let's get to some news. This morning, Friday, when we're
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: recording this, the Iranians announced that the Strait of Hormuz
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: was now open. Donald Trump very cheerfully truthed about how
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: This was a great deal. The Strait was open. There
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: would be a deal within a couple of days. We
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: were going to get all of the dust, although there
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: are reports that we're going to give the Iranians $ 20
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: billion for that dust. But it seems like things are
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: in a better place than they were a few days ago.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: What is your take on this? Do you think this
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: is a big win? Should we just give Donald Trump
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: the Nobel Prize now? What do you think?
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: I say we wait a little on the Nobel prize maybe,
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: but no, I mean, listen, the, the theme is like
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: arsonists setting fires and then declaring victory when they partially
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: put the fires out after they've already done a bunch
• 3:33
  Speaker 4: of damage. And, uh, I, I was going back and
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: forth with some people on social media yesterday about how
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: can't I just say it's a great thing to open
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: the Strait of Hormuz or Strait of Vermouth, I think
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: Besant called it weirdly yesterday, which is a weird thing.
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: And of course, I want it open. There's no reason
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: to start pumping up the price of oil, which leads
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: to more expensive gas for no benefit whatsoever for the
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: average American who's just filling up their tank. Of course,
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: that's good. But I think if we just talk about that,
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: we lose sight of the fact that this was optional
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: to begin with, that even the objectives changed and didn't
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: make sense. And it all really goes back to Trump
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: getting out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018. And
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: I played that clip for my audience this week of
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: Trump doing this big announcement where it's all presented as
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: if he's just so strong and powerful and smart saying,
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: we are getting out of this deal. That was really
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: the moment that led to 90% of what's taken place.
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: And I said at the time, I'm not an advocate
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: of the Iranian regime. I oppose right wing theocracies. Uh,
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: they regularly threatened the existence of other countries. And also
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: if I were them from like a basic game theory perspective,
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: it makes sense to go back to enriching uranium. Once
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump says we're out, if only to have leverage
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: for future negotiations. Great. It's open. I think that that's
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: a great thing, but it never should have been closed
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: in the first place. To quote Trump, it never should
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: have happened, as he likes to say. Right.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: It's like where we're going to end up here. This
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: can go a couple of ways. This trade is going
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: to be open for the length of the ceasefire. Maybe
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: they're going to extend the ceasefire. Maybe they'll get a deal.
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: This optimism that they're going to get a deal in
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: the next three days seems a little skeptical to me.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: These are hugely complicated negotiations. But If they're on a
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: path towards a deal, maybe they straight will stay open.
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: We will stop bombing. Importantly, there will be a ceasefire
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: in Lebanon with Israel like that. That is all important
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: and good. But Donald Trump's best case scenario is probably
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: a slightly lesser version of the deal that he ripped
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: up in 2018. So this was like, to what end
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: was all of this to just end up right where
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: we were before?
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: I'm so glad you brought that up because I did
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: a breakdown last week of what was in the original
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: 2015 deal, which was a terrible deal. According to Donald Trump,
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: it didn't make sense. Obama shouldn't have signed it, et cetera.
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: And the administration by their own admissions were struggling to
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: get even back to the full strength of that deal. Uh,
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: and it's, I mean, it's, it's beyond parody. It would be,
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: it would make sense to laugh if it weren't also
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: tragic and so serious. And at the end of this rainbow,
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: what we hopefully would have is something that resembles 80
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: or 90% of the original Iran nuclear deal. And so this,
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: this kind of goes back to something that's an important
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: prism when analyzing anything Trump does, which is he wants
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: to take Obama and Biden's names off of things. I mean,
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: we think about replacing NAFTA with the USMCA and there
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: are some differences in there about the percentage of vehicles
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: and parts that can be made and Canada, US and Mexico,
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: but it's basically a recreation of NAFTA with a different
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: name and slightly different parameters. This is the exact same
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: thing all over again. And, um, we, the, the priority
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: seems to be not really, um, uh, ballistic missiles or
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: regime change or nuclear. It's a race things that Obama
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: has done and put Trump's name on them, even if
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: they're operationally basically the same thing.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: Even if a deal gets done, there are some longer-term
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: consequences here because there really was– like while the Iranian
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: regime is quite radical and quite anti-American, there was a
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: growing– there were whole generations of Iranians who were raised
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: to not necessarily hate America. They were looking for a
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: more modern version of their country. And we've now– we
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: blew up a girl's school. We've been bombing their country.
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: We've bombed their country a couple of times now. Like
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: we've set back the possibility that one day this regime
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: will leave and the one that comes in will be
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: a more friendly, one that's more friendly to America. It
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: has set the US back in that longer term effort,
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: once again, to go right back to where we were
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: in 2015.
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: I think that's right. And that applies in a lot
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: of areas. I mean, when we're in and then out
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: of Paris climate or WHO or WTO or whatever. one
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: aspect of it is, can we undo the practical changes
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: that these decisions make? And so like in this case,
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: we got out of a deal. Now we've bombed, they're
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: trying to recreate the deal.
• 8:23
  Speaker 5: Cool.
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: But there's the broader problem, which is the U S
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: as an increasingly not credible negotiating partner or signatory to
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: deals of all kinds. And this is why I say
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: that the effect of this, even if you undo a
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: hundred percent of it, which I don't think you can,
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: but even if you could, what about when the next
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: administration is here, but other countries remember that the United
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: States has had these circumstances where you make a deal,
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: you stick to it as far as anyone can tell.
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: And then on the whims of a president, they say, Hey,
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: we're out. I think this hurts our negotiating position even
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: beyond Donald Trump.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: One thing I've heard from people over the last, since
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: Trump's been reelected from people abroad or people who work
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: in foreign policy is our allies, international organization of the world,
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: were willing to sort of accept the idea that Donald
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: Trump's first election was this black swan event that just happened.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: He didn't even get the plurality or majority of votes.
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: There were all these crazy circumstances. It happened. The US
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: lost its mind for four years. And then we were
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: back to the sort of the core American values and
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: approach to foreign policy that has existed through both parties
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: since the end of World War II. But now that
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: that's happened a second time, in a 12-year period. Europe
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: is thinking differently. NATO is thinking differently. There's a real
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: question whether you can rely on the United States to
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: actually be the partner it has always been because we're
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: always four years away from someone like Donald Trump, I
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: think is the issue.
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: Well, even after President Biden won in 2020, we knew
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: we weren't out of the woods because tens of millions
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: of people had just voted for Donald Trump for a
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: second time. And then now we have tens of millions
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: of people who actually voted for him for him three times.
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: I think the rhetoric around NATO over the last few
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: weeks related to Iran is like a critical reminder of
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: the approach of this administration and why other countries are
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: right to be skeptical of Trump or the US's commitment
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: to those institutions. Trump spent years saying on NATO, nobody
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: else is paying enough. We might not come to their
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: defense under article five if they don't pay what Trump
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: believes they need to pay. And then Trump says, Hey, NATO,
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: they need to come to our defense by which he
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: meant we created a mess in the straight of Hormuz.
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: Now there's consequences. Please come and help. Now, of course,
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: article five doesn't cover that scenario. Article five is about
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: attacks on NATO allies, not problems you create in non
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: NATO bodies of water that you then are desperate for
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: help for. But on the one hand, Trump was saying,
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: even our commitment to, to article five for other countries
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: is a question mark. And then going, forget about article five,
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: come help us in the Strait of Hormuz. That's crazy
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: when you look at it from, from the point of
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: view of our allies and that has an impact.
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: And when you consider that just only a few months ago,
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: Trump was threatening to invade a NATO ally in order
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: to get Greenland. So that also is not going to
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: help things. Do you think, let's say this deal holds,
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: and by the time people hear this on Sunday, it
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: may not have held, but just let's live in the
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: hypothetical for a second here, which is, let's say straight
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: remains open. Maybe we have a deal. Maybe we are
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: in indefinite negotiations with the Iranians to seek a deal.
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: But price of oil starts to come down. The some
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: of the economic impacts are to come down. Do you
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: think that what happened over the last few months with
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: Iran is going to have a lasting political impact or
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: at least last long enough through November? Or will it
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: fade if we memory hold like so much else in
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: the Trump era?
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: Well, if you're asking as to the effect on the
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: November elections, I think that it very well could dissipate.
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's a crazy thing to think of. But Um,
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: primarily I think voters are going to be going off
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: of their perception of how the economy is probably in
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: the four to six weeks before the November election. Now
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: this isn't the Iran situation is interesting because it's both
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: foreign policy, but it directly affects the day to day
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: economy of people. Not to mention there's this ability to
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: compare and contrast. You know, Donald Trump spent a campaign
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: saying prices on everything will come down and he's talking
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: about the sort of stone that he'll be using on
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: the columns at his ballroom that no one asked for. Um,
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: the foreign policy decisions which affect oil and gas and
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: through transportation affect everything else that people are paying for.
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: His actions right now are very much indifferent to the
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: average effect on a family's, uh, economy. But it, I,
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: it pains me to say it, there is this sort
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: of relatively short memory on a lot of this stuff
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: as far as voters are concerned. And so if gas
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: prices do come back down by November, Um, and, and
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: inflation numbers improve a little bit. I think there's a
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: good chance that if Trump off ramps here over the
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: next four weeks, what we thought would be 40, 60
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: vote swing in the house of representatives might be much smaller.
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: Now I still think Democrats take the house regardless, but
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: it might be like a 15 seat swing or something
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: like that, which would not be the overwhelming blue wave
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: that is possible.
• 13:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: I look, I think if gas prices are not at
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: $ 4 a gallon, Trump will have avoided the worst case
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: scenario for him and his party. I do think there
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: is some lasting damage here from the war that will
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: affect him in November. One, he has any chance that
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: the economy was going to get significantly better than it
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: was pre-war was ruined by the war, right? Inflation is
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: back up. There is a long bottleneck on some of
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: these prices. We're already going to suffer in food prices
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: from the fertilizer cost because he did this during planting season.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: So farmers were already making choices. They were already paying
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: more for fertilizer. and then making choices about how many
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: acres to plant based on that. Um, and so he's,
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: it's not going to be as good as it could
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: have been if he hadn't gone to war. So that
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: takes that off the table, you know, and it's like,
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: if we're being like totally like, brass tacks about this.
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: His approval ratings only dropped four points, basically, since the
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: start of the war. Now, the difference between 38 and
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: 42 probably matters a lot in some of these seats.
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: But I do think that this is one of those
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: high-profile things that affects people in two ways in how
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: they think about Trump. One is the idea that he's
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: out of control, and that's a problem for Republicans because
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: generally what people want is some balance in these elections.
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: That's sort of the thermostatic public opinion piece here. And
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: the other thing is, This is now the second thing
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: he has done. He has stood up, waved his arm
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: around Trump as high as he can say, I'm going
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: to raise your prices. And that hurts. So I think
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: the amount of the impact from this war depends a
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: lot on the price of gas. I very much agree
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: with that. But I think he has done damage to
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: himself and made things harder for the Republicans.
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: I think that's true. And I wouldn't understate the importance
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: of those four points because the lower you go, the
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: less there is left in the sense of there's some core,
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: I don't know if it's 22 or 28%, or I
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: don't know exactly what it is, but it's the shoot
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: people on fifth Avenue and they don't care kind of crowd.
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: So when you're at 42, losing four, I think is
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: actually quite significant. We're getting to the end of the, um,
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: convincible electorate, if that makes sense.
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. I think, I don't know what his
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: floor is, but it's certainly below– we now know it's
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: below 42. And you want him to be as low
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: as possible because also if he's mired at 38, it
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: does– just there's like such a narrative of despair within
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: the party that it has to affect turnout.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Pod Save America is brought to you by Fast
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: Growing Trees. Did you know Fast Growing Trees is America's
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: largest and most trusted online nursery with thousands of trees
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: and plants and over 2 million happy customers. They have
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: all the plants your yard or home needs, including fruit trees,
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: privacy trees, shrubs, and houseplants, all grown with care and
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: guaranteed to arrive healthy. Whatever you're looking for, Fast Growing
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Trees helps you find options that actually work for your climate,
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: your space, and your lifestyle. Fast Growing Trees makes it
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: easy to get your dream yard. Just click, order, grow,
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: and get healthy, thriving plants delivered to your door. Get
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: your dream yard, Johnny. That's a John getting his dream car. Anyway,
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: that's a video from when John was 17. They're alive
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: and thrive guarantee promises that your plants arrive happy and healthy.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: No green thumb required, just quality plants you can count on.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Plus get ongoing support from trained plant experts who can
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: help you plan your landscape, choose the right plants and
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: learn how to care for them every step of the way.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: Fast growing trees is great because I don't know, everyone
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: wants to like have some greener in their house or
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: yard or whatever, but I don't know what I'm doing.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: No. I don't know what looks good. You want to
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: have them and you want to keep them alive.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know how to keep this s *
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: * * alive.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: How about alive growing trees?
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: Alive growing trees is great. And you know, spring has sprung, John.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: And now is the time to plant, famously.
• 17:07
  Speaker 5: I always say that.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: Spring has sprung. Right now, they have great deals on
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: spring planting essentials, up to half off on select plants.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: And listeners to our show get 20% off their first
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: purchase when they use the code CROOKED at checkout. That's
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: an additional 20% off, better plants and better growing at fastgrowingtrees.com
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: using the code CROOKED at checkout. fastgrowingtrees.com, code crooked. Now's
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: the perfect time to plant. Let's grow together. Use crooked
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: to save today. Offer is valid for a limited time.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Terms and conditions apply. Positive America is brought to you
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: by Common Power. If you're listening to this podcast, you
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: know the stakes of midterm elections. If you still need convincing,
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: just scroll through this administration's latest blunders. I would just
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: point you to any news article about the war in Iran.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: It's a good reason to worry about what these morons
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: are up to. To save America and democracy, Common Power
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: needs your support. Common Power is the organizing force for
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: training and deploying volunteers to door knock for Democrats in
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: over 20 battleground states and over 50 races this year alone.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: Their teams are driven by next generation leaders and they
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: need your support to fund their travel and development. Vote
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: Save America partnered with Common Power in the 2024 elections,
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: sending hundreds of volunteers to win important races around the country. Look,
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: we don't have to tell you guys for the thousandth
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: time how important these midterms elections are. It will really
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: matter if a lot of us get out there and
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: knock on doors and talk to people and talk to
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: our friends and talk to our neighbors and just make
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: the case for why they have to vote, why we
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: need to check on Donald Trump and why we need
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: it right now. Support the organizing force of volunteers fighting
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: to shift the balance of power at commonpower.org slash crooked.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: That's commonpower.org slash crooked.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: All right, let's pivot real quick here to the affordability
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: tour that Trump has been on. He was in Vegas
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: on Thursday night to do a roundtable to tout his
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: no tax on tips policy. This is the tax credit
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: they've pinned their hopes on to try to salvage the
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: midterm elections. Here's what Trump had to say to a
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: group of Las Vegas workers. Let's take a listen.
• 19:04
  Speaker 5: For the remainder of 2026, you're going to see a
• 19:06
  Speaker 5: big surge. The numbers are really tremendous. And that's why
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: I'm out here. If they were bad, I wouldn't be
• 19:11
  Speaker 5: here today. I'd be sitting home watching television. Don't forget,
• 19:15
  Speaker 5: we're having some Fake inflation because of the fuel, the
• 19:18
  Speaker 5: energy prices. Earlier this week at the White House, I
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: met a wonderful woman named Sharon Simmons, a grandmother driving
• 19:25
  Speaker 5: DoorDash to help support her husband's cancer treatment. She's got
• 19:29
  Speaker 5: serious cancer. She's going to be okay, I think. Sharon
• 19:32
  Speaker 5: delivered McDonald's to the Oval Office. It was a little
• 19:35
  Speaker 5: bit of a, you know, I mean, to be honest,
• 19:37
  Speaker 5: it was a little tacky. Millions of American small businesses,
• 19:40
  Speaker 5: including restaurants, dry cleaners, Corner stores, what is a corner store?
• 19:45
  Speaker 5: I've never heard that term. I know what a corner
• 19:47
  Speaker 5: store is, but I've never heard it described, a corner store.
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: Who the hell wrote that, please?
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: What do you think? Is this a winning economic message?
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: No, I mean, there's so there's this is so chock
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: full of things to talk about. You know, I mean,
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: to go back, there was this incredible moment with the
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: DoorDash grandma.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to hear you talk about this.
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm sure you don't want men and women's sports rights.
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: And she goes, I don't really have an opinion on that.
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: I'm just here for no tax on tips. Like that
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: was very interesting because it was someone telling the president
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: this culture war stuff. I'm worried about what's happening in
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: my budget. That's what I care about. The most tragic
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: part of all of it though, is that there is no,
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: there is no, no tax on tips in the bill. Uh,
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: what this is is a deduction and it requires five
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: minutes of discussion, but this is something that it'll benefit
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: the average tipped worker at the most a couple hundred
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: bucks a year, which I'm not dismissing as nothing. But
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: when you're thinking about child tax credits of a couple
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: thousand bucks and different things, there's lots of other things
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: that can be done for working class people. Um, you
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: get to deduct up to $ 25, 000 in tips from your
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: federal income. Uh, the vast majority of tipped workers are
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: paying very little, if any federal income tax. So there's
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: actually not that much left to deduct. Same thing with
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: no tax on, on social security. Uh, Trump raised the
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: deduction a little bit, uh, for seniors, but these are
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: like not at all the policies that are being presented
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: with these one liners and people are doing their taxes.
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: Now we just passed the tax deadline of April 15th
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: and seeing that their tax liability really hasn't changed actually
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: that much because of these bills. Now, will they remember
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: that in November when they vote? I don't know. It
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: doesn't strike me as a winning message, at least the
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: way that he's presenting it. Yeah.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: You hear the White House talk or you hear the
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: Republican strategists talk. They're like, we need to get back
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: on the economy message. Get back on the economy. Talk
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: about the economy. That is the key. And I'm sure
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: that talking about the economy is better than talking about
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: the ballroom, right? Or better talking about the war. But
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: Trump's a very bad economic messenger. That is something that
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: has– he is a good economic messenger when he's in
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: charge and the economy is good. And he is a
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: good economic messenger when he's out of power and the
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: economy is bad. But when he's in power and the
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: economy is bad, he's terrible because he can't admit fault.
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: He can't do the Bill Clinton feel your pain thing.
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: He can't say, you know, he just can't give the
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: honest answer. Like, I inherited a mess. We've made some progress.
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: People are still hurting. We need to do more. And
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: here are the things we're going to do. Like, that's
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: the message that works. It's the version of the message
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: Obama had to do in his first term after the
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: 2008 financial crisis. but Trump cannot, he just cannot do it.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: And he's like, he's got to call it fake inflation.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: He was interviewed by a bunch of reporters headed to
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: the helicopter at the White House on the way to
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: that event. And they asked about high gas prices and
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: he denied that gas prices were high and then attacked
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: ABC News for saying the gas prices were high. He
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: just can't do it. Like it's just, it's not a,
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: he's just like what people want to hear, he can't say.
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: And what he's generally says is either sort of nonsense
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: or it's the kind of thing that pokes people in
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: the eye. Like, In the gas prices question from yesterday,
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: he brought up the stock market. I remember sitting in
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: focus groups in 2009, 2010, and these are people, swing voters,
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: soft Obama voters, people hurting in that economy, as so
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: many people were. But if anyone brought up the fact
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: that the stock market was up, they would flip the
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: table over in anger because that to them signified that
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: all these other people were getting rich or they were
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: doing fine and the average person weren't. So Like he,
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: I mean, he is sort of a bad economic messenger
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: and that's a gigantic shift from his first term.
• 23:28
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: I mean, I don't think Trump realizes the degree to
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: which stock market holdings are highly, highly concentrated at the top.
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: And a lot of people do have 401ks and retirement
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: accounts that are, that are tagged to the market. But
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: in terms of holdings, it's a relatively small amount of
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: money compared to the very wealthy. It's interesting to see
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: that a message that they correctly, the Trump people correctly
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: identified during the Biden presidency. that simply repeating that everything's
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: awesome doesn't convince people if they don't feel that it's awesome.
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: Now I'm using the word feel because it may be
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: pretty good by most economic metrics, but perception really is
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: reality with the economy and how it feels when you're
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: looking at how much money is left at the end
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: of the month, what's, what's coming in, what's going out
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: and what are my expenses. The MAGA people stumbled upon
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: the reality that you can't convince people the economy is
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: good if they don't feel it. And they're kind of
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: doing the exact same thing now because they don't seem
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: to have any other ideas.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's doing exactly what Biden did. It's touting macroeconomic
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: numbers to convince people that what they were seeing personally
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: in their lives, their bank accounts, does not matter or
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: is not that important. You know, it was like the
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: people are always citing how low the unemployment rate was,
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: which is great. Like that is better than a high
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: unemployment rate. But it just doesn't change the fact that
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: people are just paying so much more money for the
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: things they need in their daily life. Groceries, gas, housing.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: And people are getting hammered right now with utility bills.
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: Just absolutely hammered, particularly in this past winter as like
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: these cold spells all across the United States, heating bills
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: through the roof. And there's no actual attempt to try
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: to solve the problem for people or even just seem
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: like you're trying to solve the problem. Like in general
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: in politics, you either got to solve the problem or
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: you got to get caught trying to solve the problem
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: and Trump's they're doing neither.
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: It also sometimes is important to talk about what is
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: being measured. And the example I often give is, you know,
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: if you put Bill Gates in a room with nine
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: other people and you talk about the mean net worth
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: of that room, you would go, this is the wealthiest
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: group of people I've ever seen. But the mean would
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: be the wrong metric in that scenario. You could have
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: nine broke people and then bill Gates and it averages
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: out in that way to something that looks pretty good.
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: We know that you can mess with all of these
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: indicators and create a perception that is different. I'll just
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: give you one example that always comes back. They, when
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: the unemployment rate was low under Democrats, including Barack Obama,
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: the right was obsessed with talking about the labor participation
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: rate and they insisted that the labor participation rate is
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: really low. Therefore the economy is not actually good because
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: too many people are out of the economy now It
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: was true that the labor participation rate had been declining
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: But it's been declining for a long time as the
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: population ages and more people retire You could spin that
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: on its head and go hey listen the fact that
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: people can afford to retire is good and that's gonna
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: lower the labor participation rate the point I'm making is
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: is No matter what's going on with one metric, you
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: can pull some other metric out and go, this is
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: the one that really represents what's happening to the average person.
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: And as we learned under Biden, as we're seeing right now,
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: those macro indicators, as you said, don't really tell the
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: story of what is happening in terms of the median American.
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: What did you make of the DoorDash grandma event? Was
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: it a good press event, a good message? I can
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: kind of go both ways on this. I'm curious your take.
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: On the net, I mean, I think on the one hand,
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: I thought back to the Trump McDonald's thing.
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, same. That's exactly.
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: And so like, I think Trump does well when it's
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: just pictures or video where you don't hear anyone talking, right?
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: So when you saw Trump wearing the headset and the
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: apron at McDonald's, it's like, okay, that, that imagery is
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: actually kind of useful to Donald Trump, Trump opening the
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: door to the oval office and greeting this grandmother and
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: taking the bags of McDonald's. I think there is a
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: significant part of the American population that sees that and goes, okay,
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: that's an, that's an image I can identify with. But
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: then the messaging around it, I think, was terrible. And
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: the event was pretty widely ridiculed. It even got Trump
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: to say when he talked about it on Thursday that
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: it was tacky, I think was the word that he
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: used at the end of the day. So I don't
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: think in the net it was a beneficial event.
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I had the exact same thought was every Democrat
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: ridiculed the McDonald's event. And like it seemed cheesy. And
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: what we did not calculate in a lot of the
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: Democrats talking about it didn't calculate in 2024 was that
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: It's the kind of thing that goes viral. And it
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: got so much attention. And it got viral because people
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: who love Trump were posting it. It got viral because
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: people who wanted clicks were posting it. And it went
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: viral because Democrats were making fun of it. But everyone
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: saw it. And this was poorly executed. I think Trump
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: should not have taken a bunch of questions from the press.
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: There was a way to do this probably close to right.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: And it got a ton of attention. Everyone was talking
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: about it. every, you know, everyone mentions that it was tax,
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: no tax on tips was the reason for it. And
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: so like, to me, there was a little bit of
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: a lesson of like, we do have like for Democrats
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: is sometimes you got it. Like you have to lean
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: into the things that are going to get attention. And
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: this did get attention. Trump did not execute it well,
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: because as you mentioned, he spoke and that is often
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: a downside for him, but like, it's easy to like completely, um,
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: look at the cable coverage of it or even the
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: Twitter coverage of it and say this was a total
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: loss for him. And then if you go, like with
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: the McDonald's thing, if you go on TikTok or Instagram,
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: you see it's everywhere. What are the things you can
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: do that can break out of the bubble, the political
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: media bubble and get to those people? And this at
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: least had the potential to do it. Trump just kind
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: of stepped on it. Yep.
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: I think that that's right. But I think on balance,
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: the Maybe my feeling in two months will be different.
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: But looking back at the McDonald's thing, it seems that
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: that was pretty clearly a win for Trump.
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: Yes, I agree.
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: Whereas this one is seeming at best like a wash.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it had the potential for a win
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: that Trump kind of fumbled the football here.
• 29:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: Positive America is brought to you by the Working Forest Initiative.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: The Working Forest Initiative is a cross-industry coalition promoting the
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: role of working forests in driving economic growth and climate resilience.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: The backbone of the WFI's sustainability efforts is a diverse
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: team of working forest professionals. From timberland owners to hiring
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: managers and accountants, GIS analysts mapping the future of our
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: canopy and biologists protecting wildlife, these experts ensure our working
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: forests remain healthy and resilient. These are the stewards ensuring
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: America's forests thrive for generations to come. The foundational principle
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: of working forest professionals is simple. Always plant more trees
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: than are harvested. Planting is what makes working forest sustainable,
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: and sustainable working forests are how WFI cultivates healthy ecosystems
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: that reduce wildlife risk, protect biodiversity, and provide sustainable solutions
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: for the future. The coalition of working forest professionals does
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: more than manage land. They cultivate a resilient, sustainable legacy.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: By championing these practices today, the WFI ensures America's forests
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: remain a vibrant resource for our economy and a vital
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: sanctuary for our environment for generations to come.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: Patsy of America is brought to you by Nutrafol. Good
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: hair days do more than we give them credit for.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: When your hair feels healthy, you show up differently. You
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: feel more confident, more relaxed, and you're not constantly checking
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: the mirror. Nutrafol supports hair health from within and delivers
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: results over time so your hair becomes something you enjoy,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: not something you stress out about. Nutrafol is the number
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: one dermatologist-recommended hair growth supplement brand, and it's the number
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: one hair growth supplement brand personally used by dermatologists. Nutrafol's
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: hair growth supplements are peer-reviewed, NSF-certified for sport, and clinically tested.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: It's not a one-size-fits-all approach. Nutrafol offers multiple formulas for
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: men and women tailored to different life stages like postpartum
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: or menopause and lifestyle factors such as plant-based diet so
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: you get support that's actually right for you. Adding Nutrafol
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: to your daily routine is easy. Order online, no prescription needed,
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: with automated deliveries and free shipping to keep you on track.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Let your hair become one less thing taking up space
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: in your head and see thicker, stronger, faster-growing hair with
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: less shedding in just three to six months with Nutrafol.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: For a limited time, Nutrafol is offering our listeners $ 10
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: off your first month's subscription and free shipping when you
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: visit Nutrafol.com and enter promo code CROOKED. That's Nutrafol.com spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L.com,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: promo code CROOKED.
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: All right, I'm going to spend some time talking to
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: you about what we're seeing inside the right-wing media ecosystem.
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: Last week in an extended rant on True Social, Trump
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: called out Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: Jones by name. He did that again here on Friday morning.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: He called them the opposite of MAGA. Although those four
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: aren't the only ones criticizing Trump, there have been many
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: more have been critical, including a bunch of really important
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: Trump supporters in 2024. Let's take a listen.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Here's a leader who's mocking the gods of his ancestors,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: mocking the god of gods, and exalting himself above them.
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: Could this be the Antichrist?
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: Most people that voted for Trump or wanted Trump to
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: be in office, one of the things that was attractive
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: was this no more wars.
• 32:30
  Speaker 5: Sure, of course.
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: And now we're in one of the craziest ones. What
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: kind of delusional reality are we living in where he's
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: parading around the grandma that's working DoorDash so she can
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: afford to pay her husband's cancer bills? And he's like, see,
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: we're not doing tips. One of the features of most
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: of Trump's decade on the public stage here, on the
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: political stage, has been essentially no criticism from his media
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: allies at all. That has changed in the last couple
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: of months here. It started with the Epstein files. It's
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: gone into overdrive because of the Iran war. How significant
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: do you think this is? Does it really matter to voters?
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: Could it change the political dynamics or is this just
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: sort of like porn for Democrats?
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: I think it does matter, but maybe in a different
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: sense than some might think. I don't think that the comments,
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: for example, from Andrew Schultz and Rogan are going to
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: turn Trump voters into into midterm democratic voters, because I
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: think that that's just a difficult uphill battle. And you
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: have to remember that a lot of the people that
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: were activated by the manosphere and by Trump himself were
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: previous non voters. They were, they got involved in politics
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: because of Donald Trump and the manosphere movement around him.
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: So it's not, Oh, you know, I sometimes voted one way,
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: sometimes the other, I went Trump. Now I don't like this.
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: I'll go back to Democrats. I think a lot of
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: these folks, if they're not liking what they're seeing, they're
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: going to stay home. Now that still presents an opportunity,
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: I think for Democrats to do some damage in November,
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: but that kind of remains to be seen. The part
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: I find very interesting about a lot of these clips
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: is that there's no accounting for the role that they
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: played in getting Trump elected. And so there's been a
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: lot of the, one of these, I think it was,
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: I don't know if it was Schultz or which one,
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: but maybe even Rogan used the word betrayed when it
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: came to the war stuff where he said he was
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: going to be anti-war and then he does this stuff.
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: I've said to my audience, if you have interactions with
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: people who fell for it and now they're reconsidering, let's
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: welcome them back. Let's not make fun of them. This
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: is not how you get people out of cults. You say,
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: it's great that you're thinking for yourself. It's great that
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: you're rethinking previous mistakes you made. But I also want
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: to mention this was predictable. And the way that we
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: know it was predictable is that our entire ecosystem of
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: podcasts and was predicting that exactly this would happen. So
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: it wasn't this completely nobody could have seen it kind
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: of thing. And so I think that the approach has
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: to be awesome that Rogan and Schultz and whoever are
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: kind of changing their tone right now, but they're not
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: absolved of the fact that this was totally predictable and
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: expected and they pulled in arguably millions of people, uh,
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: into this, the sort of Trump world, softer Trump supporters
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: maybe than the hardcore mega base. And you want to
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: make sure that you don't allow that to happen again
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: to you next time around, because there will be whoever
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: is after Trump and they're the same sort of mechanism
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: is going to be at play again. So I think
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: that it's going to have an effect and it's having
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: an effect, but I want to do everything I can
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: to make sure that we say this was not an
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: unpredictable out of nowhere thing. We were saying these guys
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: were wrong all along and it turns out they were.
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and many of them– I think Andrew Schultz has
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: talked a little bit about where he erred in this process.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: But for the most part, everyone else is– they are
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: just on to the next one. There's a few things
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: I find interesting about this. One is these folks, particularly
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: the political ones like Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones,
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: they are– I'm sure they are conservative in their political views.
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: I don't doubt that. And I believe that they probably
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: genuinely liked Trump at some point, even if they don't
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: like him right now. But they are also people who
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: are responsive to an audience. And what has really driven
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: the growth in right-wing media from 2016 until now has
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: been just the simple fact that you were either pro-Trump
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: or you died, right? All the conservative entities that were
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: not pro-Trump but tried to remain conservative went away, right?
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: Weekly Standard, et cetera. So you either had to become
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: very pro-Trump or you had to become like a member
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: of the And if these people were seeing giant drops
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: in viewership or subscribers or advertisers, whatever else, they would
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: not– I suspect that we would hear a different tone.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: And you're not seeing that. So I do think that
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: there is something that has changed in the economic incentive
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: structure of right-wing media, which I think is problematic for Trump.
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: Second thing here is– and it's worth separating the– like
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: the Megyn Kellys and Tucker Carlson's from the Joe Rogan's
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: and the Andrew Schultz's or the Theo Vaughn's or any
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: of the other manosphere– the Nelk Boys, any of those
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: other people, because I think the main audience of the
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: people actually like tune in to Megyn Kelly and Tucker
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: Carlson are political people, right? It's like the version, it's
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: the right-wing version of people who watch our shows. And
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: then the people who tune into these other things are
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: apolitical people who became interested in politics because the host
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: content creator influencer that they trusted talked to them about
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: politics and kind of pushed them on this. And for Republicans...
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: losing the apolitical people does hurt with turnout, as you
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: point out. I do not think those people are coming
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: out for congressional Democrats for the most part. Maybe the
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: right Democratic presidential candidate can get them in 2028. But
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: you don't see them just being like, Joe Rogan told
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: me to vote for Donald Trump. I voted for him.
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump kind of screwed me over. Maybe Joe Rogan
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: screwed me over too. And so now I'm going to
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: vote for.
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: Lauren Boebert or something.
• 38:01
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: Or I'm going to vote for John Ossoff or Janet
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: Mills or pick your Democrat. That seems unlikely to me.
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: But a Trump voter who does not turn out is
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: a net loss of one for the Republicans. And so
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: that is bad. And if they do not– if just
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: standard typical midterm voters turn out in this election– That's
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: very bad for Republicans because we dominate that space now.
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: The other thing is also, increasingly, Trump doesn't really have
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: that much to offer a lot of these people anymore
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: when at one point he did because he can't run again.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: These people being the hosts, the content creators?
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: Yes, yes. Sorry, the Megyn Kellys and these sorts of
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: folks where the incentive to stick with him for future
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: goodies of whatever kind there might be, rides on Air
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: Force One or Trump rallies for the next campaign or whatever.
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: I think he's just got a lot less appetizing things
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: to offer a lot of these people at this point.
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: And so they're making the calculus, their audience is increasingly disaffected.
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: We see it in the approval ratings and they're kind
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: of trying something different.
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: You know, this whole thing has started a big sort
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: of debate about what MAGA means. And Trump's pollster, Jim McLaughlin,
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: talked to Politico on Friday and he said this, the
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: base doesn't consider Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, or Candace Owens
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: conservative anymore. My guess is most of their clicks are
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: from progressives. Now, I don't buy that, but what do
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: you think?
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: Well, no, I don't buy that either. Not at all.
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: I don't buy that at all. I think that there's
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: another aspect to this, which is, is Trumpism even conservative
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: by any traditional thread? I mean, the discussion of what's
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: conservative at this point, I don't think there's much conservatism
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: left anywhere in that movement. But No, the idea that
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: it's left-wingers that are watching this stuff as kind of
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: rage bait or for entertainment, I don't think that that's
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: the case at all. In fact, a lot of my
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: audience even says, hey, a lot of this stuff isn't
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: even really worth reacting to because these people are increasingly
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: on the margins of what we consider to be kind
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: of like the valid political discussion. And we don't even
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: care to hear from them that much. So I don't
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: buy that.
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: I think the interesting thing here is, so there is
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: a question of like, who is actually conservative? And you
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: were right, by any definition, Traditional definition of the term conservative,
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: Trump is not conservative. He is spending money. The US
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: government is taking over companies. We are taking stake in companies.
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: Not a ranking conservative by any stretch of the imagination.
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: Then there's a question like, what is MAGA? Is MAGA
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: an actual ideology that is– and this sort of presumes
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: this idea that prior to 2016, there was this group
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: of Republicans or this large group in America who were anti-immigrant, nativist,
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: populist on economics, anti-system, who were just waiting for someone
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: to lead their movement and Trump showed up? Or is
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: MAGA just another word for Trump fan? And I think
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: it's– I don't know whether it started as the former,
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: but it's definitely the latter now. Like, yes, they are
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: not– Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly are not MAGA because
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: they're not pro-Trump. But that doesn't mean that they– I
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: think that's an important distinction for people to understand, especially
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: when you look at the polling. Because the thing you
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: hear all the time is, yeah, all these quote-unquote MAGA
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: influencers have turned against Trump, but 92% of MAGA voters
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: support the Iran war. Well, it's like, no, 92% of
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: Trump fans support Trump's war. No shit, right?
• 41:30
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: I think there's a few characteristics at this point to MAGA.
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: I mean, one of it is It relies on what
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: I call faux populist rhetoric. You might just call it
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: populist rhetoric because it's not policy, it's rhetoric, but I
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: call it faux populist rhetoric is number one. Um, it
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: is reactionary at its core and it's quite authoritarian as well.
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: So if you think about libertarian Republicans like Rand Paul
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: and authoritarian Republicans like Trump, they land in very different
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: places on policy. So I think that when we actually
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: look at policy for within MAGA, It's extraordinarily authoritarian. It's
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: authoritarian when it comes to its regulation of businesses. When
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: we don't like the decisions Twitter's making about what can
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: be published, we say the government now tells Twitter that
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: they have to publish certain things like during the pandemic,
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: for example, or whatever the case may be. So I,
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: I think that those are kind of the building, the
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: most important building blocks right now, but it's an authoritarian
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: movement far more than republicanism was for really for, for
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: the last 20 to 20 years prior to Trump.
• 42:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: Let's widen the aperture here a bit because I want
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: to talk a little bit about your career. You've been
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: making political content longer than I have, longer than most
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: people doing it online. You've been hosting your show in
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: some capacity, which originally started as a radio program, I believe,
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: since at least 2005. Talk a little bit about how
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: you ended up in this space and how the media
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: ecosystem has changed in that time period.
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: I really started just out of boredom. A community radio
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: station when I was in college started up. And at
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: that point you just had to sign up and you
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: got a show. It was like a very low barrier
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: to entry. So it was easy to get a show.
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: But very quickly, you know, I came up when podcasts
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: were growing and then YouTube for news and politics content
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: got going. And so I got involved in that. The
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: biggest difference now from when I started was when I started,
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: the pie was getting bigger so fast. that as there
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: were new entrants creating content, it had no importance whatsoever
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: on your audience because the pie was growing so quickly
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: as people transitioned from cable and broadcast radio to podcasts
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: and online video. That's changed now because a lot of
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: that transition has slowed down. There's sort of like a
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: critical mass that was reached and then growth slows down.
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: So a lot of the people who did transition over
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: to digital media have done so already. And there's sort
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: of like a smaller opportunity for the pie to grow.
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: And so many people are now doing this. So I
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: think I benefited a lot from timing in the sense
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: that I got in early enough to build an audience.
• 44:12
  Speaker 4: And I was recently talking to some Canadian journalists who
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: were just getting going in this. And I said, I,
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: it would be very difficult to start right now because
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: there are so many more people doing this than, than
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: there were. I think that that's great in terms of democratization.
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: And also it does put a little bit more of
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: the onus and responsibility on the audience when it comes
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: to media literacy and determining what exactly am I getting here?
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: Is this trustworthy? Do I understand the difference between news
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: and opinion, et cetera? But it's a very different feel now.
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: And then the other thing is it's starting to get
• 44:43
  Speaker 4: very corporate, even in the online independent media space for
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: two reasons. One legacy in corporate media all have a
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: presence in podcast and YouTube, CNN, has podcasts and CNN
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: has a massive YouTube channel. So I think that's one difference.
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: And then the other is private equity and investment firms
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: are getting involved in a lot of what was previously
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: completely independent media. So all of that is really changing
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: the feel of the space.
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: Do you think that's the, do you take it as
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: a negative that it's becoming more corporate?
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: I think that there are negative and positive aspects to it.
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: I think the negative can be Sometimes when money comes in,
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: it kind of flattens things. So a lot of stuff
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: starts looking kind of the same. And I, I, on
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: my show this week, I talked about how some nonpolitical
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: YouTube channels have been sort of bought up by private equity. And, um,
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: that hasn't necessarily been disclosed by the creators. And so
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: a lot of the same changes start being instituted across channels.
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: And so things kind of start to look more similar.
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: I don't think that that's good because I think part
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: of what makes the space interesting is that everybody has
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: their own presentation style. The studios look different. The approach
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: looks different. Losing that, I think, is bad. I do
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: think that there is this reality that the right in
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: the independent space has been so well funded for years
• 46:10
  Speaker 4: that they've grown to dominate some aspects of it. And
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: that money was much later coming in to the left.
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: And so I don't want to unilaterally disarm either. And
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: so I recognize that sometimes you do have to fight
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: fire with fire. And some of that money coming in
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: may be necessary from a political perspective to fight the right.
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: There is finally money coming in to progressive content creators
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: that has been many, many, many, many years after it's
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: been coming into the right and still at a much,
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: much lower volume. I've spent... honestly, much of the last
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: 10 years going to meetings with donors to try to
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: convince them that to take some of that money they
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: were spending on TV ads that were largely being shown
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: to people over the age of 65 and put it
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: into any form of content creation that could be influencers,
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: independent media, podcasts, etc. But it's still, even after all
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: of that, you know, really took after the 2024 election
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: for there to be like a real, or at least
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: a little bit in the run up to 24. And
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: then after that, more interest in it. What do you
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: think the hesitancy has been among the Democratic Party establishment,
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: the funding base to actually get behind independent journalism, aggressive
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: content creation?
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: I think that the donors on the left are have
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: been very attached to institutions as a concept. And so
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: when you go to them and you go, Hey, forget
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: about a big institution. Here's the 10 biggest progressive shows.
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: They don't have anything to do with each other, but together,
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: here's the audience they command. What about dumping in a
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: bunch of ad money, for example, which the right does
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: where they go, Hey, listen, we're not involved in your production.
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: We're just going to do ad spend. So we're going
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: to put your content in front of people on Facebook.
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: And on YouTube, we're just going to dump money in
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: that way. You could do that on the left and
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: you could say, Hey, I don't have to create any
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: content here. The 10, the 15, the 20 biggest shows
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: they're proven already. They have an audience. Let's just leverage
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: that with ad dollars. For example, I it's, and I've
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: pitched that to some people and they don't really seem
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: to get it. They're just, they still think that doing
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: the four minute hit on, on cable news, is better
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: for an elected official than long-form conversations. And all of
• 48:27
  Speaker 4: this stuff is changing. So I may be more critical
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: than where we are right now in 2026. But I
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: think it's just like there's this deference to the big conglomerate.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: My experience has been a couple of things similar. One,
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: the first problem is most of the people who are
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: writing these checks don't consume YouTube, TikTok. It's like it
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: is a foreign world to them. They do not understand it.
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: So you're asking them to give money to something they
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: don't know what is. What they do know is television ads.
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: And they've been writing checks for television ads for however
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: long they've had money. And they see those television ads
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: because they watch 60 Minutes or the football game or
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: whatever else, and they see them. And someone will email
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: them the link to the ad that they essentially paid for.
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: And then the second problem is, and this really started
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: in my era, in the Obama era,– that as a party,
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: we became incredibly data-driven, which is good. I'm not against that.
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: But we really decided we could figure out the exact
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: ROI on every dollar spent. And so it's like if
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: you are running– a television ad, you can at least
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: say it's this many ratings points. It's going to, this
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: is what the audience is. This is how many people
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: we're going to, your dollars are going to reach. It
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: is just a lot. Let like, these are not to
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: the extent you have metrics. If you were investing in
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: like your ad idea, it's except that you have metrics
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: that are not metrics that are particularly familiar to the
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: people who are paying for television ads. And then if
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: you're just saying, invest in content creators themselves, right? Let's
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: give some of them a stipend. Let's you know, let's,
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: you know, have some sort of funding that helps people
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: get started or lets them level up. That's a venture bet.
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: It's not a specific. It's not a stock. You're not
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: buying an equity, right? So people I've talked to have
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: really struggled with that because they became used to this
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: idea that there's this very specific formula that your dollars
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: are going to reach this many voters. We need this
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: many voters to win. And now you're asking them to
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: invest in something they don't fully understand in a way
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: in which without the certainty of impact that they've had before.
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: Because You're not exactly investing– and this is, I guess,
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: the third reason that's tied to it is short-termism. Every
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: Democratic donor wants to win the next election. How– and
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: I understand that. Every one of them has been existential
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: for a long time now. So it's like we absolutely
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: have to win the House. How do we win the House?
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: We might always have to win the House. But what
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: we're saying is we have to build something that is
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: going to sustain a progressive pro-democracy movement for the future,
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: for 26, for 28, for 30, for 32– And that
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: we just have always been like, we don't have the
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: version or haven't had the version of the Koch brothers
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: who were investing for the long term for decades.
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: That's right. I think that that long term thinking is
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: what's missing. And I've had a couple of conversations with
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: people who they weren't really looking to invest in anything
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: in particular, but they were trying to understand the space
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: a little more, which I appreciate. And I said, here's,
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: they said, how would I know whether my dollars are
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: working and how quickly? And I said, here's the way
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: you kind of have to think about it. Imagine that
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: when you identify the 20 largest progressive shows and we
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: figure out, Hey, cumulatively, this is a billion and a
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: half views per month and a hundred million subscribers. I'm
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: just making up numbers. It's probably, it probably would be
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: like 30 million subscribers and 1.5 billion views a month.
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: Imagine if over the next two years by investing in,
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: in the ad programs using ad spend to boost these
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: shows that triples to four and a half billion views
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: a month and 90 million subscribers. As candidates come forward
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: in future elections, as there are movements to support, whether
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: it's prop 50 or whatever, isn't it mathematically obvious that
• 52:05
  Speaker 4: three X-ing the audience and viewership of these largest 20
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: shows is going to create a much more powerful apparatus.
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: And they kind of get that. And I tell them,
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: you won't know how much of it is because of
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: your money. You will not.
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: That's, that's the exact problem is here.
• 52:19
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: And they don't like that. They don't like that.
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: Posse of America is brought to you by Bombas. The
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: springtime thaw is finally here. Flowers are blooming. Days are longer.
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: We're saying yes to more plans and finally getting outside, running, walking,
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: just moving again. It's the perfect time to upgrade your
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: everyday go-tos with Bombas. Bombas sports socks are super comfortable
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: and designed with sport specific tech for running, cycling, yoga, hiking,
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: you name it. Uh, I love a good sport, sporty
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: man myself. I think I'm wearing Bombas right now. I
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: don't think I, I don't know if I told you this, John,
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: I don't know why I would. Um, i threw out
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: a bunch of crappy old no-show socks the other day
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: that were just they weren't holes in the bottom no
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: you know when they're just not holding up anymore yeah
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: so they get down below your foot and it's you're
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: just like pulling them up all the time and i
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: bought like a dozen new bombas and they're awesome and
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: they're they're actually like congratulations had it on the bottom
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: thank you um they fit great they hold up like they're.
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: Not too tight are they sweat wicking there are they are.
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: Sweat wicking um yeah there's the copy right here the
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: What I was just saying, Bombas are cushioned where you
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: need it, sweat wicking, and they don't slide around, so
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: you're not constantly adjusting your socks.
• 53:31
  Speaker 5: There you go.
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: I said that authentically.
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And with the weather warming up, it's time to
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: add Bombas sandals into your footwear rotation. Their Friday slides
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: are made with the super lightweight waterproof EVA that's soft
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: but still supportive. They're super comfortable and perfect to just
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: slip on and go, whether you're running errands, lounging outdoors,
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: or just want something comfy and casual to wear. My
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: recommendation to you, go to your sock drawer, take out
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: all the old ones, throw them all out, replace them
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: all with Bombas, do it now. Do it as soon
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: as you can before it's too late. For every item
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: you purchase, an essential clothing item is donated to someone
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: facing housing insecurity. One purchased, one donated, with over 150
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: million donations and counting. Head over to bombas.com slash crooked
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: and use code crooked for 20% off your first purchase.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash crooked. Code crooked at checkout.
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: Over the course of your career here, you've learned a
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: lot about the media environment. You've written a book about it.
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: You've written a second book about it that's coming out
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: this fall about the power of algorithms. Talk a little
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: bit about your book and what it's about.
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: So the concept is pay attention, which of course has
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: a double meaning. We're paying attention to stuff. We're also
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: paying for attention. And it's not political in the partisan
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: sense like my first book was. And it's really just
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: a look at how these platforms developed and how they
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: actually do come from earlier forms of media. Uh, even
• 54:48
  Speaker 4: though it might not be completely obvious how that is,
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: how algorithms today are dictating how people can exist in
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: the same country, but have completely different beliefs about not
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: what should be, but, but even what is and what
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: is taking place right now. Um, AI is a part
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: of it and how that's going to affect the space
• 55:05
  Speaker 4: that we occupy probably significantly. And, and it already is
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: in fact, in some ways and probably will, uh, even more, uh,
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: with some ideas of, of how to have a more
• 55:15
  Speaker 4: balanced and healthy approach. especially to news consumption, but to
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: media consumption of, of all kinds. And I've learned a
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: crazy amount even in researching the book. Uh, but I
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: think that really right now for anyone who either is
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: on these digital platforms has to make decisions at some
• 55:34
  Speaker 4: point about kids being on these platforms, which is not
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: a decision I have to make right now. It's probably,
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: I don't know, seven, eight years away or something like that.
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: I think we really have to understand how we got
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: to where we are and why I see certain things
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: when I look at Facebook or TikTok and you might
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: see something different and the effect that this has socioculturally
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: and on the economy. So it's kind of broad in
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: that sense, but it's specifically focused on digital platforms and
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: why they look the way they look today.
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: Your book is not political, but the most powerful... players
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: in American politics and world politics right now are the
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: algorithms themselves.
• 56:12
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: They are determined. They have played such a gigantic role
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: in polarization, news consumption, what breaks through. And like it is,
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: this may not be a part of your book, but
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: it is just worth noting that the most, the algorithms
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: that matter most are all owned by, or most of them,
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: all but one of them are owned by pro Trump billionaires.
• 56:36
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: Mark Zuckerberg and Meta control Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp. And then
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: you have Elon Musk controlling Twitter. We now have a
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: pro-Trump billionaire in charge of TikTok US. What level of
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: concern does that give you beyond just the dangers of
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: these algorithms to begin with?
• 56:56
  Speaker 4: It's a huge level of concern. But one of the
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: things I do talk about in the book is that
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: It might seem as though the causality goes one way,
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: which is, Hey, pro Trump billionaires control the algorithms. Therefore
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: the algorithms promote a lot of this right wing stuff.
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: I actually think it's the opposite way, which is that
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: the rights sort of argumentation is built for what performs
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: best in these algorithms in the sense of divisive content
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: performs better. Simple ideas with a clear scapegoat or someone
• 57:26
  Speaker 4: to blame perform better. You can go through this list
• 57:29
  Speaker 4: of five or six things and you kind of realize
• 57:32
  Speaker 4: you don't have to build it in a way that
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: it helps the right. There's something more structural in there.
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: And George Lakoff has written a lot about this when
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: it comes to political messaging. You know, you think about
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: the concept of tax relief. It's my money. It's better
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: and it's relieving when I get to keep it. And
• 57:50
  Speaker 4: on the left, we're not the opposite of that. We're
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: not going around saying the higher the tax, the better.
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: Let's rate. We're kind of saying, Hey, we're in a society.
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: If we want to have certain public services, we need
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: to set a tax level. That's like a structural thing,
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: which social media explodes. And then that's how you get
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: the disinformation. That's really simple with a clear scapegoat. You know,
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: they're eating the cats and the dogs and all of
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: this stuff it's built for these digital platforms. I don't
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: deny that the pro-Trump biases of the people in charge
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: matter and are important, but I actually think it's slightly
• 58:28
  Speaker 4: less important than it might seem because there's such an
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: algorithmic bias to the sort of stuff that the right
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: is putting out.
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: That's an important point because the Facebook algorithm became a
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: vehicle for right-wing content when Mark Zuckerberg was still a
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: Barack Obama supporter. It's that Steve Bannon... Tucker Carlson, the
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: folks at Breitbart and Daily Caller sort of figured out
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: early on how to hack the algorithm, like what are
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: the things that worked. And I remember sitting in the
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: White House in 2014 when really Facebook really sort of
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: blew up both as a major source of news for people,
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: as the news feed became a certain way. and as
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: right-wing messaging really sort of surfaced a lot. I remember
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: sitting in focus groups after– do you remember the IRS
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: scandal when there was these– which turned out to be
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: a bunch of bullshit, but that there was this accusation
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: that Obama had some of gotten a bunch of people
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: in a Cincinnati IRS office to scrutinize Tea Party groups?
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: And I thought it was one of those things, when
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: it blew up in Washington, and I understood why it
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: blew up. It's like the IRS involved in politics that
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: has echoes of Watergate. It's going to get attention. But
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: prior to that, we would always in the White House
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: have these situations where it's like there'd be this big
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: thing that like dominate Politico and CNN. Then we would
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: do focus groups and people in and around the country
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: would have no idea what we were talking about, right?
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: Just not a clue. We did focus groups on the
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: IRS thing and everyone knew. And then there was like
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: a VA scandal, which is the kind of thing that
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: doesn't really blow up in the same way. we did
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: focus groups again, everyone knew. And every time they were
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: sort of reading back, they were framing it to us
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: in right-wing terms. And when the moderator asked people why,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: like where they got this information, the answer was Facebook.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: And it's like, and they had sort of, and the
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: right had sort of figured out how to like, you know,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: it was like those Breitbart headlines that were just like
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: so offensive that they would generate so much outrage, which
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: would generate so many comments, which would generate so much engagement.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: The right has been very good at And it stayed
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: ahead of the curve, which is– it's almost shocking how
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: fast they got good at it considering how bad they
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: were at the internet in 2008, 2012. Do you think
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: Democrats are– we have a more complicated message. We have
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: a bigger tent. Things are, I think, harder for us
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: in some ways. But we're obviously not maximizing our opportunities here.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: Why do you think Democrats struggle with the sort of
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: messaging that would do better on the platforms? Yeah.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: I mean, I think part of it is just the
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: messages are inherently a little more complicated. And I say
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 4: that without even a value judgment, like they could be
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: more complicated and better or not. I happen to think
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: most of them are better, but that doesn't necessarily have
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 4: to be the case. I think that being late to
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: the game to some degree and skepticism about some of
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: us as creators and being slower to adopt that and
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: being more risk averse as well. I mean, none of
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: these are new sort of insights, but if you put
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: them all together, it has really slowed Democrats down quite
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: a bit. I mean, only after Kamala Harris lost the
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: 2024 election in December, the Biden White House said, let's
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 4: have a bunch of creators here to kind of talk
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: to us about how to work with them and this
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 4: sort of thing. And then the other thing is, I
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 4: can't speak to whether this is unique on the left
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: because I'm not in touch with the staffers of any Republicans.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: But one thing that does happen often is, The communication
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 4: I have with staffers from Democratic elected officials sometimes is
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: really weird in the sense that it completely seems to
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 4: miss kind of like what I do. Like I will
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: get text messages from staffers that go, hey, our principal,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 4: whoever it is, just put out this letter about what
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: should happen. And if you want to signal boost it,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: and it's like, no one in my audience cares about that.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: That would immediately raise red flags as why is David
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 4: reposting press releases from elected officials. And so there's sort
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 4: of like, we don't exactly totally know how to work
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: with you yet. Doesn't apply to everybody, but that's something
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: that happens a shockingly high amount of time.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: In 2025, I went and I spoke at the request
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: of the House. I went and spoke to the House
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: caucus about sort of the new media environment and podcasting
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: and how to think about content creators as part of
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: your messaging. I did the same thing for the Senate.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: You know, and it's like, it's sort of as you
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: would expect. And this is a broad generalization, but the
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: younger members get it more than the older members do.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: And younger doesn't necessarily– sometimes that means– sometimes it just
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: means how long you've been in the house, right? I
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: always sort of argue that politicians, like understanding the media environment,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: freezes in amber the moment they get elected to office, right?
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: Which is like the last thing they ever knew was
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: what they– how they consumed the media as a normal human,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: and then that's it. You know, they're like– Bernie Sanders' team,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: he's not the youngest, is very good at this stuff.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: There are exceptions to it. The staffers, I met with
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: the staffers, with a group of staffers, and what was
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: interesting was a lot of them get it. They're in
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: their 20s, early 30s. They consume media the way you
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: and I consume media. They listen to you. They listen
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: to Ponce America. They subscribe to a lot of sub stacks.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: But it's just very hard for them to explain convince
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: their bosses, who all still live in the old media world,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: both the members of Congress or the chiefs of staff,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: in some cases, particularly in the Senate, of why these
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: things matter. And so they're being told to bring an
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: old world idea to a new media world. We also,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: as a party, became obsessed with signal boosting at some point,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: like around 2012, where it's like, hey, retweet this thing
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: I'm going to send you and let's drive engagement to it.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: And that was before there were– I mean, you were
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: doing it, but there weren't as many content creators who
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: were actually media figures who you could go on their
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: show or have a conversation with or work it into
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: the coverage that you would sort of treat as a media,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: as a member of the media, not a– fellow Democrat
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: with a large Twitter following. And I think that they
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: have struggled to adjust from that. The term signal boost
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: drives me insane.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. The other one that I don't like is, hey,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 4: I wanted to send you a couple of flags. And
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: I'm like, don't send me any flags. I don't need
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: any flags right now. Just let me know if your
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: boss wants to do an interview and then we can
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 4: actually have a conversation. But to your point, there are
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 4: increasingly more and more, I find it to be especially
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 4: governors whose teams do really get it. and our understanding
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 4: that kind of like long form don't overmanage, certainly don't
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 4: say only talk about these three things. Just like if
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 4: you can trust the principle, let them do their thing
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 4: and it's going to be far more authentic. And when
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 4: you think about that, it reminds me of when Trump
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 4: sat down with the Nelk boys. I mean, he told
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 4: 150 lies during that thing, but it didn't matter because
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 4: you got the sense that he was kind of hanging
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: out giving his genuine, authentic opinion about things, which is
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 4: a deplorable opinion in so many different ways. But the
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: feel of it is something voters just identify with in
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 4: a much more direct way. Yeah.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: One of the pieces of advice I try to give
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: politicians or their staff is like, the goal when you
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: go on a show is not to just say the
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: words your pollster told you to say. You have seven minutes.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: No matter what happens, you have to get all your
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: message out in that seven minutes. Don't answer the question.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: Deliver your answer. And it's like that's not how the
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: world works anymore for a couple reasons. One, people are
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: very skeptical of politicians. So if you sound like a politician,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: you're fucked. It's over. So if you're doing talking points,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: you've lost. I don't care if you're doing it on CNN,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: you're doing it on your show, you're doing it on
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: our show, anywhere else. You sound like a politician, you've
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: lost everyone. The second thing is that because people hate
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: politicians and they're very skeptical of them, like you're starting
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: at a deficit. So you have to convince them you're human.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: So like what is the thing you authentically care about
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: that's not politics, right? Like what– and like you find
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: a way to talk about that somewhere, right? That could
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: be sports. Like you hear Josh Shapiro always talking about
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: Philly sports. He cares a lot about Philly sports. You
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: hear J.B. Pritzker cares– he is a Star Wars nerd
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: and he will talk about Star Wars until the you know,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: to the Caliscom home. And he did an interview where
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: he came up on St. America with Lovett and they
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: talked about their favorite Star Wars characters. They ranked the
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: Star Wars movies. Like that, like you just seem like
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 3: a normal human. And people are just like afraid to
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: do that. Because, and you can only do that in
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: a long form conversation.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 4: That's right. And that's the other thing which I think
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 4: you're sort of alluding to, which is the talking points
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 4: can't fill a long term, a long form conversation. So
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 4: you all of a sudden have a 53 minute hole
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 4: to fill.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: And you gotta, you gotta talk, you gotta talk about things.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: Are there, Are there Democrats out there who you think
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: are doing it right, who understand this media environment and
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: are sort of communicating the right way? And I'll stipulate
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: AOC and Zoran right away, but are there others?
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think there's no one person that does it
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 4: all perfectly. But in the last year, definitely. I mean,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 4: I think Gavin Newsom's team definitely seems to understand how
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: to use a lot of these platforms. I think JB
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 4: Pritzker is pretty good. I was with him a few
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 4: weeks ago in Chicago and did an interview with him
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: and he was pretty freewheeling and was up for talking
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: about whatever. And his team seemed to understand who everybody was.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 4: And I think that that, that was a great thing.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 4: Not in more of an interview format, but Adam Schiff
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 4: is pretty good at putting out reaction videos to things
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 4: that are happening in the Senate and sort of like
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 4: explaining how these relate to what people are experiencing and
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 4: they get a huge amount of traffic. So I think
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 4: that that's strong. I think Wes Moore has been quite
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 4: good and his team seems to understand. There's really a
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 4: lot that are getting better and better at it. Cory
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 4: Booker's team also is pretty on the ball in terms
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 4: of being proactive, but not in a way where they're
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 4: asking you to cover press releases. They're actually giving you, hey,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 4: he's doing this thing. Here's what's interesting about it. we
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 4: would love for you to talk about it or whatever
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 4: kind of thing. So I think there's a growing list
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 4: of people who get it.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: If you were giving it, like we're going to have
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: somewhere between 12 and 200 Democrats running for president in 2028.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: If you had a chance to sit down with them
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: and give them some advice about how to be a
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: more effective, more authentic communicator in that presidential election, what
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: would you tell them?
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 4: The primary thing would be get your staff out of
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 4: the way. You've got to make sure that you are
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 4: not trying to have an authentic conversation with two weeks
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 4: of forced interaction communication between producers and staff in between,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 4: because that, that just really kills things. I mean, I
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 4: think that that obviously know what you stand for, understand
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 4: what is important to you, know who you're talking to.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 4: All of those things are important, but I think the
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 4: most important thing is don't allow staff to get in
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 4: the way of what can be really good conversations.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: David Pakman, I think we'll leave it there. Thank you
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: so much for spending the time with us today. Hope
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: to talk to you again soon.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 4: My pleasure.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: That's our show for today. Thank you to David Pakman
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 3: for joining the show. Love it. Tommy and John will
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: be back in your feed on Tuesday.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 5: Bye everyone.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to cricket.com slash
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. Also,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: please consider leaving us a review. That helps boost this
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: episode and everything we do here at Cricket. Pod Save
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: America is a Cricket Media production. Our producer is Saul Rubin.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: Our associate producer is Farrah Safari. Austin Fisher is our
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: senior producer. Reid Cherlin is our executive editor. Adrian Hill
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: is our head of news and politics. Jordan Cantor is
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: Charlotte Landis. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Naomi
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Carol Pelleviv,
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: David Tolles, and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.