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Speaker 1: Don't forget there's no safe like simply safe. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Plot Save America. I'm John Favor. Tommy's off today. On
Speaker 1: today's show, the White House tries again to limit the
Speaker 1: number of vaccines for kids based on unproven conspiracies about autism.
Speaker 1: Todd Blanche officially becomes the Attorney General thanks to the
Speaker 1: Republican Senate. AOC says woke one was crazy. As Wisconsin
Speaker 1: and Minnesota Democrats head to the polls, Jesse Waters does
Speaker 1: not want to talk about women's sports, and Hunter Biden
Speaker 1: sits down with Tucker Carlson. Then Montana House candidate Sam Forstagg,
Speaker 1: a former smoke jumper, stops by the studio to talk
Speaker 1: to love It about his candidacy and the politics of
Speaker 1: his states.
Speaker 2: He's really interesting. I really recommend listening to that conversation.
Speaker 2: This is a person who decided to run for office.
Speaker 2: He literally is jumping out of planes to put out
Speaker 2: wildfires and then spending the rest of his year like
Speaker 2: organizing and doing union work, and he's just a really
Speaker 2: interesting person.
Speaker 1: A firefighter. My kids would love this. Yeah, speaking into
Speaker 1: firefighters right now, Well.
Speaker 2: They're gonna listen. I mean, a lot of our listeners
Speaker 2: gonna be big into fire riders after this conversation brought
Speaker 2: it up.
Speaker 1: Excellent. All right, all right, but first let's check in
Speaker 1: on how the president's wore in the Middle East is
Speaker 1: going NPR. Here's a headline from NPR. Haunted by Hoover,
Speaker 1: Trump searches for an endgame in Iran. CNN decided to
Speaker 1: go with Trump has a Carter style Iran. Problem is
Speaker 1: the economy drags before the midterms. We got a Hoover,
Speaker 1: we got a Carter. What else, it's more Nixon for
Speaker 1: the trifecta.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, he's definitely doing Yeah, he's definitely doing Nixon.
Speaker 2: Nixon at the Department of Justice, Carter in the Middle East, Hoover, Hoover,
Speaker 2: Hoover on the breadlines. I mean, he's really it is
Speaker 2: really all of them. And in fairness, the comparison to
Speaker 2: Carter is even more apt than that because the straight
Speaker 2: of horror moves is a hostage.
Speaker 1: That's the context for lots of reporting over the weekend
Speaker 1: that the president is desperately looking for a way to
Speaker 1: accept defeat in Iran after the regime made it clear
Speaker 1: they're not giving up control of the Strait of Hormuz uh.
Speaker 1: Trump is also weighing dropping his demand for a nuclear deal.
Speaker 1: I told Axios that he is quote low keying it
Speaker 1: with Iran and only semi negotiating at this point, and
Speaker 1: then on Monday responded to Iran's demand for reparations by
Speaker 1: demanding reparations from Iran.
Speaker 3: Take that a lot of neocons losing their semis. Sorry,
Speaker 3: tom I.
Speaker 1: Don't think Tommy's not here. They were never they were
Speaker 1: never semis.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that the Iranian regime is intentionally
Speaker 1: dragging the war out so that Trump loses the midterms,
Speaker 1: probably because they're watching clips.
Speaker 3: Just like this.
Speaker 4: You said in June that this was quote the strongest
Speaker 4: job market in your lifetime by what metric.
Speaker 1: The bottom line is that if you look at the
Speaker 1: overall economy, then things are really really boomy.
Speaker 4: Trump's administration has only added five hundred and forty eight
Speaker 4: thousand net jobs so far, which is considered very slow growth.
Speaker 4: It's growth, but very slow two million jobs were created
Speaker 4: in the last eighteen months of Biden's presidency. Are you
Speaker 4: really arguing that your numbers are better than that?
Speaker 1: Well, I disagree with your number. We'll have to follow
Speaker 1: up on email.
Speaker 4: I know you don't negotiate with the Iranians, but you
Speaker 4: do talk about the economy, and you said your bullets
Speaker 4: is going to be a like a lot of traffic moving.
Speaker 1: There every single day. If I wouldn't call it ack.
Speaker 1: A lot low of voters feel about the president's work
Speaker 1: on jobs.
Speaker 2: You know, these are the types of numbers that will
Speaker 2: make a lot of Republican members of Congress lose their
Speaker 2: jobs come November.
Speaker 1: You can see it right here. I mean, just look
Speaker 1: at this trend line. Trump's not appropriating on jobs.
Speaker 5: He is now.
Speaker 1: Twenty two points underwater, swimming with the fishes, swimming with.
Speaker 2: The vicious kind of that was like what kind of
Speaker 2: code switching was Harry doing at the end there, it's
Speaker 2: like extra New York.
Speaker 1: How does old Donni wriggle his way out of this one?
Speaker 1: Love it?
Speaker 2: From the beginning, they hadn't said they were going for
Speaker 2: unconditional surrender, that they were going to prevent Iran from
Speaker 2: being able to project power in the Middle East, that
Speaker 2: they were going to fundamentally reorder the power in this
Speaker 2: critical part of the world. And what he had done
Speaker 2: not unlike what he had done when he had a
Speaker 2: midnight hammer in the past or killed Solomane like done
Speaker 2: a series of strikes and then claimed that the nuclear
Speaker 2: program was set back at the way Barack Obama could
Speaker 2: have never dreamed through his deal. Maybe they could call,
Speaker 2: you know, bombing the nuclear sites and incapacitating a large
Speaker 2: percentage of Iran's military as some kind of victory if
Speaker 2: they reopen this strait. But now Iran has proven that
Speaker 2: the US military, despite all its might, combined with Israel,
Speaker 2: cannot stop it from controlling this vital waterway. Trump looks weak,
Speaker 2: the country is not behind it. There's all these reports
Speaker 2: about our depleting military capacity, and now at the end
Speaker 2: of it, the best he's going to accept is we're
Speaker 2: back to where we started. Now, to be clear, I
Speaker 2: hope that happens. I would rather us get back to
Speaker 2: the strait being open and not having this on again
Speaker 2: off again war in the Middle East and all the
Speaker 2: instability and danger and chaos that that entails. But it's
Speaker 2: still a total capitulation by Trump.
Speaker 1: And I don't think this strait is going to be
Speaker 1: open because Iran has recognized correctly that this is their
Speaker 1: sole point of leverage now. And that's why, you know,
Speaker 1: there's all this reporting last week that Iran and I'm on,
Speaker 1: we're like heading towards a deal, and I guess they
Speaker 1: have negotiated it, but Aron's basically like, yeah, we negotiated
Speaker 1: this with Oman, but we're not opening the straight until
Speaker 1: the US ends the blockade, US forces out of the region,
Speaker 1: compensation for the war, sanctions, relief, they're asking for all
Speaker 1: of it because they don't really want the deal, because
Speaker 1: they actually want to lord it over Trump. And you know,
Speaker 1: and from Trump's perspective, he does it like he keeps going.
Speaker 1: You know, they talk about exit rams. He keeps going
Speaker 1: past different exits on the highway. Each time he goes
Speaker 1: past one, the next exit is worse than the last one.
Speaker 1: Because now, what can he actually do? He can't. He
Speaker 1: doesn't want He's not talking about a military strike. I remember,
Speaker 1: he's talking about horrible, like the worst military strike since
Speaker 1: World War Two, and we're going to destroy them. As
Speaker 1: early as last week we were just talking about that
Speaker 1: and today he was asked and he's like, you'll see,
Speaker 1: you'll see, but we don't have the munitions. We're running
Speaker 1: out of munitions. There's no intelligence that said that any
Speaker 1: further US strikes would bring them to the negotiating table
Speaker 1: or do anything or cause them to change their behavior
Speaker 1: in any way. So basically what he wants is for
Speaker 1: the strait to reopen and then say a nuclear deal
Speaker 1: will happen some other time. But he can't even do
Speaker 1: that because they're not going to open the straight.
Speaker 2: And they're not cooperative rhetorically, right, Like he really, really
Speaker 2: what he wants is for this all to just go
Speaker 2: the fuck away, like everyone just shut up about Iran
Speaker 2: or I don't want to talk about it anymore, and
Speaker 2: I want to think about anymore. We won I'm done,
Speaker 2: it's over. Everyone stopped complaining. And so he does these
Speaker 2: threats to say they're coming back to the table. They
Speaker 2: don't cooperate and say we are back to the table.
Speaker 2: They have this annoying way of not helping him with
Speaker 2: his pr problem.
Speaker 1: Right because they can read the news, yeah, and watch
Speaker 1: clips like we just did. The Guardian says that there's
Speaker 1: two factions in Iran, arguing about their strategy on this.
Speaker 1: One things that if Trump is weaker after losing the
Speaker 1: mid terms, he'll have less reason to deal. The other
Speaker 1: thing that losing Congress will force Trumps to negotiate.
Speaker 2: What do you think My instinct on this is that
Speaker 2: it is no easier for Iranian political factions to predict
Speaker 2: Trump's conduct that it is for us to predict Trump's conduct.
Speaker 2: I think that there's a third door, which is and
Speaker 2: this is, by the way, something that some of the
Speaker 2: neocons have been wish casting for, which is Trump is
Speaker 2: a little bit constrained by the politics right now, because
Speaker 2: all of these Republicans he's dealing with do not want
Speaker 2: to be saddled with an ongoing war in the midterms
Speaker 2: and the cost of gas and the anger from the
Speaker 2: part of Trump's base that were convinced that they were
Speaker 2: voting against feign Wors. So they want all this to
Speaker 2: stay pretty quiet. If Trump, whether he wins the midterms
Speaker 2: or loses the mid terms, there are those who believe
Speaker 2: that will give him the flexibility to finally do the
Speaker 2: escalation that they're desperate for.
Speaker 1: Him to do.
Speaker 2: He'll be he won't be running again. Other Republicans can criticize,
Speaker 2: they can be a debate about it in the twenty
Speaker 2: twenty seven twenty twenty eight Republican primaries. But there's a
Speaker 2: version of this where losing the midterm may weaken him
Speaker 2: politically but might put him in a position to do
Speaker 2: something drastic and quite terrible.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was thinking about it the other way, and
Speaker 1: that like, because I don't know that escalation does anything
Speaker 1: at this point, because I don't know that they can
Speaker 1: he can bomb them into submissions since they've hit all
Speaker 1: the targets. I do think he could give them more,
Speaker 1: He could capitulate more, and you could see him doing
Speaker 1: that again after the midterms, just to get it off
Speaker 1: his plate and to go around saying that he ended
Speaker 1: the war and he's a peace president and like it's
Speaker 1: a terrible deal, and everyone tells him it's a terrible deal,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't care because he just.
Speaker 2: Lies, yes, and then he gets you know, he's doing
Speaker 2: his big kind of president at the end of his term. Yes,
Speaker 2: doing his sort of like big diplomatic achievements that he
Speaker 2: can kind of put in his museum tower. Part of
Speaker 2: this is a wish that the elections are somehow a
Speaker 2: hinge on which there could be some change in the dynamic.
Speaker 2: The other argument is the Trump we have today is
Speaker 2: that Trump will have six months from now. He doesn't
Speaker 2: give a fuck what happens to these Republicans for the
Speaker 2: most part, other than how it affects him. He's already
Speaker 2: said that in many interviews. What's driving him is what
Speaker 2: will drive him then, which is how his ego is
Speaker 2: reflected in the embarrassment of losing a war, being able
Speaker 2: to claim that he got a better deal than Obama,
Speaker 2: what have you. That's the case in January as it
Speaker 2: is today.
Speaker 1: One person who seems less afraid of pissing off Trump
Speaker 1: these days, as bb Net Yahoo. He just rejected the
Speaker 1: US backed peace plan for Gaza, saying that the IDF
Speaker 1: won't withdraw any forces until Hamas completely disarms, and that
Speaker 1: they're not afraid to quote stand up to the US.
Speaker 1: That would be Israel. What did you think that's all about? Yes.
Speaker 2: He also said again that as long as he's Prime Minister,
Speaker 2: there will be no Palestinian state, neither in Gaza nor
Speaker 2: in Judea and Samaria is what he says, but the
Speaker 2: West Bank, and that's regardless of whether Hamas is in
Speaker 2: charge so they can negotiate and deal with what it
Speaker 2: means for Hamas to be disarmed, and there may be
Speaker 2: legitimate disagreement inside of that, even though Benjamin Ettia, who
Speaker 2: is not a good faith actor, and there is no
Speaker 2: disarmament that would be acceptable to him, obviously, but there
Speaker 2: is an actual policy question in what it looks like
Speaker 2: for Hamas to be disarmed when you're leaving those weapons
Speaker 2: inside of Gaza. Fine, But if he's saying there will
Speaker 2: never be a Palestinian state, which he's been saying for
Speaker 2: what Yes, but he's saying even now after they've leveled Gaza,
Speaker 2: even as Hamas has agreed to the terms of this deal,
Speaker 2: which means handing over power, even in the deal in
Speaker 2: which there will be an international force, like all of
Speaker 2: these steps, the steps that would have to happen, and
Speaker 2: that should be what determines the creation of a Palestinian
Speaker 2: state that Israel recognizes. He is saying that that cannot
Speaker 2: happen on his watch. So you have Trump now saying,
Speaker 2: you know, the Trump administration kind of quietly saying he's
Speaker 2: got an election in October. He's trying to protect his
Speaker 2: right flank. Let's wait till after the election, which by
Speaker 2: the way, is a large as he does not afford
Speaker 2: people like John Cornyn and Cassidy and the rest. But okay,
Speaker 2: he gets let's say they then Yaho manages to stay
Speaker 2: in power. He gets the other side of this selection.
Speaker 2: Then what he is saying he will never agree to
Speaker 2: a plan in which the Palestinians have a state, which
Speaker 2: means he will never agree to a plan in which
Speaker 2: Israel is not the sovereign in Gaza and the West Bank.
Speaker 1: Right, which means that they will. He'll never agree to
Speaker 1: a plan where Palestinians and people who are living in
Speaker 1: the West Bank and Gaza are anything but second class
Speaker 1: citizens with fewer rights than israelis, which is if people,
Speaker 1: you know, people who are probably Israel get upset when
Speaker 1: you call it an occupation or that it can act
Speaker 1: like an apartheid state. But when you're talking about the
Speaker 1: West Bank and Gaza, like, what do you call it?
Speaker 1: If there's never going to be a Palestinian state and
Speaker 1: Israel is just going to control both areas the entire time,
Speaker 1: are they going to make them full citizens of Israel?
Speaker 1: And probably doesn't sound like.
Speaker 2: It, And you have Israel taking more and more of
Speaker 2: Gaza for this security perimeter. They no longer even really
Speaker 2: recognize the original border of Gaza as where a Palestinian
Speaker 2: state would begin. You have settlement expansion going on at
Speaker 2: a pace they are doing everything they can to make
Speaker 2: any kind of a Palestinian state, both politically and practically impossible. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: you have those who I think are rightly incredibly disgusted
Speaker 2: and critical of Israel saying that a two state solution
Speaker 2: is now ridiculous and stale and dead talking point because
Speaker 2: of what's happened. They want a one state solution in
Speaker 2: which Palestinians have equal rights. Those that are pro Israel,
Speaker 2: that is anathema to them because they believe in a
Speaker 2: Jewish state. If you believe in a Jewish state and
Speaker 2: you find it repellent at the idea of Israel being
Speaker 2: an apartheid state, then the answer is a state in
Speaker 2: which Arab Israelis and Jewish Israelis have equal rights. But
Speaker 2: there is a Jewish majority that requires a Palestinian state
Speaker 2: in which they can govern themselves and live in freedom
Speaker 2: and autonomy. And that is the reality, and Benjamin Nannaho
Speaker 2: is the obstacle to that possibility. And everything else you
Speaker 2: can blame all the rhetoric you don't like. There's tons
Speaker 2: of anti Semitism, but it is this Israeli government and
Speaker 2: the Israeli people backing it that are now making Israel
Speaker 2: this Paria nation around the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I don't know that an election even that
Speaker 1: get frid of Nanna, who is going to fundamentally change
Speaker 1: too much about that scenario that you just described. So
Speaker 1: let's see.
Speaker 2: But by the way, I just think we should just
Speaker 2: keep arguing. I think I think we keep arguing it
Speaker 2: on about social media and accuse each other of all
Speaker 2: kinds of things.
Speaker 1: I'm very, very very close to the solution there, very close.
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Speaker 1: purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace dot com
Speaker 1: slash crooked. One surprise addition to the White House schedule
Speaker 1: on Monday an Executive Order on childhood vaccines. The order
Speaker 1: changes the federal government's official guidance about which vaccines kids
Speaker 1: should get and how soon, on the completely unproven theory
Speaker 1: that combining different vaccines into single doses and administering several
Speaker 1: vaccines in a single doctor visit, which has happened for decades,
Speaker 1: might cause autism. Specifically, the EO calls for the measles,
Speaker 1: mumps and rubella vaccine called the MMR to be given
Speaker 1: as three different shots, even though they're not available separately.
Speaker 1: It asks states to revisit vaccine mandates, which is their choice,
Speaker 1: and it pairs down the group of vaccines that should
Speaker 1: be recommended for all kids taking HEPA and B vaccines.
Speaker 1: The flu vaccine and the COVID vaccine off that list
Speaker 1: of recommended vaccines. Somehow, though, what Trump RFK Junior and
Speaker 1: noted health expert Stephen Miller said about vaccines in the
Speaker 1: OVAL on Monday was even worse than the EO itself.
Speaker 5: Large amounts like vas A vaccine are currently pumped into
Speaker 5: your child's body. And you know, there are some groups
Speaker 5: that have virtually no problem with autism, and they, you know,
Speaker 5: I have to say this, say their groups that aren't
Speaker 5: big into the world of vaccines, and nothing bad can
Speaker 5: happen from what we're doing. Nothing bad can happen. It's possible,
Speaker 5: it doesn't work. I don't think that's much of a possibility. Frankly,
Speaker 5: we're gonna learn a lot.
Speaker 1: The US passed all of twenty twenty five's measles total
Speaker 1: by July. So far this year three hundred seventy one cases,
Speaker 1: thirty seven new outbreaks versus two thousand for all of
Speaker 1: last year a little over two thousand, and for all
Speaker 1: of last year. MMR coverage among kindergarteners has fallen from
Speaker 1: ninety five point two percent in twenty nineteen twenty twenty
Speaker 1: to ninety two point five percent. So good job everyone,
Speaker 1: And now we're going to be telling kids to and
Speaker 1: families to split the shots up somehow, which will mean
Speaker 1: more missed visits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, what do you think happens if you
Speaker 2: tell everybody they have to go to the doctor three
Speaker 2: times instead of one time. You can answer the question
Speaker 2: the countries that have done this. I think Japan split
Speaker 2: up the MMR vaccine. And what do you end up with?
Speaker 2: You end up with outbreaks of mumps and rebella like,
Speaker 2: that's just what happens. This is all, And you know,
Speaker 2: we'll talk about Bill Cassidy and his capitulation on Blanche.
Speaker 2: This is somebody who is in a position of power.
Speaker 2: He is a doctor, he believes in vaccines. He had
Speaker 2: a moment where he could have stood up to this,
Speaker 2: and he took the ridiculous false assurances from RFK Junior
Speaker 2: at face value because he wanted to be convinced by r.
Speaker 2: F K Junior so he could avoid the hard vote
Speaker 2: and voted r of K Junior out of committee. And
Speaker 2: now we have as destructive a health secretary as you
Speaker 2: could imagine in this job. Being alive is already challenging.
Speaker 2: We don't need to put it on hard mode. Like
Speaker 2: that is what this is. Like vaccines are a miracle.
Speaker 2: This is all based on false science. Like even like
Speaker 2: this idea to like, oh, you know, we give our
Speaker 2: kids seventy two jabs or whatever number of jabs, like
Speaker 2: just that is a number based on giving kids the
Speaker 2: flu shot, and that they are not counting the shots
Speaker 2: the other countries also give their kids just not real.
Speaker 2: And then on top of that, because they think of
Speaker 2: vaccines as somehow harmful, even though there's no evidence that
Speaker 2: they are harmful. In fact, they are one of the
Speaker 2: great miracles of modern life. They have changed the world.
Speaker 2: They've made being a parent a very different experience than
Speaker 2: would have been one hundred years ago. When other countries
Speaker 2: don't give kids vaccines, they react by saying, can you
Speaker 2: believe it? We're giving our kids more vaccines. Yes, that's cool.
Speaker 2: They're not willing to spend on some of those vaccines.
Speaker 2: They're not willing to add them to the schedule rationing
Speaker 2: fucking healthcare over there in Europe the day the Danes
Speaker 2: are rationing the healthcare, we're giving more vaccines than they are.
Speaker 2: And part of the reason we have to do that
Speaker 2: is because our health system is so much fucking worse
Speaker 2: that we don't catch a bunch of stuff that they
Speaker 2: might catch in a universal system. And so when you
Speaker 2: remove some of these vaccines and say what could happen, Well,
Speaker 2: what's gonna happen is there's gonna be a bunch of
Speaker 2: kids that get heppie. There's gonna be a bunch of
Speaker 2: kids that don't get vaccinated for rotavirus or what have you,
Speaker 2: and they're gonna get sick in that window. Because the
Speaker 2: doctors that recommend these vaccines and recommend them happening when
Speaker 2: kids are born or early on, are not fucking malicious.
Speaker 2: They're not looking to harm kids they're not satists. They
Speaker 2: know that if you increase the window, if you cause
Speaker 2: more delays, if people don't show up to the doctor.
Speaker 2: Inside of that group of kids are people that are
Speaker 2: gonna get hurt, maybe permanently injured, maybe die. That is
Speaker 2: what's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: I'm bummed about it.
Speaker 2: Wow, I'm really mad.
Speaker 1: I'm going to need a hearing check.
Speaker 2: Makes me really sad.
Speaker 1: It's a CDC. In their own website still says that
Speaker 1: there's no published evidence of any benefit from separating MMR.
Speaker 1: It's just and the way these things get like sort
Speaker 1: of seep out into the public consciousness. We're getting another
Speaker 1: example of it. We got one just today because they
Speaker 1: have they're still you know, trying to do a number
Speaker 1: on Fauci, and so they got his phone as government phone,
Speaker 1: and they released all the texts and there's there's one
Speaker 1: text where he's like, Oh, one thing we should we
Speaker 1: should look at as we're developing these COVID vaccines is
Speaker 1: you know, if there's any effect on miscarriages, right, because
Speaker 1: there's like a thrown out a hypothesis like that's something
Speaker 1: that we should we should look at.
Speaker 2: These are a new vaccine. It is a new technology, like,
Speaker 2: let's make sure that if it causes some kind of
Speaker 2: response by the body, that there isn't a higher incidents
Speaker 2: of miscarriage. We need to know that about this vaccine.
Speaker 2: A completely reasonable question for Fauci to ask.
Speaker 1: So is January twenty twenty one. Yeah, he said that
Speaker 1: the second dose of the COVID shot theoretically could be
Speaker 1: associated with miscarriage in the first trimester. So that's something
Speaker 1: to think about. Then they tested it, of course, it
Speaker 1: was like by the time it was widely available, like
Speaker 1: it was fine, and they had all the right recommendation
Speaker 1: with held approval by the way for pregnant whom for
Speaker 1: a while for a while because of this reason. Yes,
Speaker 1: so they did like everything they were supposed to do.
Speaker 1: Now everyone is like, Megan McCain is like, put him
Speaker 1: in jail.
Speaker 2: I'm serious, looking in jail.
Speaker 1: And then now they're they're they're recirculating this debunked theory
Speaker 1: where there's this study that apparently shows that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I know what you don't they are they
Speaker 2: are numerically illiterate.
Speaker 1: Katie Pavlich. The mandated and doctor recommended COVID nineteen shot
Speaker 1: for pregnant women was effectively an abortion shot. According to
Speaker 1: new documents just released by Senators Johnson and Paul, the
Speaker 1: authors of this study claimed a miscarriage rate of twelve
Speaker 1: point six percent, but the raw data revealed an eighty
Speaker 1: two percent miscarriage rate. Is that what happened? An eighty
Speaker 1: two percent miscarriage rate. No, they read the study ring,
Speaker 1: They read the numbers wrong. They're all fucking idiots in
Speaker 1: every single right wing not every single one, but all
Speaker 1: these right wing accounts now are putting out that there's
Speaker 1: an eighty two percent miscarriage rate for the COVID shot.
Speaker 1: So completely irresponsible and fucking dumb.
Speaker 2: It's also we all live in the world. A lot
Speaker 2: of pregnant kimmen got got the COVID shot. If there
Speaker 2: was an a some eighty percent chance of miscarriage because
Speaker 2: of the COVID shot, that would be one of the
Speaker 2: worst health catastrophes that would be. It would be like
Speaker 2: fucking children of men out there. And uh, they're just
Speaker 2: first of all, to get it. They're just misreading the number.
Speaker 2: Even that twelve percent might that might sound like a lot,
Speaker 2: right if you're just if you're just casually consuming this information.
Speaker 2: The point is like a lot of first trimester pregnancies
Speaker 2: and in miscarriage. That's why people don't tell their family
Speaker 2: until they're through the first trimester. What they found is
Speaker 2: when you looked at all the data, there wasn't a spike,
Speaker 2: It didn't go above there wasn't a statistically significant increase
Speaker 2: in miscarriages. That's all that. And they look at it
Speaker 2: and they do the best they can. They weigh the
Speaker 2: data against the safety that the COVID vaccine provides. And
Speaker 2: these are scientists and doctors doing their best to try
Speaker 2: to protect pregnant women, to protect children, to protect people
Speaker 2: from all kinds of viruses. And because of the conspiracy
Speaker 2: addled minds of the people in that room, they can
Speaker 2: make none of them doctors, none of them doctors, none
Speaker 2: of them with medical degrees, and forget even the recommendations,
Speaker 2: like forget.
Speaker 1: Like the so maybe that j guy, the seat one, whoever,
Speaker 1: Jay Bocker, whatever his name is.
Speaker 2: But like, okay, these are these these are recommendations that
Speaker 2: would harm people one hundred percent. Just the way they
Speaker 2: talk about the vats of vaccine, injecting the little ones,
Speaker 2: the jabs, the seventy it's all meant to it's a
Speaker 2: it's a it's all meant to make people question be
Speaker 2: afraid of these vaccines. Meanwhile, the vaccines we give today
Speaker 2: are so different than the ones that were given even
Speaker 2: twenty or thirty years ago. They have much less of
Speaker 2: the antigens in them. They're much more precise. We've learned
Speaker 2: a lot about vaccines because science is amazing, and so
Speaker 2: the dozen or so vaccines that kids will get in
Speaker 2: early childhood today actually have less far, less, like a
Speaker 2: tenth as much of the kind of antigens that was
Speaker 2: in one Pretussia's shot thirty years ago. We have we
Speaker 2: have figured out how to do this in a way
Speaker 2: because because the people doing this research care so much,
Speaker 2: because they didn't become you know, become it. They're not
Speaker 2: researchers in vaccines because they're what like power mad COVID
Speaker 2: mask people. No, they're they're doctors trying to provide us,
Speaker 2: do the best care, do the research for the reasons
Speaker 2: they got involved in medicine in the first place. And
Speaker 2: they're these people are like decided it's a fucking conspiracy
Speaker 2: to give kids autism. Meanwhile, I don't know, given the
Speaker 2: state of our fucking our education system, our healthcare system,
Speaker 2: our infrastructure. Maybe we could use a little more autism.
Speaker 2: Get people on these fucking spreadsheets figuring this stuff out.
Speaker 1: Don't laugh at that. Don't laugh at that staff.
Speaker 2: God forbid, we have a We have more people in
Speaker 2: this country that don't like that. That that like staying
Speaker 2: inside and doing fucking math.
Speaker 1: It seems like a little bit of a self interested.
Speaker 2: I got every vaccine, and look at me. I know
Speaker 2: how to make eye contact. It's not bad hard. Look
Speaker 2: at it, John right now, right in the eyes. He
Speaker 2: can't look at me. Who has autism? Now neither of
Speaker 2: us speak well.
Speaker 1: Uh one one lighthearted moment uh in this whole thing
Speaker 1: was someone one of the reporters asked Trump afterwards, you're
Speaker 1: a proud father. Would you have vaccinated your children differently?
Speaker 1: And this man with that like straight face does it
Speaker 1: just doesn't even skip a beat, Just as I did.
Speaker 1: I did. I took I took my children for five
Speaker 1: different vaccinations. I went with my wife and we took
Speaker 1: each of them for we separated out all the vaccines.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker 1: Do you think that man has ever taken any of
Speaker 1: his children to a doctor's appointment ever? Do you think
Speaker 1: he knows that they eat? Do you think he ever
Speaker 1: knew who their pediatrician was.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine Donald Trump in the same room as
Speaker 2: one of those toys where you move the little things
Speaker 2: along the wires with Imagine him sitting against the wall
Speaker 2: and there's just like a kind of big red stripe
Speaker 2: behind him, you know.
Speaker 1: And he's walking into a suit and tie to he's
Speaker 1: got to take take work off because he's got to
Speaker 1: take Don Junior to get a vaccine.
Speaker 2: Come on, buddy, you'll get a lollipop at the end.
Speaker 2: It's me Donald Trump taking my son.
Speaker 1: He and Havana. We're just going together to the pediatricians.
Speaker 1: I would have loved someone to follow up on that question,
Speaker 1: be like, oh, when did you When did you do that?
Speaker 1: What pediatrician? Where did they go?
Speaker 2: Famous hypochondriac Donald Trump sitting in a waiting room with
Speaker 2: a bunch of coughing children. Inconceivable.
Speaker 1: Inconceivable, he just missed his son's wedding. What are you
Speaker 1: talking about? Anyway? Right before the vaccine event, Todd Blanche
Speaker 1: was sworn in as the next Attorney General in a
Speaker 1: private ceremony in the Oval Office on sad The Senate
Speaker 1: voted to confirm Blanche and the only no's were Lisa
Speaker 1: Murkowski and Susan Collins. But three yes is from the
Speaker 1: three members of the so called Yolo Caucus of Republicans,
Speaker 1: John Corny and Tom Tillis and Bill Cassidy, who had
Speaker 1: this to say, and.
Speaker 2: On giving his family protection from I R S probes.
Speaker 2: That's totally wrong, totally wrong, and so I will go back.
Speaker 3: This was not a black or white decision.
Speaker 4: That is wrong, and no Americans should be targeted by
Speaker 4: the law, but no Americans should be above the law.
Speaker 6: And that frankly almost weighed to vote no.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Especially it's a it's quite a black and white decision.
Speaker 1: There's there's a yes vote and there's a no vote.
Speaker 1: He's either he's either confirmed or he's not confirmed. I
Speaker 1: will say that. In the in that oval the vaccination event,
Speaker 1: some reporter was like, so is the weaponization fund dead?
Speaker 1: And he said, well, that's up to the attorney general.
Speaker 1: Now mm hmm, just like we thought.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like fecklessness of Cassidy and Cornyn until its three
Speaker 2: people that Trump's personally ruined their careers. He got involved
Speaker 2: to get them out office. He successfully did it. He
Speaker 2: has now put forward as his Attorney general nomination, someone
Speaker 2: who's oversaw the politicization of the Justice Department unlike anything
Speaker 2: before in American history, which is a tough category. RFK
Speaker 2: was the Attorney General who personally met with Gallaine Maxwell,
Speaker 2: oversaw her transfer to a Cushier prison. Has overseen a
Speaker 2: Justice department in which they've gone after Lisa Cook and
Speaker 2: James Comy and fucking the sandwich thrower, all the way
Speaker 2: up and down in any like, so beyond the pale,
Speaker 2: so obviously unfit, so clearly a moment to just stand
Speaker 2: up and say no, as you could ever imagine in
Speaker 2: the Senate. And then this guy has the audacity to
Speaker 2: then claim it was a hard decision. He talks about
Speaker 2: tearing up in this interview with given the credible amount
Speaker 2: of responsibility on his shoulders to have stood in those
Speaker 2: hallowed halls and been responsible for such big decisions, much
Speaker 2: like he always imagined it could be to be on
Speaker 2: in that storied Senate chamber. And he is saying it
Speaker 2: as someone who completely failed his moral responsibility, that he
Speaker 2: completely gave up that power to Donald Trump in a
Speaker 2: way that is pathetic and that defines him. His whole
Speaker 2: life is defined by his decision to be a tool
Speaker 2: for Donald Trump, a stooge for Donald Trump, and he's
Speaker 2: giving interviews about how weepy he was the having had
Speaker 2: the opportunity.
Speaker 1: I mean, look at it this way. Sometimes we say
Speaker 1: these people do this for Donald Trump because all they
Speaker 1: want is their job and their title, and they're afraid. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it was none of those things. He lost his job,
Speaker 1: lost his title. He doesn't have anything to fear anymore.
Speaker 1: He just thought, Okay, sure it's it's Todd Blanche.
Speaker 2: It's kind of laziness.
Speaker 1: He said something about like, well, it wasn't about like
Speaker 1: the perfect attorney general was. Maybe another one would be worse.
Speaker 1: What are you talking about.
Speaker 2: I really think they've sorted Todd Blanche into the serious
Speaker 2: guy who talks honestly behind closed doors, and that's what
Speaker 2: they've convinced themselves.
Speaker 1: But this is where this is how they all like
Speaker 1: love Rubio stell right right in their mind. Rubio's like
Speaker 1: the adult in the room, even though he is like
Speaker 1: capitulated on just about everything that Donald Trump has asked
Speaker 1: him to do.
Speaker 2: Right and says crazy things in public. Now the same
Speaker 2: way they can see Doug Bergham as a serious and
Speaker 2: reasonable person even though he's out there saying that the
Speaker 2: reflecting pool was destroyed by vandals. The other part of this,
Speaker 2: too is they act they're acting so powerless. They had
Speaker 2: so much power. Cassidy Collins, Murkowski, Tillis Cornyan. They could
Speaker 2: have come together and said, we want to ban by
Speaker 2: law any kind of insurrectionist fund. We want a public
Speaker 2: assurance from Todd Blanche that he won't consult with Donald
Speaker 2: Trump about ongoing cases. They could have. They could have
Speaker 2: in law. They could have passed a law that said
Speaker 2: no settlement with the irs could carry forward into the
Speaker 2: future that it can only be. There's all kinds of
Speaker 2: things that they could have done with their actual power
Speaker 2: that was not impossible. It just required some work, like
Speaker 2: actually getting together and figuring it out and caring enough
Speaker 2: to do something without acting. Like every vote that happens
Speaker 2: to you is the like there's no forward planning to it.
Speaker 2: It's like, well that's the vote today. Nothing I could do.
Speaker 2: He's acting, so it doesn't fucking matter.
Speaker 1: It's really wild. I would love someone to really I
Speaker 1: mean this is no, I wouldn't because what's going to
Speaker 1: happen is Todd Blanche will continue to do horrible things.
Speaker 1: And then someone will ask them, you know, what did
Speaker 1: you think about Blanche doing that? And maybe they'll say, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm so disappointed that he did that. I never thought
Speaker 1: he would do that.
Speaker 2: I was reassured, you know, he gave me his assurance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, boy am I. It's like, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: how Susan Collins talks about Brett Kavanaugh and Dobbs.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, that is the and like Susan Collins
Speaker 2: now gets to have this vote no, and as everyone
Speaker 2: the point people have made again and again is that
Speaker 2: she only votes against Trump when it doesn't have a consequence.
Speaker 2: This is what's happening here. But I do think there's
Speaker 2: like an alarm that's not going off a dog that
Speaker 2: ever barks with Susan Collins, which is what kind of
Speaker 2: fucking non leader is she? She has all this power
Speaker 2: in the Senate.
Speaker 1: She head of the Appropriations Committee, she could have gotten some.
Speaker 2: Other There's so much she could have done with this
Speaker 2: group of people. She's still good. They could do it
Speaker 2: right fucking out. They never will. He is desperate. It
Speaker 2: is a it is a close Senate Mitch McConnell is
Speaker 2: quote unquote recuperating at home. You know, his doctor. Jonah
Speaker 2: Salk says he's getting better. Clara Barton says he's doing
Speaker 2: quite well. So there's that.
Speaker 1: It's working from home, h some kind of home, all right.
Speaker 1: So that's it. Todd Blanche, Todd Blanche is our new
Speaker 1: attorney general. He was the old attorney general. Gonna we're
Speaker 1: not gonna notice much of a difference. He's just gonna
Speaker 1: continue doing whatever Donald Trump tells him to do. Personal lawyer,
Speaker 1: now the attorney general, but still the personal lawyer. All right,
Speaker 1: let's get to the midterms. On Monday, Speaker of Mike
Speaker 1: Johnson launched an exciting new messaging effort called the Contrast
Speaker 1: for America, the Transpired by Newt Gingrich's famous Contract with America,
Speaker 1: which mister, the people alive don't remember anymore, aiming to
Speaker 1: reframe the election as a fight against actual communism. That's
Speaker 1: not a joke. If you go to the website, which
Speaker 1: I don't encourage you to try, but if you go there,
Speaker 1: it shows the history of communism in different milestones and
Speaker 1: different communist takeovers, and then it compares. Then it compares
Speaker 1: democrats wanting to raise taxes to that they cause that communism.
Speaker 1: Now that's now that's communism raising taxes. Republicans are betting
Speaker 1: that their only chance to win the mid terms now
Speaker 1: is to capitalize on the Democratic infighting over a few
Speaker 1: DSA candidates and also more progressive Democrats like Abdul winning
Speaker 1: their primaries the cycle. Here's AOC giving her theory of
Speaker 1: the case to ABC's John Carl on Sunday in response
Speaker 1: to questions about Wisconsin front runner of Francesca Hong and
Speaker 1: Abdul doing his best to pivot to a general election message.
Speaker 7: What do you make of those controversial statements. I'm sure
Speaker 7: you've seen, and I mean she's you know, the Thanksgiving
Speaker 7: dust up, she says, she doesn't you know, still believe that,
Speaker 7: but you know, the abolished prisons, abolished police.
Speaker 8: My understanding is that is that Francesca Hang has made
Speaker 8: clear her present stances to her life.
Speaker 3: She's moved away from right, she's.
Speaker 8: Moved away from it. And I have a local city
Speaker 8: councilman that has this, saying woke one was crazy. And
Speaker 8: I think that we all share in the goals of
Speaker 8: having as low a crime rate as possible. I think that,
Speaker 8: you know, during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time
Speaker 8: is not rhetoric that we would use today.
Speaker 9: When asked about Hassan Piker's comments on nine to eleven,
Speaker 9: Senator Bernie Sanders called it a dumb statement.
Speaker 2: Do you agree?
Speaker 9: Do you disavow those comments that America deserved nine to eleven?
Speaker 10: Of course, of course it was a dumb statement, And
Speaker 10: of course I think Hassan himself would say that was
Speaker 10: a dumb statement.
Speaker 1: He disabout it. I want to be held accountable for
Speaker 1: what I say and what I do.
Speaker 10: Look, I'm less concerned now with who I'm campaigning with
Speaker 10: a lot more concerned about who I'm campaigning to.
Speaker 1: So Republicans are hoping that Democratic quote unquote extremism will
Speaker 1: be for this midterm cycle. What the Dobbs decision was
Speaker 1: for twenty twenty two sort of a way to change
Speaker 1: the subject away from a deeply unpopular incumbent. What do
Speaker 1: you think? Do you think it could work?
Speaker 2: I don't because one is a fear mongering message about
Speaker 2: Democrats trying to make every Democrat sound like the craziest
Speaker 2: thing people saw on the internet. The oh there is
Speaker 2: a real decision having real negative consequences on people's lives
Speaker 2: that the Republicans actually did. I also think it is
Speaker 2: part of you know, they can't. There's no campaigning that
Speaker 2: they can do to diffuse.
Speaker 3: The fact that they overturned Row.
Speaker 2: They did that they wanted it, and in fact, a
Speaker 2: lot of the people who were very happy to see
Speaker 2: roe VERTND also supported abortion bands at the six week
Speaker 2: mark or with no exceptions for rape or incest or
Speaker 2: the life of the mother. So they were settled with
Speaker 2: their actual position. And this is fear mongering about Democrats
Speaker 2: to make people think that they can't have I don't know,
Speaker 2: universal health care and a tax code that was as
Speaker 2: high as they were in the communist days of America
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 1: I don't think it could work. I mean it could work,
Speaker 1: but I think that it'd be one thing if Republican
Speaker 1: candidates in an alternate universe were out there being like,
Speaker 1: you know, Donald Trump, we break from him sometimes because
Speaker 1: he can be extreme, and these Democrats are extreme too.
Speaker 1: We're the only thing holding the line between crazy Donald
Speaker 1: Trump and crazy Democrats. Of course, that's not what they're
Speaker 1: going to do. They're all in for Donald Trump. So
Speaker 1: I think that I think it'd be tough, and also
Speaker 1: depends on like most people, when you are I mean,
Speaker 1: we saw this in the New York Times Santa Pols
Speaker 1: of the Senate battlegrounds from last month, which is you'll
Speaker 1: get a majority of voters in that poll in the
Speaker 1: Senate battlegrounds at least said Democrats are too far to
Speaker 1: the left. They think the Democratic Party is too far
Speaker 1: to the left. But when you ask about the Democratic
Speaker 1: Senate candidate running in their state, they don't think necessarily
Speaker 1: think that that Democratic Senate candidate is too far to
Speaker 1: the left. And so in midterm this goes race by race.
Speaker 1: And if you know, if you're a Democrat running that
Speaker 1: race and they try to tag you as a DSA candidate,
Speaker 1: or they try to say you want to abolish prisons,
Speaker 1: like you just say, no, that's not what I believe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what I believe. I have this agenda that
Speaker 1: is not my agenda. And so you know, they'll i mean,
Speaker 1: on the margins for you know, voters who aren't paying
Speaker 1: attention until they go cast a ballot. Could this work Maybe,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I think in a midterm for
Speaker 1: most voters, it's probably going to be going to be
Speaker 1: tricky when you get down to the individual race level.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like I guess will it work, Well, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: going to work on some people. This is they're trying
Speaker 2: to make Democrats their job. Fundamentally, what is American policy today?
Speaker 2: It is from the right is an effort to make
Speaker 2: extreme Republicans seem reasonable and reasonable Democrats seem extreme, and
Speaker 2: to pretend that politics is ultimately not about what the
Speaker 2: tax rates are and who gets health care and who doesn't.
Speaker 2: That's what everything. That's why they got a fucking the
Speaker 2: former NBA guy trying to get into the WNBA. It's
Speaker 2: like it's all part of one big thing. I was
Speaker 2: thinking about Francesca Hong because I joked about it, love
Speaker 2: it or leave it, and I went through the tweets
Speaker 2: and they are quite silly. And this is the moment
Speaker 2: where we're going to talk about these things because the
Speaker 2: primary is wrapping up. We're having an intra party debate
Speaker 2: right now. This is the moment where Abdual pivots to
Speaker 2: the general where there's the most sore and hurt feelings,
Speaker 2: where we're trying to figure out what worked and what didn't.
Speaker 2: You're trying to reconcile all these things like in Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: whatever happens in the election, Let's say Francesca Hang is
Speaker 2: the winner. Maybe she has, maybe she's not. Either way,
Speaker 2: Tom Tiffany right, like, oh my god, I can't believe
Speaker 2: she tweeted that about Thanksgiving. Tom Tiffany objected to Wisconsin's electors.
Speaker 2: He signed on to the to the Ken Paxton lawsuit
Speaker 2: to try to overturn the election. He continues to say
Speaker 2: that there were hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes in Wisconsin.
Speaker 2: He said that that Trump should cut off funding too Madison,
Speaker 2: that Wisconsin, the state he's trying to lead, should get
Speaker 2: less money because it is not going along with Trump's
Speaker 2: immigration policies. He refused to say that Trump shouldn't invoke
Speaker 2: the Insurrection Act is He sponsored a resolution in Congress
Speaker 2: to support Trump for sending people to fucking seccat in
Speaker 2: El Salvador. He's an extreme and radical person. And if
Speaker 2: you ask people, do you want a governor who was
Speaker 2: in a bad mood in Christmas in twenty twenty or
Speaker 2: somebody who believes in deporting people to a foreign gulag
Speaker 2: and supports sending more money to Ice and cutting taxes
Speaker 2: for billionaires? Like, where do you actually come down on this?
Speaker 2: I think people if given the choice, faithfully would choose
Speaker 2: somebody who maybe said some kookie stuff in the post.
Speaker 2: And that's our job is to get back to that.
Speaker 1: I don't think those voters were going to be like, well,
Speaker 1: her Thanksgiving tweet was crazy. It's going to be they're
Speaker 1: going to think, oh, she wants to abolish police, or
Speaker 1: she wants to and I'm afraid about crime, and so
Speaker 1: she's going to have to do, if she's the nominee,
Speaker 1: reassurance of people that she cares about public safety, and
Speaker 1: do it in a way that is convincing.
Speaker 2: I also, this is my own Maybe this makes me
Speaker 2: a bit of a neolib shill, but there was a
Speaker 2: time when Democrats really enjoyed hating communists and like really
Speaker 2: kind of got into it about how stupid and deadly
Speaker 2: and dumb and ideology is that, Like, there was a
Speaker 2: kind of consensus that fascism and communism were programs for
Speaker 2: morons and losers that were deadly and stupid, and we
Speaker 2: should fight them with everything we've got because we believe
Speaker 2: in a democratic and liberal order in which we protect
Speaker 2: people from the worst kinds of destitution and have a
Speaker 2: safety net and give everybody opportunity. But also support the
Speaker 2: freedom to say what you want and pray how you want,
Speaker 2: but also start a business and create products and try
Speaker 2: to build things and innovate Like that was sort of
Speaker 2: what we all used to believe in. One way to
Speaker 2: deal with the communism crap is to have democrats out
Speaker 2: there who are willing to say, like, I believe in
Speaker 2: free markets as long as they're fair and give everybody
Speaker 2: a chance, which is something a lot of Democrats used
Speaker 2: to be a little bit more comfortable talking about because
Speaker 2: they were less afraid of being attacked by people on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think a duel even in the
Speaker 1: primary towards the end was talking about like because he
Speaker 1: would be asked, oh, aren't you DSA too, and he
Speaker 1: was like, no, I'm I believe in free markets. I
Speaker 1: like free markets.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: And look Francesca hang in fairness. She's like she's been saying, like, well,
Speaker 1: i'm a I was a small business owner. You know.
Speaker 1: The challenge is like when you call yourself a socialist
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, what does socialism mean? And this
Speaker 1: is the whole thing with you know, well, defund was
Speaker 1: actually just a slogan, and abolish is just an aspirational
Speaker 1: abolish police and abolished prisons. That's just an aspirational thing
Speaker 1: that's not real. Well, then don't use the fucking slogan. No,
Speaker 1: it's just an.
Speaker 2: Extremely unhelpful way of achieving my vision.
Speaker 1: Right. It's like it's like, then you're upset that people
Speaker 1: don't understand that you actually have a nuanced view of
Speaker 1: public safety because you embrace the slogan abolished police. Like,
Speaker 1: of course they're not going to understand that you have
Speaker 1: a nuanced view if you use that slogan or you
Speaker 1: just say you're socialists. And so you probably shouldn't call
Speaker 1: yourself a socialist.
Speaker 2: Right because because like I think there are plenty of
Speaker 2: people that are democratic socialists who are socialists, but a
Speaker 2: lot of people ascribe to it because they think being
Speaker 2: a democrat is correctly crnch. The word liberal was actually
Speaker 2: maligned by Republicans for a long time. And they're really
Speaker 2: social democrats, right, That's what they are. They are social democrats,
Speaker 2: which and I really do think there's a lot of
Speaker 2: people that have convinced themselves that democrats are just sort
Speaker 2: of incremental socialists, right in both directions, But I think
Speaker 2: they're socialists that believe that about democrats. I think there's
Speaker 2: there are people that there's a kind of and there
Speaker 2: are lefty democrats who believe that about that. Somehow we're that. Really,
Speaker 2: to be a liberal is just to be afraid to
Speaker 2: say what you really want, as opposed to having a
Speaker 2: framework for viewing the world in which government helps to
Speaker 2: address inequities and solve problems. But fundamentally you do believe
Speaker 2: in all kinds of freedoms, including the freedom the freedoms
Speaker 2: that go along with the free market.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, it's just if you believe in medicare for
Speaker 1: all and wealth tax on billionaires or abolishing ice or
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Just say you believe in those things
Speaker 1: and just talk about those policies. Like the labeling doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like it's helpful in any way, shape or form,
Speaker 1: But I don't know. That's just me.
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Speaker 1: by Viatrice. How do you feel about woke? One was
Speaker 1: crazy as a way to explain the excesses of a
Speaker 1: I guess it's just twenty twenty, maybe twenty one, whatever
Speaker 1: that time period was.
Speaker 2: First of all, I think it's it has been of
Speaker 2: it just being kind of true. And I saw a
Speaker 2: few people talking about this, which is Okay, we're now
Speaker 2: saying kind of more publicly what we were all saying
Speaker 2: to each other in private, like, boy, we've lost our
Speaker 2: minds a little bit, haven't we. And to me, what's
Speaker 2: interesting about it is like I like whenever, I care
Speaker 2: less about what people were saying on the internet and
Speaker 2: more about what our candidates were doing. And I think
Speaker 2: about everyone raising their hand about decriminalizing the border or
Speaker 2: kind of taking kind of more lefty positions. It's what
Speaker 2: settled Kamala with the sort of the that's you know
Speaker 2: that that that questionnaire is from the height of this
Speaker 2: moment of woke one point zero.
Speaker 1: And images like the you know probably the you know
Speaker 1: Pelosi kneeling with the kenty cloth was maybe maybe that
Speaker 1: was a little much.
Speaker 2: And but what but what But what was happening then was,
Speaker 2: first of all, there was we were dealing with a
Speaker 2: once in a century pandemic. We were having a genuine
Speaker 2: and important conversation nationally about systemic racism and policing. It
Speaker 2: did lead to a lot of important conversations about reform.
Speaker 2: But I do think that a lot of people felt
Speaker 2: like they were performing something they didn't totally understand or believed,
Speaker 2: and they would leave the criticism to others because they
Speaker 2: just weren't going to take on that work, right, And
Speaker 2: so everybody kind of went along with certain parts of it,
Speaker 2: but they weren't totally sold on, right, or maybe they
Speaker 2: didn't say it themselves, right, but they didn't want to
Speaker 2: get in the muck. They certainly weren't going to go
Speaker 2: out there and saying I actually don't believe in defunding
Speaker 2: the police. There wasn't a lot of equity. There was
Speaker 2: a lot of value in poking your head up above
Speaker 2: the trench line there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I mean when you think back to like
Speaker 1: what was woke one, right, because now we're just saying, oh,
Speaker 1: it was all crazy, and you're right, people like at
Speaker 1: least people on the left kind of instinctively know what
Speaker 1: that means. Yeah, But it's like worth talking about what
Speaker 1: it is, what it was, And I do think it's
Speaker 1: like three different things we're talking about here. There's policies, right,
Speaker 1: and so there was defund the police. It was the
Speaker 1: big one, but there was also abolish the police, abolish prison,
Speaker 1: which I I didn't even remember from then, but now
Speaker 1: we're now, we're seeing all the tweets from back then
Speaker 1: abolish borders or open borders or decriminalize all that. So
Speaker 1: there was that. Then there was language that was used,
Speaker 1: and there was like there were words that no one
Speaker 1: actually uses in real life that were chosen to replace
Speaker 1: words that had been deemed offensive but weren't always offensive.
Speaker 2: Well, even in your interview with Francisca Hung, she talked
Speaker 2: about justice impacted individuals.
Speaker 1: Right, Which is a funny thing because I remember when
Speaker 1: I interviewed Andy Basheer and he and I was like,
Speaker 1: what did democrats do wrong or whatever? I asked him
Speaker 1: some question about Democrats and what he would change, and
Speaker 1: he's like, well, we use language that you know people
Speaker 1: that's I don't know if he said faculty lounges, but
Speaker 1: it's that kind of idea. And he said, you know,
Speaker 1: like justice impacted individuals. I remember when he said that
Speaker 1: to me, I'm like, is he just saying that phrase
Speaker 1: to like pick out something to mock because I'd never
Speaker 1: heard that. I was like what is he talking about?
Speaker 1: And then she said it to me and I was like, oh, oh,
Speaker 1: I guess that is something just as impacted individuals. So
Speaker 1: there's a whole bunch of language that made the left
Speaker 1: and Democrats seem like completely out of touch and that
Speaker 1: they don't speak the language that most people speak. Right.
Speaker 1: Then there was the public shaming, I want to say
Speaker 1: cancel culture, but public shaming, right, which is there was
Speaker 1: a tendency and this was mostly on the internet, though
Speaker 1: it bled into the primary a little bit in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: responding to someone's statement or position that you disagree with
Speaker 1: by trying to yell at the person, label them bad,
Speaker 1: shame them instead of persuading them that they're wrong or
Speaker 1: calling their idea bad or their statement bad, like they
Speaker 1: were bad. Yeah, you know, Like that's and it's like
Speaker 1: also the difference between like that statement seems a little
Speaker 1: racist versus like you are a racist, yeah for making
Speaker 1: that statement, or sexist or whatever it may be. And
Speaker 1: so there was a little there was as we were
Speaker 1: discussing real problems to be solved, systemic racism, police violence,
Speaker 1: a brutal way of treating immigrants, whatever it may be,
Speaker 1: there was this belief that if you yelled loud enough
Speaker 1: or took a strong enough stance and called out the
Speaker 1: people who were taking the opposite stance loudly enough, that
Speaker 1: like that would be the way that you fight it.
Speaker 1: And I think that since then people have learned that
Speaker 1: maybe the most effective way is to try to like
Speaker 1: bring people along to persuade them, and then you know,
Speaker 1: if you can't vote against them or organize against them. Right,
Speaker 1: But it's just there was a there was like a
Speaker 1: substitution for real politics because the discussions were happening online
Speaker 1: and people were just doing a lot of yelling and
Speaker 1: name calling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it also like there was it followed, so Trump
Speaker 2: wins in twenty sixteen, the me too happens in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: You have a series of terrible killings by the police
Speaker 2: that follow and then into the pandemic and then the
Speaker 2: death of George Floyd. And it was this moment of saying,
Speaker 2: look at what we've tolerated, right, look at how much
Speaker 2: injustice was sort of baked into all of these systems.
Speaker 2: Look At how much we were ignoring that was in
Speaker 2: plain sight all around us. Now is the moment we're
Speaker 2: going to tear these things down. We're going to tear
Speaker 2: these systems down. And that was exciting, and it was
Speaker 2: exhilarating I think for people, especially for activists, who suddenly
Speaker 2: found that there were millions of people in their homes
Speaker 2: seeing their messages. They weren't out at bars, they weren't
Speaker 2: at they weren't in an office, they weren't living, they
Speaker 2: weren't at a park. They were home watching their screen
Speaker 2: and and all of us collectively worked of taking in
Speaker 2: a lot more of this and more receptive to it.
Speaker 2: I mean we were, we were you know, I remember
Speaker 2: we were doing pods from our homes and you just
Speaker 2: knew that you put, everyone was seeing it all at once, right,
Speaker 2: There's a lot of people going out to do jobs
Speaker 2: that they had to do, but as a side of
Speaker 2: our culture was being made by people fully paying attention
Speaker 2: all the time from their couches and all of that
Speaker 2: was it meant that everything was heightened, and you lack
Speaker 2: the feedback loop of being in the world, right, you
Speaker 2: lock the feedback loop of talking to someone face to
Speaker 2: face and trying things out, and also, by the way,
Speaker 2: stepping away for a little bit.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, there was also a thing too, where so
Speaker 1: you know, George Floyd's murder and a very important discussion
Speaker 1: afterwards about reform, reform, policing, systemic racism. And then you know,
Speaker 1: there would be some vandalism and you know, you know,
Speaker 1: windows being broken, and you know, people spray painting a
Speaker 1: cab all cops are bad, and then some people will
Speaker 1: be like, well, that's not great, you know, to do
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And then the response you get is,
Speaker 1: how can you care about that when there are these
Speaker 1: bigger issues? And the truth is it's the reason you
Speaker 1: care about that is because the rest of the country
Speaker 1: is watching as well, and there's a most people, a
Speaker 1: majority of people who think police brutality and police police
Speaker 1: killing is a problem and very bad. But also they
Speaker 1: like police in general as a concept, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, And so like for those people, if you
Speaker 1: tell them no, no, no, it's also okay, uh looting in
Speaker 1: vandalism and saying that all cops are bad, like that's
Speaker 1: okay too, Like they're just not going to agree with you.
Speaker 2: Well. I also I do think that there was an
Speaker 2: impulse and I especially in like a kind of a
Speaker 2: political show like this or political political debate more generally,
Speaker 2: there was a I don't remember what the book was called,
Speaker 2: but the thesis was something like looting a okay, were
Speaker 2: I work for a major news organization and my book
Speaker 2: is called looting. Yes, uh, it's terrific, you know, it's
Speaker 2: like sort of but it's sort of written in some
Speaker 2: academic speak like looting in the practice of freedom or
Speaker 2: something like that. And I remember feeling this at the time
Speaker 2: because it was so heightened and the internet was such
Speaker 2: an intense place that you would you would say, like,
Speaker 2: hold on a second, these things are counterproductive, right, Like
Speaker 2: this leads to backlash. We're trying to avoid that backlash
Speaker 2: because the cause is so just, right, like, because the
Speaker 2: cause of accountability for violence against people by the police
Speaker 2: is so important, because.
Speaker 1: It's like, yes, but because the cause is so just
Speaker 1: and important, that's why you have to be careful. What's
Speaker 1: why you have to be extra extra like think harder
Speaker 1: about persuading people well, and.
Speaker 2: And so then you say, that's and so therefore, because
Speaker 2: the looting or the damage will be taken out of context,
Speaker 2: even if the vast majority of people are peaceful, it
Speaker 2: will be it will cause a backlash. But even in
Speaker 2: that moment, there was a kind of social pressure against
Speaker 2: simply saying because looting is wrong, because that business being
Speaker 2: destroyed hurts the people that work there, the people that
Speaker 2: own that business, even if it is a big company,
Speaker 2: by the way, but it hurts the people that work
Speaker 2: there that aren't for a big company whose jobs depend
Speaker 2: on it, but a lot of them are going to
Speaker 2: be small businesses, and that is just simply morally wrong,
Speaker 2: even if the ultimate cause for the anger, what led
Speaker 2: to the protests itself, is just it is just wrong,
Speaker 2: even if it weren't counterproductive, and there was very little
Speaker 2: space for that. But here we are years later, and
Speaker 2: actually the failure for more politicians and people in authority
Speaker 2: to remember those lines and assert those lines in the
Speaker 2: same way. By the way, a Bill Cassidy or John
Speaker 2: Cornyn are afraid to draw those lines. They are paying
Speaker 2: because they went along with a kind of style that
Speaker 2: the country has now looked back on with a lot
Speaker 2: of disdain.
Speaker 1: I will say, on the other hand, after AOC made
Speaker 1: those comments, I saw a lot of center left folks
Speaker 1: who sort of always thought that woke one was a
Speaker 1: little crazy, just not being very thrilled that she was
Speaker 1: just laughing it off. And they want a more serious
Speaker 1: explanation about what actually was crazy and what progressives have
Speaker 1: learned and sort of like more of a mea culpa
Speaker 1: on this and I understand that. But also it's like
Speaker 1: political leaders on the left moving away from some of
Speaker 1: the fringi er unpopular positions that they took in the
Speaker 1: past is a good thing. Well, and like one way
Speaker 1: to incentivize people changing their minds like that is to
Speaker 1: welcome it when it happens and not complain about it,
Speaker 1: because I think changing your mind is good. Apologies are good.
Speaker 1: Recognizing that that past positions weren't the best is good.
Speaker 1: Like you you sort of want to It's almost like,
Speaker 1: in a different way, it's when a Trump voter is like, oh, gosh,
Speaker 1: I didn't think the deportations were coming to my town,
Speaker 1: and like, instead of being like, well, you're an idiot,
Speaker 1: you know that, the response to actually be like great, well,
Speaker 1: then welcome, welcome to our movement.
Speaker 2: Well. Look, the term woke was stolen and turned into
Speaker 2: a pejorative, but one of the ways it was used
Speaker 2: at the time was it doesn't matter when you got woke,
Speaker 2: that you are right like it just like that that
Speaker 2: that you've woken up to what's happening in our society,
Speaker 2: and that's a good thing.
Speaker 3: Like that to me.
Speaker 2: The other part of the woke one is crazy is
Speaker 2: part of the problem is okay, fine time is flattened
Speaker 2: on the internet and in political ads.
Speaker 3: That the fact that.
Speaker 2: Now people are walking away from certain styles of rhetoric
Speaker 2: or positions that were more extreme than they want to
Speaker 2: take right now. Good those old clips are still coming out.
Speaker 2: Kamala paid in blood for what she said in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: We are for what We are all paying in blood
Speaker 2: for what Kamala said in twenty twenty. Uh So part
Speaker 2: of this, well, of course not of course it wasn't
Speaker 2: just her, it was everybody was ever. It was a
Speaker 2: it was a it was a cultural kind of like
Speaker 2: whatever acute cultural moment of people kind of kind of
Speaker 2: uh uh kind of in this sort of reverie. But regardless,
Speaker 2: one way to get past it. It's not just disavowing it.
Speaker 2: Like I appreciate abdul now saying that was dumb, but
Speaker 2: people can smell when someone wants to say something, and
Speaker 2: like there's a difference between saying and and hang did this, well,
Speaker 2: this is different between saying like what I'm running on
Speaker 2: is what I'm saying right now. And these are my
Speaker 2: current views, and I've said things in the past and
Speaker 2: I don't stand by all of them, and people evolve
Speaker 2: versus just being like, look, I said some stupid fucking
Speaker 2: shit in the past, and uh, like I looking back
Speaker 2: on it, I don't really think that anymore. And you
Speaker 2: can trust that. I love that as a governor of
Speaker 2: this state that I will support the police. I believe
Speaker 2: in policing the people, that the people, some of the
Speaker 2: most vulnerable communities in our society, depend on having good,
Speaker 2: responsible community policing that they can trust. That's what I
Speaker 2: want to build. I don't want to abolish the police.
Speaker 2: I think that that's dumb and I regret embracing it
Speaker 2: as a slogan because it doesn't actually capture what I think, Like,
Speaker 2: there is a way of talking about this that is
Speaker 2: going to honor your values that doesn't just you're not
Speaker 2: just going to get past it.
Speaker 1: No one's just going to get you can't do the
Speaker 1: robot like these are my positions now, I will never
Speaker 1: talk about what they were before.
Speaker 2: And by the way, like AOC knows that, of course,
Speaker 2: like AOC.
Speaker 1: Is like that, well, she I think she I liked it.
Speaker 2: But no, but I think she's trying to signal showing
Speaker 2: like this, there is a way to talk about this
Speaker 2: in a kind of honest and authentic way that helps
Speaker 2: people see past something you may have said a few
Speaker 2: years ago.
Speaker 1: You know where people are gonna be able to hear
Speaker 1: a lot more about the best path forward for Democrats,
Speaker 1: and maybe we'll even have a conversation about whether woke
Speaker 1: one was crazy or not.
Speaker 2: Where John Crooked Con Crooked Con.
Speaker 1: It's happening in DC the weekend following the midterms. Then
Speaker 1: we've said this before, there's a special rate for Friends
Speaker 1: of the Pod subscribers. But those tickets, they're running out.
Speaker 2: Running out of those special front of the Pod tickets.
Speaker 1: So you got to head on over to Crookedcon dot
Speaker 1: com to grab your tickets. And if you haven't subscribed already,
Speaker 1: become a subscriber, get ad free episodes of all your
Speaker 1: favorite pods and support independent.
Speaker 2: Media and a bunch of episodes you can only get
Speaker 2: on our.
Speaker 1: Subscription fee, all kinds of secret episodes. All your friends
Speaker 1: are talking about them.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: So before we move off this, it's election day. As
Speaker 1: you're listening to this both in Wisconsin, where Hang has
Speaker 1: been in a commanding position for a while now, and
Speaker 1: in Minnesota, where the Democratic primary for the open Senate
Speaker 1: seat that Tina Smith is vacating is happening between Lieutenant
Speaker 1: Governor Peggy Flanagan, she's been on the show, in Congresswoman
Speaker 1: Angie Craig. We tried to get her on the show,
Speaker 1: and it's tightening more than people expected. Any final observations
Speaker 1: on either the Wisconsin gubernatorial race or before we move
Speaker 1: on to Minnesota, I did notice there was one last
Speaker 1: state navigate state navigate pole that has hung at forty four.
Speaker 1: Crowley at twenty two. He gained seven from their last poll,
Speaker 1: Undecided at nine, Calderoy's at eleven, Brennan five, and Barnes
Speaker 1: is still at six in that pole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll see. I mean, I do think the fact
Speaker 2: that the Republicans have gone behind Tom Tiffany has meant
Speaker 2: they haven't had any kind of fractious primary on their side.
Speaker 2: We've had one on ours. I do not think we
Speaker 2: have shred our assults in glory in this primary. I
Speaker 2: don't think it looks particularly you have the lieutenant governor
Speaker 2: dropping out because of some sort of alleged campaign malfeasans
Speaker 2: by the campaign manager didn't reflect very well, especially in
Speaker 2: a state that's been dealing with a scandal around fraud
Speaker 2: and medicaid. You have Crowley who got out then got
Speaker 2: back in at the behest of Tony Evers, the governor,
Speaker 2: who could have run again. People thought he would, then
Speaker 2: he decided not to. And so the end result is
Speaker 2: people feel like, oh no, we ended up with somebody
Speaker 2: that has these kind of crazy old posts and has
Speaker 2: sort of been mired in this sort of right wing
Speaker 2: scandal for a few days, and all of that I
Speaker 2: do think has obscured the stakes in this election. The
Speaker 2: next Wisconsin governor may oversee the the presidential contest that
Speaker 2: could be close. That person will be responsible for certifying
Speaker 2: the election. Tom Tiffany is an election denier, and I
Speaker 2: Democrats we have these big emotional anxiety, anxious, you know,
Speaker 2: anxious debates about our candidates. We worry about them saying
Speaker 2: the wrong thing. We worried about them having extreme positions
Speaker 2: that are out of step with the voters. The Republicans
Speaker 2: are not doing that, Tom Tiffany. The voters of Wisconsin
Speaker 2: do not want an election deny or they believe that
Speaker 2: they believe in free and fair elections, and they believe
Speaker 2: in a society in which when you lose an election,
Speaker 2: that's okay. You live to fight another day. You don't
Speaker 2: claim Donald Trump won and try to tell a bunch
Speaker 2: of your fellow citizens that their vote doesn't counts. They
Speaker 2: don't believe in using the Insurrection Act. They don't believe
Speaker 2: in deporting people to foreign gulags. They don't believe in
Speaker 2: this mass deportation scheme in which our cities are overrun
Speaker 2: by Ice agents. And so we have to remind our
Speaker 2: we have to focus on painting the extremism of Tom
Speaker 2: Tiffany as the real threat to Wisconsin, and after Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: after this primary, we have to get our heads in
Speaker 2: the fucking game.
Speaker 1: We haven't talked a lot about Minnesota. Angie Craig, I
Speaker 1: would say, is the more moderate candidate she has been.
Speaker 1: Peggy flanagain has been sort of attacking her on her
Speaker 1: vote for the Lake and Riley Act, which Craig first
Speaker 1: defended and then backtracked on. Craig is more pro Israel.
Speaker 1: She's called off or she said she doesn't want a
Speaker 1: PAC money in the APAC was still doing some fundraising
Speaker 1: and some spending for her. She also won't commit to
Speaker 1: not voting for Schumer. Peggy Flanagin is committing to vote
Speaker 1: not vote for Schumer as leader. Peggy flan again said
Speaker 1: she would have supported that vote to cut off military
Speaker 1: and financially to Israel that they took. Angie Craig didn't
Speaker 1: vote for that, and Peggy flana again has wanted to
Speaker 1: you know, reform ized. She has not gone as far
Speaker 1: to say abolish eye. So it's it's what we've seen
Speaker 1: in some of these primaries, but not I would say
Speaker 1: the differences aren't as stark as they maybe were in
Speaker 1: Michigan or some of the other ones. What do you
Speaker 1: think about this race? The polling is sort of all
Speaker 1: over the place, we don't know.
Speaker 2: It reminds me a little like the old saying about like,
Speaker 2: you know, why is the fight so contentious? Well, because
Speaker 2: the stakes are so low. I'm not saying the stakes
Speaker 2: the stakes are low. They're actually quite high. They're big
Speaker 2: differences between them. But I think a part because people
Speaker 2: think we can win in Minnesota, and because I think
Speaker 2: Peggy Flanagan is not sort of a DSA city council person.
Speaker 2: She's a right, Lieutenant governor that a lot of people
Speaker 2: really respect for. Andrew Craig. Is me a little to
Speaker 2: her right or more you a lot to her write whatever,
Speaker 2: it feels a little bit less. It's got a little
Speaker 2: less certainly national attention, and I honestly a little lestention
Speaker 2: for me. I've had Peggy flan again on the show.
Speaker 2: I really like her. I really like her.
Speaker 3: I have no no.
Speaker 2: Knock on Angie Cragg, but I just Peggy Flanagin is
Speaker 2: just a really inspiring person to me. She has to
Speaker 2: be the first woman Native American to be elected to
Speaker 2: the Senate, and just a really dynamic and interesting person.
Speaker 1: I think it is because, like you said, whoever wins,
Speaker 1: I don't know that it changes like the race rating.
Speaker 1: I don't think it makes it more of a toss
Speaker 1: up if Flannagan wins or versus Craig or vice versa.
Speaker 1: The other reason it might have gotten closes. Angie Craig's
Speaker 1: been going after Flannagan for her connections to the state's
Speaker 1: fraud crisis that Wallace has been dealing with, that the
Speaker 1: Republicans have been all over. It's remember it's what originally
Speaker 1: led Trump to send in Ice to Minnesota and all that.
Speaker 1: So she's been trying to tagger with that, so that
Speaker 1: might be and basically saying make it an electability argument,
Speaker 1: saying that if Flannagan wins, that Republicans will spend the
Speaker 1: whole race tying her to the fraud crisis as well. Now,
Speaker 1: you could argue that they'll probably do the same to
Speaker 1: Angie Craig, even though she's not the lieutenant governor, because
Speaker 1: they'll just say any politician in Minnesota is part of
Speaker 1: the fraud crisis. But you know, that's one one argument
Speaker 1: they're having there, all right. Speaking of the Minnesota primary,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw the story about Royce
Speaker 1: White over on the Republican side. He is a former
Speaker 1: NBA player who has run before for federal office and
Speaker 1: is now trying to get in on the discourse about
Speaker 1: the w NBA and trans rights by declaring that he's
Speaker 1: entering the w NBA draft. Niskanter Freedom has also made
Speaker 1: this Another NBA player has also a former NBA player,
Speaker 1: has also made this announcement as well. White even put
Speaker 1: on a wig in interviews with Alex Jones and Benny Johnson.
Speaker 1: Because that's what we're doing now. Most folks on the
Speaker 1: writer are eating this up. It's also causing some conflict
Speaker 1: because it's forcing them to talk about women's sports. Here's
Speaker 1: our boy, Jesse Waters struggling with this very problem.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 11: This is week three of the five covering the WNBA,
Speaker 11: and I have to say I am done. I hate
Speaker 11: the WNBA. I mean, I don't mind women's basketball. My
Speaker 11: girls play basketball, but I don't want to cover women's basketball.
Speaker 11: I don't want to be a WNBA analyst.
Speaker 12: We get paid to have an opinion about everything, and
Speaker 12: this is something I don't care about. Every time I
Speaker 12: open up the rundown and see the WNBA in it.
Speaker 11: I feel like Jessica must feel every day. We have
Speaker 11: to do this again, really this again.
Speaker 2: I don't know father of daughters, a father of daughters,
Speaker 2: you know, as you know John, And I'm a season
Speaker 2: ticket holder to angel City. That's right, that's the women's
Speaker 2: soccer team here in Los Angeles. That is because I
Speaker 2: am married to someone who used to basically be a
Speaker 2: lesbian and they just kept the women's sports when they transition.
Speaker 2: So we go to the games and we have a
Speaker 2: great time. And there was a little dust up about this.
Speaker 3: A couple of.
Speaker 2: Months ago, a player wrote an op ed about about
Speaker 2: this and believing that people that were born as a
Speaker 2: biologically male shouldn't play in women's sports and that there
Speaker 2: should be a regime of testing. And this led to,
Speaker 2: you know, the debate we've had at nauseum about well,
Speaker 2: if you have a regime of testing that just punishes
Speaker 2: women who are forced to be examined, when this ends
Speaker 2: up putting more power in the hands of the men,
Speaker 2: and it really kind of creates a situation in which
Speaker 2: women have to prove that they're women. And all of
Speaker 2: this debate is happening. And do you know how many
Speaker 2: trans athletes there were in the National Women's Soccer League
Speaker 2: at that time?
Speaker 1: Zero? Zero, same as zero right now.
Speaker 2: It's zero. And so they really like talking about this,
Speaker 2: They really like talking about women's sports, and I suppose
Speaker 2: that they can keep doing it. And if these guys
Speaker 2: and there are people who believe that if you've gone
Speaker 2: through a transition, that doesn't give you any advantage, or
Speaker 2: others who simply say, if you went through male puberty
Speaker 2: you have an advantage. It doesn't matter what happens. And
Speaker 2: I'll leave that other up to experts to decide However,
Speaker 2: if they would like to play in the w NBA,
Speaker 2: they better fucking transition. Let's get them on some fucking hormones.
Speaker 2: They let's get let's let's let's get them in there,
Speaker 2: let's get for a couple of years. Let's see it boys.
Speaker 1: I mean not to get into it, but they seem
Speaker 1: to think that it's just based on self identification, that
Speaker 1: if you just say I identify as a woman, that
Speaker 1: you are eligible for the w NBA Draft, And nothing
Speaker 1: in the rules says that the league is going to
Speaker 1: have to figure out what the rules do say or
Speaker 1: like or what the qualifications are because it says you
Speaker 1: have to be a woman, But like, what does that
Speaker 1: mean if someone ever wanted to who has transitioned, if
Speaker 1: someone ever wanted to play in the w NBA that
Speaker 1: they're they're not dealing with that. They're dealing with a
Speaker 1: couple of men who have not transitioned. They're just saying
Speaker 1: that women and putting on wigs, which is a very
Speaker 1: different thing. But uh yeah, that's that's that's what we're
Speaker 1: doing right now. Just just two men who really want
Speaker 1: to get attention is where we're at.
Speaker 2: And even Jesse Waters doesn't want to give it to them.
Speaker 2: Even Jesse Waters is bored by this. Uh yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1: Uh, that's that's what's happening. That's what's happening.
Speaker 2: Good Luck follows.
Speaker 1: Well, they're getting some attention, all right. Last thing before
Speaker 1: we get to Lovet's interview with Sam Forstagg. Tucker Carlson's
Speaker 1: new coalition includes Marjorie Taylor Green, Thomas Massey, and maybe
Speaker 1: Hunter Biden. On Monday, Carlson released a highly anticipated I
Speaker 1: guess two hour interview with Hunter Biden, who he's just
Speaker 1: he is just making the rounds Hunter Biden. Here's a clip.
Speaker 1: Here's here's how it went.
Speaker 6: I'm supposed to hate Tucker Carlson because he's an anti
Speaker 6: Semite and he's this, I know not you're not an
Speaker 6: insistent might.
Speaker 3: I might know?
Speaker 6: No, that's what my point being?
Speaker 1: Is it? That would just say? So?
Speaker 6: My point being is is it like if it's anti
Speaker 6: Semitic to point out that bb net NYA who is
Speaker 6: evil incarnate, then you know what, I don't know what
Speaker 6: to say to I don't know what to say to
Speaker 6: people anymore.
Speaker 1: What do you think? What do you think about all this?
Speaker 1: He started by talking about how much how much he
Speaker 1: loves Candace Owns because he did Candace's show too.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like he He's got like all of
Speaker 2: Joe Biden's ego, but like none of the civic mindedness.
Speaker 2: Is how it always feels to me.
Speaker 1: Well, it was very It's he's just doing like a
Speaker 1: pander thing, right, which is like it's a little bideny
Speaker 1: where he like wants to be sort of nice and
Speaker 1: gracious to the person he's sitting down with, but he
Speaker 1: does it in a way by being like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: everything you say is amazing and great. What oh I oh,
Speaker 1: I have disagreements with you, disagreements with you, but like
Speaker 1: I don't think you're an anti Semite blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: And it's like also going after bb net yah who
Speaker 1: liked that too, And I'm like, where where's your dad
Speaker 1: on this one?
Speaker 2: Well, it's also it's so fun to only argue with
Speaker 2: the dumbest version of your opponents. That's true when you
Speaker 2: put a wig on and try to join the WNBA.
Speaker 2: It's also true when you say it's anti semitic, to
Speaker 2: say that Bibinga and Yaho is evil?
Speaker 1: What are we doing it?
Speaker 2: Well, actually, it's I'd say, why don't you have a
Speaker 2: maybe sort of interrogat a less stupid version of this
Speaker 2: and see how far you get there. Like Tucker Carlson
Speaker 2: has had Holocaust deniers on his show. He has embraced
Speaker 2: a whole host of anti Semitic conspiracy theories. He has
Speaker 2: been flirting with all kinds of anti Semitism. He has
Speaker 2: accused so many people of having dual loyalties, like, he
Speaker 2: has engaged in a ton of like anti Semitic tropes,
Speaker 2: he has used anti semitism, and how he makes his arguments,
Speaker 2: whether you want to sit there and sort of be
Speaker 2: the arbiter of whether or not Tucker's an anti anti Semite.
Speaker 2: For whatever reason, white people tend to be circumspect about
Speaker 2: saying to other white people, you're not a racist, right,
Speaker 2: But somehow when it comes to anti Semitism, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of people that aren't wish that'll allow to be
Speaker 2: Like I've checked and you're not and said, well okay, buddy, great,
Speaker 2: Thanks thanks for letting us know. We were waiting for
Speaker 2: the Hunter Biden in premature on Tucker Carlson to let
Speaker 2: us know whether Tucker Carlson is an antisemit or not.
Speaker 2: And now there's one last thing.
Speaker 1: To worry about. Here's my thing about the whole Hunter
Speaker 1: Biden media tour on all of the various right wing
Speaker 1: hosts and all the different places he's going, I'm not like,
Speaker 1: this is not a debate for me about like the platforming,
Speaker 1: And you can't go on someone's show that you that
Speaker 1: you think is awful or whatever. It's like, if you're
Speaker 1: going to do that, have a discussion that is about
Speaker 1: the places where you disagree, have a little debate about it.
Speaker 1: You don't have to be screaming at each other if
Speaker 1: you don't want. But like, if you're just going to
Speaker 1: go there to be like, oh, you're actually awesome and
Speaker 1: and then like wait for Tucker or Candace or whatever
Speaker 1: to be like and I'm sorry that I went after
Speaker 1: you so hard, Hunter, when you know your dad was president,
Speaker 1: Like what is the point of that? Well, Like, who
Speaker 1: gains from that other than you? That's my question, Like,
Speaker 1: what what kind of good are you doing? Are you
Speaker 1: introducing Tucker's audience to Hunter Biden's views on the situation
Speaker 1: that are different than what Tucker Carlson believes in. Because
Speaker 1: if that's the case, that's one thing but that's not
Speaker 1: what he did there. That's not what he's doing with
Speaker 1: the canvas Owens. It's not me. He would be fucking
Speaker 1: sat with Nick Funtes like, what are you doing? Man?
Speaker 2: Yeah? To what end is all of this?
Speaker 1: Exactly?
Speaker 2: To what end aside from like your attention?
Speaker 1: Yes, right, that's the thing. And I like, again, I
Speaker 1: don't want to assign motivations because maybe there is some
Speaker 1: other motivation, but I don't know, I don't know what
Speaker 1: the intention is other than sort of just because all
Speaker 1: he keeps doing is just going in these shows and
Speaker 1: pandering to the to the host.
Speaker 2: It also is like there's a certain kind of sort
Speaker 2: of broken brain person on social media that's been just
Speaker 2: really eating up the the Hunter Biden tour. They love it,
Speaker 2: they love it.
Speaker 3: It's like like.
Speaker 2: He's some kort of sort of world weary truth teller,
Speaker 2: you know, like he's trying like he like he's traveling
Speaker 2: around kind of telling these sort of forbidden truths, like
Speaker 2: the forbidden truths being that like I guess Mike Johnson's
Speaker 2: gay and Tucker Carlson loves Jews, Like that's what.
Speaker 1: I forgot about them. Mike Johnson, Yeah, all these Republicans
Speaker 1: are in the closet thing.
Speaker 2: And that the closetocracy, he called it, is like the
Speaker 2: is actually the bigger threat than oligarchy, which is like, okay, man,
Speaker 2: and just it's this weird.
Speaker 1: But I guarantee if you sat down in one of
Speaker 1: those interviews with one of the Republicans that he had
Speaker 1: accused of being in the closet, he would be like, oh,
Speaker 1: not you. I think you're great.
Speaker 2: No, I think you love We.
Speaker 3: No, no, we.
Speaker 1: Definitely we disagree on a lot, but you're amazing. You're amazing.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just very predictable what's going to happen
Speaker 1: every table.
Speaker 2: It's also just like and like, you know, I agree,
Speaker 2: like actually like boy, politics sure seems not like no
Speaker 2: fun when you talk about hard issues and get into
Speaker 2: the nuance of things and question Tucker Carlston about his
Speaker 2: views and actually sort of interrogate some of these difficult
Speaker 2: and thorny issues that we're facing, or why the right
Speaker 2: has become so radical and conspiratorial and extreme, or what
Speaker 2: actually drives politics to not work for people When you're
Speaker 2: not saying it's because Josh Holly is secretly gay and
Speaker 2: actually anti Semitism, isn't that isn't isn't connected to what's
Speaker 2: happening on the right whatever you want to say, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it gets it's almost like becomes like work. You have
Speaker 2: to really focus on it and spend a lot of
Speaker 2: time on it, and it sucks. I agree.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Come on Pod Save America anytime, all right when
Speaker 1: we come back, Montana House candidate Sam forsdag Podsave America
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Speaker 2: Sam Forsad, Welcome to the pod.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: John.
Speaker 2: So, first of all, let's just give people some background
Speaker 2: on who you are and what led you to run
Speaker 2: for Congress. You're a smoke jumper and this is your
Speaker 2: first time running for office. Just tell me about yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's my first time running for anything higher than
Speaker 3: vice president of my union local. Until seven months ago,
Speaker 3: I worked as a smoke jumper for the US Forest Service.
Speaker 3: So in the short version of that as we parachuting
Speaker 3: in a remote wildfires to put them out while they're
Speaker 3: still small. And I was a leader in my union's
Speaker 3: local when all the dose cuts began, and what that
Speaker 3: looked like in Montana is in large part you know,
Speaker 3: they said it was all about government efficiency, but the
Speaker 3: people we lost for the lowest paid workers we've got
Speaker 3: in our agency. I mean, when they have fired three
Speaker 3: hundred and sixty Montana's just in the Forest Service, just
Speaker 3: on Valentine's Day two years ago, eighty five percent of
Speaker 3: them were GS six's or below, making nineteen seventy an
Speaker 3: hour or less. In my agency, it was people, the
Speaker 3: people who swing the tools and conduct the science to
Speaker 3: maintain our public lands. And when I reached out to
Speaker 3: Ryan Zanke, the Republican in the seat, who should be
Speaker 3: the person you can reach out to when your members
Speaker 3: lives you're being turned upside down, I got crickets. So
Speaker 3: I decided, if he's going to take my co worker's jobs,
Speaker 3: I'm going to come take CA.
Speaker 2: Just so people understand, like how just to get when
Speaker 2: Doge comes in and makes cuts to save money. Sure,
Speaker 2: what happens when you're trying to say, put out a
Speaker 2: fire quickly before it gets bigger, Like walk people through
Speaker 2: what happens if, say, the equipment you used to rely
Speaker 2: on is no longer available like day to day? What
Speaker 2: did it mean for them to try to make government
Speaker 2: more efficient?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty clear none of
Speaker 3: this was about efficiency. It's about power and consolidating that
Speaker 3: power in the hands of a select few, including the
Speaker 3: righteous man in the world who happened to be at
Speaker 3: the helmet this thing. But on the ground, what it
Speaker 3: looked like even last year, and I know it's worse
Speaker 3: right now, is public safety was hampered. I mean I
Speaker 3: jumped a fire in early July last year, a time
Speaker 3: when usually you are not in a state of resource scarcity.
Speaker 3: Resources being the demand power and the people you need
Speaker 3: to help fight a fire if you don't catch it
Speaker 3: with those first eight jumpers on the ground and setting
Speaker 3: up a task force, and I get told, Hey, I
Speaker 3: know you're requesting three hotshot crews. They're none available in
Speaker 3: the region, so we're going to order six contract hand
Speaker 3: crews instead because they don't have the same capabilities. So
Speaker 3: we're going to need more people and that's the only
Speaker 3: way we get any help to you. In the next
Speaker 3: few days. What it means on the ground is we
Speaker 3: all pay so much more for so much less, and
Speaker 3: it takes longer to fight those fires. And I mean
Speaker 3: those stories are endless.
Speaker 2: And so you're making I know, you've been doing this
Speaker 2: for with seven years and you're making nineteen dollars nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy five an hour, seven years in And because of
Speaker 2: these cuts, they have to bring in contractors in private
Speaker 2: companies that are going to make much more money. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and cost a lot more than what the kind of
Speaker 2: the trained people would have done.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the real goal here was cuts and
Speaker 3: privatization to turn into another source of profit. You know.
Speaker 3: Another story is last year I jumped the fire outside
Speaker 3: of Steamboat Springs in Colorado. And you know, as jumpers,
Speaker 3: most fires we catch with the first you know, four
Speaker 3: to eight twelve smoke jumpers on the ground. But when
Speaker 3: you don't, you step back and you set up a
Speaker 3: large incident to make sure that you can save houses.
Speaker 3: We had hundreds of houses at risk in the immediate
Speaker 3: vicinity this fire. We ended up catching at around five
Speaker 3: hundred acres and on the second day I put in
Speaker 3: order for pumps and hoses, which is a pretty basic
Speaker 3: fire fighting implement just to get water to the line.
Speaker 3: And they tell me, well, we used to have a
Speaker 3: gear cash here and steamboat last year, but they that
Speaker 3: they shut that down with the cuts. So you're not
Speaker 3: going to get those pumps and hoses until the end
Speaker 3: of next shift because we have to overnight airmail the
Speaker 3: pump and hose kit from Denver to Steamboat and we
Speaker 3: got to drive it up to the line and then
Speaker 3: we got to get it up to you. So you're
Speaker 3: not getting it till the end of the day tomorrow.
Speaker 3: So not only is our firefighting hampered, I mean I
Speaker 3: cannot imagine a more expensive way to deliver hundreds of
Speaker 3: pounds of water pumps than that.
Speaker 2: So you're a smoke jumper and just that basically you're
Speaker 2: going to the places where cars can't reach, vehicles can't
Speaker 2: get to, to try to solve problems before they get bigger.
Speaker 2: What does that look like if there's a smoke jumper
Speaker 2: in Congress, Like, what do you see as the problem
Speaker 2: you're trying to surge to that you view as a
Speaker 2: failure to get enough attention?
Speaker 3: Right now? I really smoke jumping like a lot of firefighting,
Speaker 3: right We're not so different from hotshot cruise or engine cruise.
Speaker 3: You're training crisis management and whether it is the housings
Speaker 3: that we're dealing with in western Montana, where we have
Speaker 3: the least affordable housing market in the country. That's a
Speaker 3: surprise to a lot of people, I think Japana. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I didn't realize that until learning about this. It's you know,
Speaker 3: you're making nineteen, say nineteen dollars an hour in an
Speaker 3: area that we think of his rural, so must be cheaper.
Speaker 3: But the average house is what like five hundred thousand
Speaker 3: dollars nowadays. In Missoula it's just shy six hundred k.
Speaker 3: You go to Bozeman, it's around nine hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 3: in a place where a decade ago is probably closer
Speaker 3: to two hundred thousand. The Flathead Valley in northwest Montana
Speaker 3: not so different. So, I mean the crises are you know,
Speaker 3: it's in housing, it's in healthcare, it's in childcare, where
Speaker 3: again medium wage is sixty thousand dollars in Montana, the
Speaker 3: average cost of childcare is just shied nineteen k if
Speaker 3: you can make it through a waiting list. And these
Speaker 3: are all crises that so many people have felt like
Speaker 3: our elected leaders at the federal level aren't dealing with
Speaker 3: any sense of urgency with And we had leadership nationally
Speaker 3: not so long ago telling us the economy is better
Speaker 3: than you think it is.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, yeah, me and a whole lot of my coworkers, Well,
Speaker 3: at the end of four years of democratic control, I'm
Speaker 3: running it's a Democrat. While yeah, we're making nineteen bucks
Speaker 3: an hour and you're in a community where you'd be
Speaker 3: lucky to find a home for less than five hundred
Speaker 3: thousand bucks. And life did not get better if you're
Speaker 3: in a situation like that over the preceding four years,
Speaker 3: and people felt like the folks in power at the
Speaker 3: national level are not listening to us quite clearly. I mean,
Speaker 3: what better articulation of a disconnect than to tell people
Speaker 3: things are better than you think it is, while homelessness
Speaker 3: just doubled or tripled in every major city in Montana
Speaker 3: over the preceding five years.
Speaker 2: What's interesting is when you say we've had leaders saying
Speaker 2: the economy is better than you think it is. I
Speaker 2: genuinely don't know if you're talking about Joe Biden or
Speaker 2: Donald Trump. One thing you said recently, is that the
Speaker 2: National Party did everything they could to make it hard
Speaker 2: for a Democrat to win in places like Western Montana.
Speaker 2: What do you mean by that?
Speaker 3: What I mean is we had people at the national
Speaker 3: level who quite literally were not listening to us, and
Speaker 3: we have people who are dealing with a housing crisis
Speaker 3: twenty miles away from what you and I were talking
Speaker 3: about earlier, places like the Yellowstone Club where you got
Speaker 3: to be a multimillionaire just to be considered for membership,
Speaker 3: and you go twenty miles up the canyon, you're in Bozeman. Well,
Speaker 3: we have homelessness that's doubled or triple. You have people
Speaker 3: living in the back of their cars or trailers, and
Speaker 3: people who felt like, rightfully their problems were not being
Speaker 3: solved to the national level. And when that's the case,
Speaker 3: when things are that bad, process is not an adequate
Speaker 3: excuse for not dealing with those things. And I want
Speaker 3: to note I would offer the National Party that all
Speaker 3: they could to make it hard for Democrat to win.
Speaker 3: The Democrat did just win the seat I'm running for.
Speaker 3: It's Montana's first congressional district. John Tester won Western Montana
Speaker 3: while he lost the state last year by just shy
Speaker 3: up a point, even in a tough environment like that,
Speaker 3: So we know we can win this thing. And the
Speaker 3: project here is to win in a meaningful way and
Speaker 3: rebuild the coalition we used to have when we could
Speaker 3: win statewide and when Democrats could conceive of ever having
Speaker 3: a meaningful majority in the US Senate.
Speaker 2: You know, you've seen people talking about like abolishing the Senate.
Speaker 2: It seems like for a lot of people it's easier
Speaker 2: for them to wrap their minds around fundamentally changing the
Speaker 2: Constitution than winning in places like Montana state wide. Again,
Speaker 2: even though John Tester represented Montana in the Senate. Max Bocchus,
Speaker 2: what do you think right now? Is like five bunch
Speaker 2: of Montana and asked a bunch of people. When you
Speaker 2: think of a Democrat, you think of blank, Like what
Speaker 2: do they think when they hear about a Democrat?
Speaker 3: I think right now people think about John Tester, who
Speaker 3: was our senator until a year and a half ago,
Speaker 3: and not so long ago, Democrats had serious power in
Speaker 3: place like Montana. I mean, two thousand and nine, we
Speaker 3: had a fifty to fifty split in our state Senate.
Speaker 3: We used to have it. In twenty sixteen, we had
Speaker 3: a Democratic governor, Steve Bullock, who was re elected on
Speaker 3: the same ticket as Donald Trump. Twenty eighteen, John Tester
Speaker 3: re elected again in our state. Democrats have found a
Speaker 3: win in Montana, to win even when Donald Trump is
Speaker 3: gaining power. I mean, eighteen thousand Montanna's voted for Donald
Speaker 3: Trump and John Tester in twenty twenty four. Those are
Speaker 3: the people who deserve a candidate who's actually going to
Speaker 3: speak to our experience and talk about how government needs
Speaker 3: to be a thing that can make your life materially
Speaker 3: better when the market is not meeting that need. And
Speaker 3: government has also been failing on that job for a
Speaker 3: long time. And I think clearly you look at what's
Speaker 3: happening around the country or even in our race. Right
Speaker 3: where I started this primary, nobody knew who the heck
Speaker 3: I was in December of last year, and we had
Speaker 3: a crowded, competitive primary that included a candidate who was
Speaker 3: the Democratic nominee for governor last year, people who'd been
Speaker 3: running for a year. And what we saw is that
Speaker 3: people are really hungry for candidates or for just anybody
Speaker 3: who can actually reflect our experience and say, like, it's
Speaker 3: not just your problem. The fact that people can't afford
Speaker 3: a house. It's not just your problem that when your
Speaker 3: car makes a funny noise, well that might mean you
Speaker 3: can't afford rent next month. Because I've lived it too.
Speaker 3: It is our problem. And of course people are going
Speaker 3: to address problems with more urgency if you've lived them.
Speaker 2: How much do you think the way like so the
Speaker 2: way Democrats we have Obviously there's like a huge problem
Speaker 2: with like the Democratic brand. How much of that do
Speaker 2: you ascribe to, say, like right wing media of hammering people,
Speaker 2: kind of pulling the most extreme versions of a Democrat.
Speaker 2: And then how much you actually laid at the feet
Speaker 2: of the Democrats themselves.
Speaker 3: John I would say, we hold these truths to be
Speaker 3: self evident. The Democratic Party messed up pretty damn bad,
Speaker 3: and they got us into this situation. We had four
Speaker 3: years of power. Yeah, people were facing massive issues. I
Speaker 3: mean between fire seasons, I helped put together the Montana
Speaker 3: Coalition to solve homelessness. We pulled a dozen homeless shelters
Speaker 3: together from around the state and we ended up getting
Speaker 3: some legislation passed in a Republican supermajority, the first one
Speaker 3: in state history. And the reason that was able to
Speaker 3: happen is because the problems were so damn bad. I mean,
Speaker 3: quite literally, I'm not exaggerating. We have tripled the number
Speaker 3: of on house people in a place like Montana. We're
Speaker 3: in the northern Rockies. It is not a hospitable place
Speaker 3: to be living on the streets. People die every year.
Speaker 3: And I mean if you were working two or three
Speaker 3: jobs at a time, like I was the entire time
Speaker 3: I was going to college and still graduating with debt,
Speaker 3: and you look up and people are telling you the
Speaker 3: institutions they just need tweaked a little bit. That does
Speaker 3: not inspire faith. Yeah, that doesn't give anyone a reason
Speaker 3: to be hopeful or to engage with politics. And so
Speaker 3: what happened. A lot of young people did not engage
Speaker 3: with politics last year. They did not turn out and vote,
Speaker 3: and we are now quite literally not the party of
Speaker 3: working people. Most working people, most folks making under a
Speaker 3: hundred cages voted for Republicans or shoot unions. Right, I
Speaker 3: come from a union background. We have the Gibraltar of
Speaker 3: unionism in Montana. It's but most incredible town you can
Speaker 3: go to Western Montana. Well half a union members voted
Speaker 3: for Republicans last year and a lot of young people
Speaker 3: didn't turn out. Those are all the people that are
Speaker 3: the base of the Democratic Party I want to be
Speaker 3: a part of. And if we can't give those people
Speaker 3: a reason to actually engage, and we can't show them
Speaker 3: that there's a place in this party for them, not
Speaker 3: just for the people who are rich enough to make
Speaker 3: it through these processes that we create for federal candidates,
Speaker 3: well then we don't deserve their support. So let's win
Speaker 3: it back.
Speaker 2: So Joe Biden, he's this, I think, longtime centrist figure.
Speaker 2: He wins in twenty twenty, and he actually tries to
Speaker 2: bring in Bernie, he brings in Elizabeth Warren, he puts
Speaker 2: in a trustbuster at the FTC. He governs much further
Speaker 2: the left anybody would have expected Joe Biden to govern,
Speaker 2: still not as far as some people would have wanted
Speaker 2: him to go. Has some success, and Democrats are largely punished,
Speaker 2: in part because of all the obstacles like the filibuster
Speaker 2: in the Senate, the Supreme Court, like Democrats are in
Speaker 2: some ways punished because he's unable to fully achieve his agenda.
Speaker 2: And then they and then who wins the Republicans who
Speaker 2: are then immediately deregulate past massive tax cuts to the rich,
Speaker 2: overturn put on judges to overturn row and environmental and
Speaker 2: union regulations.
Speaker 3: I got it all.
Speaker 2: And so so look, when you're talking to people in
Speaker 2: your union that that voted for Zinky or voted for Trump, like,
Speaker 2: how how do you how do you talk about this?
Speaker 2: Like what what's your argument?
Speaker 3: My argument is that I understand why a lot of people,
Speaker 3: like my coworkers and union members, some of them voted
Speaker 3: for the schlubs who were tearing all this down all
Speaker 3: around us. And man, does it piss me off somebody
Speaker 3: who spent a year and a half working with members
Speaker 3: who I mean? I remember Kara who lost her job
Speaker 3: in one day, with no cause, no notice, fifteen years
Speaker 3: into a federal service because she just happened to have
Speaker 3: taken a lateral transfer that year to do more remote
Speaker 3: work during chemotherapy. You know, members are getting texts in
Speaker 3: line at the airport to go to their grandmother's funerals
Speaker 3: saying they lost their job. They were only making sixteen
Speaker 3: bucks an hour at in the first place. But you
Speaker 3: know what, I also work with a lot of people who, well,
Speaker 3: if you're making sixteen bucks an hour, and you're working
Speaker 3: for the federal government, and housing costs have just doubled
Speaker 3: or tripled in your community and you can't conceive of
Speaker 3: ever owning a home. Well, your life just got worse.
Speaker 3: And as far as I'm concerned, there are two primary
Speaker 3: roles for the federal government. First and foremost, it's to
Speaker 3: protect your constitutional freedoms right a lot of those in
Speaker 3: the Bill of Rights of Freedoms from the government. Second,
Speaker 3: it's to make sure you can meet your basic material
Speaker 3: needs when the market is not meeting them, and the
Speaker 3: market was meeting them even worse after four years of
Speaker 3: democratic control. And you know what, if you are working
Speaker 3: two or three jobs at a time, or if you're
Speaker 3: working a thousand hours of overtime like I had to
Speaker 3: just to scrimp buy through a winter on my mortgage
Speaker 3: for a nine hundred eighty square foot home, you might
Speaker 3: not have the time to follow the intricacies of policymaking
Speaker 3: or politics. You shouldn't have to to be able to
Speaker 3: judge the people in power on what sort of results
Speaker 3: they delivered for you. And so I would just say, like,
Speaker 3: the people we need to win back are a lot
Speaker 3: of the people who got these folks elected. It's a
Speaker 3: lot of working people, there's a lot of union members,
Speaker 3: and it's folks. So you don't start a conversation with
Speaker 3: by telling them that they're wrong, because it frustrates me
Speaker 3: so much to hear people what I hear off and
Speaker 3: say like, well do they see Like why are people
Speaker 3: voting outside of their own their own self interest, their
Speaker 3: own material self interest. It's not more in your interest
Speaker 3: to vote for somebody who's going to make your life
Speaker 3: worse a little slower than the other guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Also, don't tell people what their interests are. Presumably,
Speaker 2: So there's also been a part of this debate about
Speaker 2: how did the Democratic Party lose the men? What happened
Speaker 2: to the men and the working class? And a lot
Speaker 2: of people tend to get.
Speaker 3: Better place to address than a podcast student.
Speaker 2: Yeah, two guys in a podcast studio. This is where
Speaker 2: we're supposed to solve it all. But you know, I
Speaker 2: think Ester has talked about wokeness as being part of this.
Speaker 2: You said something interesting the other day, which is just
Speaker 2: that basically, if you have a member of Congress who's
Speaker 2: worth millions of dollars trying to be a tribune for
Speaker 2: the working class, that person may feel a little bit
Speaker 2: more afraid to say pushback on trans issues or have
Speaker 2: a position that might not have a majority, but actually
Speaker 2: they want to be supportive of trans people.
Speaker 1: How do you think about this?
Speaker 2: What do you think that the social issues are part
Speaker 2: of democrats problems? Like Bernie has Because he's such a
Speaker 2: kind of people understand what Bernie stands for. He's had,
Speaker 2: on the other hand, more room to say, you know what,
Speaker 2: I don't think we should defund the police, or we
Speaker 2: do need to have a strong boarder.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of it comes back to credibility.
Speaker 3: And I had this fascinating split screen for the last
Speaker 3: eight years of my life where I'm doing wild and
Speaker 3: fire in the summers six to nine months out of
Speaker 3: the year, and then I was doing organizing an advocacy
Speaker 3: in the winters. Between that, I worked for the coalition
Speaker 3: at Homos Shelters, I mentioned for the State Library Association,
Speaker 3: even for the ACLU, and I well, when I would
Speaker 3: be in the middle of fire season, there's not a
Speaker 3: lot of other jumpers who go do policy work, and
Speaker 3: so you bet your tell. Everybody wants to ask me
Speaker 3: about whatever they might have seen on the news. Maybe
Speaker 3: it was on Fox news and if we got time
Speaker 3: in between digging line or cutting line, you know, I
Speaker 3: tell them, you know that story. Well, here are the
Speaker 3: people that I know in the winters who are just
Speaker 3: trying to live their life with dignity without government telling
Speaker 3: them how to do it. And I think that that's
Speaker 3: a pizza that that has been lost. And I'll tell
Speaker 3: them what else I saw when I'm at the state
Speaker 3: legislature is well, we just saw in twenty seventeen deep
Speaker 3: cuts and a dismantling of our mental health services in
Speaker 3: the state when we had a budget shortfall. And over
Speaker 3: the following eight years when we had surpluses, did they
Speaker 3: reinvest in all those basic public health care services that
Speaker 3: they cut. No, they invested in tax cuts to cut
Speaker 3: the top income tax bracket year after year after year.
Speaker 3: And that's the same thing we see at the federal level.
Speaker 3: And it's what it is is it is big brother
Speaker 3: not watching you because they don't need to now even
Speaker 3: though they can. They're singing and dancing. Well, they pick
Speaker 3: all of our pockets as working people. And by the
Speaker 3: end of that conversation, a lot of my coworkers are
Speaker 3: prett passed. They weren't pissed about what they saw on
Speaker 3: the news. They're pissed about the fact that that is
Speaker 3: why I am poorer, and that is why I am
Speaker 3: poorer in a world where we just meanted the first
Speaker 3: human trillionaire. That's something that should make us angry. And
Speaker 3: that's the sort of grievance of all the festering, misdirected grievances.
Speaker 3: That kind of economic grievance is what governments supposed to
Speaker 3: be here to help address.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about your opponent. Zinki won this race
Speaker 2: most recently by eight you said, John Tester one more
Speaker 2: votes there even as he wasn't able to eke out
Speaker 2: a victory. It's very very close right now. What is
Speaker 2: the case you're trying to make in the closing days
Speaker 2: to try to get more people to understand why your opponent,
Speaker 2: just the sort of trump back talk radio host, is
Speaker 2: not exactly what Montana needs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the contrast here could not be any better if
Speaker 3: you ask me. I mean, yeah, the fellow I'm running against,
Speaker 3: he was the handpicked successor for Ryanzink. You dropped out
Speaker 3: of this race about four months ago in good riddance,
Speaker 3: and he dropped out because he saw it wasn't gonna
Speaker 3: be easy for him after a whole year spent gutting
Speaker 3: basic public services that people like me might have depended
Speaker 3: on as a kid, and his belly was full thanks
Speaker 3: to food stamps sometimes cutting our public lands where if
Speaker 3: there's a consensus issue in Montana, it's our public lands.
Speaker 3: And so what did he do? He dropped out with
Speaker 3: forty eight hours until the filing deadline and immediately endorsed
Speaker 3: this spell. Aaron Flint, who's a far right talk radio host.
Speaker 3: He spent the last ten years in an air conditioned
Speaker 3: recording studio, spewing hate and hot air and nothing against
Speaker 3: their conditions. What's wrong with it?
Speaker 2: I don't think. I think you're sort of losing the
Speaker 2: up over. There's nothing you do a lot of good
Speaker 2: work in an air condition recording studio. Sorry, continued well.
Speaker 3: And we got the guy is a political pundit, and
Speaker 3: we have plenty of pundits and political puppets in Washington
Speaker 3: right now. I would offer there's no dearth of those.
Speaker 3: We got enough of them. What we do have a
Speaker 3: lack of is working people who know what it's like
Speaker 3: to be working three jobs at a time and still
Speaker 3: paying your rent on a credit card. I know what
Speaker 3: that's like. People who actually know what it's like to
Speaker 3: have your belly full because of food stamps or thanks
Speaker 3: to food stamps when your parent falls on a hard time,
Speaker 3: and like people who don't have that perspective are going
Speaker 3: to perhaps fight with a little bit less urgency when
Speaker 3: SNAP benefits get used as leverage during a government shutdown
Speaker 3: like they did this last time around, when half of
Speaker 3: my members were furloughed at the end of those six weeks,
Speaker 3: and a lot of them are showing up at local
Speaker 3: food banks that are also having occur tail food benefits
Speaker 3: because some of that comes from SNAP. It just feels
Speaker 3: like across the board there has truly been a lack
Speaker 3: of urgency. When we had the political will to pass
Speaker 3: really big important legislation like you mentioned, like the IRA
Speaker 3: right well, a whole lot of that money never actually
Speaker 3: got out the door, and people are hurting right now.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you were on the edge of not
Speaker 3: having your home, like Kathy, whose house I was at.
Speaker 3: Kathy lives a mile from my house. She's in now
Speaker 3: one of four thousand mobile home lots that are owned
Speaker 3: by out of state private equity firms in the state
Speaker 3: of Montana. And Kathy's lot rent has gone from three
Speaker 3: hundred and seventy bucks a month to over eight hundred dollars.
Speaker 3: Kathy doesn't have ten years to wait for all these
Speaker 3: resources to propagate through the system and for half of
Speaker 3: them to go to large corporations so that maybe her
Speaker 3: life gets better. Like, Kathy needs help right now, and
Speaker 3: it feels like we did not deliver that help to
Speaker 3: people who really desperately needed it. And well what happens
Speaker 3: The party out of power gets elected and it turns
Speaker 3: into something really scary and dangerous.
Speaker 2: There's also a big fight in Montana now over data centers.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of there's a lot of outside money.
Speaker 2: They see Montana. It's cool, there's a lot of land,
Speaker 2: you can build a lot of big facilities. Yeah, where
Speaker 2: are you on building data centers in Montana? And how
Speaker 2: does that contrast with the Republicans?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, my opponent got the better part of a
Speaker 3: million dollars from American Mission, one of Open AI's super
Speaker 3: packs just in the month of May to get him
Speaker 3: through his primary, even though they tried to make sure
Speaker 3: no one could run against the guy. So what we're
Speaker 3: up against is a pretty terrifying amount of money that
Speaker 3: this industry is planning to leverage in this election. I
Speaker 3: think one hundred and fifty million they're planning to drop
Speaker 3: on elections just this year. For us, well, we have
Speaker 3: a proposed center that is in theory going to use
Speaker 3: more electricity than every residential home in the state of Montana.
Speaker 3: And our power rates have already gone up thirty or
Speaker 3: forty percent in the last three years. So what I
Speaker 3: would offer is we need to pass the damn law
Speaker 3: at the federal level saying they can't build these things
Speaker 3: until unless they show that they're going to provide all
Speaker 3: their own palwerce doesn't have to be on site, off sites.
Speaker 3: Even better, put power on the grid. We need it,
Speaker 3: ideally carbon neutral power, making sure that they're not going
Speaker 3: to dirty our air and water. I mean, you see
Speaker 3: these terrifying videos of dirty water. Well, there are more
Speaker 3: water efficient cooling systems that cost a little bit more,
Speaker 3: but this industry they can afford it. They're planned to
Speaker 3: spend four trillion bucks on data set development in the
Speaker 3: next seven years. Right now, we have none of that.
Speaker 3: All we have is an executive order trying to preempt
Speaker 3: state regulations on AI and where I am too. I'm
Speaker 3: coming at this. I'm also a relatively young candidate. I
Speaker 3: think that this technology is perhaps the biggest existential threat
Speaker 3: that we've got as a country. I mean, we've read
Speaker 3: the sci fi novel before. We're all living in it
Speaker 3: right now. This is if their promises are true, Well,
Speaker 3: this is a technology that could it could cure cancer
Speaker 3: or it could kill all of humanity, and we in.
Speaker 2: It's a big delta there, It's a big difference.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and right now it seems like we're only using
Speaker 3: it for all the bad stuff. And what in the
Speaker 3: last two weeks you're probably tracking, we had two instances
Speaker 3: of these models breaking out of the system and hacking
Speaker 3: into other outfits, and they're we're at a full scale
Speaker 3: cyber attack from an aisystem and nobody knows. There's no
Speaker 3: oversight or regulation of this right now functionally speaking. And
Speaker 3: if we can't get our arms around it and have
Speaker 3: real federal oversight and make it so we're ready to
Speaker 3: pull the plug on this thing if it poses a
Speaker 3: threat to the future of our children in our country, like,
Speaker 3: we're going to be in a tough spot.
Speaker 2: One other issue that's been roiling in Montana is because
Speaker 2: in part for what all the reasons you're saying, the
Speaker 2: Democratic brand can be pretty toxic. You have an independent
Speaker 2: that has a lot of backing from This is the
Speaker 2: first I've heard about them.
Speaker 3: First've heard of it.
Speaker 2: Now, So for people that don't know about it, Basically,
Speaker 2: there is an independent that's running with the backing of
Speaker 2: a lot of Democratic politicians. Is also a Democratic candidate
Speaker 2: on the ballot. Today, as we're recording, this is the
Speaker 2: last day for that Democratic candidate to drop out so
Speaker 2: that everyone can coalesce around the independent candidate. Do you
Speaker 2: believe that Bankman should.
Speaker 3: Drop out right now? Yeah, today's the deadline. I think
Speaker 3: they just had a press conference last couple hours. I
Speaker 3: think it's the third or fourth and last week between
Speaker 3: the two of them. Yeah, each one announcing I'm still running.
Speaker 3: IM still run.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're both still running.
Speaker 3: Yeah, still here. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's an interesting like game theory problem because they're like,
Speaker 2: there's been a brinkmanship, But what do you want to have?
Speaker 2: It's what do you want to have happened before midnight today?
Speaker 3: What I want is to make sure Kurt all Me,
Speaker 3: who's the Republican running in that race, is not our
Speaker 3: next senator. And I will be entirely honest, I'm so
Speaker 3: deeply frustrated with the entirety of how this thing is
Speaker 3: played out. Yeah, I mean the probably north eight million
Speaker 3: dollars has been sent to spent to manufacture this situation
Speaker 3: we're in right now, where neither candidate's going to have
Speaker 3: a chance of winning against the Republican as long as
Speaker 3: they're both in this race. That's obscene. Yeah, like that
Speaker 3: is actually disgusting. We have all, whichever angle you're looking
Speaker 3: at this from, we've all swallowed a spider to kill
Speaker 3: a fly. And I mean eight million dollars again, that
Speaker 3: is pearls before swine in a state where people are
Speaker 3: being pushed out onto the streets because they can't afford
Speaker 3: the basics at this point of coin flip would be
Speaker 3: better than what they got going right now. And what
Speaker 3: I've been telling the both of them is that I
Speaker 3: really hope that they will both sit down in person
Speaker 3: in a room and sort this out, because a lot
Speaker 3: of how we got here as a country is a
Speaker 3: lot of our national leaders were putting their own ego
Speaker 3: before the good of the country, and it feels like
Speaker 3: nothing changes, and well, the reality is nothing changes unless
Speaker 3: we go change it ourselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like god, a coin flip would work.
Speaker 2: Can we just do that, wouldn't? I mean, like, basically,
Speaker 2: after you we want one candidate to go up against
Speaker 2: the Republican and one of them would have to drop out,
Speaker 2: but not everyone.
Speaker 3: Wants to do it.
Speaker 2: It's basically where we're at.
Speaker 3: And it sounds like.
Speaker 2: You would, you'd you just want one of them to
Speaker 2: drop out and by the.
Speaker 3: End of the day, Yeah, I would better than the
Speaker 3: situation we're in, this this standoff.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 3: And but I will tell you too that center race. Uh,
Speaker 3: you know, I have faith in them to sort this
Speaker 3: out and to do the exercise the basic skills that
Speaker 3: my dad, who's the kindergarten teachers teaching his students. Right, Oh,
Speaker 3: sit down, look at each other, have a conversation. But
Speaker 3: if they whether or not they do that. Western Montana,
Speaker 3: Montana's first is where we have a chance to win. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is the place a Democrat just won by just
Speaker 3: by almost one percent. And I think there's a real
Speaker 3: time temptation to just spend all your time talking about whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the if it bleeds, it reads, you know, wherever the
Speaker 3: controversy is. But this is a place where we just
Speaker 3: had to turn out in the Democratic primary up seventeen percent.
Speaker 3: It was down for on the Republican side, Like this
Speaker 3: is a place where we can have a foothold in
Speaker 3: a place like western Montana or the Rocky Mountain West
Speaker 3: or rural America, something that Democrats don't really have right now.
Speaker 3: So yeah, we're spending all our time talking about that.
Speaker 3: And whichever way that race goes, I think both of
Speaker 3: those are very different kinds of candidates.
Speaker 2: Then, yeah, and whatever happens by the end of the day,
Speaker 2: that's what will happen. And then we have to focus
Speaker 2: on doing whatever we can to win your seat and
Speaker 2: the Senate race.
Speaker 3: And people can go to Sam Fromontana dot com if
Speaker 3: they want to help out.
Speaker 2: They can go to Sam for Montana if they want
Speaker 2: to help out. And you're gonna have a lot of
Speaker 2: money coming up against you, and in a state like Montana,
Speaker 2: like you know, a million dollars dropping that race can
Speaker 2: have a huge, huge impact. What are people that what
Speaker 2: did Democrats not understand about Mentata, Like you forget even
Speaker 2: just the politics just as a place, what people care about.
Speaker 2: I think it's a lot of kind of assumptions people
Speaker 2: make about like rural voters, how they view the environment,
Speaker 2: how they view public lands, Like what do people miss?
Speaker 3: I mean, our public lands are a way of life truly.
Speaker 3: I mean you're protecting your gun rights and protecting your
Speaker 3: public lands. Those are the two consensus issues in a
Speaker 3: place like Montana, because well, that's what people depend on.
Speaker 3: To keep your freezer full. If you go to your
Speaker 3: public lands and use them for hunting, that is how
Speaker 3: people find sustenance. That's what people depend on. If you
Speaker 3: can squeeze in a Sunday afternoon between your three shifts
Speaker 3: just to go hike in or skiing, like, that's what
Speaker 3: makes it worth living. And that is not a Democrat
Speaker 3: or Republican issue. I mean part of what pushed me
Speaker 3: into this race in November, when I was thinking about
Speaker 3: is it worth leaving behind smoke jumping, which is the
Speaker 3: only retirement, the only healthcare I had, the only career.
Speaker 3: I really had to run for this office because whatever
Speaker 3: the administration tells me, the Hatch Act exists, and you
Speaker 3: cannot run for public office federal employee. I got a
Speaker 3: mailer from Ryan Zinkey saying that he's the Teddy Roosevelt
Speaker 3: of public lands. A year into all of these these
Speaker 3: where my members' lives are being turned upside down, or
Speaker 3: we're down twenty percent, we've lost two thousand red carded firefighters.
Speaker 3: We're all seeing what the consequences of those are right now,
Speaker 3: where we got smoke choke skies in Montana and less
Speaker 3: people to fight all those fires. And he's sending out
Speaker 3: a mailer with his little Teddy Roosevelt had on and
Speaker 3: his boy scout outfit. Everybody claims they're for public lands,
Speaker 3: but it's a lot like these other issues, Like public
Speaker 3: lands aren't just lines on the map. There are a
Speaker 3: lot of people, most of them not making a lot
Speaker 3: of money, who work their tails off to make sure
Speaker 3: you can make it up a road to the trailhead
Speaker 3: or up a trail to access your forest. And a
Speaker 3: lot of those people are core to the rural economies.
Speaker 3: If you go down to Hamilton, well you got Rocky
Speaker 3: Mountain Labs, who's lost thirty or forty employees so far,
Speaker 3: you have forest service outposts. These are a core part
Speaker 3: of our community in our economy, and we all just
Speaker 3: got gutted. And so people are pissed, and they should
Speaker 3: be pissed, but being pissed is not enough. And you
Speaker 3: know when people say, well, are your friends who might
Speaker 3: have voted for these guys ready to see they were wrong,
Speaker 3: That's not what it is. I think right now people
Speaker 3: are just angry at both parties because you're paying for
Speaker 3: twenty a gallon at the pump for unleaded and we're
Speaker 3: in another war that this guy started, this time that
Speaker 3: none of us wanted, and we're spending billions overseas and
Speaker 3: all of our lives are worse. So we got to
Speaker 3: move past being pissed and being angry and talk about
Speaker 3: reimagining a lot of the programs that Montana's helped pass,
Speaker 3: Like Mike Mansfield was the leader of the US Senate
Speaker 3: from Montana who ushered through the Great Society and create
Speaker 3: helped create Medicare and Medicaid and NPR and PBS, and
Speaker 3: these are all the things that are under attact. They're
Speaker 3: all the things we're called on to reimagine and expand
Speaker 3: so people can meet their basic needs and have time
Speaker 3: for the kind of empathy and compassion that your neighbor deserves.
Speaker 2: Sam, I am forty three. I'm about to turn forty four.
Speaker 3: Your skill looks great.
Speaker 2: I skim it fantastic. Thank you for saying that. Could
Speaker 2: I be a smoke jumper? How athleticism? How much is required?
Speaker 2: Am I passed my prime?
Speaker 3: Is it possible? You know? I fell a rookie at
Speaker 3: forty seven? A few Wow, I'm looking at you. I
Speaker 3: mean you look pretty arn fit just from across the microphone.
Speaker 3: But No, what's required is it's a six week rookie
Speaker 3: training program. Most people got five or six years, five
Speaker 3: to ten years of fire experience before you get picked up,
Speaker 3: and about forty percent of people make it through. So
Speaker 3: it's six weeks of getting the hell beat out of
Speaker 3: you and PT and learning how to pilot a parachute.
Speaker 2: I want to know what a parachute.
Speaker 3: No, I can't do it.
Speaker 2: I've I forgot about the jumping part. I want to
Speaker 2: know what the like physical I would like to know
Speaker 2: what those like. What is like the physical requirements that
Speaker 2: I would like to do a smoke jumper training? Yeah,
Speaker 2: and maybe I don't think I can jump out of
Speaker 2: a plane. I actually struggle from a high diving board
Speaker 2: to jump into a pool. So I think that's like
Speaker 2: probably not for me, but maybe I could do the training.
Speaker 2: Sam forest Ac, thank you so much. I keep forgetting
Speaker 2: the website. What's the website again?
Speaker 3: The website is Samfromontana dot com or you can find
Speaker 3: us on socials. It's just at Sam forest Egg across platforms,
Speaker 3: and I need all the help I can get. It
Speaker 3: is a rare thing to see a working person in
Speaker 3: the halls of power, and I need. If everyone pulls
Speaker 3: together and helps out, well, we can actually make this
Speaker 3: happen and we can start changing the country, our country
Speaker 3: for the better. Thank you so much, Thank you John.
Speaker 1: That's our shoue for today. Thanks to Sam forstad for
Speaker 1: coming on. Dan and I will be back with a
Speaker 1: new show on Friday. Potive America is a Crioked media production.
Speaker 1: Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Ruben, McKenna Roberts,
Speaker 1: and Farris Afari, with Ree Churlin, Elijah Cone and Adrian Hill.
Speaker 1: Our team includes Matt de Groate, Ben Hefcote, Jordan Cantor,
Speaker 1: Charlotte Landis Krol pel Avive, David Toles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young,
Speaker 1: and Naomi Single. Our staff is probably unionized with the
Speaker 1: Writers Guild of America East