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Trump's Ballroom Reno Derailed by Epstein · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: On today's show, guess who's back? A trove of new
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: emails from Jeffrey Epstein's account allege that Trump knew what
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: the guy was up to and spent time with at
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: least one of his victims in Epstein's house. The government
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: is also officially open, but the battle over the shutdown
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: and the fate of Obamacare is still raging. We'll also
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: talk about Trump's disastrous interview with Laura Ingraham, of all people,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: that even pissed off his MAGA supporters, who are also
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: angry with Kash Patel. for the time and government money
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: he's spending on his girlfriend. Then Texas State Representative James
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Tallarico stops by to talk about jumping into the primary
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: to unseat Senator John Cornyn. But let's start with the
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: big Epstein news. On Wednesday morning, Democrats released three of
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein's emails that were part of a huge batch
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: they received from his estate after issuing a subpoena. The
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: most damning, I think, is an email that Epstein wrote
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: to his convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell all the way back
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: in April of 2011. This is after he pleaded guilty
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: in 2008 to soliciting sex from girls as young as 14.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Epstein wrote this about Trump in the email, who at
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: the time was contemplating a run for president. Quote, I
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: want you to realize that the dog that hasn't barked
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: is Trump. A victim, whose name was redacted in the release, quote,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: spent hours at my house with him. He has never
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: once been mentioned. Ghislaine Maxwell replies to this email, quote,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: I have been thinking about that. Okay. The second email
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: exchange is from 2018 when Epstein was under investigation again,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: this time by Donald Trump's Department of Justice. A friend,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: whose name was redacted also, wrote that the new attention
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: on Epstein was really part of an effort to take
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: down Trump Epstein wrote, quote, it's wild because I am
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: the one able to take him down. Jeffrey Epstein on
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump in 2018. I am the one able to
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: take him down. Then, in 2019, Epstein had an exchange
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: with the author Michael Wolff, where he wrote about Trump, quote,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: of course he knew about the girls, as he asked
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Ghislaine to stop. After the release, Oversight Committee Republicans said
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: that the unnamed victim was Virginia Giuffre, who said publicly
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: that Trump never abused her and she never saw him
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: do anything bad. Giuffre died by suicide in April. The
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Republicans also released their own 20,000 pages of Epstein emails,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: ostensibly to muddy the waters or get ahead of whatever
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Democrats were going to release next. Those emails show Epstein
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: discussing Trump and all kinds of other topics with various
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: people in his social circle, like Larry Summers. For his part,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Trump responded on Truth Social with some rants about the
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Epstein hoax, accusing Democrats of trying to change the subject
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: from the shutdown ending. But when he was asked about
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: the emails during an Oval Office press event on Wednesday night,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: suddenly he didn't have much to say at all. Let's listen.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: President, can you respond to these Epstein emails that were released.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: Today?
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you know, he's just. the normally quiet
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: and reserved Trump not taking questions from anyone.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: That's notable, I'd say.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: You wrote a message box about this. On the substance,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: what's your take on these emails?
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, they're quite damning, right? They go at the
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: core question of what Trump knew and when he knew
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: it and undermine his argument that he never knew anything
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: about Epstein and that he... Well, it's hard to know
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: what Trump's actual story is. For a long time, he
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: never knew anything. Then the White House contended that he
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: and his relationship with Epstein because of concerns about Epstein
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: stealing these girls like Virginia from Mar-a-Lago, suggesting he knew
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: about it a long time before. We don't know. Here's,
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: to me, the main point is the details are less
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: important than the essential truth here, which is that the
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: president of the United States had a long time, very
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: close relationship with America's most notorious child sex trafficker and
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: now is using every lever of power at his disposal
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: to prevent disclosure of information about that relationship. That in
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: and of itself is one of the greatest scandals in
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: American history. I know that sounds hyperbolic, but it truly
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: means just take down the name Donald Trump out of
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: it and think about what that would be like in
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: any other scenario. And every time we get this information,
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: it just fills in the details. It further undermines his
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: arguments about what he knew and when he knew it, etc.,
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: But it just reminds everyone of the truth that the
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: guy sitting in the Oval Office palled around with a
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: child sex trafficker and is preventing the release of the
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: information that could theoretically clear him of these allegations.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: And now, keep in mind, obviously, you know, the extent
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: of Jeffrey Epstein's crimes were not fully known until, you know, first,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Julie Brown died. reported this big series out in 2018,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: which then sort of led the Justice Department to start
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: looking again at Jeffrey Epstein. And then, of course, he
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: was arrested in 2019. But before that, between 2008, when
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: he gets the sweetheart deal from Alex Acosta, who would
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: go on to become Donald Trump's Secretary of Labor, between
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: then and 2018, what is known publicly about Jeffrey Epstein
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: is that he was, you know, he pleaded guilty to
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: soliciting underage girls as young as 14. So like, it's
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: not like, oh, well, all this stuff came out in 2018, 2019.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: It was, it was out there. It was public. So
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: if you were Donald Trump, or if you were someone
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein between 2008 and 2018, it's
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: pretty easy to find out that information. Just, and that,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: this is like being the most, the most generous interpretation
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: of all this, let alone when you get into some
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: of these emails, you know, at one point, Epstein offers
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: to send New York Times reporter Landon Thomas, who has
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: also reported on the Epstein drama over the years.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: He wrote the famous New York Magazine profile with a
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump quote in it.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, where he says, I know that Jeffrey likes girls young.
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  Speaker 1: And he offered to send Landon Thomas in one email
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: pictures of Trump in his kitchen with girls in bikinis. Mr.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: Epstein also told Landon Thomas about a time when he said, Mr. Trump,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: this is from the New York Times, Mr. Trump was, quote,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: so focused on watching young women in a swimming pool
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: that he bumped the swimming pool at Jeffrey Epstein's home.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Important factoid there, yes. Right, yeah. On watching young women
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: in a swimming pool that he bumped into a door,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: leaving his nose print on the glass. Trump was mentioned
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: thousands of times, not hundreds, thousands of times in these documents. Again,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: you know, none of us have memories anymore, but Remember,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: there was the whole thing. Is Trump going to be
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: in the Epstein docs? And then there was the reporting
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: that when Pam Bondi and the rest of them found
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: out that he might be mentioned a few times in
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: the docs, that's when they kind of said, OK, we're
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: not going to release the docs. And she told reportedly
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: told Trump in the Oval Office. And of course, everyone always,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: you know, denies this and all the shit. But yeah, clearly,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: now that we see the 20,000 pages, he's all over
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: the doc. All over the documents.
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: But here's the thing. Let's say if this was the
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: worst stuff in the documents, why is Trump working so
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: hard to prevent the rest of them from coming out?
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: That's the thing. If the thing they were worried about
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: was this email, then.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: It's over.
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: Just let them all come out. But that's not it.
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: They have reason to believe, and we know this because
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: thousands of FBI agents combed through those documents, that there
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: is something much worse in there. And as of in
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: regard to the picture of Trump with women in bikinis
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: or girls in bikinis, you remember, because no one has
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: any memories, but Michael Wolff brought this up on a
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: podcast a couple months ago. And everyone thought it was
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: bullshit because Michael Wolff, I think he claimed, I could
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: be wrong here, that Epstein went to his safe and
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: took the picture out and showed it to him.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: I don't even remember this.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think this is correct. And one of our
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: producers can tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: sure he said that. And it should have been a
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: much bigger deal, but Michael Wolff is a bit of
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: a fabulist in a lot of people's eyes. And so
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: it didn't get a ton of attention. But now we
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: have a second potential source on the Donald Trump with
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: girls in bikinis photograph.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Look, one of our challenges here is we got a
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: lot of characters involved in this scandal, none of whom
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: are all that trustworthy. Their credibility has been thrown into
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: question numerous times. Whether it's Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Donald Trump,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Michael Wolff, who in these emails is like plotting with
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein over how to use the information he allegedly
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: has on Donald Trump to benefit himself. Yes. And like
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: trying to help him formulate responses or have a strategy on.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: you know, when to use this against Trump and how
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: and all that kind of shit. So like, could Epstein
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: be lying? Could Maxwell be lying? Could Wolf be lying?
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Could Trump be lying? Yes, all of them could be lying.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: But you just got to ask yourself, why in an
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: email in 2011, as Trump is just potentially thinking about
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: running for president in 2012, would Jeffrey Epstein in an
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: email just to Ghislaine Maxwell feel the need to lie
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: about Donald Trump spending time with one of the victims
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: in his home? Also, what would the incentive be there?
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: Also, Donald Trump is someone who is famously a cat.
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: He also very famously talks about how much he likes
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: young women. Right. He pout around with Jeffrey Epstein for
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: a long time. We don't know if he did anything,
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: but he certainly– we have this email about him running
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: into the window. We also know from multiple sources about
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: the time that they brought that bikini team from New
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: York to do a show at Mar-a-Lago, and the only
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: two people in the room were Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of just very sketchy behavior in this
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: arena– that raises real questions. And it's just you have
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: to ask yourself, what is it in the documents that
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump is so afraid would come out? Think about
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: how they dealt with Lauren Boebert on this. This is
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: just a vote, right? And they brought her into the
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: Situation Room and basically tried to twist her arms with
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: senior Justice Department officials, reportedly including the attorney general and
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: the FBI director. Because they're that scared of something, which
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: is an insane thing in and of itself. It's like
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: a massive conflict of interest in a hundred different ways.
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: But just that is the behavior of people who are
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: scared shitless about disclosure of what is in these files.
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: And I want to know what's in these files.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: And these are people who, before he became president again,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: he and all of his goons who are now in
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: positions of authority and running law enforcement- we're like, we're
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: going to release the Epstein files. We're doing it. It's great.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden now, uh, nothing, we're
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: not going to do anything. Although to be fair, and
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: this shed some light on one of the potential theories here,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: which is cash Patel, Dan Bongino, all of them were
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: out there saying, yeah, and JD Vance, we've got to
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: release the Epstein files, got to release the Epstein files.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: When Trump has asked whether he's going to release files
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: related to the Kennedy assassination. Yes, absolutely. Um, for the get,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: there was a couple other ones. Absolutely. Absolutely.
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: It was, uh, I think it was UFOs.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: UFOs.
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: Kennedy assassination, maybe also MLK assassination.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: Yep, yep.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: And then we got the Epstein files. I don't know
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, well, not when we don't want to get,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: you know, when I'm going to release any names of
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: people who may not have been really involved and get them,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: you know. So that's telling, telling. As far as the
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: broader Republican reaction, again, these are the people that for
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: years were the ones saying that the government must, the
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: government's covering something up. They must release the Epstein files.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: This is some kind of a, you know, Democrat scandal.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: They're all involved in this child trafficking ring. And as
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: soon as Trump wins, we're going to get rid of it.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: We're going to get at least these files. This is
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: now the Republican reaction in response to this to this
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: latest story. Let's play some. How convenient was it as
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: the shutdown ended? Out comes the Epstein files.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: Why didn't you bring this up during the four years
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: of the Biden administration when the Biden DOJ had all
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: these records the entire time?
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Nobody ever said a word about it. They didn't care.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Now it's the biggest thing in the world. He never
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: did anything.
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: It's a lot of innuendo, and they're going to smear
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: him with that, just like they did with the Russia hoax.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: And my gut feeling is that if there was something
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: in there about Donald Trump, the Biden Justice Department would
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: have released it. It's so funny that they can't even
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: get on the same message about the Biden administration. Mike
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Johnson's like, why did no one care during the Biden administration?
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: And then the last jackass, I think that was Andy Ogles. No.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Who was that? Oh, Andy Harris. Whatever. They're all the same.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: The last guy there was like, Andy Harris was like, oh, well,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: if there was something in there, the Biden administration would
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: have done the shitty, scandalous, corrupt thing that Trump would
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: do and just release all the files.
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to defend- Just.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: To screw Donald Trump.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to defend Merrick Garland a lot on
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: this podcast or ever in life because he's really a
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: historical villain who is very culpable for where we are
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: right now. But there is no question that there could
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: have literally been a videotape of Donald Trump and Jeffrey
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: Epstein talking about their crimes together and Merrick Garland would
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: not have released that.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Merrick Garland to this day is just, he's got the
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: P-tape with him. He took it with him. Where is
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Merrick Garland? That is a joke. That's a joke. Just
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: so everyone knows. Well, you referenced what's going on in Congress.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about what's happening there, because they are by
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: no means done with the Epstein scandal. Now that the
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: government's open and Adelita Grijalva was finally sworn in, the
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: discharge petition to force a vote on legislation that would
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: compel the Department of Justice to release all the Epstein
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: files hit the required 218 signatures. This was, as you said,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: despite a very intense last-minute push. They got Boebert. tried
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: to strong arm her with most of the people who
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: run federal law enforcement in the Situation Room because nothing
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: else is going on in the world. They tried to
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: get Nancy Mace to take her name off the discharge petition.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: I believe Marjorie Taylor Greene's name was on it. They've
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: probably given up on Marge at this point. They couldn't
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: do that. Trump failed to get anyone to take their
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: names off the discharge petition, so it did pass. Mike
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Johnson now says he's scheduling the vote for next week.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: And word is that a lot of House Republicans are
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: going to vote yes once it comes to the floor. However,
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: say it passes the House, still needs to pass the Senate.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: No guarantee that John Thune will even take it up
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: in the Senate. And then even if it passes the Senate,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: Trump would have to sign it into law, which seems unlikely.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: So what now? What do you think the goal is?
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: Is it just to embarrass Trump here by forcing him
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: to veto this and show that A bunch of Republicans
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: broke with him on this.
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: Do you think Trump wouldn't sign it? Do you think
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: he would veto it?
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: I don't think he'd veto it.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: You don't think he'd veto it? I think it would be,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: here's what I'd do if I was in Trump's mind.
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: Please, do tell.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't do like a big veto. Do you pocket
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: veto it? Yeah, exactly. I would pocket veto it. I
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: would just try to avoid it. I would have other
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: news that I'd talk about. Someone would ask about it.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: I'd say, you're fake news. Caroline Leavitt would say, oh,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: the president's talked about this before. It's a hoax. So
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: what's he going to do, Caroline? Is he going to veto?
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Is he going to pass the legislation? He thinks it's
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: a hoax.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: Next.
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: I think the president vetoing with a pen or a
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: stamp or pocket vetoing would– the legislation that would be
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: passed with a bipartisan group, right? It would have to
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: get 60 Senate votes.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: So we assume it's going to have a pretty big
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: house because all these MAGA folks– they don't want to
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: be on the wrong side of this and it's going
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: to pass anyway. So they're going to vote. So you're
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: going to get a big number in the House. Let's
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: say it got through the Senate. So it's going to
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: get at least 60 to do that. And then Donald
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: Trump's going to veto the bill that forces disclosure of
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: information about his relationship with a sex trafficker. That would
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: be a cataclysmic political event.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Also, wouldn't it be his first veto of the second term?
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it would have to be.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: I mean, it would be Truly, like, what is in
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: those files would have to be so fucking bad that
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: they would end his presidency on the day they were
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: released to veto that. Like, that would be.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: And does he even know, is the question. Like, I
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: think one possible explanation is he feels like he did
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: something bad or there's something bad in there, but he
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: can't exactly remember what because he's done so many bad
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: things over the course of the last 80 years. And
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: he's really old, yes. Yeah, exactly, and he's really old. So,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: you know, that's a possibility as well.
• 19:27
  Speaker 5: I mean.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: There is this it's it's I saw that Andrew Rager
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: at the Bulwark wrote this, which is like, you know,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: with most people, if you're trying to cover something up,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: you think, oh, that person might be guilty. With Donald Trump,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: his like default setting is cover everything up. Try to,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: you know, try to stop all bad news. And so, like,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: you sort of understand that he could just be doing
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: this anyway. But the persistence in the language. that he
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: has gone to to cover this, it's really, even the
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: kind of person who's most resistant to conspiracy theories, it's
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: tough now to understand why he would go to such
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: lengths to do this.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: Like in the 90s when Bill Clinton was dealing with
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: the fallout of the Ken Starr investigation from his extramarital
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: affair and lying about it under oath, no one in
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: the White House knew the truth. He told no one.
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: So he was operating on its own. So the White
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: House had no idea what was in there. And so
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: like you can understand some of the decisions they make
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: as they're operating entirely– some of them were believing their
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: boss who was lying to the staff too. Here, you
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: just have to imagine– like maybe Trump– like Trump obviously
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: hasn't been through the files, but someone has. There has–
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: like he has the– and it's not even like the
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: Justice Department. He's walled off from the Justice Department like
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: he would be in a normal world where he just–
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: you know, he's just trying to call Pam Bonney and
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: she won't pick up the phone because of ethics. So
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: like whether it's his White House counsel or it's Stephen
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: Miller or someone else or the Justice Department staff alone
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: have been through the files. And so they must know
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: because if it's not that– someone should tell them it's
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: not that bad if it's not that bad. There's nothing
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: preventing them from doing that. So like maybe he doesn't
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: know there's something bad there, but someone does.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Also, let's just, let's keep in mind now, now that
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: we know that Jeffrey Epstein in his emails was telling
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: multiple people that he could ruin Donald Trump, that he has,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: he has compromising information about Donald Trump, that he could
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: take him down. Jeffrey Epstein is investigated then by Donald
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Trump's Department of Justice in 2018 goes to jail and
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: dies in jail, right? Dies by suicide in jail.
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: For the audio listeners, John did kind of half-hearted air
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: quotes there.
• 21:46
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: Under circumstances that, you know, we still don't know. We
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: all did the footage of the... If this were a
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: fucking low-budget movie plot What do you think people would
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: guess happens next? That the guy who went around telling
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: people that he had blackmail on the president and the
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: president's justice department then sends him to jail and then
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: he dies in jail? I mean, I'm going on record here.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying I believe the conspiracy.
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: But you kind of do.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: I don't even know if I do, but how fucking
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: ridiculous is that? If it was anything else, if it
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: was a movie, if it was anything else, you'd be like,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, obviously. Obviously we know what happened.
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: And then we haven't even talked about the fact that
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: there's all this reporting now that not only did Ghislaine Maxwell,
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: the person who could share all this information with the
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: public and is preparing a pardon application or a commutation
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: application to the Trump Department of Justice, has not only
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: just been moved to a low minimum security prison camp,
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: she's now getting special privileges at that prison camp, according
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: to reporting from CNN, not available to anyone else, including
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: all the toilet paper she wants. which is obviously in
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: short supply in prison. Like it's– the amount of– like you,
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: I try very hard not to be a conspiracy person.
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: I try– usually, we talk about this all the time,
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: that in Washington, it is almost always– the answer is
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: always incompetence, not conspiracy. But the amount of information here,
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: whether– we don't know what Trump did, but the lengths
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: at which they're going to prevent the disclosure of information
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: is so– like if he was guilty how would he
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: acting differently is right now maybe it's just it's it
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: is like just like use your brain people so I
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: guess and put it the way he is something he
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: is scared shitless of coming out what that is I
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: do not know but it is enough to make him
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: act very much against his own short-term political.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Interests remember when Ghislaine Maxwell sat for an interview in
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: her cushy new jail with Todd Blanche the deputy attorney
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: general who was Donald Trump personal lawyer Exactly. And he
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: asked her about whether Trump was around Epstein and these
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: girls and asked about Trump's conduct. And her quote to
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Todd Blanch was, quote, I never witnessed Trump in any
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: inappropriate setting in any way. Fast forward to the email
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: that we all just read when she said instead, oh, yes,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: I've been thinking about that time when he was. Now,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: could Donald Trump have been at Jeffrey Epstein's house? with
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: Virginia Dufresne in an appropriate way, I guess. Perhaps Jeffrey
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Epstein had Virginia Dufresne at a dinner as he was
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: also sex trafficking her and abusing her and all the
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: horrifying things he did to her. So I guess there's
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: a possible explanation where Ghislaine Maxwell's answer to Todd Blanche
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: was technically true. At the very least, it seems a
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: bit incomplete. I saw George Conway tweet about this. Yes, yes.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: And then Todd Blanche responds to George Conway on Twitter,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: and he was like, well, I didn't have these emails
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: then when I interviewed her. And then George was like, well,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: then maybe you should go back and interview her again
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: and see if she tells the truth now.
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: Just, we'll be waiting for that interview to happen.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: What is this? What is happening right now?
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: The fact that this whole thing comes down to a,
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: the way in which we're getting information about this scandal
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: is a Twitter fight between the Deputy Attorney General.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: And George Conway. Everything is just so stupid.
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's so dumb.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: On a quite a serious subject, frankly.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Very serious. Very serious. So, like, politics of this, like,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: I was ready. I'm like, okay, the Epstein thing has
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: faded away. I get it. Whatever. Trump has not covered
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: himself in glory on this one. But it seems like
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: the MAGA base was ready to move on. All the
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: MAGA influencers, the MAGA media types are all like, they're
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: all covering up for him now. They don't care anymore.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: All the people that had showed, like, a little bit
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: of independence from Trump when this first broke. They're all
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: back on board and they're pretending nothing's there. Like, is
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: this something that Democratic politicians should still be talking about?
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: What do you think?
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: Well, we kind of have to. Like we know, we
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: knew before the 2025 elections, affordability is number one issue.
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: If anyone had any doubt, the election's made it crystal clear.
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: If we could only talk about one thing, we talk
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: about affordability, but we don't get to pick the topics.
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: We're not in the White House. We don't have the
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: bully pulpit. Even if we did, we don't have sort
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: of the messaging throw rate or the media machine to
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: allow us to do this. As long as you got
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: to talk about the things that people are talking about.
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: And this is one of those things. It has political
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: advantages for Democrats in two ways. One is there is
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: a way to take this. Like you can't be incredibly
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: awkward and be like, he's talking, he's covering up for
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: the Epstein files to cover, to distract from his high
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: prices or anything dumb like that.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: Um, And you don't need to be going like just, oh,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Trump's a pedo. Like we just don't, just don't say
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: more than we know. Stick with what we know. It's
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: bad enough.
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: The most politically appealing way to talk about this is
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: to lay out the facts in a straightforward, fact-based way
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: as you can, and then make the point that Trump
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: is covering this up to protect himself and his other
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: rich friends. And this is part of the corrupt, broken
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: political system he said he was going to fix. Those
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: are not the words to use, but that's the gist
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: of the story.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: You got to have that disclaimer now because otherwise we'll
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: just hear a.
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: Statement exactly like that. I just shout. These are stage directions.
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: The second way that this matters is Trump, you may remember,
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: launched an affordability campaign like five days ago. You know
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: when you can't talk about affordability? When you're in the
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: middle of a roiling national scandal over a relationship with
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: America's notorious child sex trafficker. And so it does block
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: his ability. to deliver a message on anything helpful to himself.
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: And so if we had a scandal where we found
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: out that Trump was working with Jeffrey Epstein to personally
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: raise egg prices, that would be better politically. But this
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: is what we got, and I think it can be useful.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: This entire second term also is about Donald Trump himself
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: personally delivering a damaging narrative about him and his presidency
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: to us on a silver platter every day. You know, like,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: you don't have to think too hard about how the
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: Epstein scandal fits in with the rest of what he's doing.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Is that, like, all of the corruption that people were
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: just angry about in Washington, not just Democrats or independents,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: but Republicans, people in Trump's base. Like, the money he's making,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: the crypto, the Qatari jets, the Gatsby parties, the ballroom, the, like...
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: All this shit. It's all the peace. The pardons for
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: all of his rich friends and all the fucking violent
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: January 6th people. If you're a friend of Trump's, if
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: you're connected to Trump, if you can do this, you're
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: all set. You can break the law. You're going to
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: get rich. Trump's getting rich. The family's getting rich. Everyone else,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: fuck you. Your costs are going up. You're going to
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: bear the brunt of the tariffs. You're going to bear
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: the brunt of the shutdown. We don't give a shit.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: We're going to kidnap you off the street, whether you're
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: undocumented or not. Like it's a whole, it's, it's right there.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: It's right there. I don't, you know, he's delivering it
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: right to us. It's just, it's so easy.
• 29:09
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• 31:02
  Speaker 1: about our new open government, which will stay that way
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: until at least the end of January. What a luxury.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: The Departments of Veterans Affairs and Agriculture, along with some
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: military projects, are now fully funded through all of 2026.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: So are SNAP benefits, which people should start getting again
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: on Monday. Federal employees are back to work, and paychecks,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: including back pay, will start going out in a few days.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: One problem that's still lingering is air travel. There were
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: nearly 1,000 flight cancellations on Thursday, and the administration says
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: It's going to keep cancellations at 6% of total flights
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: for the foreseeable future. I imagine this is untangling all
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: the delays that sort of built up in over the
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: last couple of weeks and the fact that we have
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: been suffering an air traffic controller shortage for some time now.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: So I'm sure that former real world road rule star
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Sean Duffy has this under control. Also unresolved, the future
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: of the Affordable Care Act subsidies that 20 million Americans
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: rely on. and the bitter recriminations among Democrats over the
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: deal that eight senators struck with Republicans to end the shutdown.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: We'll get to the Obamacare subsidies in a second, but Dan,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: you didn't get to join our group therapy session on
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Tuesday's pod about the deal, though you have written about it.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: Where's your head at now that we've all had a
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: few days to process this?
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: Like you guys and some of the other Democrats, I
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: was quite pissed at the way in which the shutdown
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: came to an end. that it was these Democrats who
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: did this at this point in time. This was the
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: point of maximum leverage for Democrats. It's very possible that
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: the Republicans were just never going to give, and their
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: advantage was they didn't give a shit about any person
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: they hurt, and they would starve people, they would destroy
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: air travel, they'd destroy the economy, do anything to gain leverage.
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: Democrats do not have the stomach for that. Obama used
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: to call it, we have the responsibility gene. But even.
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: Knowing that, I think we had to let it play
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: out for a couple of weeks more because there was
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: a lot of polling that showed the people were now
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: just at that moment in which we folded beginning to
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: pay attention. And that's when the real political pressure would
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: have come on the Republicans. And because Democrats, to their credit,
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: had won the messaging war and people were blaming Trump
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: and the Republicans, when all the pain started, particularly around
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: air travel at Thanksgiving, they were going to blame the
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: people they already blamed for the shutdown, Trump and the Republicans.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: And so we should have let that play out. And
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: so I'm very frustrated by that. I thought the eight
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: senators who caved here sold everyone out. And I think
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: they did an absolutely miserable job of explaining their position.
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: You know, Angus King saying we shouldn't stand up to
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: Trump didn't work. People calling it a win. Angus King
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: went from saying that we went from no chance to
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: 50% chance to get the Obamacare subsidies to the next
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: morning we're down like 20% chance. You know, they basically
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: caved for one vote that is really kind of bullshit.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: Having said that, It's happened. It's over. I don't think
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: it's going to matter in the midterms. No one's going
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: to remember this cave 11 months from now when people
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: are going to vote. So I think there are lessons
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: we should learn about how to go about these fights
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: in the future, about what it takes to actually win
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: them and whether we have the stomach to do it collectively.
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: But it's time to put it behind us and time
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: to focus on making the Republicans pay the price for
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: being so committed to raising healthcare premiums? Because I do
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: think in the end, if we play our cards correctly,
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: Republicans will have won the battle but lost the war here.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about ACA subsidies because that fight's not
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: done yet either. Senate Democrats are supposed to, as part
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: of the deal, get a vote on legislation of their
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: choosing in December around extending the ACA subsidies, though there
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: has been some talk about a compromise with Republicans. in
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: order to get it passed through the Senate. Some of
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: the ideas that have been thrown out are, do you
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: want to means test the subsidies? So like I heard
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: Gene Shaheen say, like if you make over $ 200, 000, you
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: shouldn't be eligible for the subsidies because then that would
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: get more Republicans on board in the Senate. It all
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: seems a little silly to me because the big problem
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: is the House, but that's what's going on in the Senate.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: In the House, Mike Johnson still won't commit to a vote.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: Democrats are trying to file another discharge petition like they
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: did with the Epstein files to force a vote in
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: the House on a three-year extension of the Affordable Care
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: Act subsidies. I was looking to hear from some of
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: the more establishment Republicans or the retiring Republicans on whether
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: they'd go for that. Don Bacon, who's retiring, he said
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: he would not sign a discharge petition on this. So
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: that's not a very good sign. Mike Lawler is like
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: a frontline Republican who's very vulnerable. He said he'd be
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: maybe for a one-year extension, but nothing more. So we'll
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: see on that. But can you think of any way
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: that this could actually get done and signed by Donald Trump?
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: No, I really can't. I think it's highly, highly unlikely
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: that Republicans will do this. It will split the Republican caucus.
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: Mike Johnson does not want to split his caucus at
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: this point. I think it's highly unlikely he brings it
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: to a vote.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: I will say that... I completely agree with you. And
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: that is why in the last couple of days, the
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: more I have thought about the shutdown, the first thing
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: in my mind is the chances that they were ever,
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: even with all the pressure, going to ever pass an
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies. I thought it was,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: I started off when the shutdown started by thinking it
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: was relatively high because I know how popular it would
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: be to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies, even with
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: their own base. Right. Something like 50 percent, 51 percent
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: of MAGA voters said that they are supportive of this.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: So I thought it was very high. And then I
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: thought then it was like, yeah, I guess I'm like
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: Angus King. Then I thought it was like 50 percent,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: you know, because then then we then they lost the
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: election over it. It's like I don't know what other
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: kind of pressure would have forced them to give on
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: the subsidies as opposed to just given on getting rid
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: of the filibuster. for opening up the government that I
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: could still see if they held on. I just, I
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: could not, I still cannot see a scenario where they're
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: going to do anything on ACA because they feel they
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: seem so fucking dug in now. And Donald Trump and
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: a bunch of Republicans are all talking about not just
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: not extending the subsidies, but Hey, let's take this opportunity
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: to just like dismantle the rest of the affordable care act. Give,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: they keep talking about, we don't want to give money
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: to the insurance companies. We want to give money to
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: the people.
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: Who are then going to give it to the insurance.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, where are you going to fucking buy the health
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: insurance from? Who do you think you're going to buy
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: it from? Fucking Santa Claus? Like, what are you talking about?
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: Just doctors who take cash.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: Well, and they're talking about these health savings accounts, which,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: by the way, it's basically like a tax-free account that
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: you have to fund, or maybe the government will give
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: you a few thousand bucks, and then you have to
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: fund the rest, and it's tax-free. You can't even use
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: it to pay for your premiums the way a lot
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: of them are currently written in legislation, so you can
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: use it to pay for extra out-of-pocket costs, I guess.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like physical therapy.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: It's fucking worth nothing. It would give the insurance companies
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: so much more power to deny you coverage for pre-existing conditions.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: So not only now are they going after people who
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: were relying on the Affordable Care Act subsidies, they want
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: to go after people who would get denied pre-existing conditions.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: So these are all their ideas right now, and you
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: mean to tell me that this is the group of
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: people who would be like, all right, all right, we'll
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: extend the subsidies? I just... Look, we're going to go
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: through this again in January, and then there's going to
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: be another government funding deadline at the end of January.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: And I think Democrats should fight like hell. But at
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: the end of the day, Republicans are on the losing
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: end of an 80-20 issue, and they don't seem to
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: fucking care.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, you're thinking about this, and I thought about
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: this way too, that through the lens of people understanding
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: their own political self-interest. Raising people's healthcare premiums at a
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: time in which affordability is the number one issue, that
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: is a real-world personal commitment to losing the House. That's
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: really what they want to do there. And it's not
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: even like this is– sometimes there are issues that are popular,
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: but they largely benefit the other party. This benefits their
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: voters more than anyone else because it.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: Is primarily– Right, which is the only reason I thought
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: they would have done it.
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: I mean, no one has less regard for their voters
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: than Donald Trump and the Republicans. We could go through
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: many reasons why this happened. Part of it's negative polar
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: Before the shutdown was over, there were a lot of
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: Republicans who really wanted to solve this problem. But once
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: it became part of the shutdown, they could never give
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: on it. There's the fact that they are immune from
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: political pressure because they live inside an epistemic media bubble
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: that doesn't allow them to know how bad things are going.
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: This is really a fundamental change in how the world
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: worked between when we dealt with the shutdown in 2013
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: and now. In 2013, most Republican members of Congress got
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: their news from the Wall Street Journal, Politico, New York
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: Times even. They watched CNN. They watched Fox, of course,
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: but they were in on the joke with Fox. They
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: saw all the bad coverage. Now they live in a
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: world where they're winning all the time. They don't even
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: know when they're losing, so they just keep losing in
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: this case.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Even if they see coverage that tells them they are losing,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: the only person that matters is Donald Trump and keeping
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump happy. Because even if their voters are pissed
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: at them, even if they're getting bad coverage, they know
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: that if they cross Donald Trump, they'll get a primary
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: challenge and he'll come down hard on them. And so
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: then they'll lose their job anyway. So they are, you know,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: I think they probably, some of them probably realize they
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: don't have good options either way. But the scarier option
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: for them is to piss off Donald Trump.
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: And this is a fundamental change between Trump 1.0 and
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: Trump 2.0. In Trump 1.0, he would have wanted to
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: sit down with, at the time, Pelosi and Schumer and
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: get the big four together and cut a deal. And
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: he wanted to be in on things that seemed popular. Here,
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: it's just like it's a presidency based entirely on owning
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: the lips. And the way to defeat Democrats here, not
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: to help Republicans, but to make Democrats lose, was to
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: force them to cave here and not to actually do
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: what's in the... The guy should, especially if you're so
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: fucking afraid of the Epstein files coming out, the guy
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: should really, really want the Republicans to win the House.
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: And I know he's doing things like trying to redistrict
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: and gerrymander the world to get it done. But one
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: way to help them win the House is to solve
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: this massive political problem, and he just made it worse.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: Speaking of political problems they don't really give a shit about,
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: there was one provision that got snuck into the final
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: funding bill in the Senate. that would let senators sue
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: the federal government for as much as half a million
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: dollars each if their data is accessed without notice. What
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: is this all about? The provision benefits eight Republican senators
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: who were recently found to have had their phone records
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: accessed during the investigation by Jack Smith into Donald Trump's
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: 2020 election subversion. Mike Johnson, a bunch of Republicans in
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: the House, including some pretty conservative Republicans in the House,
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: said they had no idea the provision was in there.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: And now Johnson says he's planning a House vote to
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: undo it, which is kind of wild. What the hell?
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: It's really one of the most bizarre things because it's
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: incredibly– it's obviously unpopular. It seems insane. It's basically just
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: a potential cash grab for eight members of Thune's caucus.
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: It's already been established that this happened to them. They
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: wrote the rules to ensure that the eight members of
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: the Republican Senate caucus– could sue and get up to
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: a half a million dollars. Like it's already done. Like
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: they wrote the rules to ensure that they could win
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: because they already knew the evidence in this case. And
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: then the members of the House probably pissed because where's
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: their half a million dollars? And I mean, it's nuts.
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: It's truly, truly nuts. There has been not, everyone is
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: very quiet about how, like we know Thune asked for it,
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: but who asked Thune to ask for it? What was
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: the thinking here?
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: Ron Johnson was asked about it because he was one
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: of the senators and he was like, well, I didn't
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: really want it, but some other people wanted it. And
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: he wouldn't say who.
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: I want to be very to see which of any
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: of them actually sue.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: The whole it's it's so fucking crazy, though, when you
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: think about it from a again, just blatant corruption kind
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: of standpoint, is that if the FBI and the government,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: if they have a target of their investigation and they're
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: looking into that, and the target of the investigation is
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: making phone calls with a bunch of people, then they're
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: not going to pull up your phone records. They didn't
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: pull up their phone records and know what they were saying.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: They didn't know the contents of their phone calls. They
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: knew numbers that they were calling, Donald Trump, and potentially
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's co-conspirators in this. So they knew the numbers
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: that they were calling and the times that they called
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: those numbers, right? This is like standard investigative procedure. And
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: what these senators have decided is For anyone else in
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: America that this happens to, that's standard procedure within the
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: confines of the law. That's how investigations are conducted. But
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: for these eight senators, they get special treatment, such special
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: treatment that they get half a million dollars each potentially
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: if they sue over this. But everyone else in America
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: this happens to, including the members of the House, they
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: don't get that special treatment.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: Just wild.
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: It's just wildly stupid corruption.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: And I think that the only reason that Johnson and
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: them are willing to try to strip it out, the
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: most obvious is because it doesn't include them. But also,
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: this wasn't a Donald Trump thing, so they're not worried
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: about pissing off Donald Trump. It's just like a bunch
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: of fucking unnamed jackass Republican colleagues in the Senate. Pod
• 44:59
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• 46:28
  Speaker 1: or more. So neither the end of the shutdown nor
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: the latest Epstein news has taken the spotlight off Trump's
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: single biggest vulnerability with voters right now, the economy. The
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: White House is saying that the shutdown means they may
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: never release the October data on jobs and inflation. So
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: we don't exactly know how bad things are out there, but, um,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: President's gut tells him that life in America has never
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: been better. He's reportedly planning a series of speeches on
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: the economy in the coming weeks. Fan out across the country,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: take it to the people, make his case for all
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: his accomplishments. Definitely should do the trick, right? Always does
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: the trick. If you want a preview of how Trump's
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: version of Bidenomics is going to land, even with his friends,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: take a listen to the president's interview with Laura Ingraham
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: on Tuesday evening.
• 47:22
  Speaker 5: Is this a voter perception issue of the economy, or
• 47:26
  Speaker 5: is there more that needs to be done by Republicans
• 47:28
  Speaker 5: on Capitol Hill, or done in terms of policy?
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: More than anything else, it's a con job by the Democrats.
• 47:34
  Speaker 5: So are you saying that voters are misperceiving how they feel?
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: So when I took over, you remember?
• 47:41
  Speaker 5: Because you said Biden did that too, because he was
• 47:43
  Speaker 5: saying things were great.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: Let's say it's synonymous, Biden and Kamala.
• 47:47
  Speaker 5: Your housing director has proposed something that has enraged your
• 47:51
  Speaker 5: MAGA friends, which is this 50-year mortgage idea. Is that
• 47:55
  Speaker 5: really a good idea?
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: It's not even a big deal. I mean, you know,
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: you go from 40 to 50 years, and what it
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: means is you pay something less. From 30, some people
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: had a 40, and now they have a 50.
• 48:08
  Speaker 5: Are people saying they're anxious about the economy? Why are
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: they saying that?
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: I don't know that they are saying that. I think
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: polls are fake. We have the greatest economy we've ever had.
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: You can't imitate gold, real gold. There's no paint that
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: imitates gold.
• 48:20
  Speaker 5: So these aren't like from Home Depot or something?
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: No, this is not Home Depot stuff.
• 48:24
  Speaker 5: No, not stuff you buy?
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: This is not Home Depot.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: Could not be more perfect.
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: It's so good.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: Four bites at the apple he has. She asked him
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: four times about the economy, including one that's this fucking
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: random proposal that the great mortgage fraud investigator over at
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: Bill Pulte came up with about the 50-year mortgage. He
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: dismisses that idea. And then the other three answers, nothing
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: is wrong. Everything is great. Economy is wonderful. Laura Inger,
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: are you sure? What about people? It's all fake. Con job.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: Everything's great in the economy. By the way, have you
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: seen all the gold all over the Oval Office? It's
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: real gold that I'm putting all over the Oval Office
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: and everyone else is fine.
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: It really is like he wants to lose.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: But he can't lose. That's the thing. He's not running again.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: He's a lame duck and he's fine.
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: I mean, that, the lame duck thing is very important here,
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: but it's just, he's doing, if you were to just
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: write out, here's ways in which you could end your
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: presidency functionally, he's doing those things.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: And he's probably, he's probably a little surprised, like, and
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: yet here I am still.
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: To have, to, at a time of great economic uncertainty,
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: bulldoze the White House to build yourself a ballroom paid
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: for by America's wealthiest corporations with business before the government,
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: to throw the Gatsby party, to do this interview about
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: the economy and then give people a tour of your
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: gold-plated office. I mean, it's great. It's great stuff.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: I do think it's what you were saying earlier about,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: the bubble has become even smaller and he's just not
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: getting any bad news from anyone. He's got He's got
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: more sycophants in this administration than the last administration, which
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: is really saying something. So any kind of bad news
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: he hears, he's just dismissing as fake. He doesn't believe it.
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: He doesn't believe bad polls. He doesn't believe anything else.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: You'd think that maybe the results of the election might
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: jar him a little bit, but not so much, it
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: seems like. It did briefly.
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: I mean, he did seem quite rattled in the immediate aftermath.
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: He's like yelling. He does those weird events. He's yelling
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: at the Senate. He went to the House. They want
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: to shut down over. He's going to do affordability, but
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: he doesn't really have the stick-to-itiveness to get it done.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: We played the clip earlier of him not answering the
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: question about Epstein, and he was signing the bill to
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: reopen the federal government. He did a little topper when
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: he was there at the desk. He was reading something,
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: and it was all about affordability. You can tell that...
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: Susie Wiles or someone in the White House was like,
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: we got to be a little bit more on message
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: here with affordability. So he tried it out there. Didn't
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: seem happy. He's never happy when he's forced to be
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: on message. He was at an event today with Melania
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: about foster children. And he started doing a whole affordability
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: thing there, which again, heart wasn't in it. So they
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: are trying to get through to him that affordability matters,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: but he doesn't believe it. He doesn't believe it. I
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: think he genuinely believes things are fine.
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: Well, to say that affordability is an issue is to
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: admit that he has failed to lower costs and he
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: is incapable of admitting fault. He is psychologically, chemically, physically
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: capable of admitting fault. He's been that way his whole life.
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: That's not going to change now. That's why this affordability
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: push is doomed to fail.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: Of course, it's doomed to fail. But I do wonder
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: at some point, probably not till the summer or spring,
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: Republicans in these races in the Senate and the House
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: are going to start being like, hey, I'm losing. And
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: maybe you should take that affordability thing a little more seriously. Like,
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: do you think that happens or do you think they
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: just grin and bear it?
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: His solution to that is to try to change the subject.
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: This is just when everyone was saying.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: More troops in the streets, invade Venezuela.
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: Think about 2018, right? Where healthcare and taxes for the
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: rich were the number one issue. Instead of trying to
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: deal with that, what he did was he did the
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: caravan immigration at the end.
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe that's his strategy.
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: I don't think it's particularly good strategy. I don't think
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: it's going to work. It's really hard to make it
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: work when people are looking at their grocery bill every week.
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: But I think that's what he's most likely to try.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: As bad as those Trump answers were, the one that
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: the MAGA base is most pissed about came later in
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: the interview when Ingram asked the president about accepting Chinese
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: students at American universities and the H-1B visa program, which
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: his Silicon Valley buddies love. But the MAGA base hates
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: because it means immigrants coming to the country, whether they
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: are high skilled, low skilled, doesn't matter. Immigrants coming to
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: the country. MAGA base is upset about it. Here's what
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump had to say, though.
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: There's never going to be a country like what we
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: have right now. The Republicans have to talk about it.
• 53:07
  Speaker 5: And does that mean the H-1B visa thing will not
• 53:10
  Speaker 5: be a big priority for your administration? Because if you
• 53:13
  Speaker 5: want to raise wages for American workers, you can't flood
• 53:16
  Speaker 5: the country with tens of thousands or.
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: Hundreds of thousands of foreign workers.
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: I agree, but you also do have to bring in talent.
• 53:22
  Speaker 5: We have plenty of talented people here.
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: No, you don't.
• 53:24
  Speaker 5: We don't have talented people here.
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: No, you don't have... you don't have certain talents and
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: people have to learn.
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: A lot of.
• 53:30
  Speaker 5: MAGA folks are not thrilled about this idea of hundreds
• 53:34
  Speaker 5: of thousands of foreign students in the United States. You've
• 53:36
  Speaker 5: said as many as 600,000 Chinese students could come to
• 53:39
  Speaker 5: the United States. Why, sir, is that a pro-MAGA position
• 53:43
  Speaker 5: when so many American kids want to go to school
• 53:46
  Speaker 5: and there are places not for them and these universities
• 53:49
  Speaker 5: are getting rich off Chinese money?
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: If we were to cut that in half, which perhaps
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: makes some people happy, You would have half the colleges
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: in the United States go out of business.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: So what?
• 53:59
  Speaker 5: We're dependent on China to keep our university system going.
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: I actually think it's good to have outside countries. Don't forget,
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: MAGA was my idea. MAGA was nobody else's idea. I
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: know what MAGA wants better than anybody else. And MAGA
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: wants to see our country thrive.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: Didn't think the leopards would eat my face.
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: Oh, man. What a callback.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: There it is.
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: Here's my question.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: Do you think it's still true that nobody knows MAGA
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: better than Trump?
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: Absolutely not. You brought up the term about Trump being
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: a lame duck, and this is lame duck behavior.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: He has lost the touch. Because I found myself in
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: that exchange siding with Donald Trump over Laura Ingraham. And
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: he wasn't, because he's not used to answering that way,
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: he couldn't really handle it very well. But what he
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: was trying to say is, yeah.
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: We need H-1B visas because we have plenty of talented
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: people in this country, but for some jobs, in certain
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: high-tech jobs, you need people with skills, and people can't
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: fill the jobs, and so you bring in... So immigrants
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: come to this country, and they do those jobs like
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: they have for the last several hundred years in this country.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: That's what America is. It's a nation of immigrants. Same thing.
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: International students are partly what make our university system the
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: envy of the world, and so we like to have
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: international students in this country, and we don't want our colleges...
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: closing down, which Laura Ingraham thinks like doesn't care about
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: because now they've attacked colleges and universities for the last
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: 10 years in the Trump administration, tried to take down
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: institutions of higher education, tried to attack immigration. And Donald
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: Trump's sitting here trying to be like, well, yeah, well,
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: there's some immigration that's good. And Laura Ingraham and the
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: MAGA base that's really pissed about that answer are like
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: abso-fucking-lutely not.
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: I mean, this is the all-in podcast version of Trump.
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: Like we went on their podcast and said we were
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: going to staple a visa to the diploma and do
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: all these things and expand the H-1B visa program. And
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: then Steve Bannon went fucking ballistic over it and it
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: became this huge thing. What I think is going on
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: here is twofold. One, Trump has lost his fastball. He's
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: lost touch with the base. He doesn't have the pressure
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: of re-election over him to force him to make certain decisions.
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: And he now also thinks it's all about him. He
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: believes the talking points. He doesn't fully understand that there
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: was an entire political movement of which he is the
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: head of, but it's not all about him. And you
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: have the movement itself beginning to– the organizing principle of
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: a movement that includes people like Mike Johnson, evangelical Christian, anti-LGBTQ,
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: anti-gay marriage groups, and full-born American nationalists. The thing that
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: kept them all together was Trump. Trump is no longer
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: going to be on the ballot again. So now they
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: are beginning to jockey for what a post-Trump future looks like,
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: and that's going to lead to a lot of dissension,
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: a lot of mess. And Trump doesn't have what it
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: takes or even the interest to try to ride herd
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: over that process. He's too busy putting gold on the walls,
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: trying to make crypto dollars, and building ballrooms to actually
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: worry about coalition management. And J.D. Vance was to do that,
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: but he is an imperfect person to do that because
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: It's all self-interested for him, and people realize that. And
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: he is a point of leverage for various parts of
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: that movement to try to gain influence. So I think
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: it's going to be very, very– this is not about
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: just the Epstein-Faust. I think it's going to be very,
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: very messy in the MAGA movement in the coming years.
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's sort of a little bit like how
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: things ended up playing out in the Democratic primary in
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: 2019 when Obama as the organizing principal was no longer there.
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: What is the post-Trump portion of the– and ideologically, I
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: think the MAGA movement is more conflicted than the Obama
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: coalition was from 2009 to 2017. Yeah.
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think that for the last decade, this
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: has been a cult of personality. And we've talked a
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: million times how there's, there was no like sort of,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: there were few guiding philosophies of the MAGA movement other
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: than whatever Trump wanted and whatever Trump wanted is what's
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: good for Trump. And also whoever's like the last person
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: in his ear, right? You could imagine after that exchange
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: with Laura Ingram that Steve Bannon calls him up And
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: the next time we hear him talk about H-1B visas
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: and Chinese students, suddenly he sounds like Steve Bannon, right?
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: So Donald Trump, you can sort of play him either way.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: But I think what he doesn't quite realize, or maybe
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: he does and he just doesn't care, is how extreme
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: that faction of his movement is becoming. And that was
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: just scratching the surface with the H-1B visas and the
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: Chinese students. I mean, we've been talking about the Nick
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: Fuentes movement.
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a normal policy conversation. Right beneath that is
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: a debate within the party about the acceptability of Nazism.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, I talk about this in my interview with
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: James Tallarico, but Rod Dreher, who's like a longtime sort
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: of post-liberal conservative J.D. Vance friend, was with J.D. Vance
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: and Victor Orban over the weekend in D.C., And he
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: wrote this like long sub stack afterwards where he spent
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of time in D.C. talking to all these
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: young Gen Z Republicans who are working in government, working
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: in politics. And he's like as right wing as you
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: get this guy, J.D. Vance Powell. And he said that
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: he thinks 30 to 40 percent of these young Republicans
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: who work in politics right now are like Nick Fuentes
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: fans and that they are very anti-Semitic. and that they
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: are very open to fascism, and they don't really have
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: any actual policy demands. They just want to burn everything
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: down because they're also very nihilistic. And it's just like
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: this very dangerous movement afoot in MAGA right now. And
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: that is where the energy of the party is going
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: to be, or that's where the energy of the movement
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: is going to be. The question posed Trump is, in
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: which direction does the party itself go? And everything you
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: just said about like, J.D. Vance being an imperfect person
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: for this. Certainly, I don't think they're going to think
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: Marco Rubio is a true believer. But these are people
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: who look at the more diverse multiracial coalition that Trump
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: has built over time and wish that it didn't exist
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: and really do just want a coalition with white people, basically.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: And no immigrants, not just no immigrants, but like native
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: born white Americans. That's that's this faction of the movement. And,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: you know, I think people who probably ran Trump's campaign
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: know that the only the only way you have a
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: Republican majority in the future is if you continue to
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: make these gains with non-college working class black and Latino Americans.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: And if you don't have that, then you're not going
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: to be able to win a majority. But the sort
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: of the the Nick Fuentes faction doesn't really give a
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: shit about that. It's going to be a real problem.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: One other MAGA star who the base is fed up
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: with right now for different reasons, FBI Director Kash Patel,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: who it turns out has been spending tens of millions
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: of taxpayer dollars taking the FBI jet to places like Scotland, Nashville,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: where his country singer girlfriend lives, to his parents' house
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: in Florida, and during the government shutdown, to a hunting
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: lodge in Texas called, wait for it, The Boondoggle Ranch.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: You just can't make it up.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: Can't make it up. This is all according to records
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, which published quite a
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: story headlined, Kash Patel's effin' wild ride as FBI director.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: With the subhead, in just one week in October, he
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: ticked off his bosses with premature comments about a terror
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: investigation and squeezed in a trip to the Boondoggle Ranch
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: on the Bureau jet. Where would you like to begin, Dan?
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: The botched terror investigation or taking the FBI jet to
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: a wrestling match to watch his girlfriend sing the national anthem,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: the amazingly named Boondoggle Ranch. I'll let you go here.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: I think I'll start with the botched terror investigation where
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: he woke up one morning, tweeted about the arrests, except
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: local law enforcement did not know. The investigation wasn't done yet,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: and two of the terrorist associates got wind and then
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: attempted to flee the country.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a big no-no, and not the first time
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: that he's been sort of live-tweeting investigations.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: And live-tweeting sort of inaccurate facts about ongoing investigations. He
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: did this shortly after Charlie Kirk's assassination as well. So, yeah,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: and then people are not happy. People are not happy
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: with the FBI said, oh, he's only taken. So just
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: so people know, by law, the FBI director, when they
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: take personal trips, still has to take the private plane.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: the government has for the FBI director to have access
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: to secure communications. And if you take it for personal reasons,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: then you have to reimburse the government the cost of
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: a commercial flight, not necessarily a private jet flight, which
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: is like $ 20, 000 at least if you're flying all the
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: places that cash is flying. And then the FBI in
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: response to this story is like, he's only taken 12
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: personal trips this year. And I'm like 12 personal trips.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: He's the FBI director. It's not the, the year isn't
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: even done yet.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: We're in the 11th month. He didn't start in that
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: office until like February, maybe March. So he's averaging like
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: three trips a month here.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: I haven't taken 12 personal trips last year and I'm
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: not the FBI director. I'm just a podcaster. I'd like
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: to take some more personal trips.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: You know what a podcaster is a future FBI director.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: That's true.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: So maybe I can finally get some R and R
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: and take a private jet places once I'm in a,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: once I'm in the government. It's just fucking wild. And
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: then he fired this guy on Halloween, an FBI agent,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: Stephen Palmer. He's a 27-year agent who ran the FBI's
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: Critical Incident Response Group, which is the unit that responds
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: to high-risk situations like child abductions and hostages. So you might,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: why is he firing this guy? Also oversees the agency's
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: use of its government planes. And Palmer tried to explain
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: to Patel's staff that the more he used the plane
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: for personal travel, the less it could be used for
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: other bureau operations. And then he got fired. The FBI says,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with that, though. Nothing to do with that.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: I've got a lot of questions there. It seems like
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: the guy in charge of responses to child abductions shouldn't
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: also be managing the private plane logs.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: Weird overlap. Weird overlap, yeah.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like you could find someone else for
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: that task. But there is something gratifying about this, which
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: is a relatively dim... thoroughly unqualified person was put into
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: a position of great power and influence and has done
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: just as poorly as you would have expected. Like I said,
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: like it's just helpful to know that that's how it goes.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: Not even, not even relatively dim. I think I would
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: take issue with the relatively just dim, just pretty dim.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: You want to go with dim? I'm okay with that.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: People are very mad about the, the girlfriend, uh, Alexis Wilkins. Um,
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: And A, because Kash Patel keeps flying to Nashville where
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: she lives, now flying to State College, Pennsylvania for a
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: wrestling match where she's singing the national anthem. He got
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: very mad about this criticism. And he said that she's
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: not just a country singer. He was on Twitter saying
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: that she's a country music sensation who has done more
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: for this nation than most will in 10 lifetimes.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: 10 lifetimes.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: Thrilled. Also, she's suing everyone now because- Yeah, five million bucks,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: I think. Well, all these, back to what we were
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: talking about, all the Groypers and the Fuentes fans and
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: all these right-wing racist influencers, anti-Semitic, they think that she's
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: an Israeli spy, that she was somehow working with Epstein,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: and Epstein was working with the Mossad too, and that
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: this is a honeypot trap. And all this, like, just
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: complete bullshit conspiracy. Like, even for them, a crazy fucking conspiracy.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: But she just keeps suing them all for defamation. And there's, like,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: this one guy she's suing who didn't even make a
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: claim that she's a Mossad agent or whatever, but just
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: sort of, like, put up a picture of her in
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: cash with a honeypot or something. I don't fucking know. But, like,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: then Will Summer wrote all about this ball work. You
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: gotta go check it out.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: It's so good.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: It's an amazing piece. But then, like, Because she's suing
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: him and the lawyer she's using is Kash Patel's lawyer,
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: so they think he's behind all the lawsuits. Now all
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: the right is defending him, this right-wing influencer, because he's
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: getting sued by Alexis Wilkins. So he's got the base
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: matting him over his girlfriend. Everyone else is wondering why
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: he's spending $ 20, 000 a pop flying all over the country
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: for personal reasons, tweeting out fucking investigations and screwing them
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: up for the FBI. What the fuck?
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: He's not good at his job. It's pretty clear.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: Seems like one that at some point Donald Trump might
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: be like, eh, I don't know if I need this.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: Once again, require him to admit fault.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he would have to care about anything that's going on, huh? Well,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: that's all we got for now. When we come back,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: you'll hear my conversation with James Tallarico about the increasingly
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: competitive primary for the U.S. Senate in Texas. Two quick
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: things before we get to that. Message box. We got
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: another message box pitch right here. Dan?
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 3: Here, I'm... We encourage everyone to sign up. Here's what
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: we've been covering on MessageBox in the last couple of
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: weeks here. We have written about how Donald Trump is
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: a lame duck and what that means politically. We got
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: near instant analysis of the 2025 elections, including a breakdown
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: of exit poll data after the Democrats caved. Just talk
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: about why that happened, how it happened, and where we
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: go from there. The argument for MessageBox is if you
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: want to get real-time analysis of what is happening, it
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: offers context, not hot takes. hopefully not clickbait, although I
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: do like it when you click, then that's what MessageBox
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: is for. It is to dig deep into the issues
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: that are happening, provide context about why it's happening, and
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: talk about where we all can go from here, whether
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: you're an elected official, an activist, someone who's just worried
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 3: about democracy. And because, like Donald Trump, I too have
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: an affordability push, if you go to the website that
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: kills me, crooked.com slash yeswedan, and you sign up there,
• 1:08:14
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• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: Amazing.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: Support my affordability push. That's what I would say.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: Look, I do not miss a message box. It's like
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: the first thing I read every morning that there's a
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: message box out. So I would read it every morning
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: if you wrote one every day. But I wouldn't want
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: you to do that because you have some pods to
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: do as well.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: There's so much content. I got Polar Coasters. I got
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: Pod Save America's message box.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: You're doing a lot. Also, new merch in the Crooked store,
• 1:08:43
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• 1:08:45
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• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: or we didn't have your size there. Head to store.crooked.com
• 1:08:53
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• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: James Tallarico. Patsy of America is brought to you by ZipRecruiter.
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  Speaker 1: James Tallarico, welcome. Thanks for having me. Good to be
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: with you in person.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 4: It's so nice to meet you.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: Uh, you too. You too. I've heard so much about you.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: I've been following you for a long time now. So
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: same start with some news of the day. You said
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: the deal to end the government shutdown, um, wasn't a compromise.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: It was surrender. I certainly wasn't a fan either, but
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: I guess my question is if you were in the Senate,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: like how much longer would you have held out knowing
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: that Donald Trump clearly has a higher tolerance for inflicting
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: cruelty on people, um, Well.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 4: I'm a proud Texas Democrat, but I already have a
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 4: religion and I already have a sports team. So I
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 4: have no problem sharing hard truths about our party. And
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 4: as a Texas Democrat, I'm always working with a losing hand.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 4: You know, I'm in a Republican dominated legislature and my
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 4: job tends to be losing in the best way possible.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: But national Democrats in this situation had a lot of
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 4: leverage to fight for the people of this country. And
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 4: I felt that they gave up that leverage far too easily. And,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 4: you know, Donald Trump certainly has a higher tolerance for
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 4: inflicting pain on people. I agree, but he's also very
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: sensitive to other people's opinions about him. We know that's
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 4: true about Donald Trump. And we saw that he had
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 4: hit a record low in his approval ratings because of
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 4: his actions in this government shutdown, literally taking food out
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 4: of the mouths of hungry children to fund tax breaks
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 4: for his billionaire donors. And so the fact that national
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 4: Democrats let him off the hook and didn't get anything
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 4: in return, to me, just feels like a political and
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 4: legislative malpractice.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: Do you think maybe they should have held out for
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: like another couple of weeks, another month?
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 4: I think we should have held out till we got
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 4: what we wanted, which was not only reinstating the snap
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: cuts and making sure that hungry kids and and working
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 4: parents had enough to eat, but also making sure that
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 4: healthcare premiums weren't going to skyrocket for millions of Texans
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 4: and millions of Americans. That's our job as Democrats is
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 4: to fight for working people. And if we're not doing that,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 4: then we shouldn't wonder why voters don't trust us at
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 4: the ballot box. So, you know, I, I very much
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 4: look at these positions as jobs or being hired to,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 4: to be the people's voice and the people's champion in
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 4: the halls of power. And if we're not doing that,
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 4: then we should find work elsewhere.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: So a growing number of House Democrats have called on
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer to step down as leader. A number of
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: your fellow Democratic Senate candidates have said they won't support
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: Schumer as leader if they win. Would you?
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 4: I think this problem is a lot bigger than Chuck Schumer.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 4: I think it's a lot bigger than any one senator.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 4: And if we want to just try to put the
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 4: blame all on one person, I think we're missing the
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 4: bigger picture, which is that our party has forgotten how
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 4: to fight at the national level. I do think that
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 4: national Democrats could learn a thing or two from red
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 4: state Democrats, because we have to figure out how to
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 4: use every tool in our toolbox to fight for our people,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 4: to fight for our values. And we develop a thick
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 4: skin and we develop certain muscles in the halls of power.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 4: I think you're going to see in 2026, red state Democrats,
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 4: Texas Democrats, starting to step up into these leadership positions
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 4: and hopefully steering our party in a direction where we
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 4: can fight effectively and actually win for working people all
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 4: over this country. And I honestly think that's the discussion
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 4: we need to be having. There's a temptation to find
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 4: one person and say, that's the problem. Let's get rid
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 4: of that. That senator or that minority leader and all
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 4: of this will be solved. I don't think that's true.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 4: And I do think we've got to have a conversation
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 4: about how the party as a whole at the national
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 4: level has to change if we're going to transform this
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 4: country so it works for regular people again.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: One thing that every Democrat, even some Republicans, even some
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: people in the White House seem to agree on coming
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: out of last week's election is that life in America
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: isn't affordable and the government needs to do something about it.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: What ideas do you have on this issue that you'd
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: want to fight for if you get to Washington? Yeah,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: I do agree.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 4: That was the big lesson across all these different races,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 4: all these different kinds of candidates too. It's that affordability is...
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 4: the primary pain point for Americans and for Texans. So
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 4: I've served for four terms in the state legislature. I've
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 4: actually passed a lot of bills as a Democrat in
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 4: a Republican-dominated legislature. And a lot of those bills have
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 4: been focused on bringing down costs. Obviously, grocery store prices
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 4: are a real pain point for people, but I don't
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 4: think we're talking enough about the structural aspects of our
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 4: economy that prevent working class, middle class people from getting ahead.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 4: So the cost of housing, the cost of healthcare, the
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 4: cost of childcare. In Texas, I don't know what it
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 4: is in the rest of the country, but in Texas,
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: childcare is now more expensive than college. So for young
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 4: working families with young kids, this is pricing them out
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 4: of the American dream. And so I've passed bills to
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 4: bring down costs in all of those areas. I want
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 4: to do that at the federal level. There's even more
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 4: that we could do in Washington to start to restructure
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 4: the economy so that working people, middle-class people can finally
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 4: build a life, build wealth for themselves and their families.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: Housing seems like one of the biggest costs that has
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: been a pain point for people now for almost a decade,
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: whether you're not able to buy a home, whether you
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: can't afford your rent, young people thinking they're never gonna
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: be able to buy a home.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 4: Right, and they're not wrong.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 4: I mean, I saw a stat that 90% of baby
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 4: boomers went on to earn more money than their parents.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 4: For millennials like me, it's 50%. It's even lower for
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 4: Gen Z. And owning your first home is such a
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 4: key part of that dream. And there's kind of a
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 4: sequence because if you can't buy a house, then it's
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 4: hard to start a family, hard to have kids, hard
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 4: to get rooted in a community, hard to build wealth.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 4: So these things build on each other. And if we're
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 4: robbing young people from the ability to afford their first home,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 4: you're really locking them out of the American dream. And
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 4: I don't think older generations understand the damage and the
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 4: harm that that's doing to young people all over this country.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: What have you guys been doing in Texas about that?
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: Because I do know that it's easier to build homes
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: in Texas than it is at least here in California. Yeah. Well,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: a few things.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: I actually just passed a bill a few months ago
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 4: in the Texas legislature to allow for single-stair housing. This
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 4: is kind of wonky, but this is a form of housing,
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 4: many times condos, that's very popular in other countries. But
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 4: for some reason, we have this outdated building code in
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 4: Texas and a lot of other states that that doesn't
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 4: allow for these smaller housing units with just one staircase.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 4: Usually the blame is put on fire safety, but all
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 4: these other countries have figured out how to keep people
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 4: safe and also build these smaller units. And so we
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 4: just repealed that part of the code. And Democrats were
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 4: excited because it was going to allow for more young
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 4: people to afford a home, either whether they're renting or
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 4: whether they're buying a condo. And then Republicans loved it
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 4: because we were repealing regulations. And so it was kind
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 4: of this match made in heaven where we had bipartisan
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 4: buy-in on a housing bill in Texas. And then in
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 4: the Austin area, in Central Texas, we went through some
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 4: dramatic zoning reform, which makes it easier to build housing
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 4: in the urban core. And Austin is one of the
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 4: few metro areas in the whole country that's seen rents
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 4: decline in recent months. And so some of these solutions
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 4: are right there in front of us. It's just going
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 4: to require building the political will to actually get them done.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: So being from Texas, spending a lot of time in
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: South Texas, you've seen both the successes and failures of
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: our immigration system up close, of the many injustices committed
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: by the Trump administration. What has been most horrifying and
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: enraging to me are the mass detentions and deportations and
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: outright violence targeted at people who merely look like they
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: might be immigrants or are peacefully protesting or are just bystanders.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: I also think that the one reason Trump was put
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: in a position to do this is because of our
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: collective failure as a country and as a party over
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: decades to actually fix our immigration system. What did that
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: failure look like to you in Texas during the Biden years?
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: And if you become a senator who's in a position
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: to do something about it, what would you do?
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 4: So I'm an eighth generation Texan. My family's been in
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 4: the state since it was Mexico. And fact, my family's
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 4: from South Texas. My mom grew up in Laredo right
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 4: there on the Texas-Mexico border. I feel like Texans understand
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 4: immigration better than other folks across the country, both its
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 4: challenges and its benefits. What I've said is that our
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 4: southern border should be like our front porch. There should
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 4: be a giant welcome mat out front and there should
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 4: be a lock on the door. You can do both
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 4: of those things at the same time. Most people in
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 4: this country, most people in Texas are pro-immigrant and pro-security,
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 4: but they really feel like they've been failed by both
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 4: parties because they've had one party, particularly in the Biden era,
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 4: that was pro-immigrant and seemed to not be very concerned
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 4: about security and seemed to have a high tolerance for chaos.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 4: I remember talking to my colleagues who served border communities,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 4: and they were talking about Just the incredible toll that
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 4: that policy on our southern border was taking on people
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 4: in South Texas and all along the Texas-Mexico border. And
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 4: it was unsafe, both for native-born Americans, but also for
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 4: migrants and for immigrants. People also see from the Republican Party,
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 4: folks who seem to be pro-security, but very anti-immigrant, right?
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump is literally sending masked men in unmarked vehicles
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 4: to kidnap people off our streets, tearing parents from their children.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 4: waiting in school pickup lines, lurking in hospital waiting rooms.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 4: I mean, so what I think what we need is
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 4: finally a political party, and I hope it's ours, that
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 4: can both welcome immigrants who are coming here to contribute,
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 4: to live the American dream, to make us richer and stronger,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 4: and also keep folks out who mean to do us
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 4: harm and ensure that there is an orderly process I
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 4: really believe the Democratic Party should be the anti-chaos party.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 4: We should be the ones trying to make government work
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 4: for people. And immigration is a classic example where we
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 4: have failed as a party. And if we hope to
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 4: earn people's trust and their respect going forward, we've got
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 4: to rethink how we approach this issue.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: So you've become something of a national figure because you've
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: impressed a lot of people outside of Texas, a lot
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: of Democrats, based on your ability to speak about faith
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: and how it informs your politics. You went on Joe Rogan.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: something that not many Democrats have done. He tells you
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: to run for president. Barack Obama says he's impressed with you.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: You got a New York Times headline asking if you're
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: the savior the Democrats have been waiting for. Meanwhile, you're
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: just trying to win a Senate primary in Texas. Does
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: all that national attention make it easier, harder? Like, how
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: are you processing it all?
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 4: Well, I already have a savior. And I think this
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 4: is a problem in our politics where we hope that
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 4: one candidate or one politician is going to fix all
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 4: of our problems. And it's, and it's a terrible way
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 4: to approach politics. One, because it robs you of agency, right?
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 4: If you can put all your hopes and dreams into
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 4: one person, then you don't have to do much. When
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 4: in reality, I am one small part of a solution,
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 4: but it's going to take all of us, whether we
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 4: are candidates, whether we're podcasters, whether we are ordinary citizens,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 4: it's going to take all of us transforming this broken
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 4: political system and making it work for all of us again. Uh, and, but,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 4: but I will say that I'm thankful we've got folks
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 4: interested in Texas. because Texas, I think, will flip in
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 4: this upcoming election. And once we do that, both with
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 4: the help of everyone in Texas and our honorary Texans
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 4: in other states, it will fundamentally change the politics of
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 4: this country forever. And so I think this is the
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 4: most high stakes Senate race in the country. Not only
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 4: does it hold the key for winning a Senate majority,
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 4: but it does hold the key, I think, for saving
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 4: this American experiment. And And if we can figure out
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 4: how to win in Texas, it'll mean that the Democratic
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 4: Party has figured out how to win America. And I
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 4: am so thankful and so proud to be part of
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 4: that effort. And I'm really excited that people around the
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 4: country want to help.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think a lot of people had hope for Texas.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: And then over the last couple cycles, it seemed like
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: it was slipping away. I think, look, people don't quite
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: get the national election, like a presidential election. The electorate's
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: different than a midterm election. Beto came, what, within like
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: two and a half points, a couple hundred thousand votes.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: That's right. How are you looking at the strategy? I
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: know you're in a primary right now, but everyone in
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: Texas right now, obviously, you know, it's like I said,
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: it's become tougher in presidential elections the last couple cycles.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: But how are you looking at the state strategically on
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: how to flip it this time around?
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think people are sleeping on Texas. I really do.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 4: When you zoom out over the last 15 years, competitive
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 4: statewide elections have gotten more competitive. I remember when I
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 4: was growing up in Texas, Republicans would win statewide elections
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 4: by 25, 30 points. Now they consistently win by single digits.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 4: You mentioned Beto O'Rourke coming within two and a half
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 4: points in the last Trump midterm. We're about to have
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 4: the second Trump midterm. Feels like we've been in the Trump.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: Era forever, right? Forever, my whole life.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 4: But this is the only, this is only the second
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 4: Trump midterm we've ever had. People also forget that in
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 4: the next election in 2020, Joe Biden only lost Texas
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 4: by five points. It feels like we've memory hold that stat.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 4: If- Republicans were five points away from winning California. They
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 4: would break the bank, right? They would go all in, right?
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 4: They have that killer instinct that the Democratic Party doesn't
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 4: always have. But I think it's going to require a
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 4: couple things to win in 2026 in Texas. It's going
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 4: to require a candidate who can inspire and energize people.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 4: That's what I'm trying to do all over the state.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 4: But it's also going to require a grassroots army to
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 4: meet voters where they're at, whether it's on their phones
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 4: or at their doors or on the phone or writing postcards.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 4: It's going to take thousands of Texans stepping up and
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 4: doing their part to win the state and engaging with
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 4: their neighbors who aren't with us yet, which is not.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: Always easy to do.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 4: But I am so excited that we've already had 8,000
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 4: Texans go to our website and sign up to volunteer.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: This is without us asking.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 4: These are just folks who are so fired up about
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 4: winning Texas that they are taking the initiative to sign
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 4: up to knock doors and make phone calls and write postcards.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 4: And then some of them have already started their own
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 4: volunteer meetups all over the state. In fact, something I'm
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 4: really proud of is during this snap crisis where we
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 4: have families in Texas going hungry, our volunteer teams have
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 4: taken it upon themselves to go to food banks all
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 4: over the state. And they're organizing not just to win
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 4: an election, but to serve people, which is, I mean,
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 4: we forget that's what politics is supposed to be about.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 4: It's supposed to be about helping others and loving our neighbors.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 4: And I'm so thankful that we are building that team together.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 4: And I will just say, anybody who's listening, if they
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 4: want to join, they can sign up at jamestallarico.com and
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 4: join this volunteer army, because it's going to take all
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 4: of us to pull off this feat of winning Texas.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: So I work for someone whose career in national politics
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: began in a similar way, suddenly get like launched out
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: of a rocket there, a national scene. And the strategy
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: that opponents used against Obama, once he was put on
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: a pedestal, was to knock him off the pedestal, saying
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: he's not what you think he is. You're already getting
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: some of this. There was an Axios story this week
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: about you following back some women who followed on Instagram
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: and happened to be OnlyFans models and escorts, even though
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't really know that from their accounts. My reaction was,
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: so who cares? Like, what's wrong with that? Of course,
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: the intended suggestion is that this is somehow inconsistent with
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: your Christian faith. From a campaign perspective, How have you
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: thought about handling this and just this kind of stuff
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: that's certainly coming?
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 4: Well, I very much believe in fighting back when you
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 4: feel like your neighbors are under attack. And we welcome
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 4: the support of all Texans, regardless of how they make
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 4: their money. And I know what these women did on
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 4: their own time, but I'm not going to judge them
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 4: for it. I'm also not going to participate in an
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 4: effort to smear them for clickbait. And that's exactly the
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 4: kind of senator I'm going to be if I'm elected.
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 4: And I will just tell you, I feel like Texans
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 4: are not interested in this kind of media junk. They
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 4: want a senator who's going to bring down costs, who's
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 4: going to clean up government, who's going to take on
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 4: this broken political system. And I think they're going to
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 4: see right through these media games.
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: And I didn't realize that your campaign was saying this,
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: that it's like you go on Joe Rogan, suddenly a
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: whole bunch of new people know who you are. Yeah.
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: They then follow you on Instagram. Yeah. You're a nice person.
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: You follow them back and say, thanks.
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 4: Well, it's not even that not being a nice person.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 4: It's how new media works.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, exactly. You engage.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 4: Well, we, again, as a state rep in Texas, we
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 4: have built one of the largest Instagram followings of any
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 4: national Democrat. And we've done that by collaborating with big
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 4: accounts and working with them to get our message out.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 4: And so we follow back all kinds of people. I mean,
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 4: actors and musicians and athletes. I even follow back like
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 4: a really popular bulldog, which I don't know much about,
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 4: but you know what? They share our content and they're
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 4: helping to get the message out. So I think this
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 4: is also an example of how legacy media is just
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 4: kind of clueless on what new media looks like and
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 4: what it takes to win in this current environment.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: So you've talked about people wanting politics of love.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: You've also talked about a few times in this conversation,
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: people wanting Democrats to fight.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: What does fighting with love look like and sound like?
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I feel like people think that these are two
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 4: different things. I was born to a single mom who
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 4: was working at a hotel in Austin. She met my
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 4: birth father, a 21-year-old high school dropout who had a
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 4: drinking problem. And that drinking problem sometimes led to violence.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 4: And one night he became abusive again. But that night,
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 4: my mother's love rose to meet it. And she packed
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 4: all our stuff into her little Ford Escort. She drove
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 4: me to the hotel where she worked. She begged the
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 4: manager to let us stay in one of the rooms
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 4: until we found this little apartment in East Austin. And
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 4: there wasn't room for a nursery, so I slept in
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 4: a crib in her closet. And she was so proud
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 4: of that closet. She decorated it with toys and pictures.
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 4: No one was going to tell her it wasn't a nursery.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 4: And to me, that's what love looks like. It is
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 4: sometimes confrontational. It is sometimes aggressive. It does whatever it
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 4: takes to stand up for the vulnerable. And so this
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 4: idea that love is passive or love is weak or
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 4: love is neutral doesn't align with what I've seen in
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 4: my own life. It also doesn't align with what my
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 4: faith teaches me. I started off this campaign, um, with
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 4: the Bible story of Jesus flipping over the tables in
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 4: the temple. Because we oftentimes, whether you're Christian or not,
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 4: or whether you're religious or not, we all think of
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 4: Jesus as this very gentle, nice guy, right? Which he
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 4: certainly was. But when his neighbors were under attack, when
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 4: there were powerful people picking on vulnerable people, he didn't
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 4: stay in his room and pray. He walked into the
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 4: seat of power and he flipped over the tables of injustice.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 4: To me, I started off the campaign with that story
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 4: because it exemplifies what love demands of us in these moments.
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 4: And it doesn't demand passivity. It demands action. It demands
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 4: fighting back. And you can do that without dehumanizing your opponents.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 4: That is the critical line you can't cross over. In
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 4: my faith, we're called to.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: Love our enemies.
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 4: One, that acknowledges that you're gonna have enemies, right? If
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 4: you speak truth to power, if you stand up for
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 4: vulnerable people, you're gonna run into opposition. You're gonna run
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 4: into opponents. But we're also called to love those opponents too,
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 4: which is so hard to do. Again, as a Democrat
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 4: in the Texas legislature, I struggle with this. I'm not
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 4: saying it's easy. But if we can get to that
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 4: point where we're not just fighting for our neighbors, we're
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 4: also fighting for our enemies, I think that's when you
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 4: see true transformation.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: It's what I try to do.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 4: And it's what I want this campaign to be about too,
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 4: is fighting back, but rooting that in a deep love
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 4: for our neighbors, for our communities, and also for our
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 4: enemies too.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: James, thanks for, uh, thanks for sitting down with me and, uh,
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: good luck out there. It's exciting. It's exciting to hear
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: what you're doing.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 4: I appreciate you.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: Thanks. That's our show for today. Thanks to James Tallarico
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: for coming on a longer, more extended interview with James
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: Tallarico you can find on offline Saturday. So I did.
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 3: Excellent podcast, an excellent podcast, a must listen.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah. We say he came into studio. We
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: did a We did a little bit for PSA and
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: then we did a longer interview for Offline and talked
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: about his faith, talked about social media, algorithms, companies. We
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: did all. We covered the whole landscape. So check it out.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: Love it. And Tommy and I will be back with
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: a new show on Tuesday. But before then, we're going
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: to have some more cuts from CrookedCon coming your way
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: on Sunday. Dan's great panel on what the polling is
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: telling us about next year's races. I went myself in person.
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: It was the one panel I saw that I didn't
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: moderate myself. Loved it. Great panel.
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 3: Great group of guests for this panel.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: And you'll hear, well, also on that episode, you'll hear
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: Alex Wagner's conversation with Governor Andy Beshear. So lots more
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: CricketCon content coming out on your feed. Check it out.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: Everyone have a great weekend.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 2: Bye, everyone.
• 1:31:56
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  Speaker 1: America is a Krigin Media production. Our producers are David Toledo,
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: Emma Illich-Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari.
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• 1:32:22
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