Always Test Your Hopium

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There's just the soft, fluffy bread you crave. Plus, small batch drops of indulgent favorites, like the popular two-gram net carb Hero Croissant and three-gram net carb Hero Penne au Chocolat. And right now, Hero Bread is offering 10% off, Go to Hero.co and use code IHEART at checkout. That's code IHEART at H-E-R-O dot C-O. All figures per serving of Hero Bread see Nutrition Facts on Hero.co. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. All right, Dan, on today's show, we're going to talk about the brand new Time Sienna polls that the polling gods have blessed and cursed us with. Whether we think the overall political environment for Dems is too good to be true, Republican candidates finally running away from Trump, and the latest development in one of the many wars Trump is losing, this one against the media. Then you'll all hear Tommy's conversation with activist and former president, former NFL quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, who was in the studio yesterday. Very cool. I know. And you're in the studio today, which is great. Also cool. Not as cool, but cool. Because right after this, we're getting on a plane and we're going to Austin for the Texas Tribune Festival. Very cool, too. There'll be a live show there Friday night. Is it Friday night? Yeah, today's Thursday. It'll be in your feeds on Sunday, will it not? It will. It will. It will. Thank you, Dan. All right, let's start with Donald Trump's plan to make his Chinese communist pal, Xi Jinping, feel right at home. During his visit to America, a crackdown on journalists who report news that Trump doesn't like. On Thursday morning, Trump appointed Judge Timothy Kelly ordered the White House to restore the press access Trump tried to revoke for CNN, MSNOW, and Politico, at least while the lawsuit plays out. Judge Kelly said the outlets would probably succeed with their claims and was not swayed by the administration's argument that the ban was really about protecting national security. Probably didn't help that the White House made their case by citing a Politico story, the source for which turned out to be, according to Oliver Darcy at Status, J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance risking national security by leaking to Politico with an administration-approved background briefing. That's how you get away with it. By late Thursday morning, after initially getting turned away again, even after the judge's ruling, reporters from the offending outlets were finally back in the briefing room. Still some confusion about when and whether network pool coverage will resume. That's contingent on the White House allowing CNN to participate. First Amendment principles aside, because since the White House is putting them aside, why not us? As a former White House communications director, how much do you think access to the building matters these days? I don't want to put them totally aside because it is just worth just, we just should say that it is absolutely essential that the federal government cannot bar media, members of the media, from accessing government property based on what they report. It's a cut and dry case. If that was happening in any other country, the State Department would send out a warning about how democracy was falling in that country. It is a blaring red light. Now, to be sure, according to previous court rulings, the White House could decide we're not having any press at all in the White House. Like we're just not granting access to anyone. Once you open it up to some press, you got to open it up to everyone fairly. Now, in terms of like how much, it matters in like the day-to-day capacity of the press to scrutinize Trump, it matters. Like having the right people in the room who can ask questions of the White House press there if we ever have press briefings again matters. I think the decision to kick the wire reporters out of the pool is much more consequential in terms of actual scrutiny of the president and the capacity to hold them accountable than in barring individual reporters, as wrong as that is, because it's those pool reporters who are in the room, in intimate settings with the president who are able to ask him questions directly, even when he doesn't want to take those questions. But it's also, you know, they kicked the reporters out of the Pentagon. There's still been a ton of great reporting about the war in Iran, about a bunch of, you know, corruption and problems in the DOD. And like the reporters that we know who do the hardest reporting on Trump, like Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swamp, New York Times, they're not hanging out in the White House, right? They're not, they're doing that. Often it's not even from Washington, D.C. Sometimes they're in New York or wherever they are. Using the phone. So you can still hold them accountable. He's not going to escape it, but it is quite bad. - What do you think the political effect has been? Like, it doesn't seem like this was a plus for Trump. - Yeah, I don't know. I think to the, this is not a thing that gets voters worked up about. Trump has benefited from that for many, many years. And the press, I think, is fair to say, is paying a price for not having stood up in a collective way to Trump during his first term, when they had more leverage. And Trump had fewer ways to get his message out on his own. But it's just one more thing. Like in all the polls, we're talking about these New York Times, Santa polls, they ask voters whether Trump is focused on the right things or the wrong things. - Yeah. - And it's like two thirds of voters, or six in 10 voters, say he's focused on the wrong things. There's one more wrong thing, right? It's the ballroom. It's the helipad. It's, you know, kicking, you know, caring about your press and kicking them out. That's all the wrong stuff. It's one more example of the thing he's doing other than lowering people's costs. - So before we move on, you know what outlet never gets banned from the White House? - Crooked Media. - I was gonna say Fox News. - No, we haven't gotten banned yet. That's because we haven't been given access yet. - Well. - But you know the best way to support us so we can become a growing, an even bigger independent pro-democracy media company that may someday get access to the White House, you can subscribe today at crooked.com/friends and become a Friend of the Pod subscriber. - How do you do that? - You go to crooked.com/friends. - Okay, time out. That pitch sucked. - What? - Let me tell you how to do this, all right? - Okay. - Do you, this is not, give us money so we can be closer to Donald Trump. That's a terrible fucking pitch for this company. - I said someday. I meant like in a future administration. - No, here's the thing. Do you want to see Crooked Media on that list of the banned media companies, yes or no? If the answer is yes, subscribe today. - How's that gonna help us be on the panel? - Because they're going to help us build up the resources to do the things it requires to cover Trump in the way that will piss him off to the point that Natalie Harp will be showing newsletters from the, newsletters from the Crooked Media sub stack or clips from this podcast to him, which gets us banned. - Because you know, it was Natalie showing him an MS Now segment that got them banned. And like, we don't know who the segment was, but it could have been us. It could have been a late Saturday night MS Now segment from Crooked Media. - Our goal is to get our content on Natalie Harp's iPad. And the way you help us do that is by subscribing, right now becoming a friend of the pod. - And if neither of these pitches were persuasive, enough to you. You also get ad-free episodes of all your favorite Crooked pods, subscriber-only podcasts, and you get all our sub-stack newsletters too. Yeah. So there's a lot of reasons. It's a menu of plugs. Crooked.com slash friends. All right, let's get to the politics. For the first time in any election during the Trump era, we are witnessing a veritable stampede of Republican candidates running away from their wildly unpopular leader. In the last few days, Florida gubernatorial candidate, Byron Donalds, hardcore Trump acolyte, basically removed any mention of Trump's endorsement from his campaign website. Newly vulnerable Kansas Senator Roger Marshall distanced himself from ICE deportations happening in his state. We got a Republican Senator from Kansas just distancing himself from Trump on ICE in Kansas. Texas Governor Greg Abbott imposed a data center ban. And Utah Senator John Curtis called for an investigation into a Russian oligarch paying for Don Jr.'s wedding. But the area where you're seeing the most flip-flopping, unsurprisingly, is the Iran war. Here's Michigan's Mike Rogers, who's been an Iran war hawk for decades, basically an any kind of war hawk for decades, in a video released on social media this week. Michigan families are struggling with the price of everyday life. Groceries cost too much. We have to bring prices down. The war with Iran needs to be stopped. And this looks quite inauthentic. But even more so, we know that the swing voters who decide this election are the ones who are most cynical about politicians. And so this is not. Do we really think those voters who distrust everything that any politician says is going to believe that all of a sudden these Trump alkylites have come to some sort of deathbed political conversion? I do not. I guess the other side of it would be if you are. The type of voter who's going to go to the polls in November, doesn't pay much attention to the news, doesn't like Trump, isn't happy with the war, but is the kind of person who's like, well, I want to check on Trump. But even though I don't like him, maybe this Republican candidate seems like they're not on the same page as Donald Trump. And so maybe I'll give them a try. That is possible. And I'm sure there is a person or two like that somewhere in America. But it's just. Where are these people going to see this stuff? They're not even leaning into it. At least Congresswoman Salazar, whose ad we looked at last week, she at least did it in an advertisement. This is not an ad from Mike Rogers. It's a video. Who's going to see the video? What. That is weird. Who's the video for? Us. Yeah. It didn't work. So they can write a bunch of stories. People write a bunch of stories that they'll see saying he breaks with Trump. Who in Kansas is going to read Roger Marshall's tweet? This is too little, too late. It's weak. Are you surprised they just held another vote on an Iran war powers resolution? And, you know, it passed the House over to the Senate. And Collins, Susan Collins voted for it. But on the no side, Dan Sullivan in Alaska, Roger Marshall, the Kansas Senator we were talking about, and John Husted in Ohio, all in tough races, competitive races, and all voted no. Are you surprised? I think they're still afraid of angering Trump. This was a very close vote. They basically had to hold Cassidy and convince him to vote to keep it from passing. Cassidy, who fucking voted no. Yes, exactly. Like, has nothing to lose, just doesn't care. It's just like, you mentioned, like, there is a potential price to pay on a micro level for angering Trump. Like, you mentioned Byron Donalds took all the Trump references off of his website. He put them back on when someone told Trump. So, you know, and these candidates are becoming more and more dependent on MAGA Inc. super PAC money. So, you know, you can see that they are betwixt and between here. And in the end, they're going to stick with the person who has the millions of dollars in super PAC money to spend. Conservative radio host Steve Deese, who's from Iowa, wrote a long thing on Twitter about how the war is unpopular with conservatives right now in the state of Iowa as COVID lockdowns and the TARP bailout. Deep cut, TARP bailout. He also said, quote, we need the president out on the stump ASAP and that Republicans need to, quote, stop running fake and gay ads about how often so-and-so shows up for votes. Agree or disagree with his prescription? Are the ads fake and gay? I feel like this question is a trap in so much of a form. I think, I think Steve Deese is a very smart person, very smart person. So, I don't want to jump ahead. And everyone should follow in the White House should listen to him and Trump should campaign. He should campaign everywhere, all the time. There was a report I saw that Trump was planning to campaign in 35 districts. Yeah, well, he's got to get on that. I saw that in National Journal and I haven't seen it anywhere else. So, he's very busy with rolling out the red carpet, literally, for Xi Jinping right now and bragging about how much he loves granite and his new helipad. That was what was going on today with Trump. Not a lot of campaigning. Message of the day. Message of the day. He likes granite just like me. Trump's response to the rest of his party pulling the fire alarm, has not been to campaign so far or to end the war. In his UN speech on Tuesday, he again threatened to annihilate the Islamic Republic. Don't know if that helped him with farmers in Iowa. Instead, he says he's considering a ban on diesel exports, there you go, as a way to bring down prices for truckers, a move that a lot of business groups think would backfire. Certainly wouldn't bring down the price of diesel globally. And we are, of course, in a global market as much as Trump and MAGA folks, which we weren't. And Trump is also maybe using taxpayer money to run this ad, which has been seen on Newsmax and at least here in the LA market on Fox. Together we will defeat communism, socialism, and Marxism in America. America will never be a communist country. Love me. Love me. Love me. Love me. Love me. Love me. Love me. Love me. He's the toughest, most resilient person that I've ever met. And nothing was going to stop him from fighting so hard for the country he loves. Okay, so there's a little tagline there at the bottom that just said, paid for by the U.S. government. In case you couldn't hear what they were singing, it was just love me over and over again with images of Trump. A little on the nose, if you will. I thought this was fake. Yeah. At first, because I feel like this has to be illegal. It seems to be illegal. Yes. I think more than— No, it didn't say, like, vote Republican, so I guess there's that. But it did just sort of, like, glaze Trump for 30 seconds while being like, we're going to fight the commies. Definite violation of the anti-glazing provision of the Hatch Act. But the other thing is this ad looks almost exactly like those MAGA Inc. Super PAC ads that we watched on this podcast, including the use of Dana White. Yes. That's Dana White's voice doing it, so it's almost exactly like, here's the thing. Is it illegal? Probably. Are all the laws around this largely unenforceable, and the president may be from those laws? Yes. But you know what that ad really is? I was going to say. Fucking embarrassing. Oh, I was going to say, yeah, maybe it's illegal because it's an in-kind contribution to the Democratic Party. Well— Because I would like that ad saturating every single market. Well, here's the thing. It's not on every market. It's the— According to ad impact data, they spent $14,000 on it to air it only on Fox and Newsmax. I.e. the program. The programs that Donald Trump is watching. So this is obviously about making this sad man feel better about himself. Do you see that Washington Post story from last weekend? We talked about it on Tuesday's pod, about, like, Trump getting the sads and being upset that, like, no one's thanking him for anything. Yeah. And he's losing. And there's a Wall Street Journal story, too, about it. But in one of the stories, it had him around that—his wildly successful convention in Dallas, looking himself at each ad and each ad. And, like, trying to say—like, making edits to the video and saying, like, this is good because they were all about him and how great he was. So that does fit with that sort of larger scheme to, like, make him feel good about himself. This is the digital equivalent of what has happened in campaigns for years, which is you put yard signs on every block between the office and the candidate's house so that they believe that the campaign is going great. And this is that. It's a great idea. All right, Dan, let's talk about the polling. It is, of course, that time of year when the mornings get darker. and the air gets crisper and we warn people about paying too much attention to the avalanche of polling despite talking about nothing else in our group chats with the exception, of course, of the viral Globe story about the lesbian bar in Western Massachusetts that just dropped its mask mandate. And if you don't know what I'm talking about. I still haven't read it. I can't believe it. I'm saving it for the plane time. I want, yes. John, I cannot get. I want, while you're reading it on the plane, I want to know your reaction. I'm going to watch your reaction wherever we're sitting. Each line. Okay. In fact, maybe you should read it out loud to the plane. Oh, that's a great idea. It's amazing. Anyway, the dominant story over the last week or so has been how the bottom seems to be falling out for Trump and Republicans after a ton of polls that seem too good to be true for Democrats, especially in red states, have been released. Nate Silver's flipper model, Nate Silver, still counting, New Crooked Media Podcast with Claire Malone and Galen Druk. Check it out. It's, you know, it's going like gangbusters right now. Only a couple episodes in. It's excellent. Anyway, Nate's flipper model now puts Democrats' chances of winning the Senate at 69%. Nice. And about 91% chance of winning the House. His likely voter generic ballot has Democrats up nine points and Democrats leading in all of the competitive elections. Senate races. But then, just as I predicted slash feared in our, I think our Wednesday meeting, I said, imagine if we wake up Thursday and we're trying to figure out what to talk about on the pod and we get a New York Times poll. Sure enough, we did. So I think I told you that the rumors were swirling that the New York Times was in Michigan conducting a poll as we speak. That was just a tweet that both of us saw because our algorithms are set up completely. Yes, yes, yes. That is true, but I'd also heard that from several people. Oh, you did? Okay, well, you got real reporting there. Anyway, other Nate and his New York Times Sienna polls dropped of Michigan, New Hampshire, and Maine, and they brought us back to earth. Good news is Abdul is up 49-44 over Mike Rogers in Michigan, although this was probably taken before that social media video of Rogers in the grocery store came out. Yes, that's true. So who knows? He could be taking the lead now. Chris Pappas in New Hampshire is up 50-45 over John Sununu. But in Maine, Troy Jackson is behind Susan Collins by three points, 46-49. Now, just as we sat down over the last couple hours, there have been two additional Maine polls. There's a UNH poll where I think it was 51-47. And then there's a UMass Lowell poll, which is 49-43. And they're both Jackson leads in both of those. Now, they are not as high quality as the New York Times poll, which is the best, but there you go. What the hell do you think's going on in Maine? Well, let's stipulate a couple things. One, as you said, the New York Times is the best of the public pollsters. Does not mean they're infallible, but they are the best. I think Nate Cohn does the best. We once thought that J. Ann Seltzer at the Des Moines Register was infallible. She was. Everyone's infallible until they aren't, John. That's the thing. So that's one. Two, the average, at least before these two polls that you mentioned came out, according to Nate Silver, is Jackson plus 2.8. And so, it's worth just remembering that in polls like this, Jackson winning by 2.8 and Collins winning by three points are both within the range of outcomes. Yeah. What the poll, what all the polls are telling us is that this is a very, very close race. It is a toss-up race. If I had to pick like which side I would rather be at this point, I would rather be Troy Jackson and Susan Collins as hard as she is to beat just because the political wins are so much at Jackson's back. I can go through here and, you know, it's interesting to look at this, that Nate Cohn's poll and the other polls and see, like, why is this one different? Because it's the only one that has shown Collins winning of all the polls we've seen in, for weeks. Yeah. And I know you've been doing some unskewing of the poll today because you're a big proponent of poll unskewing. No, as I wrote in the message, I wrote in the message box today, poll unskewing is loser shit. You shouldn't do it. But I do think when you get two polls with different results, it's worth trying to understand what that difference is. And notably, this is not a more Republican sample than other polls. Yeah, that's not the problem. Nate Cohn looks through and it looks exactly like a CNN poll that came out recently that has Jackson up three. A couple of things that I would point out from this poll that I think are noteworthy, which is Susan Collins has a big image advantage here. She has a net positive rating of three points. Jackson is, I think, about seven or eight points underwater. But what's most. Yeah, I would say on that one before you go on, I was not surprised that. I was maybe a little surprised, but not really surprised that Susan Collins had a favorable image in the poll, right? I think she was like 51-48. Yeah, she was a little. A little higher than I thought. She was underwater last time. There have been a lot of ads. She's had a big spending advantage. So it's not shocking that she would get to that. That's all with it. That's possible. The more shocking result was Jackson's favorability, unfavorability, which is 41-49. Yeah, and what is most notable of that. Like, Jackson's much less well-known. He is. It took him a long time to get up on air. People don't really know who he is. He was just a legislative leader who had run for governor in a relatively low-profile race. Is this poll has 18% of 2024 Kamala Harris voters who have an unfavorable impression of Jackson. Yeah. That's kind of just. You know, maybe people in Maine can tell us otherwise, but that's hard to see how that's possible. It just runs against the basic trend of polarization where people support, you know, naturally have a. Reflects a favorable opinion of the people in their party. And Jackson is not a controversial candidate. He's more a blank slate. So it would be one thing if he had a lower approval, but there was a large number of Democrats who did not know who he was. That's not really what's happening here. So that's where the other thing that I think is just very interesting about this sample is. And these are small subgroups that are going to have large margins of errors. But this poll has Jackson only winning. Jackson endorsed by Bernie Sanders, progressive, winning voters under 30 by two points. That was great. It's like his worst demographic. Age demographic. In 2020, according to exit polls, when Susan Collins was winning by almost nine points against Sarah Gideon, she lost voters under 30 by 16 points. So, like, if you just. Those things just sort of normalize. You get to what I think this is, which is a incredibly close race against a hard candidate. The pro-Collins side has a $25 million spending advantage going forward. If you look at all the reserves spent, money spent, and money at the time reserved, that's a huge advantage in a state the size of Maine. That can have an impact here. But this is a state that wants Democrats to be in charge of the Senate by 11 points. Yeah. And those two things. At some point. 12% of Maine voters who want Democrats, who told the New York Times they want Democrats to control the Senate, said that they will vote for Susan Collins in this poll. And again, like you said, it's not to say that the poll is wrong. No, no, no. I'm not saying it at all. But if you're the Jackson campaign and you're reading this poll and maybe your private polling also has it, maybe not a three-point deficit, but you're close, what do you do differently? You have to go at the point you just made. Regardless of how you feel about Susan Collins, regardless of how you have voted for Susan Collins in the past, if you think that Donald Trump should no longer be in charge of the Senate, if you think that there should be some sort of check on Donald Trump, you have to vote for Troy Jackson. That is exactly what. You're maybe a Democrat, you voted for Collins in 2020, maybe you voted for Collins before that, maybe you think Collins is different than these other Republicans. But if you care about who controls the Senate, if you're angry about what's happening in this country, the way to express that anger is if you vote for Troy Jackson. I wonder. And now, again, I don't know what's going on in the state of Maine because we're not on the ground there. But from where we sit, I can say that, like, that race has not been nationalized in any way. We don't hear much about that race since. Shatner dropped out. And it's interesting to me to compare it with Michigan, where, obviously, Abdul has gotten a ton of attention. That race has gotten a ton of attention. There's obviously, like, a very divisive primary there. And, you know, if you asked a national audience, a national audience of political junkies who talk about this all the time, they might tell you, well, Abdul's pretty polarizing, and maybe it was tough after the primary to get Democrats on board with him, and maybe he still needs more Democrats, and who knows, and Mike Rogers is kind of boring and seems like an old-school Republican, and maybe he'll do well. And, like, in that poll, and we can talk more about it in a second, but, like, Abdul's got 95% of Democrats. He's got a better favorability rating than Jackson, for sure, even after he's been beat up on Fox News and elsewhere all the time. Like, and it does make you wonder, like, does someone who is more unknown nationally or even in their state, and Abdul's someone, what, known in his state, but also Troy Jackson was, like, Senate Minority Leader there for a while. I'm not sure that's worth it. Right. But, like, do you need to be out there everywhere all the time, either doing events or doing press, that it's going to reach a lot more voters who don't pay close attention to politics to sort of get your name ID up there? You might. You absolutely might. Right. I think this race was about Graham Plattner, not about Susan Collins for a long time, and then it sort of became about neither. Yeah. And maybe a little bit more about Troy Jackson than Susan Collins, or at least 50-50, and you've got to make to get more about Susan Collins. So you have to be the kind of candidate that you can be. And I don't know Troy Jackson. Abdul's obviously a very specific type of candidate who can and will and wants to go on every single podcast in the world and be everywhere. And Asaf's a certain candidate who is on MSNBC every night. That may not be Troy Jackson, but I think he has to do. You know, it's interesting because it's not even that this poll suggests that people don't know who he is since we need to be out there more. They don't like him. I just don't buy that. I just do not. Like, I could be wrong. You know, Nate Cohn wrote in his. Because the thing I really appreciate about Nate Cohn is when his polls don't match what everyone else thinks, he doesn't hurt his polls, right? He doesn't. And then he will explore and take on the idea that maybe it's an outlier. In fact, Nate Cohn, in the column he wrote about the poll, raised the question, is it an outlier or an omen? So he may be telling us what's coming. But as we sit here today, I am very just skeptical of this idea that Democrats do not like Troy Jackson. Yeah. Well, we'll see. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. Pod Save America is brought to you by Helix. Summer is over and fall is here, which means we are back to our routines and our busy schedules. And sleep is more important than ever. Upgrade your sleep quality and give yourself the best setup for a great day every day with a Helix mattress. You don't have to take our word for it. Helix is the most awarded mattress brand, tested and reviewed by experts at major outlets like Forbes and Wired. Take the Helix Sleep Quiz to find your ideal match based on your preferences. Helix delivers your mattress right to your door with free shipping in the U.S. Plus, you can rest easy with our 120-night sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty, as well as seamless returns and exchanges. 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He was also involved in a "pay-to-play" scheme, campaign money in exchange for Collins helping secure federal defense contracts, and that the investigation was still active when Trump's purge of FBI and Justice Department officials ended it in 2025. Particularly notable piece of evidence in the piece, and they have these emails. In 2019, Kao met with Scott Reed, who ran a Susan Collins super PAC, then told him via email that he was writing a $150,000 bill for a $150,000 donation through a shell company, put it in writing, and then seven days after the money was deposited, Collins asked for Kao's number so she could thank him. Here's Collins pretty angrily denying the whole thing. It is so offensive. Legally false. And it is so offensive. It really offends me. And I'm offended for my staff, too. Code red. We have gone from concerned to offended. Multiple times offended. So offended. That's like as exercised as Susan Collins gets. What's your read on the story and its potential impact? We should also say, by the way, that all the denials afterwards from Susan Collins and her staff, ProPublica ran another story the next night that some of those were just lies. She was like, "Oh, well, the Biden administration investigated this. They found no wrongdoing. It was closed." She was talking about like an earlier investigation. And then there was this later investigation. And that's where she and her super PAC and her staff and her office, whatever, they were part of. So they're not telling the truth even in their denials already, which is easily proven. But so who knows? But anyway, what do you think? You generally do not want your candidate's name, donor, and FBI investigation in the same sentence ever? Shell company donation. Yeah, all that. Just a ton of words you don't want. All that. Yeah. How much is it going to matter? I don't know the answer to that. You know, there has been a lot of advertising spent trying to tell main voters that Susan Collins is corrupt. There's a Democratic super PAC ad that's up right now from the, I think it's the arm of the Senate majority PAC that, you know, talking about donations from Epstein donors and votes about the Epstein files and all of that. Obviously, there are a lot of smart people working on this race who are looking at a lot of data. I just have remained skeptical that you're going to convince main voters after all these years and all these years of voting for Susan Collins that she is corrupt. I just, I did a lot of work my pre-podcasting days in very small states like South Dakota where everyone has a relationship with their politician. And they have, you know, this was Joe Biden in Delaware before he was vice president, same thing. I think it's just very hard to convince people. It's very hard to convince people that she's corrupt. And that's the reason to it. Do you think it's easier to convince people that Susan Collins is just MAGA and is going to mean, you know, that she's just going to let Trump do what he wants? I think you have a better chance of that considering the track record. That's like, we're going to finish this podcast. It's going to come out tomorrow morning and I'm going to get probably a lot of texts from people working on this effort. You're going to show me data that says otherwise. Yeah. I genuinely, I'm asking the question because I genuinely don't know. Because the point is not she's MAGA. Like that's also not credible. It has to be a real thing, which is. You have to tell, this is a good exercise. You have to tell a story. What is the story of Susan Collins where she was an independent, you're from Maine. Yeah. And you maybe don't like her or maybe you're a Democrat or you're maybe, you know, but you have voted for Susan Collins in the past. Maybe you didn't last time. Maybe you're undecided. And you do think that she's someone, as you can see in this poll. Who has delivered for Maine and she breaks with Donald Trump and other Republicans once in a while. What's the story you tell that voter? I think the story is that she has voted with Donald Trump, whatever it is, 92% of the time. She has supported him when Trump has needed her. We have incredibly high stakes decisions, including Supreme Court justices that are going to come up over the next few years. And do you want someone who agrees with the people of Maine or someone who's going to vote with Donald Trump? Yeah. I might. I've been thinking about this. I might. It's a little more subtle, but I think you can run an ad campaign around this, which is like she's been there forever. Yeah. And she has been in Washington too long. And the longer she's been in Washington, the more she's gotten like Washington. And she went there and at one point maybe she was an independent voice who delivered for Maine. Look at the cost of living in Maine. Home heating oil just hit its highest price ever in Maine. Like for all that she's delivered for Maine, has she done that much for your life right now? And now she's got this lobbyist issue. She's now voting with Donald Trump 95% of the time. Like what happened to Susan Collins? Don't we want to change right now? Which combines a few of those things. Oftentimes when – and I've been on the losing end of this when I worked for Tom Daschle in South Dakota. Oftentimes the way you beat a well-liked politician with a long history in a state is you tell a story about how they've changed. It's usually how they've gone to Washington. I think that what you're hitting on the right way. I just am not – and I can be convinced. People with internal polling data, I can be convinced you're going to reach me. But I am not – but as of yet, prior to that point, I'm not convinced that the way – that the change is she's corrupt. Right? Like you can go Washington. Like the way they took Daschle down a whole bunch of other ways was that he became more liberal than the state. Yeah. And the proxy for that in this case – and he was – is the voting with Trump 90% of the time. And that he had gone Washington and he lived in Washington and he had a Washington lifestyle. I think from this point on, one, I think it's more she goes along to get along in the Republican Party, and that is the real consequences for Maine. And she has done that throughout the Trump era. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about the two less psychologically destabilizing times polls, Michigan and New Hampshire. On one hand, we love a five-point lead, especially where the Dem candidates are at 49% in the case of Abdul and 50% in the case of Pappas. On the other, both Abdul and Pappas are underperforming the generic ballot in their respective states. What do you make of these polls in these two states? I think the explanation for the Michigan result is easier than the New Hampshire result. Yeah. When you look at the polls, you can see it, which is, as you point out, to Abdul's credit and, frankly, to the credit of Haley Stevens and Gretchen Whitmer and just almost everyone in Michigan. Team players all around. They got aboard and they have united the has lingered among independents. In a world where Trump has absolutely putrid approver rating with independents, it's essentially a tie among independents between Abdul and Mike Rogers, which is why this race is five points, not 10 points. Although, 8% of Trump voters back Abdul, which is more than back Troy Jackson or Chris Pappas. Yes, which we're going to have a, Greg, is there a conversation about the horseshoe effect if that happens in the end? The other reason why Abdul is winning by five, not more, and this is hard because they did not include the governor's race in here. Yeah. So there was not a, you don't have this other baseline. Like in previous polls, we've talked about this race. We've showed the delta between what Jocelyn Benson was getting of the gubernatorial ballot and what Abdul is getting in the Senate race. And that gives you a sense of whether he's underperforming the state. Is on the question of who's more extreme, there's by 14 points, voters see Abdul is more extreme than Mike Rogers. And that is what, that is bleeding into the race. I think, which is why it's five points, not seven points, eight points, nine points or 10 points. Now I'll take a one point win. I don't give a shit, right? Same. We will have this discussion afterwards about how he does, because this is going to matter so much to this battle of narratives heading into 2028 about the currency of a candidate with Abdul's progressive values and positions and not just a battleground state like Michigan, but also a top tier primary state now. Yeah. And the other thing is of all these three states, Michigan, Michigan is the swingiest state, the more conservative state. So he is doing the best of the three polls. That is the best poll, which you might not have guessed heading into it. He also is the only Democrat of the three who beats his Republican candidate on cost of living. That is also deeply concerning. Plus nine, Abdul, well, for the other two. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, Abdul's plus nine on, who do you trust more on cost of living? Plus 24 on healthcare, which again, I think speaks, but I think all three of these polls like scramble a lot of narratives on all sides of the Democratic discourse. But the idea that, you know, Abdul's cost of living economic populist message is earning him more trust among voters on the most important issues for voters than the other two candidates is notable. And that he has not paid a price for Medicare for all. Right. Now the Republicans have not litigated Medicare for all because they're afraid to do so. Right, right. So what's going on in New Hampshire? I will say, you know, also Kamala did win by six, right? It was 48-42, I think. In New Hampshire? Yeah. She won by 2.8 points. Oh, it was less? Yeah. Okay. Someone should correct me, but I'm pretty sure that's right. Okay, so it's better than she did in New Hampshire. But what's going on? It's once again below the generic ballot, which is like 11 in New Hampshire. I think this is really about the two candidates. When you dig in the polling, it doesn't make a ton of sense. Pappas is doing better with independents than Sununu. So there is less enthusiasm, less enthusiasm among Democrats for Pappas, although he's mostly consolidated the party. The thing really is, is that John Sununu is part of a, and you and I talked about this with Alex last week, is part of a well-known, well-liked political dynasty in New Hampshire that is associated with being anti-Trump. You remember his governor brother- And moderate politics. And moderate politics, and always has been, right? His father was chief of staff in the White House for Reagan. But Chris Sununu, who was the governor for many terms, very, very popular, and was the Republicans' top choice to run for the seat, was a very, very outspoken, aggressive Trump critic. Remember, he went to the mattresses for Nikki Haley until Trump became the nominee, and then he just backed Trump. But he has that credibility. So this is a case where Pappas is like, he's not a bad candidate in any way, shape, or form. We think he's sort of a generic Democrat in this case. And Sununu is a Republican plus candidate. That is one. Where I can see, because it was a very late primary, the closer we get, like if the Times polls this again, or there's a bunch of other polls in New Hampshire, I could see him doing better, like actually improving. I mean, I think that's true. He's also at 50. Right. So it's like, there's not that much room to grow there. You were right on the money. It was 2.8. Yeah. 2.8. And Kamala won in 2024. Zooming out from all these polls, what's your overall take on the political environment right now? Too good to be true? For Democrats, too early to tell? Or, you know, throw the Times-Siena polls in the average and keep on huffing the hopium? Well, I think you throw them all in the average always. And that's honestly the real answer about Maine. If you throw in the average, the average still shows a slight advantage for Jackson, which, as I said, is basically a toss-up race. I think when you look at that. Like, do we all sit here and worry about a systemic polling error like 2016, 2020? Yes. Of course. We absolutely do. Now. Can I give you what? What Nate Silver's doom scenario is on that? It's going to happen. I know what it is. Yeah, I know. Well, I feel like we should tell everyone. Yeah. Because one of the things that Nate describes, both Nates describe this, is a possibility, is in a lot of these polls, it's the red states where Democrats are doing best in these polls. And specifically among demographic groups like younger voters, Latino voters, and now working class voters, right? Who, obviously, are more Trump in 2024. And so the swing is biggest among those groups. And so when you get to states with older populations, with whiter populations like Maine, then you don't see as much of a swing, right? And maybe that explains there was a New York poll out this week that showed Kathy Hochul only up nine in New York. There was a couple of Minnesota polls we talked about a while back that has Peggy Flanagan shows her in a tighter race. So it's like, what's with these sort of northern bluish, bluish states that are not as good for Democrats as like Kansas may be in play and some other red states. So that's one. So maybe there's like a geographic thing going on. And then Nate Silver said, now those same voters, working class voters, Latinos voters in red states are also some of the groups where polls have tended to overestimate Democrats in recent election. So are we looking at like maybe all those good polls in the red states that are showing those swings are a mirage and it's a polling error. And then these bluish, these bluer states that are showing it tighter are the real polls. Now that's the scary, that's the scary. So I think let's take that, let's take that apart in a couple different ways. One, like it is possible there's a systemic polling error, right? And as you say, that polling error would be disproportionately taking place in the states you mentioned, the ones where that we are most excited about right now. There are the reasons why that may not be happening. Yeah. And look, if the polls are off by two points or two, three points, that's not a polling error. That is a historically normal poll. One, the polls have been, accurate in the midterms. No one ever believes the polls are accurate in 2022, but they very, they quite very much were just the vibes were wrong. Right. The, the, at least in the Trump era, at least also this time we have other data points that point towards a blue wave, right? You have special election performance, which in and of itself is not super predictive, but it's much more, and this is some research, Amy Walter, it's done at the Kirk political process. I mean, the special election results are much more predictive in midterms than presidential years. It's for all the obvious reasons about us down in 24, but well, it's just because the, the, the larger, the, the greater the proportion of lecture that is first time or less engaged, less frequent voters, the, the greater the distance between the special election electorate and the actual electorate. That's that gap is less in midterms. Yeah. And we also have primary voting data where Democrats have been outvoting Republicans, even in red states. So just the total number of Democrats participating in primaries is way up. It's down for Republicans. And so those all contribute here. And you can see that in, and then you worry about what we were with the Latino numbers, but in actual precinct results, both in New Jersey and Virginia in 2025, and then in the special election, we've seen particularly in Texas and that special Senate election that we saw many months ago, you're seeing dramatic more than 20 point shifts among Latinos in Latino heavy precincts. So all of that indicates that I don't think this is like 2020 was a systemic error where everything, the polls painted a picture of the world that did not exist. Now, maybe these polls are not painting. Maybe the blue wave is not as big as the polls suggest for all the reasons you mentioned, but there are all these other data points that would support the idea that this is very good Democrat. And then say you don't want to believe any of the polls, the price of gas, the price of groceries, the fact that mortgages hit seven mortgage rates at 7% today, all of that are things that historically are very, very bad for the incumbent party. Now I got a lot of theories about, you know, I've, I got, I got bull cases. I got bear cases. I got things in the middle. And there are a couple, I think the red state thing is really interesting. Like why are we doing better in red state? than blue states. I think there are a couple of, there's the potential polling error, so that's obviously very real. Another one is, is in the Senate races, we have better candidates in the red states. Like, I'm just, Tallarico, Sherrod, Paltola, Turek, these are all truly excellent candidates. Cooper. Roy Cooper, John Ossoff, for examples. Abdul's a very talented candidate, but there's real reasons to believe he could underperform the environment there. Troy Jackson is untested. Chris Pappas, you know, sort of not a particularly well-known candidate. The other one, which is the flip side of the polling error, is we have squeezed every bit of blood from the stone of college-educated states. Yeah. And where there just aren't that many people, you know, there's that much more, there's not that much swing left, or swing remaining in like a New Hampshire. And, you know, if you look at Trump's approval rating with, so Trump won white non-college-educated voters, which are disproportionate in these red states we're talking about, by 34 points according to exit polls. In the New York Times poll, he's only plus eight with them, nationally, in the one from September. So if those, you know, non-college voters, non-college white voters, particularly non-college white women, are moving towards Democrats, that's going to have a much bigger effect. It's the inverse of what happened in 2016. Right. And like, that's the question, that's what we're really going to have to see. The only other doomer scenario is. I got another one, too. Let me, let me, yeah, well, this is, and this is what the main result would show, which is, Trump ends up being quite unpopular. And, you know, we see an exit poll on the night of the election that's like, Trump's approval was 38%, 40%, right? That would be very low comparison. But all these Republican candidates were just able to convince people that they're different than Trump and that, and you're a Republican and you don't like Trump, or you're an independent, you don't like Trump, but you can still vote for a Republican Congress and then you can just, you know, just be mad at Trump and he's not going to be president anymore in a couple years anyway. Okay, so I can be. And so somehow we've started to depolarize the electorate. Well, I think that there's, I know that it's depolarizing. The way to think about it is, and this is the difference between 2018, well, 2018 was great for Democrats and 2022 was not great for Republicans. Right, yeah, right, right. And this is Ron Brownstein's thing that he talks about all the time, which is, our success will be dictated by the percent of people who disapprove of Trump who vote for a Democrat. We got, you know, high 80s, in some cases, 90% of those people in 2020, in 2018. In 2022, Republicans got much fewer. And so that's why we were able to win in Pennsylvania, Georgia, places like that. Now, you know, it's obviously these are small sample sizes, but we also had bad, Republicans had bad candidates in 2022, which may be why that is. Yeah. And then the other thing to think about here is, because I was struck by this Cook political battle, the battleground report where they pull, I think we talked about last week, where they did 37 districts that are the, all the toss up, lean Democrat, lean Republican districts in their, in their ratings that has, those districts all together have a Trump plus five, Trump won them by five points. The generic ballot has, in that poll, has Democrats winning by two, which is seven points, seven points, but it's the bottom half, you know, it's the floor of the range we're seeing in the polls. Like you see a seven point generic poll today, you're kind of like, not that great. We're used to these 11s and 12s. And, and one possibility there. But in, but in battleground. Well, right. But the way to, the reason why it could be more, the battlegrounds would be more at the floor than the ceiling is, or under there, under the national average is because the campaign is being waged there. So if you are just in a non-competitive state, non-competitive district, all you're getting is Trump bad news. Right. And so you look at then 2024, the swing in the battleground states. Oh yeah, this is like the Kamala. The Kamala argument is, I think it was like two point something and the national swing was 4.8. So where there's, you're actually voters. She did, she did surprisingly worse in blue states. Yes. In 24. And the campaign made the argument afterwards that no one cared about because she lost. That like actually where they waged the campaign and spent a whole bunch of money, she did better than she did nationally. And so like that does, in a national, that does you no good in a, like losing by less in a battleground state gets you no argument. You can get extra electoral points, but narrowing the margins there is going to take some of these districts, you know, that could be like plus 12, plus 10, get a lot harder if it is actually the case, if we actually see that Republicans spending money where politics is a focus, you know, can narrow, can narrow that, what the generic ballot is nationally. Anyway, the, the upshot of this is Democratic candidates need money because we're being outspent and they need help. So. And how can they get help, John? They can go to votesaveamerica.com. And we can, we'll send you out to a state. We'll give volunteering shifts and you can donate to the Senate fund or the House fund and we'll split it up between the most competitive races. I do feel like before we move on here to our very important last topic that I want to just, I just want to say this because I know I have this brand as a doomer, as someone who wades through silver felting for dark findings. But even my worst case scenario here that I'm laying out, other than the systemic polling error where everything is fucked, is consistent with Democrats winning the House and potentially winning the Senate too. These are questions of margins. Right. But like the worst case scenario, the worst real realistic bear scenario is so optimistic compared to what we thought it would possibly be. That's true. That is true. We do have one more Senate race to talk about before we get to our final topic. That's right. Well, I think this is an important topic too. Which is the New York Times report on Mary Paltola's campaign in Alaska. For those who didn't know, or didn't read it, the Times described Paltola's political operation during the campaign and in Congress as being chaotic and not a great place to work and gave a few examples, including, quote, angry and profane outbursts from the candidate who allegedly at one time shoved an aid in frustration, which Paltola's campaign said was being mischaracterized. Times also wrote that one of Paltola's demands was, quote, requiring aides to feed live crickets to her family's pet chameleon, Meatball. The campaign pushed back on the story and cited, Paltola's grief over her mother and husband's deaths over a few months in 2023 as being partially responsible for any outbursts. What did you make of the story? It gave me no political concern for Mary Paltola. Like, this is clearly an attempt to sort of do to her what happened to Katie Porter. Yes. And sort of to have this, or that was done to Amy Klobuchar in the 2020 Democratic primary. I look at this and I cannot see a world in which this story makes it less likely that she wins the election. The Senate race in Alaska? Yeah, I don't either. I mean, I will say this. Like, I feel like I have been spoiled in my life in politics because we worked for a boss who was unbelievably nice to us. Did not yell at us. And always patient. And I do not have a lot of patience for bosses in politics or elsewhere who are mean. And if one of them was mean to me or bullying, I would fucking get out of there. Like, I just can't. But I don't have an experience with that and I have no idea what it's like to work in politics. I don't know if I've worked for Mary Peltola or Katie Porter or any of these people that there's been stories about. I will say, it is hard to imagine that even if I have had a horrible experience with a boss in politics, or especially in politics, or on a campaign, that I would leave and then a month before an election for a seat that could determine control of the United States Senate would ring up the New York Times and complain about it. I just can't get there. And I'm like, who knows? I could not put myself in the shoes of someone who would do that. Not at least. I mean, I can put myself in the shoes and I wouldn't do it. I think it's fucking nuts. I have. I've worked for great bosses. Absolutely great bosses. Barack Obama was one of them. I've also been very fortunate in that. I also worked for Senate leadership. So I've been yelled at by lots of senators that I didn't even work for all the time. It's not pleasant. You still get yelled at by senators. I still. Every once in a while, that still happens. And, you know, that is. It is terrible. And there are some really shitty bosses on Capitol Hill and in life. Like, that is absolutely true. The. There are some. There's some context to some of this, which is right after. Yeah. Mary Paltova had lost her mother and her husband and was dealing with grief. And some things are. Like, there are definitely cases where bosses do ask things of their employees. And this is very true to members of Congress that are not appropriate in the sense. They go beyond just duties. Like. You know, picking up the dry cleaning, babysitting our kids. Like, you hear those stories and that is bad. I don't think feeding the pet while you're thousands of miles away while running for re-election is. That's probably annoying and I think kind of gross to a lot of people to feed live crickets to an animal. Like, my wife would not like that at all. Yeah. Which is why I will never fulfill my son Jack's dream of having a pet tarantula. Oh, boy. That's what he really wants. Okay. But it's also not something you think like, you know what? That is so bad. And it's got like some text from her too where she, like, you know, has a few. They're bad. You know, the R word, the F word, right? They're bad. But it's like, also, the idea that, again, that a former staff member would be like, hey, New York Times, here are the texts from my boss when she was really angry and said something awful. I think if you. Like, that stuff was very. It was quite inappropriate. But you sort of have to. and that stuff should not be tolerated. But you have to weigh that against the consequences of Republican Senate that confirms a Supreme Court justice in 2027. Or like the rest of her career and personality. Like people have bad fucking moments. That's the other thing. It's like, I just can't, I can't deal with the like, the one thing that comes out about you. We're going to use it to like, and you know, fuck off. Yeah, like I don't know her, so I have no context. Some of these other politicians you hear this about, we have met before. Right, right, right. I have no idea. Yeah, I've never met her. Anyway, yeah, but I think from a political perspective, like I don't see this as hurting her at all. She's very, very well liked in Alaska. Okay, one last thing before Tommy's interview with Colin Kaepernick. According to Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, I have a new reason to be worried when I get on the plane this afternoon. Let's watch. We're excited. Many airline pilots, flight attendants, and air traffic controllers, are part of the furry community. When you walk onto a commercial flight, it's possible that the pilot flying your plane could have a deranged fetish of dressing up like an animal. Also, transgenderism is a mental disease, a blown up emoji next to him on an easel. So like, I don't even want to know what the rest of the speech was about. I think it's best we don't. Yeah, so a bit of context there, because clearly that needs context. That came from. Tuberville's, it's a 20-minute floor speech on Tuesday where he warned about the dangers of gender confusion. There you go. He did gender confusion. That was probably the first section of the speech. Then he moved into the furry section of the speech. As one does, yes. Tuberville's currently squaring off against Doug Jones in the race for governor of Alabama. On Thursday, Tuberville tweeted a link to a recent furry migration convention, which he said featured an aviation furs meetup before posing the question, would you be comfortable with a mentally ill, furry being your pilot? I mean, well, now you're saying mentally ill furry. Yes. Like, I don't want a person who's mentally ill as a pilot, no. But I don't know if whatever they do when they're not safely flying me to my destination, I'm fine with. I know you are. And look, you and I have gone on many fights together over the years. And I've honestly, ever since we watched this clip this morning, never seen you more excited to get on a plane. Like, we're doing this podcast early, so you can get to the airport early. And I'm like, can I get, look, I'm not, I'm not, I'm getting off this plane unless I am assured that our pilots, at least one of them, could be the co-pilot. Is a furry. Is a furry. Do you think there's some sort of. Flying the furry skies? Is that what we're. Do we have a, do we have a pod title? Is that what that is? Woof. Tommy, that guy has, has to be the dumbest motherfucker in the Senate for sure. Right? I mean, that, yeah. I would not say Congress. Yeah, you just don't know. Gotta check out the House. Yeah, Senate, I can buy that. I think Senate. Yeah. He's, he's it. He's the dumbest one. Anyway, he'll, but, God, it would be nice if, if Alabama was a different state and Doug Jones could win that one. Maybe he will. Maybe he will. Maybe this is it. Maybe there's a giant pro-furry vote that we don't know about. Mary Poltola, that story does not matter. The furry story takes down Tuberville. That's what I'm going with. When we come back, Tommy's interview with Colin Kaepernick. Support for the show comes from Into the Mix, a Ben & Jerry's podcast about joy and justice. Every year, professional sports pumps roughly 350 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Most pro teams put sustainability on the bench. Vermont Green Football Club put it in the starting lineup. During the pandemic, Vermont Green FC co-founder Patrick Inferna and his friends got on a Zoom call and asked themselves a simple question. What if a soccer club could actually mean something? And how it runs? How it travels? And what it does with its waste? How it treats the community? And what it asks of the young players who wear its jersey? 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It was a lot of correcting the record, a lot of process in there. But I'm excited it's out in the world. And hopefully people are able to take that, run with it. Hopefully it gives them some new insights, some new perspective and gives us a pathway to be able to discuss how we move forward. Yeah, yeah. So I bet a lot of listeners, look, my shows, my audience is like, they're obsessed about politics, probably not so much sports. Yeah. They heard your name around 2016 and are aware of kind of the quote-unquote controversy, but they don't know how much success you had on the football field before that. Like, can you just tell folks about the 2012 season? Because that story alone could be a book. It was just like this incredible, right, moment. Yeah. So the 2012 season, this is my second year in the NFL. At that point in time, I'm a backup quarterback behind Alex, Alex Smith. Alex gets hurt. I've been training, preparing, waiting for this moment to step on the field, take over for him. My first start was a Monday night football game against the Chicago Bears. Went out, played really well. And during that time period, Jim Harbaugh, who was our head coach, made the decision, we're going to stick with you. And Alex was playing incredibly well. So the change wasn't, hey, he's playing bad or anything. But on the back of that, then became, we're going to the playoffs. My first playoff game against the Green Bay Packers. We go up, we go out, we put up, I think it was 45 points. It's crazy. Set an NFL record, 181 yards rushing. My first playoff game. And then ultimately went to the Super Bowl that year. And 263 passing, right? Yes. You were busy. You were a busy man in that game. We were busy. It was a good one for us. It was crazy. Yeah. Then you made it all the way to the Super Bowl, the first season you started. I mean, that's like, for folks listening, that doesn't happen very often. It's like you and Tom Brady and like a couple of other folks. And it was, the Super Bowl was my 10th NFL start. It's crazy. So it wasn't even a full season, jumped in, in the Super Bowl. And then the following year, went back to the NFC Championship. So like, it's not only that you were one of 32, you know, starting in the Super Bowl. It's not only that you were one of 32, you know, starting in the Super Bowl. NFL quarterbacks, like you were playing at the highest possible level, which I think is just relevant when we get into the conversation about the NFL blackballing you later. Yes. So let's fast forward to 2016. There's this like a series of very high profile, horrific cases of black men being essentially executed by police. Yeah. Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Alton Sterling in Louisiana, Philando Castile, just name a few. Can you describe how those stories impacted you and kind of like built on what you've been reading and studying throughout your life? Yeah. So those killings directly impacted me and directly impacted the protest. But prior to that, I've been reading, I've been researching a lot of the material and insights and history that I wasn't given growing up in school. And that what kicked that off was the autobiography. Autobiography of Malcolm X that my wife, Nessa, gave me. And that then took me down a path of reading. and on, reading Huey Newton and Angela Davis and Steve Biko and Garvey, and all of these black revolutionary leaders that have looked at systems and why are these systems producing these outcomes and how do we actually work to be able to address the systems. So, have been doing that. Also, in advance of this, we've seen Mike Brown be killed and the Ferguson uprising. We've seen Tamir Rice. We've seen Eric Garner. So, this has been going on for years and there's a whole history behind it. And a lot of the conversation that was happening in 2016 in the groups that I was talking with are, well, we have to do something. And we have to do something significant to address this. And that ultimately led to the protests at the beginning of the NFL season. And it's also important context. This is a little bit of a new era for us where social media is much more prominent. As we have these police killings happening, they're traveling. And they're traveling across the country. We're all watching it. I think the direct comparison here is, I mean, when we look at Rodney King being beaten by the police, there were riots. We're at a place now where we see black people being killed with such consistency that we're being desensitized to it. It's being so normalized that it becomes like, oh, man, another one. And then people go about their day. As opposed to, we have to take action to stop this. And we need to do it urgently and we need to do it definitively. And so, you decided to protest. You sit during the anthem for a couple games. Finally, a reporter notices. I think his name is Steve Weiss. You tell him, quote, I'm not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football. And it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid to leave and getting away with murder. I think you mentioned this conversation to your partner, Nessa. She says, how hard do you go? You said four out of ten. Turns out a call in four is like a massive global story. It breaks containment. Coming from sports media, everyone's got an opinion on it. I'm like, Fox News and shit. Did it surprise you how much the story sort of blew up right away? It did. Now, I had an expectation of, I thought there would be a certain response, in particular from white people. Now, that statement I thought was just pretty straightforward and factual. So, I didn't think it was something that would blow up into the story that it was. That's why in my mind, I was like, that was a four. Right. There's a whole lot of other things that I could have said that go a lot further than that. But I think what it got to the crux of is how fragile this persona or facade of justice and liberty and freedom. And when you actually poke at that and is this actually being applied? Is this actually being applied to everyone? Is everyone actually in a space where they're able to get, they're able to have safety? They're able to walk the streets and not be targeted. And the response on the other side of that was so aggressive and so loud. To me, it was, in many ways, it was curious as to why it was so controversial to say police shouldn't kill black people. And I think that was very, very revealing. And I'll also say in response to it, there was also overwhelming support as well. So, I want to make sure that both of those are covered because what we really saw was two sides of America in that response. And some of that being significant pushback and some of that being, no, we're seeing this every day in our communities. We have to address this now. Yeah. So, there's this like. Massive debate. I mean, you're right. There definitely were supporters and then people like loudly criticizing you. It was like, it was hard to read that your family wasn't initially very supportive of you. They were like, we know cops. You're kind of embarrassing us. I mean, that must have sucked and tough. Yeah. Not the response you want or I expected. Yeah. And it's, again, I've gotten to a place that whatever people. Those responses are. That's what it's going to be. But to me, I want to stay focused on the issue and I have to keep moving towards addressing that. And in that moment, as much as that was shocking to me, it also, in many ways, it validated a lot of the experiences that I had prior and also was very similar to the responses that we're seeing across the country. So, I think the parallels there. Not that it made it better, but it made it less shocking in that regard, but obviously not the response that you want to get. Yeah. Debates about free speech in America always seem to get hung up on how someone is protesting and not what they are protesting. That is very stupid, but just to like kind of let's entertain that debate for a minute. Like when you look. I look back at, I was just trying to think about it, when I look back at your protests, you're not trying to distract from the anthem, you're not trying to call attention to yourself, you're like a big, you're 6'4", you're physically making yourself smaller in the moment, right, by like sitting or kneeling. In every other context, kneeling is respectful, right? If a guy gets hurt on the football field, everyone takes a knee. When you go to church, you pray, you get on your knees, right? Like, so, but the debate becomes, this is disrespectful to our troops or something. Or like, no one's talking about police brutality. And it just like, it feels like that was, I don't know, was that incredibly frustrating? Did you expect that? Oh, it was very frustrating, but it, there was a realization that all of the conversation was used as a distraction or deterrent to actually addressing the issue. It was the form of protest. It was the flag. It was the military. Then it became, you know, the conversation with the NFL. All of the conversation and where a lot of the media ran with it was to spaces other than the actual issue of police killing black folks. And for us, we tried to approach it from a space of, well, anytime we're asked, we're just going to bring it back to this issue. But you, you can't control the whole media landscape. And it's also an interesting, we're also in a new media landscape where views and clicks in the business models are changing during this time period. So it becomes, well, we need eyeballs. And what's the thing that's going to get us more eyeballs becomes part of that conversation as well. In addition to some of the. I would say some of the, the reporters or outlets that may be taking a little more nefarious approach to try to redirect the conversation to gain political points or try to rally people around political parties. Right. And so, you know, the NFL, again, to fast forward a little bit, they, the, they collude to blackball you and prevent you from playing again. You file a legal action against the league for collusion. You eventually settle with them. I hadn't realized until I read the book. How much politics influenced the outcome of a legal process. And frankly, like the options available to you. Can you explain that to listeners and how the Supreme court in particular factored into your thinking? Yeah. Well, first within the, the grievance process with the NFL, we tried to avoid going down that process. We reached out to the NFL in advance, tried to ask to have a conversation and they were like, no, Violet, good luck. Really? Wow. So it was a surprising response to me. That's crazy. Okay. So, and this is on the back of NFL coaches saying like, oh, he's a starter in this league. So it was very obvious what was happening and we're like, look, just like, let's just cut this out and get back to, to what we should be doing. But that ultimately led to the grievance process. Now the, the jurisdiction that we have to operate with. Within is the arbitration process. That's in the collective bargaining agreement. So that's laid out now as part of that, we did look at options of, can we get outside of that jurisdiction? And if so, how do we go about that? And as we did that analysis part of it became, if we go to a federal judge and try to go to federal court, they're going to kick it back to the jurisdiction of the CBA. The other part that became a factor is Donald Trump had aligned himself and the NFL owners had aligned themselves with each other and had shared interests here. We see as Donald Trump is nominating Supreme Court justices, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, we also see NFL owners and organizations backing these candidates. So Michael Bidwell from the Arizona Cardinals, John Elway of the Denver Broncos backing these candidates in the process. The Supreme Court flips, it's now 6-3 Republican. And we're in a space where at this point in time, it's very, very much a loyalty to Donald Trump. And the analysis is even if we get to the Supreme Court and we have the best case and it is obvious and they explicitly state it. Right. It didn't seem like there was a scenario where they would ever rule in our favor. Right. The business interests just weren't there. And I get that point in time, the conversation was also, is the Supreme Court actually going to operate in the way that was intended to? And we see some of that playing out. Yeah. Your hesitation was well-founded, it turns out. Yeah. So, and that was early stages of this, but we have since seen that play out. So, that led us into the traditional grievance process. We had to go through a special arbitrator on the back end of that. If you win there, then you can go to an appeal, which is a three-person arbitration board. But the structure is, if any one of those arbitrators makes a decision the NFL doesn't like, they can fire them and replace them. This process is rigged. So, they've been lying their incentives to be like, well, you're going to rule in our favor. Yeah. And we see this play out. And it's very rare that the NFL even gets to a place of settling a case. So, the evidence there was overwhelming. But it is a process that you have to navigate, to your point. It is very much rigged. It's set up in the NFL's favor. And the NFLPA, the Players Union, isn't strong. So, they haven't put the right safeguards in place for players and protections in place for players. And that's a whole other conversation. Yeah. And also, the politics of this. I mean, the issue got picked up by Trump so quickly. I mean, he called protesting players sons of bitches in a speech in September of 2017 in Alabama. Very subtle venue for that. I mean, how did his involvement in, the conversation kind of change your experience of it? Well, his involvement put much more of a political spotlight on it, more than it already was. And then we see the NFL owners aligned to that as well. When we see him say, get the sons of bitches off the field, we see the NFL owners follow suit. We see Bob Kraft, who's the owner of the New England Patriots, on Air Force One with him. We see Donald Trump calling Jerry Jones, saying, this is a winning issue for me. Fall in line. We see Jerry fall in line. Woody Johnson became his ambassador to the UK. Exactly. And this is in addition to NFL owners donating millions of dollars to him, his inauguration. We see Stephen Ross, the owner of the Miami Dolphins, hosting a fundraiser, raising millions of dollars for him. So the alignment of their interests we see become so closely connected that essentially they're operating as one in the same. Speaking of NFL collusion, Macklemore was just pulled off of Ed Sheeran's tour. It happened because of Bob Kraft, the owner of the Patriots you just mentioned. By the way, I'm a Patriots fan. I don't feel great about it in this conversation, but I should just be honest. Bob Kraft calls Ed Sheeran and he says he's going to cancel your concert at Gillette Stadium in New England if Macklemore isn't dropped. According to the Wall Street Journal, Kraft was in touch with other team and stadium owners who are also going to cancel concerts if Macklemore wasn't dropped. Kraft was offended by comments Macklemore made in support of the Palestinian people and about Gaza. The collusion there sounds very similar to your case, but I wondered what your reaction to reading about all this was. They're just openly colluding now. To me, we have gotten to a place where in 2017 when we filed the collusion case, it was, no, we're not doing this. That's not what's happening. They're trying to deny it. All the facts and evidence says otherwise, but as we sit here today and we're talking about Macklemore, we're seeing them do it openly. We're seeing them do it publicly. And brag about it to the Wall Street Journal. They're bragging about it and they also know or have a high degree of confidence. There's no repercussions. There's no accountability to them or for them. So I think for me, it gets me to a space of we collectively have to decide, are we okay with this type of collusion? Are we okay with this oligarchy operating in this way where they're able to attack and target individual citizens? And also, what does that mean for everyone else that follows? So I think there should be very definitive action that people are taking to make sure that this doesn't happen again. Yeah. I mean, look, Bob Craft, he's got free speech too. He can be offended by whatever offends him. He's entitled to his opinion. I guess he's entitled to, I guess, who gets to play at his venue. I watched the Macklemore speech. I thought it was really inoffensive. I know that Macklemore did wear a costume in 2014 that was really bad and he apologized for that. It was sort of like this anti-Semitic kind of like mask. But I also, I went back and I looked at some acts that recently played at Gillette Stadium. And I think it's interesting to think about which artists get canceled or dropped and which don't. So Morgan Wallen did a show at Gillette in 2025. In 2020, he was arrested for smashing a bunch of stuff in a bar when he was asked to leave. In 2024, he was arrested for throwing a chair off the roof of a bar in Nashville, which landed right next to a bunch of cops. And then in 2021, he was filmed screaming racial slurs. And then last month, Chris Brown played at Gillette. In 2009, he pleaded guilty to felony assault charges for beating up Rihanna. 2013, he punched Frank Ocean over a parking spot. I didn't even know about that. It's crazy, right? Later that year, he was involved in Hit and Run, another assault, another assault in 2018. He was arrested in 2018, 2025. I'll stop belaboring this. But like, I'm not calling on Bob Kraft to cancel their shows or cancel them like big picture. But again, in your case, like it's like in your case, like physical violence, including assaulting women was not a deal breaker for Bob Kraft, but speech was. I just think that's interesting and worth noting. Well, we, we see that across the NFL as well. We see players that have legal issues and they, they're welcomed back in. And I think in part, I look at those as it gives them, it gives them leverage in many ways, the, the NFL owners and organizations, because then in, in helping navigate a legal situation, it's almost a, it's almost a sense of you are now indebted to us and you're going to take the actions that we want you to take. And we'll, we'll have requests that come along with that. Now, I think the threat to the, the NFL owners are the people who are willing to, to use their, their voice, um, and also are not bought and paid. I, if they can't control you, that becomes a threat to them. Um, if you're advocating for people that they view as counter to their interests, then it becomes a threat to them and they will do everything they can to try that, um, and tamp that out. So I, I think there's a major issue there, um, in the power that is wielded. I think again, collectively as people, we have to look at this and say, well, are we okay with this? Or are we going to take action to try to make sure that this doesn't happen? I think the threat to the, the NFL owners are the people who are willing to take action to try that. your current phone and your number. can choose from three, six or 12 month plans and say goodbye to a monthly bill. Ditch overpriced wireless with Mint Mobile. It's so easy. Sign up online and get three months of premium wireless service for 15 bucks a month. To get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mintmobile.com slash crooked. That's mintmobile.com slash crooked. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com slash crooked. That's it. There's no catch. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12 months plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees. Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20 gigabyte hotspot capable device required availability. Speed and coverage vary. See mintmobile.com. I'm Nate Silver. I'm Galen Druke. And I'm Claire Malone. We're back this time with our friends at Crooked Media for a new show called Still Counting. Numbers are hard, takes are easy. And frankly, numbers have only gotten harder. What does the data actually say? How do we reconcile that with the other things that we're seeing in American politics and around the world? And how do we use that data to understand or maybe even dare to predict the future of American politics? New episodes every Wednesday starting September 9th. Subscribe to Still Counting on youtube.com slash at still counting podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Discover a spectacular island destination. With crystal blue seas, endless sunshine and the cool Bahamian breeze. Baja Mar located in Nassau, Bahamas offers your choice of three luxury hotels. The richly refined Rosewood, the playfully hip SLS and the stylishly modern Grand Hyatt. With over 45 restaurants, bars and lounges. Baja Mar serves up delicious dining from world renowned chefs like Daniel Balloud and Marcus Samuelson. Nightlife venues like the new John Batiste Jazz Club and the Caribbean's most luxurious casino. At Baja Mar you'll find every pleasure under the sun and one of a kind experiences for the entire family. Like Baja Bay, our 15 acre lush tropical water park. Interactive wildlife experiences including our daily flamingo parade, world-class golf, tennis, spa and so much more. I think interestingly too, Macklemore, my understanding is I think he is, owns all his own music and is independent from any label. So he's not facing the kind of control that you were just mentioning that players deal with. Yeah. So fast forward to 2020, George Floyd is murdered in front of our eyes. It explodes the conversation that you've been having for years now. This time the NFL is forced to respond. Roger Goodell posts a video where he says, quote, we the National Football League condemn racism and the systematic oppression of black people. We the National Football League admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest. He doesn't mention your name, which is pathetic. But did that feel like vindication? Because it sure, I mean, sounds like vindication. No. Because the only reason he did that video was because there was a video put out by some of the star players in the NFL calling him out and calling the NFL out for not doing anything. Over the last 10 years. But then also specifically in this moment, in the wake of George Floyd being killed by police. And if you go, if you go back and look at the video from the players and you look at the video from Roger Goodell, he says everything verbatim in that video, with the exception of he changes. I think the players video said, we apologize to the protesting players. Um, for not, for not supporting them or, or something to the, of that nature. And he says, well, we should have listened earlier. Even in this moment of national protests, international protests, the position is always to protect their own interests. And there's legal ramifications for, for them. Um, if he's saying we apologize, um, admitting wrongdoing. Which is why there's the kind of sleight of hand there. Um, but it, again, they are always going to look out for their interests and they will only take actions if it is in a space that they are forced to, they're never going to be proactive and say, oh, you know what? We know this is an issue. We're going to go out and address it. Um, they will always be looking at, well, what's most profitable for us and how can we keep control and keep things out of the way. And like, I bet our listeners don't know how much money Roger Goodell makes. I think it's like 64 million, 65 million at the kind of tail end of his contract. Yeah. He's making an insane amount of money. To do what? To fly in a private jet to games? Like a lot of people would love that job, Roger. I mean, to protect the owners and make them as much money as humanly possible. Well, that, that's the thing. Protecting the owners and being the shield for the owners is the number one responsibility there. Right. And not the players. No. It has nothing to do with the players. Like that's not where his allegiance is. That's not where his responsibility is. Um, and again, when we look at, uh, when we look at contracts and agreements, um, with executives like this, typically it is in the framework of you have a fiduciary responsibility. So they're always going to be looking out for their own financial interests. Now, to me, the part that becomes interesting in my case is, the financial interests actually say otherwise. Um, because my Jersey went to number one, we have the campaign that we did with Nike in 2018. We see a jump of $6 billion in their, their valuation during that time period. So this also becomes one of the moments that we see them working counter to the business interests of the NFL. Um, and more so are focused on power and control than just the financials. Yeah. They wanted to show that they could silence you to silence future critics of the league or about whatever, I guess. Exactly. And all, and all of the ripple effects that come with that, um, power of players, stronger union, uh, if players organized guaranteed contracts. So on the tail end of that, that could have financial implications for them. And a lot of those actions are, we're going to try to protect this now and protect the power and control that we have to make sure this doesn't ever happen. It's crazy. The NFL of all leagues, like the most violent sport on the planet does not have guaranteed money or guaranteed contracts for players. Like if you blow up, people always read the headline number at some agent leaks, but it's all bullshit. Like the guaranteed money is so low. And if you blow out your knee, you're just, you're done, right? They cut you and you're, you don't get paid. Yep. It is. We've seen one, I think two instances, um, a fully guaranteed, guaranteed contracts, extremely rare. Um, and we've seen the NFL owners. Also be very critical and try to push on each other to make sure that doesn't happen. Um, but NFL, NFL contracts, um, or NFL lifespan is typically three and a half years, um, on average. So you have a very short window to try to earn as much as you can the NFL before you're going to be out. Right. Um, that also, and this is where, uh, the union has to be stronger. Most of your long-term benefits as a player don't kick in until after year four. Um, or at least that was the case while I was playing. Um, so you see this, you see the interests of the NFL show up in ways of that nature where they will try to maximize the profitability and their retention of dollars to the expense of the players. Right. College sports have changed. It's an entirely new scenario. I mean, they changed it completely since you were at the university of Nevada back then a college player could get like tuition room board books. Uh, now athletes can get paid for their name, image, and likeness. Uh, it's easier to transfer. Some schools can, they're paying athletes directly. Do you think, what do you think of the evolution that we've seen? I think the evolution is needed. We we've seen college sports for, for generations now, exploiting athletes and exploiting their talents and not paying them for the labor, um, and position it as student athletes. So they aren't employees. So they don't have to go down this path of paying players. I think NIL helped open that door for players to get paid. I also think there should be more work done to be able to get them directly paid from the universities, um, across the board for the players. Um, now some of the new legislation that is coming out, um, that is essentially trying to recreate, uh, structures that professional organizations have limiting players' ability to earn, um, creating non-competitive environments for teams, um, where it's, it's fascinating to me in a capitalist society where the position is, well, it should be meritocracy and the best person wins. And Hey, if you, if you have the best product and the best thing, and you can pay for it, like you have to, everybody else just has to compete with that. And what we see in these organizations, professional organizations, and at the college level, is more so a collective that is built around socialism. We want to share our resources and we want to make sure we're doing revenue sharing. And we all get an equal portion that, hey, if we're the Cleveland Browns, we're not making as much as the New York teams or LA. So we need to balance this out to make sure there's some equity within this. Then when you get to the player side, it's like, well, no, no, no. This just has to be pure competition. We're also going to cap. We're going to cap how much you can make because we need to protect our interests to make sure that we're making as much as we can. And to me, it just becomes insidious in the sense of why not just be open with what you're trying to accomplish and say it and let people address, hey, we agree with this or we don't. And the reality is the overwhelming majority of people don't agree with the approaches that they're taking and want people to be able to go out and earn as much as they can. Yeah, I mean, it's a cartel, right? Like you and I couldn't go start. We can start a business. We can start a juice stand. We couldn't start a new NFL team. It's scarcity. The values go up. But yeah, and the owners make out like bandits, but the players aren't getting paid. Exactly. It's crazy. They also have to become an NFL owner. The structures around that are to be able to make sure that that stays the good old boys club. I believe a significant portion of the purchase of an NFL team has to be in cash. I believe it's a 75% majority vote that you have to have to get approval. Oh, wow. So they have created structures to be able to insulate themselves. To make sure. Are you actually politically aligned with all of us? And there aren't going to be any mavericks out here. There aren't going to be any people that go rogue on us because we're going to make sure that we ensure that every person that walks through this door to become an owner of an NFL team actually is aligned with our interests and is going to take similar actions. That's crazy. In the book, you write about your approach to politics and voting and how it evolved over time. Yeah. Can you just talk about how your thinking changed and what changed it? Yeah. So going back to 2016, a lot of what I had seen in politics and also looking at some of the historical perspectives around politics was politics hadn't changed a lot for the black community. There are pockets where you see this show up, but largely see people's needs being unmet. And also getting into a space of constantly talking about like, what are the lesser of two evils? And that's a very typical conversation. And in 2016, I was like, well, I don't want to throw my support behind people that I don't believe in fully. And so 2016, I didn't vote. I've since changed that perspective and look at voting as a tool for us to be able to use. But that shouldn't be the only lever that we're utilizing. And part of this understanding was also the work that we were doing directly in communities, understanding the policy impact and how that affected that work, but also looking at the long-term impact and implications of this. We had not, or at least in my lifetime or in my memory, seen a president like Donald come in who is willing to just throw rule of law out the window or any practices, processes, decency out the window and just try to do whatever he wants. So I think the extreme came out of 2016. The other part is being able to see and understand the generational impact that has been had. So just looking at the judge's side as we're looking at the Supreme Court, also getting more insight on all of the federal judge appointments that were happening, I believe at that point in time when I was looking at the numbers, it was like 46 out of the 54 federal judges that were appointed had come out of the Federalist Society, which just to be able to have an organization essentially train and breed judges to their politics and have all of those appointments become lifetime appointments, it then becomes a space of, you know, you know, you know, oh, the impact and significance here is well beyond just who is on the ticket, but all of the areas of influence underneath that. And that was the area that I had to grow in politically. I didn't have that understanding in 2016. Again, post-voting, I think there's still a ton of work that we have to be doing and we have to be leaning on politicians aggressively to actually pass policies that support communities. But that's been some of the evolution of understanding the situation. And it's now led me to take a different approach. Are there any candidates out there or running now, maybe just in office that you're excited about? Yeah, the ones that have been interesting to me, I mean, obviously Mamdani in New York. He is one that has been very interesting to me. Abdul El-Saeed. Oh, yeah. In Michigan. He's a buddy of ours. We used to do a show with him here. Oh, really? Yeah. I didn't realize that. Yeah, I'll give you his number. He's great. I really like the approaches that they're taking because, they're staying very focused on the needs of the people. At least thus far, it doesn't seem like they are able to be bought or swayed within those conversations. I think that's incredibly important. I also think that how they have been able to navigate the attacks that have come their way and be able to redirect that and stay the course, that has been impressive to me. So, I'm excited about where we're headed with some of the candidates that are out there. I also think this is representative of what we've seen over the last 10 years and people being fed up just with the establishment. We need something different. We need people that are actually going to come in and serve our needs. Yeah, shake it up. And get things done. Yeah. And I think this new wave of candidates is exciting. We'll see how this plays out over time. But I think this is refreshing to be able to see candidates take the positions that they've taken and move the way they have. Yeah. I mean, look, Zoran's campaign was like your 2012 season. You know, he just blew up. You know, took it all away. Abdul is amazing because he is a brilliant guy, like Rhodes Scholar, public health expert, but also is just a great communicator. I was out in Detroit two weeks ago. I went to a town hall and I watched him just like interacting with people. And it's like, he's giving people some hope and inspiration at a time when not a lot of that running around. So it's been great to watch. Last question for you. So you write in the book that you no longer watch the NFL and that quote, whether to watch the NFL or not is a personal decision for each football fan. I understand that, but it also immediately tells me a good amount about the character of the person I'm engaging with. I winced when I read that because I love the NFL. I watch football. My team's the fucking Patriots. Bob Kraft is the owner. I felt like the interpretation is maybe you think I'm a shitty person, but I don't want to speak for you. No, I think if we are, if we're going down the path of we want to live our principles, we want to live our practices. We have to take the best practices and the best approaches possible to support the things that actually support us and the things that don't align with our values. I don't think we should be supporting those. Now there's always nuance within that because, I mean, if you go across corporations, there's always going to be something in there and people aren't perfect people. So like there is nuance within that. But overall, I think the position that I've seen is, hey, I'm supporting and I want to do the things I can. And at the same time, we'll take actions that may be counter to that. And my hope is that people will take more consistent actions because on the other hand, the other side of that is actually accountability to those organizations. In the collusion, whether it is me, whether it is McLemore, whether it is Donald targeting private citizens, all of these are spaces that we have the opportunity to be able to show up and say, no, we don't believe in what you're doing. And we're going to take actions to show you as such to make sure on the other side of that, we can create change, whether that's policy, whether that's processes, but those become opportunities for us collectively to have influence on those institutions. Yeah, I mean, look, I struggle with this, like the concussions and stuff you read about CTE, like it makes it hard to watch the game. Bob Craft, as we discussed, is a big Trump fan. Like that makes it suck on a bunch of levels. I also have, but I also have these issues with like a lot of things I do in life. Like I don't love Amazon's labor practices. Do I use Prime every day? You know what I mean? And so I don't know, it's, I think it's a challenge to wrestle with our own hypocrisy and where we're falling short on this stuff and to know actually what's effective. Like, you know, people who really believe in climate change and want to take steps to combat it always have shit thrown back in their face, being like, well, you flew on an airplane. And it's like, you know what? Me not flying on an airplane is not going to do shit. You know, and it's like, I do wonder if I don't watch the NFL, does that hurt the owners? Does that hurt the players? Does it just not matter? I don't know. Well, I think these have to become targeted. And we have to be intentional when those show up. We know boycotts are extremely effective. We're seeing this with Target right now. They've rolled back their DEI practices to be in alignment with Trump and capitulate. We've seen the black community collectively boycott them. Their bottom line has been hit. And now they're having to rethink their approach around this. So I think it is hard to say, hey, we're going to do everything all at once. And that's not an effective approach. But in the moments that we have the opportunity to say, no, here's a clear example. We're going to rally around this and behind this. Those targeted actions become extremely valuable because it also sends a message to every other corporation. In the NFL's case, every other owner. That becomes an effective way for us to be able to put pressure and apply pressure and have influence on their practices and ultimately making them change where you might not be another example. You might not be another example. Big fan of your work. And please continue. We will try until we're all arrested by Trump. See how that goes. That's our show for today. Thanks to Colin Kaepernick for coming on. We'll be back in the feed on Sunday with a special episode of Pod Save America live from the Texas Tribune Festival. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Farrah Safari with Reed Churlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, David Toles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. I'm Nate Silver. I'm Galen Druk. We're back, this time with our friends at Crooked Media for a new show called Still Counting. How do we reconcile that with the actual data? And what are the other things that we're seeing in American politics and around the world? Subscribe to Still Counting on youtube.com slash at stillcountingpodcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Some people like working twice as hard just to stay right where they are. And in Ohio, we really don't get it. Because to us, owning a home in your 30s working in tech without the traffic and still being able to make it to your kids' soccer game sounds pretty good. 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