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Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
Speaker 2: I'm Jon Levitt.
Speaker 3: Tommy Vitor.
Speaker 1: On today's show, the mission in Iran is so accomplished
Speaker 1: that we're back to bombing. We'll talk about Trump's response
Speaker 1: and how he and Pete Hegseth are losing support for
Speaker 1: their war from the most senior U.S. military officials, which
Speaker 1: may put a damper on Pete's potential presidential campaign. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about that, too. We'll also cover the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: allowing Trump to build his ballroom. Trump calling Americans opposed
Speaker 1: to building data centers, quote, backwards and poor. And some
Speaker 1: of the other shit sandwiches Trump is forcing Republican candidates
Speaker 1: to eat before November. Speaking of pieces of shit, Trump
Speaker 1: advisor Laura Loomer said some disgustingly racist things about black
Speaker 1: women that no Republican has denounced as of yet. And
Speaker 1: she's also taking credit for the deportation of right-wing creep
Speaker 1: Milo Yiannopoulos. Tough to pick a side on that one.
Speaker 3: There is no side.
Speaker 1: Then Tommy celebrates his birthday by sitting down with Nevada
Speaker 1: Attorney General Aaron Ford, the Dem nominee for governor in
Speaker 1: a critical state.
Speaker 4: Oh, yes, it's your birthday.
Speaker 3: Happy birthday, Tommy.
Speaker 4: Thank you, guys.
Speaker 3: I got us a contact for future Vegas trips.
Speaker 2: Oh, great.
Speaker 3: So, you know, like if we get in trouble, we
Speaker 3: can call.
Speaker 5: Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1: That is, speaking of things that are critical.
Speaker 2: If you can get arrested for... losing money and then
Speaker 2: going to bed at 11.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Getting thrown out of Cirque du Soleil. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay. Well, quick announcement. Speaking of trips, we're heading to
Speaker 1: Austin later this month for a live show at the
Speaker 1: Texas Tribune Festival on Friday, September 25th. It says here
Speaker 1: in the script, it's going to be a great time.
Speaker 4: Oh, I think that's right.
Speaker 2: That's one less thing to worry about.
Speaker 1: Thanks for writing that out. All four of us, plus
Speaker 1: special guest, Bobby Polito, the Democratic nominee in Texas 15,
Speaker 1: one of our most important pickup opportunities in the House.
Speaker 1: We might even get him to sing, which would be
Speaker 1: really cool. Grab your tickets to the festival and join us.
Speaker 1: We posted the link on our site at cricket.com slash events.
Speaker 1: Can't wait to see you in Austin. That's cricket.com slash events.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the news. It was just
Speaker 1: five days ago that the president declared mission accomplished in
Speaker 1: Iran and by posting what appeared to be an AI-generated
Speaker 1: image of himself, George W. Bush, and the Ayatollah. But
Speaker 1: by Sunday night, the missiles were flying once again. The
Speaker 1: IRGC were about to fire mine-laying rockets over the Strait
Speaker 1: of Hormuz from nearby Larik Island. The U.S. military launched
Speaker 1: airstrikes to stop them, and then Iran retaliated by launching
Speaker 1: ballistic missiles at U.S. bases in Jordan, all of which
Speaker 1: were intercepted. Our commander-in-chief responded in between rounds of golf
Speaker 1: over the weekend by deploying a full arsenal of AI
Speaker 1: slop about his trade war with Canada and his hot
Speaker 1: war with Iran.
Speaker 4: What the fuck?
Speaker 3: Okay, so— The Ducks were Canadian.
Speaker 1: They're not on our team. For those of you just listening.
Speaker 3: Just a Karate Geese.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
Speaker 3: Sorry, Canadian Geese. We like to be accurate.
Speaker 1: You're right.
Speaker 4: You're right. Canadian Geese.
Speaker 3: Get the facts right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so for those of you just listening, those were
Speaker 1: videos of Trump replacing a Lake Ontario sign with a
Speaker 1: Lake America sign while dancing to YMCA, an army of
Speaker 1: Canada geese with M16s wearing Trump wigs patrolling Lake Ontario—
Speaker 1: And a series of imaginary airstrikes destroying an imaginary Karg Island,
Speaker 1: which Trump said was, quote, blown to smithereens in the caption,
Speaker 1: despite no airstrikes occurring there back here in the real world.
Speaker 1: So according to Axios, there's apparently a real plan in
Speaker 1: the works to potentially launch limited strikes in the Strait
Speaker 1: of Hormuz to stop Iranian attacks on oil tankers, Navy
Speaker 1: ships and U.S. fighter jets. But that can't be true.
Speaker 1: Because Trump and the extended MAGAverse has assured us time
Speaker 1: and time again that the straight is open. So what
Speaker 1: do you think is going on?
Speaker 3: That's not true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe it's not true.
Speaker 3: That's not true.
Speaker 2: You know what I hadn't realized?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 2: That the— and I only realized after Trump posted that image
Speaker 2: of him saying he was better at accomplishing missions than
Speaker 2: George W. Bush, which is that mission accomplished took place
Speaker 2: on the Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 6: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2: Which is the ship that has been out for, was
Speaker 2: out for 250 days for what was supposed to be
Speaker 2: a four-hour tour. Oh, no, that's, that's the, that's Gilligan's Island.
Speaker 2: Four to six weeks. But so, I just thought, oh.
Speaker 1: It's a three-hour tour.
Speaker 3: Three-hour tour.
Speaker 4: Really?
Speaker 1: Three-hour tour.
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. Well, I guess that's right. You'll extend it
Speaker 3: if you want. Anyway, I just thought that was interesting.
Speaker 3: The Axios story said that Trump and his team are
Speaker 3: considering periodic airstrikes against Iran to keep their military capabilities
Speaker 3: in check and ensure the flow of commerce. through the
Speaker 3: Strait of Hormuz in perpetuity, which sounds like a war
Speaker 3: that would need to go on forever.
Speaker 2: They called it- Just mowing the grass. Yeah, they called
Speaker 2: it mowing the grass. It's something that you famously always
Speaker 2: have to do forever.
Speaker 3: It never stops being needed. It's also what the Israelis
Speaker 3: called their strategy to keep Hamas in check in Gaza,
Speaker 3: and look how well that went.
Speaker 1: That Axios story also came like, I don't know, 24,
Speaker 1: 48 hours after an Axios story by Barak Ravid. um,
Speaker 1: that basically has us officials and Axios saying that, uh,
Speaker 1: we have made all this progress on, uh, keeping the
Speaker 1: straight open or reopening the straight. Did you see that?
Speaker 1: It was like, so he, so Trump actually got on
Speaker 1: the phone with him. He got Trump on the phone. Wow. Um,
Speaker 1: and said to him, that sucker is open. And then, uh,
Speaker 1: Axios story says over the past two months, us officials
Speaker 1: say the American military has steadily eroded Iran's leverage over
Speaker 1: the crucial waterway. Um, Although then it says the ultimate
Speaker 1: goal is to reach 60% to 70% of pre-war oil exports.
Speaker 3: Well, that's a soft bigotry of low expectations.
Speaker 2: But it's also like, yeah, it's open and there's going
Speaker 2: to be periodic bombing over the strait. And going through
Speaker 2: it will be like squid game for oil tankers forever
Speaker 2: in perpetuity. I mean, not exactly the best assignment. You're
Speaker 2: not thrilled to be taking— a trip through the Strait
Speaker 2: of Hormuz.
Speaker 3: And it requires a giant deployment of U.S. troops forever.
Speaker 3: I mean, they've definitely like, it's not at zero like
Speaker 3: it was before, but it's not at pre-war levels. They've
Speaker 3: improved the flow of oil exports out of the Strait,
Speaker 3: but like.
Speaker 4: It's not better.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's been about a month since
Speaker 3: the last exchange of fire between the two sides. But this,
Speaker 3: what happened over the weekend is just part of this
Speaker 3: typical pattern of tit-for-tat exchanges. And I think it's going
Speaker 3: to get worse, not better, because last week we covered
Speaker 3: Besant saying it was economic D-Day, and that announcement was
Speaker 3: obviously wildly overstated. But between the U.S. blockade of the
Speaker 3: Strait of Hormuz and the jawboning of countries to stop
Speaker 3: doing business with the Iranians, like what they did to
Speaker 3: the Emiratis, that's going to increase the economic pain for
Speaker 3: the Iranians. And the way the Iranians respond to economic
Speaker 3: pain is with military strikes. And so as the U.S.
Speaker 3: ratchets up the sanctions, as they continue the blockade, the
Speaker 3: more likely outcome is escalation and not capitulation by Iran
Speaker 3: and the war ramping back up. So it just feels
Speaker 3: like we're still trapped in the same cycle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again, we've also sort of... completely stop talking
Speaker 1: about the reason that we apparently went to a war
Speaker 1: with Iran in the first place, which is their nuclear program,
Speaker 1: the dust. The dust.
Speaker 3: His line on that is like, ah, it's handled. We're
Speaker 3: watching it. It's under the ground now.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Which is what it was after the first 12-day war,
Speaker 3: but whatever.
Speaker 1: So really, it's just now a war to get the
Speaker 1: Strait of Hormuz from, you know, a 0% open to,
Speaker 1: I guess, 60% to 70% is the goal.
Speaker 3: Going for a C.
Speaker 4: Gentlemen, C.
Speaker 1: Things are going so badly in Iran that Trump and
Speaker 1: Hegseth are now losing support among our own most senior
Speaker 1: military leaders. There was a huge scoop from the Washington
Speaker 1: Post that these leaders have advised Hegseth that, quote, prolonging
Speaker 1: large-scale operations against Iran is unsustainable and risks weakening the
Speaker 1: military's ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the U.S. homeland.
Speaker 1: These warnings showed up as part of a classified assessment
Speaker 1: that included orders for some of the 50,000 troops currently
Speaker 1: deployed to the Middle East to remain there until 2027,
Speaker 1: which led some of the senior military leaders to respond
Speaker 1: with a, quote, non-concur, meaning they disagree with Hegseth's order
Speaker 1: but will still carry it out. Hegseth's spokesman responded to
Speaker 1: the story by accusing the Post of committing a crime.
Speaker 1: And they're probably also a bit peeved that the Post
Speaker 1: published another story that details how Hegseth has apparently given
Speaker 1: government jobs to right-wing military influencers without telling anyone so
Speaker 1: they could go around spreading his propaganda. It seems like
Speaker 1: Pete is really crushing it as SecDef. You think that's
Speaker 1: why NBC News is reporting that Hegseth's telling close friends
Speaker 1: he's thinking about running for president in 2028?
Speaker 3: You buy in stock?
Speaker 1: Love it in Hexeth, President?
Speaker 2: Sort of give all of us the USS Lincoln experience.
Speaker 2: I'm feeling trapped and no way out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't like Hexeth. Look, let's do the case
Speaker 3: for and against. The case against buying stock in Hexeth
Speaker 3: right now is his polling is terrible at the moment.
Speaker 3: He's 22 points underwater in a recent Marquette poll. I
Speaker 3: would argue he is probably more responsible for the war
Speaker 3: in Iran than anyone else who might run in 2028.
Speaker 3: It's like Trump, Netanyahu, Hexeth. He's obsessed with culture war
Speaker 3: stuff in a way that I think will turn off
Speaker 3: some normies. He was also accused of doing some really
Speaker 3: bad shit before when he was nominated for secretary of defense. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: that didn't prevent it, and he's written some crazy stuff.
Speaker 3: I think the case for him being successful in a
Speaker 3: Republican primary is he kind of merges together, like, things
Speaker 3: Republicans like before Trump with the MAGA stamp of approval.
Speaker 3: It's like, he's a neocon. He's super hawkish. He's like
Speaker 3: part of this right wing, uh, white Christian nationalist evangelical world. Um,
Speaker 3: that makes up a huge chunk of their base. He
Speaker 3: has high name ID from the Trump days and Fox news.
Speaker 3: And he's kind of like slick and camera ready. Um,
Speaker 3: and then just the resume is like sec def Fox
Speaker 3: news veteran Princeton. It's like not bad on paper. I
Speaker 3: think the big longterm question is how, um, bad does
Speaker 3: the Iran war get? How much do Republicans actually punish
Speaker 3: them for supporting it and lying about it? And I just,
Speaker 3: you know, we don't know yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I'm Boy, I hope Pete Hegseth runs
Speaker 1: for president. I think that would be awesome to watch.
Speaker 2: I hope he doesn't.
Speaker 3: He's unstoppable.
Speaker 1: The guy who has mired the United States in another
Speaker 1: war in the Middle East.
Speaker 2: The guy is going to be really hard to beat.
Speaker 2: We're worried about that Pete Hegseth getting in.
Speaker 1: I mean, the reports in the Post alone saying that
Speaker 1: some of these troops are going to be deployed through
Speaker 1: 2027 when the primary is going to be going on.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: I just don't think, you guys really think that that's
Speaker 3: going to be a big impediment in a Republican primary
Speaker 3: when you're running as Marco Rubio and J.D.
Speaker 1: Vance who are also part of the administration? I don't
Speaker 1: think we know that yet.
Speaker 4: J.D.
Speaker 1: Vance is going to be, and he has already telegraphed
Speaker 1: and so have his advisors, that he is going to
Speaker 1: run and say, I did everything I could to end
Speaker 1: the war and create a peace agreement and all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Because to the extent that the Republicans
Speaker 1: and Trump has lost any support from Republican voters, it's
Speaker 1: around Trump. the war in Iran, and the increased prices
Speaker 1: that it's caused. And so it's like the one thing
Speaker 1: that has caused voters to defect from Trump is what
Speaker 1: Pete Hegseth is in charge of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder though, I agree with that, but are
Speaker 2: those Republican primary voters or the kind of soft, like
Speaker 2: kind of less partisan people who believed America first? I mean, maybe,
Speaker 2: but like.
Speaker 3: The mega cult is still there. And I think, look,
Speaker 3: if I was Hegseth, I frame criticism... of the Iran
Speaker 3: war as like a lack of loyalty to Trump and
Speaker 3: try to make it about that guy. Look, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I just think it's an open, I think it could.
Speaker 4: Go either way.
Speaker 3: I just think he's a little more dangerous than some
Speaker 3: people give him credit for.
Speaker 1: What do you guys think about those post stories?
Speaker 2: So I went and read the, the, so these are,
Speaker 2: these people were all posting about the story. So the
Speaker 2: post reaches out to them. And they don't respond. And
Speaker 2: then they respond publicly. You're talking about the influencer one.
Speaker 3: The influencer one.
Speaker 1: Was that what you were talking about?
Speaker 3: I said the stories.
Speaker 6: Oh, sorry.
Speaker 1: Pick a friendly one to start with.
Speaker 2: So on the influencer story, the post reaches out for comment, apparently.
Speaker 3: They don't comment.
Speaker 2: And then they post angrily that the story doesn't reflect
Speaker 2: what's actually going on based on their views, which they
Speaker 2: did not share.
Speaker 3: Fine.
Speaker 4: According to.
Speaker 2: Kurt Schlichter and one of the other people, that they
Speaker 2: were brought on not to be paid influencers on social media,
Speaker 2: in part because They don't need to be paid to
Speaker 2: do that.
Speaker 3: They do that for the love of the game. Right.
Speaker 2: But to help them shape a plan to make the
Speaker 2: war colleges, you know, less woke and more lethal in
Speaker 2: line with Pete Hegseth's agenda. And even it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: there's like, these are the people you chose. And then
Speaker 2: some of them, I think all of them had served
Speaker 2: in the military and have some kind of expertise, but
Speaker 2: they're also just like right-wing trolls on social media. And
Speaker 2: Kurt Schlichter is just somebody that I don't, like, he
Speaker 2: just pops into my, algorithm once in a while and
Speaker 2: then pops back out because he's the kind of classic, uh,
Speaker 2: conservative in a liberal place. Who's losing his mind. Cause
Speaker 2: I think he's from California. He's still here, but he
Speaker 2: was living here for a while. And he wrote this
Speaker 2: series of books about this sort of like fever dream
Speaker 2: fantasy of what would have happened if Hillary had won.
Speaker 2: And then the country has a civil war and we
Speaker 2: divide up into the United States of America, which is
Speaker 2: run by Republicans and the people's Republic, which is run
Speaker 2: by Democrats. And I, So this is who they brought on.
Speaker 2: I do want to give you some facts from these books.
Speaker 2: One of those is about a Texas billionaire's daughter who
Speaker 2: defects to LA to experience equality and then has to
Speaker 2: be rescued.
Speaker 3: By special ops.
Speaker 2: The secret police is called the People's Bureau of Investigation.
Speaker 2: You have a government-assigned privilege level. The state airline is
Speaker 2: called Justice Air. There's propaganda posters that read, intolerance will
Speaker 2: not be tolerated, and deodorant is restricted to simply one kind,
Speaker 2: To not offend gender-fluid individuals.
Speaker 1: Glad you went deep on that.
Speaker 3: The world's like instructed to like be aggrieved. It's like
Speaker 3: meanwhile in reality, half the country is covered by flock
Speaker 3: cameras and Donald Trump has deployed his own like ice
Speaker 3: secret force to harass, shoot American citizens in the head
Speaker 3: and deport people.
Speaker 2: Dallas is a gleaming super city though.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: That's the new capital. The influencer thing, to me, that
Speaker 3: was just another piece of the puzzle of Hegseth trying
Speaker 3: to crush or go around the Pentagon press corps. They
Speaker 3: try to make reporters basically sign a pledge and commit
Speaker 3: to running their stories by the Pentagon brass before publication.
Speaker 3: They kick the real reporters out of their workstations. They
Speaker 3: replace them with One America News and much right-wing crap.
Speaker 3: Remember when they kicked a bunch of photographers out of
Speaker 3: briefings because Hegseth didn't like how he looked in a photo?
Speaker 3: They're destroying Stars and Stripes, which is this military publication
Speaker 3: that's really important to active duty members of the military.
Speaker 3: So now they're hiring these MAGA chuds. It does seem
Speaker 3: like it's mostly about cranking out pro-Hegseth talking points, but
Speaker 3: there is that weird anecdote about them quizzing war college
Speaker 3: students about how Pete Hegseth is doing without disclosing that
Speaker 3: they work for Pete Hegseth.
Speaker 2: That part was all just quite weird. Well, so one
Speaker 2: of the people that is part of this group... wrote
Speaker 2: for one of the MAGA journals, America Greatness, one of those,
Speaker 2: like a diagnosis of what's wrong with the war colleges,
Speaker 2: woke stuff like climate being part of it, anything about
Speaker 2: diversity as part of it, but also just this idea
Speaker 2: that like the war colleges have not focused on lethality
Speaker 2: and military force and they're all supposed to wear suits
Speaker 2: where really they should be back in their uniforms. It's
Speaker 2: sort of like, it's like there is an actual kind
Speaker 2: of whatever MAGA thing in trying to kind of de-liberal,
Speaker 2: de-leftify the war colleges. But it's, of course, being run
Speaker 2: by people who have, like, they're just sort of, you know, online,
Speaker 2: super engaged right-wing people whose brain has been kind of
Speaker 2: stewing on Twitter forever. That's who's going to kind of
Speaker 2: talk to all these people and figure out how to
Speaker 2: make the war colleges get rid of the liberals. By
Speaker 2: the way, the head of the... the commander of the
Speaker 2: liberal forces in the book, is a UCLA professor. A
Speaker 2: UCLA professor who takes a woman as a kind of
Speaker 2: a bride and had to rescue her from this commander
Speaker 2: UCLA professor, this evil professor at the top of the system,
Speaker 2: which I think has kind of explained some of the
Speaker 2: worldview going into this.
Speaker 3: Did I go too deep on this?
Speaker 1: No, no, very normal.
Speaker 4: Time will tell.
Speaker 1: Well, I will say that Pete Higgs has planned to
Speaker 1: limit press access and churn out propaganda and hire influencers. Really,
Speaker 1: it's just working very well because Pentagon's image has never
Speaker 1: been better.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's sort of the irony of the second story,
Speaker 3: which is like the Washington Post got a leak of
Speaker 3: the Secretary of Defense's orders book, which is this process
Speaker 3: where the combatant commanders get to advocate on behalf of
Speaker 3: themselves and fight for scarce resources. And then the SECDEF
Speaker 3: makes decisions about resource allocation. There's 11 Aircraft carriers, a
Speaker 3: handful are in service at any time. They can go
Speaker 3: to different parts of the world. Like, where should they go?
Speaker 3: And so it's not surprising, given that context, that, like,
Speaker 3: Pacific Command would be pissed off that they have to
Speaker 3: send their carrier strike group to the Middle East and, like,
Speaker 3: that a bunch of military units have been deployed forever
Speaker 3: in parts of the country because it means that the
Speaker 3: Pacific Command is unprepared to do something if China invades
Speaker 3: Taiwan or the North Koreans do some shit. What's remarkable,
Speaker 3: though– so that part's unsurprising that there would be non-concurs
Speaker 3: and that they would disagree about stuff. But the takeaway
Speaker 3: is clearly the military brass is so worried about the
Speaker 3: way the war with Iran is overextending them and taxing
Speaker 3: the force that this leaked.
Speaker 2: And there were so many of them in unanimity in
Speaker 2: the- Yeah, they're all just like, what are we doing here?
Speaker 3: This is crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought that was incredibly alarming. And of course,
Speaker 1: the story was over the The fallout from the story
Speaker 1: was they're mad it leaked and then they're yelling with
Speaker 1: the leakers and all this kind of shit. But the
Speaker 1: idea that our senior most military commanders are like terrified
Speaker 1: that we're not prepared to deal with other threats, including
Speaker 1: threats against the homeland because of this war. And Pete
Speaker 1: Hagseth and Donald Trump don't seem to care seems seems alarming.
Speaker 3: Well, the thing that is remarkable to me is if
Speaker 3: you were during the campaign, during 2024, it seemed like
Speaker 3: the one place that got a foreign policy establishment on
Speaker 3: the left and the right agreed was that the big
Speaker 3: threat we faced was from China. And now we have
Speaker 3: once again bogged ourselves down in another forever war, endless
Speaker 3: conflict in the Middle East, this time against Iran. And
Speaker 3: in practice, what that has mean is we literally just
Speaker 3: took the carrier strike group out of the Indo-Pacific and
Speaker 3: sent it to the Middle East to replace the Lincoln
Speaker 3: that was overextended for however long. And so we're just
Speaker 3: kind of sitting there naked. It's like, well, you guys
Speaker 3: ran on telling us that China was the threat, that
Speaker 3: we're going to get tough on China, that yada, yada, yada.
Speaker 3: But in practice, you are, the resource allocation is telling
Speaker 3: a very different story. And all the kind of uniform
Speaker 3: military leadership is quite worried about that. Not to mention,
Speaker 3: Russia is still, you know, threatening Eastern Europe. Well, Trump
Speaker 3: just invited the Russian finance minister to the G20, so.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: But no press.
Speaker 3: But not the press. But no press.
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Speaker 1: So Trump did just come closer to achieving the one
Speaker 1: victory he cares about the most. On Monday, a five
Speaker 1: to four Supreme Court majority ruled that construction on his
Speaker 1: ballroom can continue. They did not decide the matter for good,
Speaker 1: but the majority wrote that the government was likely to
Speaker 1: prevail in its argument that the National Trust for Historic
Speaker 1: Preservation didn't have standing to sue. The trust's claim to
Speaker 1: have standing appeared to rest on a statement from one
Speaker 1: of the organization's trustees, who lives in D.C. and often
Speaker 1: walks by the White House. She said she would, quote,
Speaker 1: suffer both professional and personal injuries, including to my aesthetic, cultural,
Speaker 1: and historical interests if a ballroom of the proposed form
Speaker 1: and scale were constructed, end quote.
Speaker 2: It's funny because it like pits the anti-democratic building of
Speaker 2: this ridiculous ballroom up against my gut hatred for the NIMBYs,
Speaker 2: being like, oh, your walk is spoiled by new construction.
Speaker 2: We got to build things in this fucking country.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's a, yeah. John Roberts joined the liberals
Speaker 1: in agreeing and wrote that ballroom construction thus far, quote,
Speaker 1: is likely unlawful. What do you guys think? Game over here? Like,
Speaker 1: I know it does seem like there's got to be
Speaker 1: some more solid base somewhere for someone to challenge the
Speaker 1: ballroom construction, which... John Roberts, at least, and others think
Speaker 1: it's probably unlawful. But, you know, these people just didn't
Speaker 1: have standing to sue. Right.
Speaker 4: Well, just be nice.
Speaker 1: Conservative majority.
Speaker 2: Hey, no need to be so coy, Justice Roberts. Who
Speaker 2: does have standing?
Speaker 3: Tell us.
Speaker 2: Tell us who has the standing, who can sue to
Speaker 2: stop this thing from being built if it's not this
Speaker 2: historical society. Because if there's a loophole where you can
Speaker 2: knock down any building you want when you're president, so
Speaker 2: long as you claim to be doing it with private dollars,
Speaker 2: then grab the taxpayer money later, that's a pretty big loophole.
Speaker 2: in the Constitution that has, till this point, never been contemplated.
Speaker 1: Well, apparently at the D.C. Circuit argument, Trump's lawyer suggested
Speaker 1: that people affected by construction noise could have standing. Melania.
Speaker 3: Melania. Melania calls her a lawyer.
Speaker 1: Even if someone offended by the ballroom's appearance did not,
Speaker 1: which is interesting.
Speaker 3: I was going to say, you know who needs some
Speaker 3: ballroom is Mike Lawler and that new campaign ad. You
Speaker 3: guys know what I'm talking about. Yeah, that's right. That's right.
Speaker 3: We covered this.
Speaker 1: Oh, with you. I was like, who am I making
Speaker 1: jokes on?
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 3: I got a text from a reporter over the weekend
Speaker 3: who was asking if Democrats should prioritize ripping down the ballroom.
Speaker 3: And my knee-jerk reaction is like, we have so many
Speaker 3: other fish to fry before we do take down this building.
Speaker 3: But then I assumed that as I thought about this
Speaker 3: 2028 primary— that we would probably have entire debates about demolition. Hands,
Speaker 3: show of hands. I will fire bomb it.
Speaker 6: No, no, no.
Speaker 1: I will, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's like, you know, when you move into
Speaker 1: a house and you're like, I could do a lot
Speaker 1: of renovation in this house or I could do just
Speaker 1: touch-ups here and there. Well, you don't want to make,
Speaker 1: you do the easy ones.
Speaker 2: You got to live in it for a bit before
Speaker 2: you decide what you want to change.
Speaker 1: Well, I was going to say, the easy ones are like,
Speaker 1: you know, let's turn the courtyard down. back from Mar-a-Lago
Speaker 1: with umbrellas in D.C., back to grass. Let's take all
Speaker 1: the gold shit off the stupid fucking colonnades. There's a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of easy stuff you can do before you
Speaker 1: get to the ballroom.
Speaker 3: The auto pen that's up is a photo of Biden.
Speaker 3: That's coming down pretty quick. I like that we've instinctively
Speaker 3: landed on.
Speaker 2: Unsatisfying center-left compromise on what to do with the various things.
Speaker 1: You can take the boys out of the Obama administration.
Speaker 3: But what would be an expensive nightmare to do?
Speaker 1: Ripping down a ballroom?
Speaker 2: Can you imagine? We're going to have Medicare for all.
Speaker 2: We're going to have humane immigration. We're going to treat
Speaker 2: people with respect in this country. And we're tearing that
Speaker 2: ballroom down.
Speaker 3: It's coming, man.
Speaker 5: Applause.
Speaker 3: Applause.
Speaker 6: It's coming.
Speaker 1: They're all going to applause. And then in the person's
Speaker 1: going to win the presidency and just then it won't happen.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 1: And then everyone will be mad and they'll be like,
Speaker 1: why did we lose? Because we didn't deliver the crazy
Speaker 1: promises that we made in the campaign trail. Worse.
Speaker 2: They try to tear the ballroom down. Heritage sues. Because
Speaker 2: of the noise. They have standing to keep the thing built.
Speaker 1: Supreme Court's like, well, we told you.
Speaker 3: Actually, we think.
Speaker 2: So it turns out Heritage does have standing.
Speaker 3: That's sort of... They always do. Sort of that went on.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting, like.
Speaker 1: During the Trump's own lawyer, again, like had previously conceded
Speaker 1: sort of the the weird implication of the government standing
Speaker 1: theory in this case, which is, you know, he was
Speaker 1: asked what would happen if a president suddenly demolished the
Speaker 1: White House itself or even the Statue of Liberty and
Speaker 1: nobody could show. like the requisite individualized harm of that.
Speaker 1: And then the judge in that case said, so nothing
Speaker 1: can be done? And the Trump lawyer said, I think
Speaker 1: that's right.
Speaker 2: But see, this is where the- This is so crazy.
Speaker 2: But I don't think it is that crazy. We've talked
Speaker 2: about this a little bit before. I don't think it's
Speaker 2: that crazy, right? Because really what we're all, the issue
Speaker 2: here is that Congress should be intervening, and by law,
Speaker 2: either stopping this or adjusting it or changing it, or
Speaker 2: if the president knocked down the Statue of Liberty because
Speaker 2: he found it offensive for some reason, that person should
Speaker 2: be impeached.
Speaker 1: Immediately and removed. And one of the legal theories is
Speaker 1: that Congress could sue.
Speaker 4: Of course.
Speaker 1: But of course, Congress won't sue because it's run by Republicans.
Speaker 1: But then you're like, well, why would Congress sue when
Speaker 1: a normal Congress would just pass a law?
Speaker 2: Of course.
Speaker 1: Or defund the ballroom or do whatever, right?
Speaker 2: You would sue saying we don't need to pass a law.
Speaker 2: Because it's unconstitutional, you don't need to proactively pass a law.
Speaker 2: to stop something unlawful, you just sue and say you're
Speaker 2: violating the law. That was true, by the way. Remember
Speaker 2: when there was those reforms and there's electoral reforms and
Speaker 2: then Trump was saying, see, I told you, it wasn't
Speaker 2: illegal because you had to pass this law to fix it, right?
Speaker 3: But yeah, I hear you.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk midterms. The first mail-in ballots are
Speaker 1: scheduled to be sent out in just a few days
Speaker 1: on September 4th. But will the newly Trumpified U.S. Postal
Speaker 1: Service actually deliver those ballots? That is the question we
Speaker 1: somehow have to ask ever since the president issued an
Speaker 1: executive order that threatens to withhold the delivery of mail-in
Speaker 1: ballots to states that don't comply with the federal government's
Speaker 1: demand for lists of eligible voters. When has that ever
Speaker 1: gone wrong? Demanding lists of people in your federal government.
Speaker 1: The order has once again been blocked by a federal
Speaker 1: court and the administration has again appealed. So this one
Speaker 1: could end up back at the Supreme Court. which initially
Speaker 1: let the order move forward, but made clear it wasn't
Speaker 1: yet ruling on the constitutionality of the executive order. So
Speaker 1: stay tuned. And that's not the only voting story out
Speaker 1: there that's kind of alarming. There's a disturbing report about
Speaker 1: election monitors from the Department of Justice attempting to interview
Speaker 1: voters and inspect voting machines in Wyoming during the primaries
Speaker 1: last week. The state's Republican governor, Mark Gordon, said, said
Speaker 1: the election monitor's behavior was, quote, very odd and called
Speaker 1: the move, quote, aggressive, unexpected, and disruptive. That is the
Speaker 1: Republican governor of Wyoming saying that. What did you guys
Speaker 1: make of that story?
Speaker 2: It's really weird. It's hard to see it as anything
Speaker 2: other than some kind of a trial run. It is
Speaker 2: a bastardization, obviously, of what DOJ election monitoring is meant
Speaker 2: to be, which is to make sure that people are
Speaker 2: able to vote and that there aren't racist Southern election
Speaker 2: officials stopping Black people from voting. That is the original
Speaker 2: function here that they're abusing. Even the Republican governor is
Speaker 2: saying this was unprofessional and strange. And by the way,
Speaker 2: they're not just injuring voters. They were trying to gain
Speaker 2: access to the voting machines, which just has absolutely nothing
Speaker 2: to do with election monitoring because they're not talking about
Speaker 2: the access to vote or protecting the right to vote.
Speaker 2: They're talking about the tabulating of voting, the You know,
Speaker 2: there's this conspiracy theory just revolves around these people trying
Speaker 2: to get their hands on the voting machines. They're desperate
Speaker 2: to get their hands on the machines. The truth is
Speaker 2: in the machines. But it seemed like part of what
Speaker 2: made this so, like, why even this Republican governor, like,
Speaker 2: spoke out against it, it was all just so boorish
Speaker 2: and silly and ham-fisted and incompetent that it was just
Speaker 2: a kind of sowing chaos in a primary in Wyoming.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm confused why they chose Wyoming and also, I guess, Miami-Dade.
Speaker 2: Well, some they had announced. Some they had, like, pointed to.
Speaker 3: This one they hadn't. I think, yeah, well, DOJ, so
Speaker 3: my reaction when I read the story was, why? Like,
Speaker 3: why Wyoming? Why a Wyoming primary? Why are you trying
Speaker 3: to interview voters? Why not give the Republican governor of
Speaker 3: the state a heads up? Like, was this overzealous people
Speaker 3: at DOJ or was this part of a broad-based effort?
Speaker 3: And especially because the Wyoming secretary of state is a
Speaker 3: Republican who ran on the big lie in, like, 2020 fraud.
Speaker 3: He ran in 2022, but he ran in the 2020 election.
Speaker 3: And so I was looking around at the DOJ website,
Speaker 3: and they put out a press release on August 18th
Speaker 3: saying that they were monitoring, you know, polling places in
Speaker 3: Florida and Wyoming.
Speaker 1: So they were.
Speaker 3: Public about it, but I guess they didn't really effectively
Speaker 3: communicate it to the elected officials in the state.
Speaker 1: It's crazy.
Speaker 3: None of it makes sense. None of it adds up.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're going to, you know, Trump has talked
Speaker 1: before about a plan to send election monitors all over
Speaker 1: the country and polling places in the midterms. Um, and so,
Speaker 1: and again, like the DOJ has done that before. So
Speaker 1: like they, they have that authority to do so.
Speaker 3: But, um, yeah.
Speaker 2: So they announced it because what's it's, this is so strange, right?
Speaker 2: Because in July, the same office run by sort of
Speaker 2: Trumpy kind of online weirdo announced their list of states
Speaker 2: and it didn't include Wyoming. So they added Wyoming late,
Speaker 2: like in the last like week or it's very strange.
Speaker 3: It's very strange.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I found it press release.
Speaker 3: It was really weird.
Speaker 1: Hopefully the midterms are fine. I'm sure this is the
Speaker 1: last we'll hear from this.
Speaker 3: Nothing to worry about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nothing to worry about this. What do you think
Speaker 1: about the latest with the Postal Service? We're now again
Speaker 1: in legal limbo, though we are even closer to the
Speaker 1: day that ballots are supposed to be delivered.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there was a ruling last week and people
Speaker 2: were freaking out about it. And then Norm Eisen was like,
Speaker 2: don't freak out yet because it's going to be another step.
Speaker 2: And then there was, and now it's on hold. Look,
Speaker 2: anything is possible. This order is so fucking crazy. It
Speaker 2: is so crazy to imagine that there is a secret
Speaker 2: power bestowed upon the postal service to decide which ballots
Speaker 2: are allowed and which ballots are not allowed. It doesn't
Speaker 2: apply to any other. You can't come up with any
Speaker 2: other comparison to any other kind of mail or rule.
Speaker 2: It doesn't even make sense, right? The only reason this
Speaker 2: is even possible is because we've never had ballots as
Speaker 2: anything other than open in terms of being able to
Speaker 2: tell it's a ballot, right? So what would happen if
Speaker 2: somebody just took their ballot and put it in a
Speaker 2: white envelope, right? That's now protected by The Fourth Amendment,
Speaker 2: because you as a voter are protected. You as a person,
Speaker 2: a citizen, are protected.
Speaker 3: Your mail is protected. They're not allowed to go in
Speaker 3: there without a warrant.
Speaker 2: So because ballots look like ballots, they've created a rule
Speaker 2: in which the Postal Service can, on behalf of the
Speaker 2: federal government, decide which state is upholding the rules they
Speaker 2: want or not. It's just so absurd on its face
Speaker 2: that you can't imagine even the Supreme Court allowing it
Speaker 2: to go through.
Speaker 1: But one of the DOJ's arguments to the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: or in one of the cases, it might not have
Speaker 1: been the Supreme Court one, was... Well, I mean, this
Speaker 1: isn't the federal government getting involved in state elections because
Speaker 1: obviously the states are, you know, and the Constitution says
Speaker 1: the states can run elections themselves. And if the states
Speaker 1: just wanted to. deliver the ballots themselves to people. Nothing
Speaker 1: is stopping them from doing that. We're just saying that
Speaker 1: if you use the postal service, this is what you
Speaker 1: have to do, which is funny because it's like they're
Speaker 1: even like Trump's out there being like, I hate mail-in ballots.
Speaker 1: We want to cancel them.
Speaker 3: But I use them all the time.
Speaker 1: But I use them all the time. Right. But in court,
Speaker 1: they're like, no, no, this isn't about anything about mail-in
Speaker 1: ballots not being great. This is just about the postal
Speaker 1: service requiring a certain kind of envelope. And based on
Speaker 1: if you've You get a barcode and you get the
Speaker 1: barcode if you've given us the list of voters.
Speaker 2: But this is where, like, none of it really makes sense, right?
Speaker 2: Because I am just a person using the mail. I
Speaker 2: am a person mailing my ballot that I am legally
Speaker 2: allowed to mail that they're grabbing because of a dispute
Speaker 2: with the state, right? But, like, if they have evidence
Speaker 2: that there is a specific person who they believe is
Speaker 2: a non-citizen using the mail, they can, you know, they
Speaker 2: get a, go get a warrant and open the fucking,
Speaker 2: you know, prove that this guy or this person isn't, isn't,
Speaker 2: isn't eligible to vote.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: But they can't just dismiss a whole group of people
Speaker 2: from voting because they're in some kind of other dispute.
Speaker 2: It's just, it's so, it's, it's, it's so hamfisted. I,
Speaker 2: to me, it seems now at this point, at least
Speaker 2: through this election, it is only meant to sow mistrust
Speaker 2: and uncertainty around mail-in voting. And like, you know, there,
Speaker 2: I think it's Katanja Brown Jackson, like a sort of
Speaker 2: warns about sort of this court's habit of deciding cases
Speaker 2: are either too early or too late, right? And the
Speaker 2: possibility that they will do that once again, they're doing
Speaker 2: with the ballroom. But to me, it's like, it's now
Speaker 2: getting to the point where it is inconceivable that any
Speaker 2: court could allow this to be in place for this election.
Speaker 2: And so to me, it's a, I hope, a future
Speaker 2: threat at best.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's sort of where I landed too, because you,
Speaker 1: even with, even the Supreme Court, the way they described
Speaker 1: the first ruling, it was like, well, They haven't issued
Speaker 1: the final rule yet, so no one has actually been
Speaker 1: harmed yet. Now that the rule has been issued, when
Speaker 1: it comes back to them and they have to actually
Speaker 1: decide the constitutionality of the rule itself, it feels like
Speaker 1: it could be a very different situation. So assuming people
Speaker 1: get their ballots delivered and can vote without federal agents interfering,
Speaker 1: Republican candidates will have to contend with their most formidable
Speaker 1: midterm opponent, Donald Trump. Over the weekend, Jonathan Martin published
Speaker 1: a piece with the headline, the Republican Party's midterm nightmare
Speaker 1: is taking shape. The standout quote came from North Dakota
Speaker 1: Republican Senator Kevin Cramer. He's not usually a quote machine.
Speaker 1: You don't hear much from Kevin Cramer. But he cited
Speaker 1: the price of diesel, the price of fertilizer, and Trump's tariffs,
Speaker 1: telling Jay Mark, quote, he's in serious trouble in farm country,
Speaker 1: he being Trump, and Trump is us. I'm not very optimistic. Rough.
Speaker 1: What did you guys think of J-Mart's piece?
Speaker 2: I think that could have been a cleaner sentence from Kramer.
Speaker 2: I see why he's not quoted very much.
Speaker 1: I think they were eating together or something.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I assume they were eating together because it's J-Mart.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Jonathan, that's all he does. He's constructed a show
Speaker 3: around going to lunches in various places. I read the
Speaker 3: piece and my reaction was, you know, close my eyes,
Speaker 3: say a little prayer that it comes to be. Um,
Speaker 3: I do suspect that the kind of economic sentiment and
Speaker 3: frustration is locked in. There's no fixing that between now
Speaker 3: and election day. In fact, there's reasons to believe it
Speaker 3: could get worse because of all the Iran stuff we
Speaker 3: talked about.
Speaker 6: At the top.
Speaker 3: Um, it does feel like Trump is doing everything in
Speaker 3: his power to lose the midterms. The farmer piece of
Speaker 3: it is real. Like I've talked to people in Iowa
Speaker 3: about how we screwed over Iowa farmers. Uh, the, the
Speaker 3: China trade war crushed soybean farmers. The Iran war jacked
Speaker 3: up the price of gasoline and diesel and fertilizers. The
Speaker 3: fight with Canada is just the latest piece of this.
Speaker 2: And Canada, by the way, is being very strategic in
Speaker 2: where it is targeting those tariffs.
Speaker 3: They're hitting Michigan. They're hitting Maine. But a lot of
Speaker 3: those farmers are still just red-pilled, Fox News-loving, Rush Limbaugh-listening Republicans.
Speaker 3: And I don't know where they're going to go.
Speaker 1: The hope is they don't vote.
Speaker 3: The hope is that Rob Sand and Josh Turek can
Speaker 3: convince enough of them to stay home or maybe go
Speaker 3: crazy and vote for Democrats.
Speaker 4: So we'll see.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's like, it's challenging fundamentals in some of
Speaker 3: those states. Reading through the list of states, like I
Speaker 3: feel really good about North Carolina. The fundamentals in Maine
Speaker 3: should be leaning pretty hard towards Democrats, but we've had
Speaker 3: challenges in that state before.
Speaker 1: After there, it gets complicated.
Speaker 3: You know, when Ohio's at the top of your you know,
Speaker 3: you start crossing your fingers and saying some prayers.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Iowa, the paragraph on the piece that I
Speaker 1: really liked was, flipping pork burgers at the Iowa State
Speaker 1: Fair earlier this month, Ashley Hinson, who's running against Josh Turek,
Speaker 1: was glad to discuss her technique with the spatula, the
Speaker 1: importance of her race to the Senate map, and her
Speaker 1: opponent missing votes on the legislature. But she went silent
Speaker 1: at repeated questions about whether it was time to end
Speaker 1: the war. I mean, you just can't, you can't get
Speaker 1: away with that. Until November. I mean, like, maybe you
Speaker 1: still pull it out, but, like, that's not— There will.
Speaker 3: Be a debate. There will be editorial board meetings. There
Speaker 3: will be a bunch of opportunities where she is going
Speaker 3: to have to answer questions about this.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And John Husted, who's running against Sherrod, I think, at
Speaker 1: the outset, he said, like, he wanted the war to be, like,
Speaker 1: quick and efficient and successful, or clean and successful, quick
Speaker 1: and successful. How's that going? It's like, yeah, that's not
Speaker 1: going well either.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Wishes were kisses.
Speaker 1: Wishes were kisses.
Speaker 3: Yeah. That's what I'm always saying.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, you're always saying that.
Speaker 3: I also think things with Canada could get worse in
Speaker 3: a meaningful way between now and then, too.
Speaker 1: A sentence that is crazy that you had to say.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 3: I talked to the premier of British Columbia today for
Speaker 3: Pod Save the World coming out Wednesday. Subscribe wherever you
Speaker 3: get your pods. He's not in Carney's political party. He's
Speaker 3: in the party to the left of Carney. he's putting
Speaker 3: pressure on Carney to do more to retaliate. Carney has
Speaker 3: been perfectly proportionate in his response. It's like dollar for
Speaker 3: dollar responses. He wants him to do more, consider not
Speaker 3: buying F-35s, for example. And so Carney has support from
Speaker 3: his left. He also has support from his right. We've
Speaker 3: seen Doug Ford in Ontario literally telling Trump to kiss
Speaker 3: his ass. And 76% of Canadian voters support walking away.
Speaker 1: From the talks.
Speaker 3: So that is not they're not capitulating anytime soon. Certainly
Speaker 3: not before the midterms.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that Trump is successfully producing a nationalist fervor,
Speaker 2: but it's just in Canada. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Iran.
Speaker 1: Did you, uh, did you hear that dipshit Congressman Andy
Speaker 1: Harris was on Fox today and they, uh, talk, we're
Speaker 1: talking about the Canadian trade war and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, Alberta might want to, as talked about before,
Speaker 1: like seceding from, from Canada. They're like, we should annex
Speaker 1: that state. We should just go in there and take
Speaker 1: it because a lot of oil there, a lot of
Speaker 1: good oil reserves. We are now just, we have Republican congressmen,
Speaker 1: we're taking Venezuela's oil, Canada looks good, we'll take some
Speaker 1: oil there, we'll annex, like what.
Speaker 2: The, what has happened?
Speaker 3: Pretty sure he's Hannah's parents' congressman.
Speaker 1: Oh, he's the one Republican from Maryland. Well, you see, John, well,
Speaker 1: so fascism, It is a permission. Well, this is like
Speaker 1: what you hear when like you watch, you know, the
Speaker 1: clips from Russia, like Russian state TV, the way they
Speaker 1: talk about the rest of these pundits. These are now
Speaker 1: our Republican congressmen.
Speaker 2: Well, just like they're, it's like, oh, you know, oh,
Speaker 2: you can't call Trump a fascist.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's too late. It's too soon, whatever. It's like,
Speaker 3: it's an instinct. It's an instinct.
Speaker 2: And for it's, there can be no ego wound. There
Speaker 2: can be no loss. There can be nothing that shows weakness.
Speaker 2: It does lead to one place, which it just requires
Speaker 2: toward expansion because it is the only way to truly
Speaker 2: prove you're strong and tough and can't be defeated. So
Speaker 2: we're going to go after Greenland and get the Venezuelan oil,
Speaker 2: and we're going to bomb Carg Island, and then we're.
Speaker 3: Going to take Alberta.
Speaker 2: And it's quite cold up there.
Speaker 3: Also, Alberta's having a vote on whether to have a
Speaker 3: Brexit-style referendum tomorrow. Most people think there's like 30% support
Speaker 3: for that. So it's like, okay, we're just going to
Speaker 3: invade because they're having a vote? Yeah, I was going
Speaker 3: to say, it's beside the point since we're just going
Speaker 3: to invade anyway.
Speaker 1: So you guys alluded to this, but of all the
Speaker 1: vulnerable Republicans running in the midterms, Trump's trade war with
Speaker 1: Canada is making it especially difficult for Mike Rogers and
Speaker 1: Susan Collins, who are trailing their Democratic opponents in two
Speaker 1: border states that are really going to get screwed by
Speaker 1: the tariffs. Rogers put out a very long statement over
Speaker 1: the weekend where he tried to blame Democrats for the
Speaker 1: trade war, specifically Alyssa Slotkin and Gary Peters, the other
Speaker 1: two senators from Michigan, and said Trump is, quote, right
Speaker 1: to put America first and tariffs are necessary but are
Speaker 1: not a one-size-fits-all solution. What does that mean? In Maine,
Speaker 1: Susan Collins showed that she's not afraid to stand up
Speaker 1: to Trump by writing a letter to Howard Lutnick. where
Speaker 1: she politely urged the administration to restart trade negotiations.
Speaker 3: Hey, hey, Senator Collins, here's the thing.
Speaker 2: If you just ask for agent enough times, you can
Speaker 2: get that letter to Lethick's manager.
Speaker 4: To a person.
Speaker 2: You can get that thing up the chain of command.
Speaker 2: You don't know how to send letters to the president.
Speaker 3: You're sending a.
Speaker 2: Warmly worded letter to the Commerce Secretary, who you know
Speaker 2: is a powerless schlub.
Speaker 1: She also, like, she listed off some of the impacts
Speaker 1: on people in Maine from the trade war and at
Speaker 1: the end was like, please feel free to reach out
Speaker 1: and follow up if there are any other impacts on
Speaker 1: Maine that you would like to know about.
Speaker 3: It's like, what?
Speaker 1: I mean, like, obviously they're trying to have it both ways, right?
Speaker 1: They want to seem like they are against the tariffs
Speaker 1: and the trade war, these two, without, I guess... like
Speaker 1: doing too much to piss off Trump, but like, it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like the best strategy. I don't know.
Speaker 3: In normal times, you would like distance yourself from the dumb,
Speaker 3: unpopular thing that's harming your state and show that you
Speaker 3: care about your state and you're fighting for your state
Speaker 3: and also that you have some independence. But Trump doesn't
Speaker 3: think much of independent thinking, so they're all kind of stuck.
Speaker 3: I just, I don't think you really have it both ways.
Speaker 3: I mean, nationally, Nate Silver has Trump at like 58%
Speaker 3: disapproval in terms of trade policy and tariff policy nationwide.
Speaker 3: I would like to see some data from states like
Speaker 3: Michigan or Maine that are affected by the tariffs, but
Speaker 3: I would imagine it would be more acutely felt there.
Speaker 2: I can't think of a better statement for Abdul than
Speaker 2: Mike Rogers' statement. putting out a statement on tariffs. And
Speaker 2: then the first line is, once again, Michiganders are forced
Speaker 2: to bear the consequences of the failed leadership from our
Speaker 2: Democratic officials in Washington. Because Abdul's point is this guy's
Speaker 2: going to be a sock puppet for Donald Trump. You
Speaker 2: are asked a question specifically about Donald Trump's policies, and
Speaker 2: you can't criticize him. You cannot offer a single word
Speaker 2: of criticism. It's unbelievable.
Speaker 3: No one's going to buy it.
Speaker 2: Once again, they're not in charge. No one, but no,
Speaker 2: everyone knows they're not in charge. So who is this
Speaker 2: statement for?
Speaker 1: You've got Democratic candidates out there, a lot of them
Speaker 1: saying they wouldn't vote for Schumer for leader, like unafraid
Speaker 1: to break with the national party on things. And on
Speaker 1: the most unpopular economic policy from Donald Trump that is
Speaker 1: specifically hurting two states, Susan Collins' state and Mike Rogers'
Speaker 1: state that are, or they're like running for election and reelection.
Speaker 1: They can't even say like, I disagree. Not only do
Speaker 1: I disagree with Donald Trump, but like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: try to do something like, you know, send me back
Speaker 1: there and I'm going to keep fighting. I like, dude,
Speaker 1: just do something to show that you're fighting besides a fucking,
Speaker 1: like a letter is a joke, a caricature like this.
Speaker 1: The joke is a strongly worded letter. And like, that's
Speaker 1: what she did. She just did the caricature.
Speaker 2: It's not even that strongly worded. It's a very mild letter.
Speaker 4: It's a tepid letter.
Speaker 1: It's a tepidly worded letter. That's what she said. And then,
Speaker 1: and Rogers is like, but tariffs are not a one
Speaker 1: size fits all solution. Like, What are we, are we
Speaker 1: supposed to read into what that possibly means? Tell your
Speaker 1: boss that.
Speaker 2: So you support, well, like it's interesting what's happened with
Speaker 2: the politics of terror specifically, because at this moment, free
Speaker 2: trade is just, it's, it's, it's, it's very in right now,
Speaker 2: very popular free trade.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 1: But like even the lefties, right.
Speaker 2: But if you would have said, right, if you would
Speaker 2: have said like the politics on tariffs before Donald Trump
Speaker 2: did this, did tariffs in the way that he's done
Speaker 2: would have been like, and we're going to put tariffs
Speaker 2: on Canadian goods because we're going to stop them from
Speaker 2: taking our jobs. Like, That could have been an applause
Speaker 2: line at a Michigan rally like a decade ago, even less.
Speaker 2: And so it is a strange thing of, like, are people,
Speaker 2: is he sort of not wanting to give up the
Speaker 2: good politics of terrorists while criticizing these?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: He's afraid of Trump.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, of course, he's afraid of Trump. This
Speaker 2: episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. While we're big fans of BetterHelp,
Speaker 2: the real story is the feedback from people using it
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Speaker 1: coaching session. That's strawberry.me slash cricket. Speaking of the Michigan race,
Speaker 1: Abdul is working to repair his image among some in
Speaker 1: the state's Jewish community, specifically about comments he made back
Speaker 1: in March after the attack on a synagogue in the
Speaker 1: Detroit suburbs. At the time, Abdul firmly condemned the attack,
Speaker 1: but then tried to offer some context by saying that, quote,
Speaker 1: hurt people hurt people, meaning that violence in the Middle
Speaker 1: East can lead to violence here. Here's part of what
Speaker 1: he said at an event with Jewish Democrats on Saturday
Speaker 1: in Lansing.
Speaker 6: I did not appreciate that in the attempt to offer
Speaker 6: broader context, I was trampling the dignity that that fear
Speaker 6: and that pain should have been afforded. And I could
Speaker 6: imagine that for a lot of folks that would have
Speaker 6: read like he does not see our pain or weigh
Speaker 6: it equally.
Speaker 3: And that was not my intention with the statement.
Speaker 6: And if my statement caused pain, I'm sorry. That was
Speaker 6: not what I intended to do. And sometimes you can
Speaker 6: offer context for something, but not in the moment when
Speaker 6: people are feeling it. Okay. And, you know, I made
Speaker 6: a mistake. And in the fullness of time, I hope
Speaker 6: that we can have conversations that are about context. But
Speaker 6: sometimes you can't really see context in the moment of
Speaker 6: acuity or pain. And I want folks to know that,
Speaker 6: you know, when the Jewish community is attacked, I'm going
Speaker 6: to be right there to defend.
Speaker 1: Where do you guys make the apology and the way
Speaker 1: he framed it?
Speaker 3: I watched the original message back. It was like a
Speaker 3: four and a half minute statement. I think he just
Speaker 3: tried to do too much in it. If you think
Speaker 3: back to that moment, it was like the guy who
Speaker 3: attacked the synagogue, he was born in Lebanon. He had
Speaker 3: just lost family, I think, including kids in Israeli airstrikes.
Speaker 3: So then he decided to attack the synagogue in retaliation,
Speaker 3: which obviously is like unjustifiable, evil, and just an act
Speaker 3: of terrorism. And Abdul... you know, condemned what he did.
Speaker 3: He called it unacceptable. And then he just tried to
Speaker 3: explain the context, which was like what I just talked
Speaker 3: about and then why it's wrong to blame Jewish people
Speaker 3: for actions of the Israeli government. And then get into
Speaker 3: like the hurt people, hurt people thing. And then do
Speaker 3: this broader point of like, imagine if there was no
Speaker 3: war and like no one was incentivized to do this
Speaker 3: kind of stuff. And it just, It was too much.
Speaker 3: And I think listeners just felt like it was close
Speaker 3: to maybe a justification or blaming the war for what
Speaker 3: this individual did rather than just saying, like, this is
Speaker 3: evil and unjustifiable, full stop. So it sounds like the
Speaker 3: message was well received in the room. I think there's
Speaker 3: value in politics, actually, to saying.
Speaker 4: I was wrong. I screwed up.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: If I hurt you, I'm really sorry. I think that's
Speaker 3: meaningful to people. So hopefully it helps. you know, staunchly
Speaker 3: bleeding here and I think restore some trust and open
Speaker 3: a dialogue between Abdul and the Jewish community, which is
Speaker 3: a lot of people are trying to exacerbate that split with,
Speaker 3: you know, conversation about Hassan Peker or whatever else.
Speaker 2: The, so I think it's, I'm glad he did this.
Speaker 3: I think it is good.
Speaker 2: I do, and I, and I like hesitant to even
Speaker 2: sort of, I don't know, like nitpick because, you know,
Speaker 2: he is apologizing for this statement. It is clear what
Speaker 2: he means and what he meant and what he is
Speaker 2: trying to do. And he is under a nonstop barrage
Speaker 2: of false Islamophobic, uh, bigoted attacks, fast and furious constantly,
Speaker 2: or attacks that assume some Islamophobia on the part of
Speaker 2: the listener by making all kinds of assumptions about him,
Speaker 2: about him being evil. That was just today with Vance, uh,
Speaker 2: or how that he believes evil things, whatever it would be. Uh,
Speaker 2: but at the same time, like I, you see this right, right? Like, like, Oh,
Speaker 2: it's about the context.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: Uh, And he does say in both the original statement
Speaker 2: and he says here, right, that there's no justification, right?
Speaker 2: Because whatever pain this person may have experienced, however real
Speaker 2: and terrible it may be, collective punishment is always wrong.
Speaker 2: It is wrong when someone commits a terrorist attack against
Speaker 2: Jews in Michigan. It is wrong when Israel kills civilians
Speaker 2: in Gaza. And to me, it can stop there. The
Speaker 2: cause of the hurt is immaterial. And part of, I think,
Speaker 2: why the statement brought people the wrong way is not
Speaker 2: because there was something fundamentally untrue about what he was saying.
Speaker 3: It was about.
Speaker 2: The source of the pain matters, right? We care about
Speaker 2: certain kinds of pain more than we care about other
Speaker 2: kinds of pain. And so I'm glad he is saying
Speaker 2: this in the statement, but the idea that there was like, oh,
Speaker 2: the time for context was later, maybe so. But I
Speaker 2: think at any point in which you're discussing this, it
Speaker 2: has to begin and end with the fact that any
Speaker 2: form of collective, and our own feelings are never a
Speaker 2: justification for any kind of violence against people who simply
Speaker 2: are part of a group that you are antagonistic towards.
Speaker 1: I thought it was a really genuine apology. Like, there's
Speaker 1: a range of politician apologies, and some are more half-assed
Speaker 1: than others. And, you know, he was just sort of
Speaker 1: doing that off the cuff. He was asked a question.
Speaker 1: He didn't hold back. And he didn't try to say, like, well,
Speaker 1: I didn't intend this and that. It was like, no,
Speaker 1: I made a mistake and there's the time for context.
Speaker 1: This wasn't it. Like he, I just thought it was great. And, um,
Speaker 1: you know, Jessica Alexander is the chair of the mission,
Speaker 1: Michigan democratic Jewish caucus. Um, she said, you know, she,
Speaker 1: obviously the, the campaign knows there's work to do with
Speaker 1: the Jewish community, but, um, she doesn't have concerns about
Speaker 1: Abdul and, um, Jeremy Moss, who's the democratic nominee for
Speaker 1: a house seat in Michigan and, and has declined to
Speaker 1: endorse Abdul since the primary. He said he's still concerned
Speaker 1: about Abdul's position on Israel, but that the apology was genuine, credible,
Speaker 1: appreciated by the caucus, and then said, we've had a
Speaker 1: lot of meaningful and thoughtful conversations since the primary, and
Speaker 1: this was something that got brought up. So, like, I
Speaker 1: think it's sort of also, I mean, you can look
Speaker 1: at the, you can dissect the national implications and the
Speaker 1: Hassan Pike of it all, but I think it was, like,
Speaker 1: Abdul's reaching out and talking to the Jewish community in Michigan.
Speaker 1: And this was the thing that really bothered people. And
Speaker 1: so he said, okay, I'm going to address it.
Speaker 2: I was like, just the use of such a kind
Speaker 2: of cliched phrase as hurt people, hurt people probably was
Speaker 2: like a big part of it, even if it makes
Speaker 2: sense inside the context. I also, by the way, like,
Speaker 2: this is not, I don't even, not even saying that
Speaker 2: what I, like my, the feeling I have is less
Speaker 2: directed specifically at this, this comment by Abdul than like,
Speaker 2: there is this, you see it all the time. And
Speaker 2: it's just part of, I think it's like a social
Speaker 2: media thing that like the... So like Brad Lander is
Speaker 2: yelled at on the streets of New York, right? And
Speaker 2: Brad Lander is against AIPAC. He won his race in
Speaker 2: part because he came out against military for aid for Israel.
Speaker 2: He's called what Israel did in Gaza a genocide, right?
Speaker 2: He called Israel an apartheid state. But he is yet
Speaker 2: while still defending the idea of a two-state solution in
Speaker 2: which Israel and Palestine live side by side in peace, fine.
Speaker 2: And he gets harassed on the street. And I saw
Speaker 2: people coming... to his defense, by saying something about how, like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is unhelpful, right? This, to attack someone like that is,
Speaker 2: it makes it look as though this movement is anti-Semitic.
Speaker 2: It makes it look as though the argument against, the
Speaker 2: argument by the Zionist is true, that there's people who
Speaker 2: don't accept any Jew that is part of this movement, right?
Speaker 2: It's like, hold on a second. It's not really just
Speaker 2: about how it looks, right? Like, There is anti-Semitism in
Speaker 2: this movement. That is a problem. It is a problem
Speaker 2: on your terms because it makes your movement less successful.
Speaker 2: It is also a problem for a society to have
Speaker 2: anti-Semitism infused inside of a growing and increasingly popular movement.
Speaker 2: That needs to be addressed on the merits, not simply
Speaker 2: because it's bad strategy, right? But part of it is
Speaker 2: there's this effort to the generosity for people on our
Speaker 2: own side versus the assumption of bad faith on the
Speaker 2: part of the other.
Speaker 3: It's like, let's just.
Speaker 2: apply the same standard across the board, right? This is,
Speaker 2: we would call a right winger doing this an anti-Semite,
Speaker 2: not someone who is giving into the Zionist by seeming
Speaker 2: like an anti-Semite.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And we have to, and we have to do that, uh,
Speaker 2: even when it's on our own side. That's, that's the
Speaker 2: point I'm making.
Speaker 1: Uh, JD Vance was scheduled to speak to the Republican
Speaker 1: Jewish coalition in Vegas on Monday evening. But before that
Speaker 1: he was in Michigan where he, uh, hit Abdul on
Speaker 1: the synagogue comments, lots of other things. Uh, he stood
Speaker 1: up for his wife and like a sort of fake
Speaker 1: seeming way that did not really come off as a human,
Speaker 1: which is typical of JD Vance. Um, Abdul tried to
Speaker 1: counter with some Ohio state trash talk, JD Vance couch joke. Uh,
Speaker 1: What do you guys think? Who do you think got
Speaker 1: the better of that exchange in Michigan? And any thoughts
Speaker 1: on how this campaign is going?
Speaker 3: It's hard to say.
Speaker 2: I mean, J.D.
Speaker 3: Is as cynical as they come, right? This is the
Speaker 3: guy who famously said that the country was being run
Speaker 3: by a bunch of childless cat ladies.
Speaker 1: And he was such a prick about it.
Speaker 3: So I rolled my eyes at the whole wounded, like,
Speaker 3: how dare you talk about my family thing. Because he
Speaker 3: was the one who invoked his pee-paw campaign. In the
Speaker 3: first place, when he attacked Abdul and was like, imagine
Speaker 3: telling my peep-off, Democrats support Sharia law, whatever it was.
Speaker 2: I did a joke about that in Love It or
Speaker 2: Leave It, which is like, oh, Papa, he's going to
Speaker 2: bring Sharia law. He's like, I don't know what that
Speaker 2: is yet. I haven't been made to be afraid of
Speaker 2: that yet.
Speaker 3: The fuck doesn't exist yet.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So like all that said, like I do think you're
Speaker 3: on firm political ground politically. If you just focus on
Speaker 3: the person running for office, the elected official and not
Speaker 3: their family and not kind of like constantly make this
Speaker 3: point about J.D. Vance's family and kids. I also think
Speaker 3: that the couch fucker thing has been dead for a
Speaker 3: while and no one really knows what you're talking about
Speaker 3: and probably is worth steering away from. I mean, if
Speaker 3: I'm talking about J.D. Vance, I'm just talking about how
Speaker 3: this is a guy who's willing to say or do
Speaker 3: anything for power. He is willing to flip flop on
Speaker 3: any policy issue, support any war, like do what it
Speaker 3: takes to make sure Donald Trump is president and go
Speaker 3: with that.
Speaker 1: What are they doing? What are they doing to hurt people?
Speaker 1: That is the that is which I would keep that
Speaker 1: in mind for every candidate in every race. And when
Speaker 1: you're going after the Republicans, whether the ones you're running
Speaker 1: against or Donald Trump, it is what have they done
Speaker 1: to hurt people and piss people off? And I'm going
Speaker 1: to talk about that and fight for people.
Speaker 2: And you're not running against J.D. Vance, and you have
Speaker 2: a limited amount of time to define Mike Rogers, right?
Speaker 2: This is the Republican that has, he ultimately has embraced
Speaker 2: the 2020 conspiracy theories, but I think there is still
Speaker 2: a must, there's like a memory of him as being
Speaker 2: kind of an old school, reasonable Republican. You have a
Speaker 2: limited amount of time to define Mike Rogers. J.D. Vance
Speaker 2: is a representation of a failed, destructive administration that is
Speaker 2: damaging the Michigan's economy that will be backed up 100%
Speaker 2: by Mike Rogers. And so any tit for tat you're
Speaker 2: in that's about J.D. Vance as a person, about his family,
Speaker 2: about couch fucker, whatever it is, is not about the core.
Speaker 2: It's the soundbite people are pulling and it has nothing
Speaker 2: to do with Mike Rogers whatsoever. That to me is
Speaker 2: the problem.
Speaker 1: So Trump apparently isn't satisfied with just making Republicans defend
Speaker 1: his stupid trade war. He's also going to make them
Speaker 1: defend his stupid support for data centers. Out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: he took to Truth Social on Monday morning to write
Speaker 1: the following. The only reason that communities throughout the USA
Speaker 1: should not want data centers is if they want to
Speaker 1: end up being backwards and poor. If they want to
Speaker 1: be successful and rich with far lower taxes and jobs
Speaker 1: all over the place, let data reign. The good news
Speaker 1: is that there are plenty of other places that want them.
Speaker 1: If we kill the golden goose, you will only have
Speaker 1: yourselves to blame. The post got flooded with replies from
Speaker 1: Truth Social users saying things like, I regret ever supporting you.
Speaker 1: You have lost your mind. And this statement is insane. Like,
Speaker 1: why do you guys think Trump is intent on dying
Speaker 1: on this hill?
Speaker 3: This is just another example of him doing everything possible
Speaker 3: to lose the midterms, it feels like. I mean, just
Speaker 3: so folks know, Elected officials on both sides of the
Speaker 3: aisle are furiously backpedaling from data centers. Like Josh Shapiro
Speaker 3: was all in on all these big investments coming to Pennsylvania.
Speaker 3: He's now pumping the brakes and putting executive orders out.
Speaker 3: The NRSC just put out a memo where they described
Speaker 3: data centers as the anchor around the neck of the
Speaker 3: Republican Senate candidate in Ohio. And Trump was like, you
Speaker 3: guys are a bunch of idiots. Quit your bitching. Quit
Speaker 3: your bitching about wanting water and power.
Speaker 1: It's just so like.
Speaker 2: J.D.
Speaker 1: Vance, like, tries to clean up after Trump when he's
Speaker 1: on the tarmac in Michigan and is asked about this.
Speaker 1: And he's like, well, I don't think data centers are
Speaker 1: controversial as long as, you know, you make sure that
Speaker 1: the companies, the hyperscalers that are building them are not,
Speaker 1: you know, building their own power plants. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's going to help either. Building their
Speaker 1: own power plants and that the electricity rates aren't going
Speaker 1: up and that people, like, so he's trying to add
Speaker 1: all these caveats. And then Trump's out there just like, No,
Speaker 1: they're awesome. And if you don't like them, you're backwards
Speaker 1: and poor.
Speaker 2: Or you will be soon enough. It's like the mishandling
Speaker 2: of the data centers, like Trump's comments to me are like, oh,
Speaker 2: you don't want to kill the golden goose. And it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: these companies are on television on a daily basis saying basically,
Speaker 2: we're building it whether you like, we're inventing this technology.
Speaker 2: It'll help you cheat on your, it'll help your kids
Speaker 2: cheat at school. It may destroy the planet. It may
Speaker 2: cure cancer. It will eliminate all the jobs. In order
Speaker 2: to get to that desired.
Speaker 1: Outcome- Best case scenario.
Speaker 2: In order to get to that desired outcome, we are
Speaker 2: going to have to have massive construction that requires a
Speaker 2: great deal of water and power. And after that is done,
Speaker 2: it will be monitored by basically one security guard in perpetuity.
Speaker 2: And also just don't forget, over the course of three
Speaker 2: Republican administrations, we've slowly but surely- reduced any public good
Speaker 2: in terms of taxes that could come from this. We
Speaker 2: have showed you that we are going to have a
Speaker 2: tax code in which all that wealth accrues, the jobs
Speaker 2: are eliminated, and there's no public benefit, right? Or there's
Speaker 2: much less of a public benefit. And then we don't,
Speaker 2: and then they're shocked that there's some kind of a backlash, right?
Speaker 2: Like these people are all so greedy. And I think
Speaker 2: like the tax part of it is not part of
Speaker 2: this debate. And it's not really, it's tangential, I guess.
Speaker 2: But they have spent years training people to expect that
Speaker 2: corporations are going to build a tax code in which
Speaker 2: the public will not benefit from their profits. And people,
Speaker 2: I think, now instinctively do not believe. There was a
Speaker 2: time when I think, look, it was a famous sentence, right?
Speaker 2: What's good for GM is good for the country. It
Speaker 2: was used in the majority. But there was a sense
Speaker 2: in which we kind of believed that the success of
Speaker 2: an American company was a kind of shared kind of
Speaker 2: success for the country. And I just don't think people
Speaker 2: buy that anymore. And so then you're just going to
Speaker 2: build this thing in my house and take all the money.
Speaker 2: And what do I get out of it? Maybe you're
Speaker 2: claiming lower electricity rates, which maybe actually technically true, but
Speaker 2: actually doesn't intuitively make sense.
Speaker 3: So I'm not going to believe you. You get AI
Speaker 3: photos of Donald Trump's Canada geese with machine guns is
Speaker 3: what you get. I think to answer your question, I
Speaker 3: think the reason Trump puts out stuff like that is
Speaker 3: because the only people around him are rich guys who
Speaker 3: probably have a vested financial interest in these companies who
Speaker 3: bought access to Trump. So he's probably reflecting their views
Speaker 3: in the cynical ways they talk about the stuff behind
Speaker 3: closed doors. I mean, you see this stuff from like
Speaker 3: the all-in podcast guys, like Chamath, what's his name? was
Speaker 3: attacking someone who simply wrote up a Substack piece about
Speaker 3: the very scary open AI hugging face cyber attack incident.
Speaker 3: He was attacking him as some sort of Luddite shill for,
Speaker 3: I don't know, big humanity or something. It's funny. Those
Speaker 3: are the people who actually are probably speaking to Trump directly.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Trump needs these data centers so he can fight the
Speaker 1: war with Iran and Canada online with all of his
Speaker 1: AI slot. I think that's why he needs them. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's like a... The problem with this is there is a... Okay,
Speaker 1: the first one big problem people have with data centers
Speaker 1: is the technology they are for is scaring the shit
Speaker 1: out of everyone, mainly because the people who have invented
Speaker 1: this technology and are developing it have told us so.
Speaker 1: But let's pretend that... The data centers were for technology
Speaker 1: that was going to be universally beneficial and didn't have
Speaker 1: a lot of problems. There's like a way to build
Speaker 1: them where, as opposed to giving tax breaks to these
Speaker 1: big data centers, you make them pay a tax to
Speaker 1: the community, which they do in Loudoun County, where it
Speaker 1: has most of the data centers. And like, sure enough.
Speaker 1: They're like building new schools and have all kinds of
Speaker 1: fancy public projects and all the roads are repaved and
Speaker 1: everything and people's property taxes are going down. So you
Speaker 1: can do that. If they are going to add to
Speaker 1: the power grid, you can make these companies then modernize
Speaker 1: the power grid, make it bigger, make it work better, right?
Speaker 1: Which we've needed to do for a while. Like there's
Speaker 1: ways to put all the responsibility and burden on the
Speaker 1: companies building the data centers so that it works well.
Speaker 1: And then make sure that, like, the public has input
Speaker 1: in each community, all this kind of shit. All of
Speaker 1: that's going to go out the window because we have
Speaker 1: fucking Donald Trump who's like, just build them or fucking
Speaker 1: shut up or you're backwards and forwards. Like, there's going
Speaker 1: to be no getting past sort of, like, the populist
Speaker 1: antipathy towards these data centers with the way things are going.
Speaker 1: And that's going to be. People responsible for that will
Speaker 1: be Donald Trump and the AI companies themselves.
Speaker 6: Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2: Like this backlash, like the fact that there's now a
Speaker 2: poll that said people would rather have a nuclear power
Speaker 2: plant close to them than a data center.
Speaker 1: I may get both because the data centers might need
Speaker 1: to build their own nuclear power plant just to run
Speaker 1: the data center.
Speaker 4: Sure.
Speaker 2: I personally would choose data center in that bargain, right?
Speaker 2: Like there is a lot of like, I think in
Speaker 2: part because like the first round of this was done
Speaker 2: without a lot of input from people are scared.
Speaker 3: About the implications of this.
Speaker 2: And like, there's such hubris on the part of these people. Like, oh,
Speaker 2: you're just stupid for not wanting this.
Speaker 3: Or you're just... You're just like, I guess you don't
Speaker 3: want to defeat China. That's the dumbest shit. Look, just
Speaker 3: to be honest here, stopping the construction of these data
Speaker 3: centers is going to have very little impact on the
Speaker 3: deployment of AI or the ability of these companies to
Speaker 3: build the next big model.
Speaker 1: Almost none. It's completely negligible.
Speaker 3: I think what this is is a proxy for the
Speaker 3: anger people feel at having absolutely no control over the
Speaker 3: deployment of this technology.
Speaker 1: Congress isn't doing anything. States aren't doing anything.
Speaker 3: The Trump administration was trying to block states from doing
Speaker 3: anything on their own. So this data center issue and
Speaker 3: the construction of them has become the focus of the fight.
Speaker 3: And so Trump is both getting paid off by the executives,
Speaker 3: but also knows that the entire stock market is propped
Speaker 3: up by a couple AI stocks in this circular investment
Speaker 3: they have with a handful of other companies. And once
Speaker 3: that balloon is popped, the whole thing is crashing down.
Speaker 3: And his singular accomplishment, which is a high stock market,
Speaker 3: which he doesn't really have anything to do with, is
Speaker 3: coming down with it.
Speaker 1: I just, again, all of the candidates in these marquee
Speaker 1: Senate races, who have tried to backpedal along with everyone
Speaker 1: else who was pro-data center. Can't wait for them to
Speaker 1: be asked about this Trump comment. Mike Rogers, do you
Speaker 1: think that Michigan communities that don't want data centers are
Speaker 1: going to end up backwards and poor? What about you,
Speaker 1: Susan Collins, John Husted, all the Ken Paxton? So one
Speaker 1: other storyline from the Senate field. Laura Loomer is back
Speaker 1: in the news going after Florida Democratic nominee Angie Nixon
Speaker 1: and other prominent women of color. in terms that are
Speaker 1: so disgusting, I'm not even going to try to characterize them.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to play the clip.
Speaker 5: Call out the entitlement of these, as I like to
Speaker 5: call them, ghetto black bitches. Angie Nixon, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley,
Speaker 5: Cori Bush. Katonji Brown Jackson. It goes both ways. You
Speaker 5: don't get to go demonize white people and demonize white
Speaker 5: politicians and white men and say that, you know, there's
Speaker 5: a white male problem or a white domestic terror problem
Speaker 5: in America when you behave like an absolute animal.
Speaker 1: So we contemplated not playing that clip, but thought it
Speaker 1: was important to do so because that is someone who
Speaker 1: has regularly flown with Donald Trump on Air Force One,
Speaker 1: has walk-in access to the Oval. and gets people hired
Speaker 1: and fired.
Speaker 3: She got the head of the NSA fired. She got
Speaker 3: like a bunch of top national security officials fired.
Speaker 1: And I have not heard one Republican candidate, politician, been
Speaker 1: asked to answer for this. No.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's shockingly racist. She's said stuff like this before.
Speaker 3: She's also said things about Islam and Muslims that are
Speaker 3: just as bad. She called herself a proud Islamophobe. She
Speaker 3: said that Islam is a cancer, that Muslims are savages.
Speaker 3: I think these comments, like Laura Loomer's existence is one
Speaker 3: of the best examples of where Democrats are hurt by
Speaker 3: not having a massive right-wing media apparatus like Fox News
Speaker 3: because we have Fox on in our office a lot.
Speaker 3: There's been a story about Hasan Piker every hour on
Speaker 3: the hour on Fox News for probably a couple weeks now.
Speaker 1: This is no exaggeration.
Speaker 3: No, literally.
Speaker 2: You have it on mute.
Speaker 3: You just look up and it's.
Speaker 2: Just like it's Hasan, Abdul, occasionally the parent of a
Speaker 2: volleyball player. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Mamdani.
Speaker 3: Mamdani will pop up, yeah. The other challenge, though, is that,
Speaker 3: you know, Trump has said stuff that's like just as bad,
Speaker 3: if not worse. And so it's hard to know where
Speaker 3: the shame comes from.
Speaker 1: But it's like it's been.
Speaker 3: Normalized on the right and on the left. There are
Speaker 3: things that are still surprising to people, to members of Congress,
Speaker 3: to electeds. So it's terrible.
Speaker 1: Loomer also took credit over the weekend for ICE arresting
Speaker 1: and deporting Milo Yiannopoulos. the British-born former Breitbart editor, former
Speaker 1: Kanye West aide, and just a generally vile troll. He's
Speaker 1: been out of sight for a few years, but he's
Speaker 1: seen a minor resurgence of late as an ally of
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson, who plans to publish Yiannopoulos' book called Ex Gay.
Speaker 1: Yiannopoulos appears to be a player in the larger Laura Loomer,
Speaker 1: Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor Greene war. Anyone want to attempt
Speaker 1: to untangle this one? Or thoughts on Milo's deportation?
Speaker 2: It's, there's, you know, you are what you pretend to be,
Speaker 2: so you should be careful what you pretend to be.
Speaker 3: And that picture that.
Speaker 1: Who's pretending to be what in this?
Speaker 2: I think, like, kind of taking on this idea. Like,
Speaker 2: I don't know what his true beliefs are as they've
Speaker 2: moved around.
Speaker 6: Milo?
Speaker 1: Milo.
Speaker 3: He's been gay. He's not gay. He's been crazy. Now
Speaker 3: he's a national.
Speaker 2: Whatever his position is, sort of, like, to kind of
Speaker 2: be a kind of publicity seeking troll and kind of
Speaker 2: heterodox in some way that is interesting. And also like
Speaker 2: at times sort of just clearly like making it seem
Speaker 2: as though his beliefs are not real and that he doesn't.
Speaker 4: Have real beliefs.
Speaker 3: He's all a big show.
Speaker 2: Like it ends with the department, you, you help, you know,
Speaker 2: you become a fascistic right-wing kind of troll online. And
Speaker 2: then the Homeland security is putting a kind of an
Speaker 2: unflattering picture of you on the internet while they deport you.
Speaker 3: And I feel.
Speaker 2: Like it's like the, whatever it looked, every edgelord train
Speaker 2: kind of ends in their version of that. Whatever, you know,
Speaker 2: there's no, there's no, like the same way there's no
Speaker 2: like 40 year old ballerinas. It's like, this is the end.
Speaker 2: There's some terrible end to the edgelord path.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I've not dug into this one.
Speaker 4: He sucks.
Speaker 3: This guy should go away. Have fun in the UK.
Speaker 3: Go back to Breitbart.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's some of his tweets about immigration. Just a few,
Speaker 1: like zero immigration for the next 20 years. No ifs,
Speaker 1: no buts. That's what he said last year on X.
Speaker 1: He also had a, horrible post about, like, a couple
Speaker 1: years before that. Like, what's the etiquette when you see
Speaker 1: an ICE raid? Can you masturbate right there? Or do
Speaker 1: you have to take cover for... I mean, it was
Speaker 1: just like, like, he's gone so far in the direction of, like,
Speaker 1: I can't wait to see people deported and all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Now, all that said, the idea that
Speaker 1: if Milo was still in Trump's good graces, said nice
Speaker 1: things about the Trump administration, do we think He would
Speaker 1: have been deported? Probably not.
Speaker 2: First, they came for Milo Yiannopoulos.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is because of the personalities involved. You
Speaker 1: don't think about this, but it is fucking crazy that
Speaker 1: a random citizen or advisor, political advisor, you know, right-wing
Speaker 1: media star can like not like someone, think that that
Speaker 1: person's been critical of the Trump administration, call up ICE
Speaker 1: and be like, go find them and deport them. And
Speaker 1: then it works.
Speaker 3: It's also like, look, it's the.
Speaker 2: What draws the evil eye and sometimes what draws the
Speaker 2: evil eye is Jimmy Kimmel because he's on the left
Speaker 2: or some figure that annoys Trump because they're not on side.
Speaker 2: But it's just as like, it's a classic story. You draw,
Speaker 2: if you're inside the movement and become critical of it,
Speaker 2: that's just, of course, sometimes the people that have been
Speaker 2: closest to the leader are the ones that are end
Speaker 2: up in the gulag or deported or, you know, in
Speaker 2: other regimes killed.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Nevada gubernatorial candidate Aaron Ford.
Speaker 3: My guest today is the attorney general for Nevada and
Speaker 3: is running as the Democratic nominee in Nevada's gubernatorial race.
Speaker 4: Aaron Ford, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you so
Speaker 4: much for having me.
Speaker 3: Great to see you. Thank you for being in studio.
Speaker 3: I want to start by asking you about your opponent,
Speaker 3: Governor Lombardo. At a recent event, He said that he
Speaker 3: can't control affordability issues. He can't control inflation rates. He
Speaker 3: said claims otherwise were, quote, bullshit. He also said, quote,
Speaker 3: when you talk about kitchen table issues such as affordability, groceries,
Speaker 3: and all that, that is a driver of the federal government.
Speaker 3: Do you agree with that? And if not, what can
Speaker 3: the governor of a state like Nevada do to drive
Speaker 3: down prices or just make the life more affordable for people?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, absolutely. I disagree with him on this, and
Speaker 4: I've made that point known. Um, Again, thanks for having
Speaker 4: me on.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 4: This is an important part of the conversation that we
Speaker 4: had with Nevadans and people across the nation who have
Speaker 4: people who don't think they can do anything about affordability.
Speaker 4: He called it bullshit, to use your phraseology. And what
Speaker 4: I have said is that what I think is BS
Speaker 4: is that he vetoed a bill that would have put $ 1, 000
Speaker 4: back in parents' pockets per child per year when he
Speaker 4: vetoed a bill for guaranteed school lunch for our children.
Speaker 4: What's BS is when he vetoed a bill that would
Speaker 4: have limited the amount you could pay for prescription drugs
Speaker 4: to the Medicare negotiated price for everybody, putting money back
Speaker 4: in people's pockets. You see, these are the types of
Speaker 4: things that he could have done that we could be
Speaker 4: experiencing relief from right now. This affordability crisis wouldn't be
Speaker 4: as dire as it is right now if he had
Speaker 4: aligned himself with the people of the state as opposed
Speaker 4: to the corporations that are bankrolling his campaign. I was
Speaker 4: talking to a young lady in Menden, Nevada. It's a
Speaker 4: rural part of town and a part of our state.
Speaker 4: And she was telling me she was grocery shopping. And
Speaker 4: she had a basket full of groceries, went over to
Speaker 4: the pharmacy to pick up her prescription, looked at the
Speaker 4: price on that prescription and left her groceries in the
Speaker 4: aisle because she couldn't afford both. You see, that bill
Speaker 4: he vetoed that would have limited prescription drug costs could
Speaker 4: have helped her. And that's an affordability crisis that he
Speaker 4: is causing himself. And so anyone who throws their hands
Speaker 4: up in the air like that doesn't deserve to be
Speaker 4: the governor of our state.
Speaker 1: It's a crazy thing to say when you're running for office.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Bullshit?
Speaker 1: I mean, what's the point of you being in office then?
Speaker 4: Exactly right.
Speaker 3: I saw some data over the last week that immigration
Speaker 3: arrests surged over the summer and that ICE had a
Speaker 3: record number of arrests in.
Speaker 1: June and July.
Speaker 3: If you're elected governor, how would you direct the state
Speaker 3: to work with ICE or not work with ICE?
Speaker 4: Well, look, to be clear, our governor is already helping ICE.
Speaker 4: You know, most Republican governors are doing that. Down in Texas,
Speaker 4: you see the governor offering land so they can build warehouses, right,
Speaker 4: to house folks. And our governor has committed our human
Speaker 4: resource of our National Guard members to help ICE do
Speaker 4: their job. And what I have heard and what I
Speaker 4: have said is that. people want our state resources, whether
Speaker 4: they are human, financial, or otherwise, to be spent on
Speaker 4: state stuff, period. They want us spending our money and
Speaker 4: our time and our resources on education, on mental health issues,
Speaker 4: on infrastructure, on things that are helping Nevadans and not
Speaker 4: doing the job of someone else. And so That's my
Speaker 4: position as well. And I support that. I stand for
Speaker 4: that and unequivocally say that when I'm governor, we're going
Speaker 4: to spend our state resources on state stuff, not doing
Speaker 4: someone else's job.
Speaker 1: Not doing the federal government's job.
Speaker 3: Last week, I saw that Meta settled a lawsuit with
Speaker 3: 48 states over claims that its products, its apps, you know, Instagram,
Speaker 3: other things, harmed kids by offering addictive social media platforms.
Speaker 3: You joined this suit.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering why.
Speaker 3: And what do you think the impact is going to
Speaker 3: be for kids and parents who are trying to figure
Speaker 3: out the appropriate use of social media for kids?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm smiling right now because I was asked the question,
Speaker 4: I think it was last Thursday. I was interviewing with
Speaker 4: one of our local reporters and he asked me what
Speaker 4: the proudest moment was of my career as attorney general.
Speaker 4: There are a lot of proud moments. This was one
Speaker 4: of them. If not, you know, the most prideful I've
Speaker 4: been in a while. And the night before we announced
Speaker 4: the settlement, I told my wife how excited I was. Because,
Speaker 4: you know, to be sure, we're getting up to $ 255
Speaker 4: million into our state from this settlement to help kids
Speaker 4: in the mental health issues that arose out of these
Speaker 4: addictive algorithms that are harming our kids. But what I'm
Speaker 4: most proud of is the fact that we are now
Speaker 4: instituting safety features that are going to help our kids
Speaker 4: in our mental health. You don't know this story, but
Speaker 4: last session, last set of session, I actually ran a
Speaker 4: bill called the Youth Online Safety Act that would have
Speaker 4: done exactly what I'm trying to do here. Limited screen time.
Speaker 4: It would have put parental controls in. It would have
Speaker 4: put in age verification technologies. And I couldn't get the
Speaker 4: bill passed. And I got a lot of pushback from
Speaker 4: the community. But sitting next to me during one of
Speaker 4: those pieces of testimony, Tommy was a young lady. Her
Speaker 4: name was Bethany. She sat next to me with a
Speaker 4: picture of her daughter. Her daughter had committed suicide.
Speaker 1: She hung herself.
Speaker 4: And she used TikTok to do it. And when they found,
Speaker 4: she looked up ways to tie a knot on TikTok.
Speaker 4: And when they found her, TikTok was still scrolling examples
Speaker 4: of how to tie knots.
Speaker 3: Oh, my God.
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 4: And so what I'm most proud of right now is
Speaker 4: that this settlement, by the way, I had already sued
Speaker 4: these entities myself. I wasn't part of the multi-state lawsuit.
Speaker 4: I had sued Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook directly January of 2024.
Speaker 4: And we have beat them back from trying to escape
Speaker 4: our jurisdiction immediately. But we've settled those cases. Now we're
Speaker 4: going to get opportunities for children to have better mental
Speaker 4: health outcomes, parents more control. For example, they won't be
Speaker 4: able to get notifications during school hours anymore. They're going
Speaker 4: to limit their ability to be on these apps from
Speaker 4: midnight to six. They got rid of the filters that
Speaker 4: was causing so much self-image issues. The likes and features
Speaker 4: of the default is going to have them turned off.
Speaker 4: And so parents have a lot more control. We get
Speaker 4: to protect our children, and I'm very proud of that.
Speaker 3: It's just infuriating that We've been dealing with these social
Speaker 3: media apps for well over a decade. All of us
Speaker 3: feel the harms as adults or feel the impact that
Speaker 3: social media can have on you personally, emotionally, and whatnot.
Speaker 3: And yet it took a bunch of states getting together
Speaker 3: to sue to get changes, and Congress did nothing for
Speaker 3: all that time. It just feels impossible that Congress just
Speaker 3: sat on its hand for the last decade and watched
Speaker 3: all this happen.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And look, I'm not one to sit back and
Speaker 4: wait for somebody else to do something. If I have
Speaker 4: to protect my family and I consider the state of
Speaker 4: Nevada my family, then I'm going to do it. I'm
Speaker 4: not waiting for others. But also, that's the import of
Speaker 4: attorneys general working together across state lines on issues that
Speaker 4: affect residents in all of our states. Crime doesn't stop
Speaker 4: at the border, nor do social harms that arise out
Speaker 4: of these apps that you just talked about. And so
Speaker 4: This was an opportunity for, I think it ended up
Speaker 4: being 48 attorneys general and a few from our territories
Speaker 4: as well, working together over the course of years. Our
Speaker 4: investigation started back in 2021, maybe 2022. I could be
Speaker 4: off a little bit in that regard, but we've been
Speaker 4: working together, talking together, figuring out strategy, figuring out what
Speaker 4: the right algorithm or other algorithmic approach is to addressing
Speaker 4: children that have mental health issues and It's facilitated this settlement.
Speaker 4: We wait on nobody to protect our children in Nevada,
Speaker 4: and I'm proud of this work.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I want to ask you about data centers as well.
Speaker 3: So in the state legislature back in 2015, I know
Speaker 3: you sponsored legislation to create tax incentives to bring some
Speaker 3: of these data centers to Nevada. Now you're pledging that
Speaker 3: if elected, Nevada will have the strictest rules in the
Speaker 3: country governing them.
Speaker 1: What changed?
Speaker 3: And what's your response to Democrats who are calling for
Speaker 3: a full moratorium on building AI data centers?
Speaker 4: Well, a few things. First off, the data center of 2015,
Speaker 4: 11 years ago, was not the data center of 2026.
Speaker 4: I think it was seven years before the advent of
Speaker 4: chat GPT when we were in the middle of a
Speaker 4: recession trying to bring jobs to Nevada and looking for
Speaker 4: ways to diversify our economy beyond relying on gaming. Because
Speaker 4: when the country gets the cold, we get the flu.
Speaker 4: And so we did incent data centers to operate there
Speaker 4: and did not contemplate what we are experiencing now. Again,
Speaker 4: the advent of chat GPT and the advent of AI
Speaker 4: and the usage and the draws on power, the electricity
Speaker 4: that is being consumed by these entities, the water that
Speaker 4: it has taken up. We live in a desert in Nevada.
Speaker 4: And what I have found, having spoken to Nevadans across
Speaker 4: two statewide tours in the last, I'd say, 10 months
Speaker 4: or so, is that it doesn't matter who I'm talking to. Democrats,
Speaker 4: Republicans or independents, everybody has a problem with these data
Speaker 4: centers coming in, taking up our energy, driving up our
Speaker 4: energy prices. and draining our water, and they want us
Speaker 4: to do something. And so what I am doing is
Speaker 4: responsible and responsive, responsive to the constituents who sent me
Speaker 4: to office this time and who I'm asking to send
Speaker 4: me to office for the governor's race by developing a
Speaker 4: plan now that's going to address these data centers. I
Speaker 4: am going to halt every single future abatement on data
Speaker 4: centers until we can actually go back and do something
Speaker 4: that this current governor has not done, and that's audit
Speaker 4: the compliance with the terms and agreements in the first
Speaker 4: place that the folks that he's given incentives to, $ 220 million,
Speaker 4: I think, maybe $ 240 million over the course of the
Speaker 4: current governor's tenure. He hasn't audited them to ensure, for example,
Speaker 4: that they have hired local like they were supposed to,
Speaker 4: or they've otherwise complied with the terms of the abatement agreements.
Speaker 4: And so I'm going to stop those abatements going forward.
Speaker 4: Those tax breaks are inappropriate until we can audit those,
Speaker 4: but we're also going to require them to bring their
Speaker 4: own water. I've said they're not going to be able
Speaker 4: to raise consumer rates by one penny They're going to
Speaker 4: have to use clean energy, their own clean energy, to
Speaker 4: power their facilities and build out the grid to accommodate that.
Speaker 4: And not only that, listen to the local input before
Speaker 4: things are done. If a local community doesn't want these
Speaker 4: data centers, it shouldn't be forced on them. And it
Speaker 4: seems to me that we currently have a governor who
Speaker 4: doesn't really care about local input, in fact, has described
Speaker 4: this data center issue as a gold rush for Nevada.
Speaker 4: And what I noticed, Tommy, the only goal rushing right
Speaker 4: now is from the big data center folks and their
Speaker 4: gold to his pockets.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to the Trump ballroom. I did notice one Las
Speaker 3: Vegas resident or maybe not resident, but property owner who
Speaker 3: seems to support the data centers. President Trump said, if
Speaker 3: you oppose data centers, you want to be backwards and poor.
Speaker 3: He said that earlier today. Any thoughts on that?
Speaker 4: Well, I'm beyond being surprised with commentary from our president.
Speaker 4: And he's certainly not on the ground here in Nevada,
Speaker 4: but his acolyte in Joe Lombardo is. And Joe Lombardo
Speaker 4: has capitulated, kowtowed, kissed up to Donald Trump at every
Speaker 4: single turn, every single turn. And it doesn't surprise me
Speaker 4: then that we haven't heard a single word from Joe Lombardo,
Speaker 4: at least not to my knowledge, refuting that form of characterization.
Speaker 4: We've seen, again, Lombardo align himself with Trump in advocating
Speaker 4: for data centers, calling them, saying that he's wholeheartedly in
Speaker 4: support of them. See, I'm wholeheartedly in support of Nevadans,
Speaker 4: and that's why I'm being responsive to what I've heard
Speaker 4: across every demographic, that we need to address these. You know,
Speaker 4: Joe Lombardo has written an op-ed saying we need to
Speaker 4: embrace these, you know, and again, the gold rush. Again,
Speaker 4: he's only talking about the gold rush into his pockets.
Speaker 4: But at the end of the day, you know, Trump
Speaker 4: is wrong for ignoring the will of the people. Lombardo
Speaker 4: is wrong for doing the same. And I'm going to
Speaker 4: be a governor who actually listens and is responsive.
Speaker 3: I want to ask you about the Las Vegas economy.
Speaker 3: I know it's been struggling with a dip tourism. I
Speaker 3: saw the number of visitors was down, but almost 8%
Speaker 3: in 2025 as compared to 2024. I think 2026 started
Speaker 3: kind of soft. One of the reasons I've seen cited
Speaker 3: for that tourism dip is the trade war with Canada.
Speaker 3: A ton of Canadian tourists normally go to Las Vegas,
Speaker 3: but Business Insider reported that 18% fewer Canadians visited Vegas
Speaker 3: in 2025 than 2024. They're kind of voting with their feet.
Speaker 3: about Trump's comments about annexing Canada or the 51st state
Speaker 3: and now this big trade terror fight. How much of
Speaker 3: this tourism decrease do you blame on the Trump administration's
Speaker 3: policies scaring off foreign tourists from Canada or anywhere else?
Speaker 4: Look, if I had to quantify it, I'd say that
Speaker 4: it's upwards of 100%. I mean, the fact of the
Speaker 4: matter is we are living in the Lombardo-Trump economy. Joe
Speaker 4: Lombardo has advocated for these tariffs, essentially saying that we
Speaker 4: need to feel a little pain from them. And I
Speaker 4: say we don't need to feel pain. We need some leadership,
Speaker 4: someone who's willing to stand up, push back against Donald
Speaker 4: Trump and say that these tariffs will harm our state.
Speaker 4: We do rely upon tourism, Canadian, Mexican, Chinese. Those tourists
Speaker 4: have stopped coming. And at the end of the day,
Speaker 4: it has negatively impacted businesses and employment all across our state.
Speaker 4: So I sued. I sued over those tariffs. And I won.
Speaker 4: Our governor said that my lawsuit was unfortunate. And all
Speaker 4: my lawsuits against the Trump administration, the ones that I
Speaker 4: keep winning by upwards of 85% or 90%, by the way,
Speaker 4: he calls unfortunate. Again, it's because he's kowtow, kissed up,
Speaker 4: and capitulated to Donald Trump at every turn. Lies down.
Speaker 4: Lion Lombardo is what they call him. I mean, he
Speaker 4: lies down, but he also lies, just to be clear
Speaker 4: about that.
Speaker 1: Both.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. But look, I think about this from a
Speaker 4: personal perspective, though, Tommy. You don't know my story, but
Speaker 4: I grew up eating stale candy bars for dinner. My
Speaker 4: daddy used to work at a grocery store, and he
Speaker 4: found some stale candy bars at the dumpster behind the
Speaker 4: grocery store. Safeway was throwing these candies away because they
Speaker 4: were stale and they couldn't sell them. But the Fords
Speaker 4: got to eat. So my daddy bought all these stale
Speaker 4: candy bars. And I keep a candy bar from that
Speaker 4: era on my desk at home, on my nightstand, on
Speaker 4: my desk at work as a visual reminder every single
Speaker 4: day of what struggle looks like. I can empathize with
Speaker 4: people who are saying that they're having a tough time surviving,
Speaker 4: let alone trying to thrive right now. I went from
Speaker 4: eating stale candy bars, Tommy, to becoming a single dad
Speaker 4: when I was in college, living on Section 8 housing.
Speaker 4: living on food stamps. They call it SNAP now. They
Speaker 4: got a fancy car and I had to fake money.
Speaker 4: I had to tear out the little book. I was
Speaker 4: on food stamps. I was on Medicaid. That's what kept
Speaker 4: my son and me healthy. And so I have a
Speaker 4: very real understanding of what poverty and struggle looks like.
Speaker 4: And that's why I fight every single day to ensure
Speaker 4: that everyone has the ability to survive in our state.
Speaker 3: Another lawsuit I saw you put forward is, you know, well,
Speaker 3: the New York Times reported that Donald Trump Jr. basically
Speaker 3: at an event warned people state AGs not to police
Speaker 3: or regulate these prediction market sites like CalShe or PolyMarket.
Speaker 3: And then I think 20 states, including yours, are part
Speaker 3: of lawsuits over whether states should govern sports gambling or
Speaker 3: whether that's a federal issue. I know you also signed
Speaker 3: a letter from 44 states criticizing the platforms. I realize
Speaker 3: that your state, and Las Vegas in particular, has a
Speaker 3: different relationship with gambling and gaming and sports betting than
Speaker 3: most states. But how do you think we should be
Speaker 3: regulating these sites? I mean, do you think that the
Speaker 3: federal government or state government should do more to regulate
Speaker 3: these kind of prediction market sites?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, first off, Donald Trump generally doesn't scare me.
Speaker 4: No one scares me when it comes to protecting Nevadans,
Speaker 4: which is the reason why I've actually led the fight
Speaker 4: against these prediction markets, because we are the gold standard
Speaker 4: in Nevada when it comes to sports betting. And indeed,
Speaker 4: these prediction markets are nothing but you know, a new
Speaker 4: fancy way of betting on sports. And they need to
Speaker 4: be regulated pursuant to our laws or any other law
Speaker 4: of the state, in my estimation, in which they are operating.
Speaker 4: That's how you protect consumers. That's how you ensure that
Speaker 4: they're playing by fair rules. These are things that we
Speaker 4: are the gold standard of, and we deserve to be
Speaker 4: able to continue fighting that. And At the end of
Speaker 4: the day, we sued Kaushik, we sued Polly Marcus, we
Speaker 4: sued Robin Hood, you know, and maybe a few others
Speaker 4: to ensure that they have to comply with our rules.
Speaker 4: And just last week, I think it was on Friday,
Speaker 4: the Ninth Circuit affirmed a ruling we got at the
Speaker 4: district court level saying that we indeed have the right
Speaker 4: to regulate these markets because they are nothing more than
Speaker 4: sports markets. They're not these commodities markets. that they allege
Speaker 4: are controlled by swap regulations on the commodities. COTC. Exactly, right?
Speaker 4: It was a crafty way of trying to find a
Speaker 4: hole through which they could walk and operate, but they're
Speaker 4: not that savvy, and they don't frighten us. We won,
Speaker 4: and we'll continue to advocate for these types of protections.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, I imagine you've been in a casino
Speaker 3: once or twice in your life, like have enjoyed betting
Speaker 3: on sports or gambling. What do you think the impact is,
Speaker 3: in particular on young men, of having a casino on
Speaker 3: your phone in your pocket with all the addictive qualities
Speaker 3: of social media and all the ways they keep you
Speaker 3: hooked with notifications and real-time monitoring and graphs and stuff,
Speaker 3: but with the real financial consequences of being able to
Speaker 3: lay down a real bet?
Speaker 4: Look, man, you've hit the nail on the head on
Speaker 4: one of the most important points there. And I know
Speaker 4: personally of young boys who are under the age of
Speaker 4: 21 who have engaged in And essentially gambling and sports
Speaker 4: betting using these apps. And they have spent up their
Speaker 4: college loans. You understand? And so they, in fact, are.
Speaker 4: some of the victims that we're trying to protect. And they,
Speaker 4: in fact, would be protected if they were operating in
Speaker 4: our state in a brick and mortar or under a
Speaker 4: regulated type of activity.
Speaker 3: Because they would be cut off in some way before
Speaker 3: they could get to that point?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, whatever restrictions they have in place that
Speaker 4: could be cut off, they're being at least monitored. People
Speaker 4: can see what's going on. If they see someone's getting
Speaker 4: out of control, You know, there are interventions, so to speak.
Speaker 1: At least there's some friction, too.
Speaker 3: Like, you have to get up, get in the car,
Speaker 3: go to a casino, sit in a sports book.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Like, hand someone your money.
Speaker 3: But the fact that you just lay in bed and, like,
Speaker 3: it just seems like a real problem.
Speaker 1: Switching gears.
Speaker 3: So, back in May, your opponent was pulled over for
Speaker 3: a suspected traffic violation. A cop tried to explain to
Speaker 3: him why he had been pulled over. Governor Lombardo dropped
Speaker 3: his name. The cop was like, I know who you are,
Speaker 3: and proceeded to tell him about the violation. And Lombardo said,
Speaker 3: come on, man. And then the cop let him go.
Speaker 3: The president of the Las Vegas Police Union said Lombardo
Speaker 3: did not demand special treatment per se, but just identified himself.
Speaker 3: Do you buy that? And did you see that there
Speaker 3: was a theater, a movie theater that had a special
Speaker 3: where you could get out of paying for a movie
Speaker 3: ticket by saying, I'm Joe Lombardo? That was a solid
Speaker 3: special there.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, yes. A couple of questions there. The first
Speaker 4: of which is, no, I don't buy the president of
Speaker 4: the union's statement there. Joe Lombardo was absolute. And people
Speaker 4: can watch this for themselves, right? They can make their
Speaker 4: own judgment. And I think most folks I speak to, 99.9%
Speaker 4: of these folks recognize that Joe Lombardo dropped his name
Speaker 4: in order to try to avoid a consequence. All right.
Speaker 4: The guy couldn't finish his sentence. The cop couldn't finish
Speaker 4: his sentence, telling him why he was being pulled over
Speaker 4: before he said, I'm Joe Lombardo. And then was told
Speaker 4: you ran a red light. People are getting we have,
Speaker 4: you know, very bad accidents in Nevada right now. Our
Speaker 4: insurance rates continue to rise because of these types of things.
Speaker 4: He ran a red light. That's why he was being stopped.
Speaker 4: And he says, come on, man.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 4: And the cop let him go. It was in the
Speaker 4: cop's discretion. I'm not suggesting the cop did something bad.
Speaker 4: But what I do know is that Lombardo intimidated the
Speaker 4: young man. Of course. And utilized his name to do that.
Speaker 4: And look, that's what we saw on camera. Imagine how
Speaker 4: this man acts when no one's actually being able to
Speaker 4: gauge how he's interacting with other folks. Right. We can't
Speaker 4: trust him. He already thinks that he's above everybody, as
Speaker 4: you can tell by the way he interacts with him.
Speaker 4: We also know how he feels about Nevadans, generally speaking.
Speaker 4: We have one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation.
Speaker 4: Under his entire three-year, eight-month tenure, we've had the highest
Speaker 4: or one of the highest unemployment rates his entire tenure.
Speaker 4: It's higher now than it was when he took office.
Speaker 4: But he has a theory for that. He says it's
Speaker 4: because people are lazy and they don't want to work.
Speaker 4: And they'd rather depend upon the government. instead of taking
Speaker 4: a job that's available to them. That's what he says.
Speaker 4: That's how he thinks about the people who he supposedly represents, right? And,
Speaker 4: you know, he also says that if you have a
Speaker 4: problem with the government and you decide to protest, you
Speaker 4: must be getting paid, right? Because really, truly, you can't
Speaker 4: have an objection. Sounds familiar, Mr.
Speaker 1: Trump.
Speaker 4: Exactly, exactly, yeah. And, you know, the last thing I'll say,
Speaker 4: and I'm going to give you the mic back, is,
Speaker 4: you know, and by the way, if you are protesting
Speaker 4: because you disagree with something I say, I got two
Speaker 4: words for you. F you. Those are his words out
Speaker 4: of his mouth about the people he represents, right? And
Speaker 4: so him abusing his authority is yet another example of
Speaker 4: him just thinking he's better, different, set apart, and not
Speaker 4: representing the working class members of our state and instead
Speaker 4: aligning himself with his billionaire friends, his corporations, and looking
Speaker 4: out for himself.
Speaker 1: He's got a lot of bad quotes out there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, we're not going to
Speaker 4: let folks forget. So look, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, you've talked about a lot of the ways that
Speaker 3: he's doing the bidding for corporate America. No surprise then
Speaker 3: that he is sitting on a ton of cash, his campaign.
Speaker 3: His campaign account, his super PAC, they've got tens of
Speaker 3: millions of dollars on hand. How do you combat that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, look, this race is always going to be about
Speaker 4: the money versus the many. 100%. There's no way we
Speaker 4: can compete with his billionaire friends who give him literally
Speaker 4: a million dollars a pop into a PAC. Last quarter,
Speaker 4: my PAC raised a little over a million dollars. His
Speaker 4: PAC raised $ 13 million. In a quarter? From like six
Speaker 4: different donors.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 4: You understand?
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Rich people. Rich people. Dropping in people who own data centers, right?
Speaker 4: People who donated flock cameras. Now, these are people who
Speaker 4: are supporting him as he unhurls $ 17 million of negative
Speaker 4: ads against me, which, by the way, haven't really moved
Speaker 4: the needle. We are in a tie ballgame right now
Speaker 4: within a margin of error. From every objective polling out there,
Speaker 4: you take away the Democratic polls and the Republican polls
Speaker 4: and look at the objective polling, it's either a margin
Speaker 4: of error race or or a tie ball game. And
Speaker 4: that's notwithstanding him spending $ 17 million of negative money against me.
Speaker 4: So we're going to win because we have many on
Speaker 4: our side. We have to continue to get the word
Speaker 4: out to be sure we need money. And I would
Speaker 4: encourage your people to go to Ford, FordNevada.com and check
Speaker 4: us out because that is going to be important. We're
Speaker 4: on TV, but we need people to be able to
Speaker 4: spread the word, get folks out to register and to
Speaker 4: actually show up to vote.
Speaker 3: These flock cameras, man, these are, these things are disconcerting.
Speaker 3: I'm glad there's getting a lot of attention these days.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a problem.
Speaker 3: It feels like we're building our own little Chinese-style police state.
Speaker 1: It's scary.
Speaker 4: It's scary. And again, being responsive means being— your ear
Speaker 4: to the ground. And I have learned now that folks
Speaker 4: have concerns with these things. And I suggest in my
Speaker 4: state that we stop using them until the legislature can
Speaker 4: chime in on some privacy issues.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that would be good. Final question for you. You
Speaker 3: got an undergraduate degree at Texas A & M and
Speaker 3: then some postgraduate degrees at Ohio State. Aggies play the Buckeyes.
Speaker 3: Who are you rooting for?
Speaker 4: It's a win-win for me, man. It's a win-win.
Speaker 1: Come on.
Speaker 4: It's a win-win.
Speaker 2: Come on.
Speaker 4: Here's what happened. I didn't know. So one time they
Speaker 4: did play each other. I want to say it was
Speaker 4: a Sugar Bowl, 1999 or so. I was at Ohio State.
Speaker 4: My brother-in-law played football for Texas A & M. So
Speaker 4: they kind of had the edge because he was my brother-in-law,
Speaker 4: but I didn't know. But I sat there and I
Speaker 4: watched the game, and I just wanted to see which
Speaker 4: way my body went as good things happened. And I
Speaker 4: found myself saying, yes. And it was an Aggie play.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 4: So I'm going to support my Aggies over my Buckeyes.
Speaker 1: Also, the Buckeyes win all the time.
Speaker 4: Come on, man. Ain't nothing wrong with winning. All I
Speaker 4: do is win, win, win. Come on, baby.
Speaker 3: How are you feeling about college football in the NIL era?
Speaker 1: Have we gotten it right so far?
Speaker 4: I don't know if we've gotten it right. But I think, honestly,
Speaker 4: I've always had the opinion that we should be paying
Speaker 4: our student athletes.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 4: I actually represented a basketball player who, in my estimation,
Speaker 4: got the short end of the stick back in the day.
Speaker 4: This was early 2000s. I just have a hard time,
Speaker 4: you know, accepting that we have these old grown men
Speaker 4: who are, you know, utilizing their influence on these young,
Speaker 4: impressionable teenagers, getting their careers ruined early on because they're
Speaker 4: giving them extra benefits while they get to go in
Speaker 4: and coach and make, you know, million dollar contracts, go
Speaker 4: to another institution.
Speaker 3: That's played half the time. The coach is like the
Speaker 3: highest paid state employee.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Tens of millions of dollars a year and they couldn't pay.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Look, I'm totally in favor of players getting paid. I
Speaker 3: do wonder if, There's going to be a course correction.
Speaker 3: I mean, I know Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell are
Speaker 3: trying to work on something in the U.S. Senate right
Speaker 3: now to try to reform the whole process. I don't
Speaker 3: know if it's—it seems like it's stuck at the moment.
Speaker 3: Maybe that would just reduce the number of times you
Speaker 3: could hit the transfer portal, maybe find some way to
Speaker 3: kind of even out some of the funding, but who knows?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, to your point. I don't think we have
Speaker 4: it right yet, but I think— You know, we should
Speaker 4: be paying our players. Let's figure out a way to
Speaker 4: get it done right.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Well, Attorney General Ford, thank you so much for doing
Speaker 3: the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being here.
Speaker 4: I give you an offer, though.
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 4: I have to offer you something.
Speaker 1: Please.
Speaker 4: You see, I saw you had my friend Rob Sand
Speaker 4: on recently. And he offered you to be, you know,
Speaker 4: to look at the Constitution and see if you could
Speaker 4: be governor for a day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wanted to do like a Dave thing.
Speaker 4: Well, here's the deal. So he offered you governor for
Speaker 4: the day for a day if you could pass as
Speaker 4: his body double, right? Okay, yeah. If you can pass
Speaker 4: as my body double— You can have it, man.
Speaker 3: Listen, I really appreciate that offer. I would love like one,
Speaker 3: you know, get out of jail free card for a
Speaker 3: trip to Vegas coming up. So if we can make
Speaker 3: that happen.
Speaker 4: I always tell my friends, come to Vegas, but don't
Speaker 4: make me your first call.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you must have a lot of people being like, hey,
Speaker 3: I'm making a trip. Can I get your cell? No, no,
Speaker 3: you cannot. Well, look, thank you again for doing the show.
Speaker 1: Good luck in the selection. We need you to win
Speaker 1: this thing.
Speaker 4: Thanks, man. Appreciate you.
Speaker 1: That's our show for today. Thanks to Aaron Ford for
Speaker 1: coming on. Dan and I will be back with a
Speaker 1: new show on Friday.