AOC vs. Bezos

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Check out the full lineup and get tickets right now at Crooked Con. CrookedCon.com. We'd love to see you there. That's CrookedCon.com. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Trump says the ceasefire with Iran is on, quote, life support. We'll talk about why and what comes next as he heads off to China. We'll also talk about his new plan to make Venezuela our 51st state. That's a perfect plan. Perfect plan. The follow-up from the Virginia Supreme Court's decision to throw out the Democrats' new maps, AOC taking on Jeff Bezos and what she might run for in 2028, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and his wife, Rachel Campos Duffy, getting back to their roots with a new reality television show. Yeah. Exciting. Great. Quick note. Before we start, if you're a friend of the pod subscriber, which if you aren't, you should be, you can now buy tickets for this year's CrookedCon. Special pre-sale just for subscribers. Damn right. Just for you. May 12th. That is today when you're listening. But if you're not a subscriber because you hate pro-democracy independent media and you love listening to podcast ads, you can still buy CrookedCon tickets, but you're gonna have to wait till next week, starting on May 19th. You might get a job at CBS. You might get to someday interview B.B. Netanyahu. B.B. Netanyahu. Say, sir, why are you so great? Yeah, that's the only. Why is your leadership so impressive? There's definitely a limited range of questions you can ask Netanyahu if you get the job at CBS versus if you interview him here at Pod Save America, which I don't think is gonna happen anytime soon. Rhodes has got an ask-in. I think we will be getting Netanyahu before or after we get Biden. Maybe. Actuarial question. Anyway, either way, CrookedCon's gonna be a big fun party right after this. The midterms, November 5th through 7th. Dan yelled at me for saying big fun party, because he thought that was like jinxing the midterms. I'm like, it's still gonna be a big fun party, even if we. We're gonna still have a party. We're still gonna live. Yeah. I mean, you know, what choice do we have? Gallows humor is still humor. June in 2017. I did. I did. And we don't connect those two things. And when Trump won, I remember telling Emily, there might not be a wedding now. Yeah. And she's like. Unrelated reasons. I know. Oh. Did she listen? Who knows? That did take you in through with it. Well, Hannah won't tell her. Hannah won't tell her about that joke. Don't worry about that. Anyway. Don't put this under a comment of Emily's Instagram. You know someone's gonna. You narcs. Someone's gonna send this to her. I'm gonna send this to her. Oh, I know. I hate the snitch tagger. It's gonna turn up at your wedding, is what it's gonna turn up. Anyway, you should go subscribe. What are we talking about? Become a Friend of the Pod subscriber. No ads for any of your favorite podcasts at Crooked, and you get to support Crooked Media, and you get subscriber-only shows. And you get all of our sub-stack newsletters. And, by the way, you can start buying a ticket for CrookedCon right now. They're going fast. Go get it. November 5th through 7th, Washington, D.C. It's CrookedCon.com, and you can become a subscriber at Crooked.com slash friends. All right. It appears that last week's siren emojis about the U.S. and Iran closing in on a one-page memo to end the war have given way to this week's siren emojis about Trump possibly resuming military action in Iran. Live by the siren emoji. Die by the siren emoji. Are we talking about reporters? I mean, that's who usually gives them. Well, actually, no. Reporters do, and now also just random influencers and accounts that don't give you any accurate information whatsoever. It lends such credibility. It does. And it starts with drudge. The siren started drudge. That's true. The siren doesn't make sense as a news break. Then reporters started doing it, and then just random influencer just, you know, trying to gather information that's not in any way, that just shows up in your for-you algorithm on Twitter. People with names like Joey Bloomberg. Bloomberg is reporting it. Collapsed the market for like five minutes. It is all caps, anyway. Anyway, all of this comes after Trump rejected Iran's response to the one-page memo. They just kept telling it was one page, 14 points. It's the right length of the memo. They got it all on one page. Anyway, rejected, which Iran waited 10 days to send and included demands for U.S. reparations and permanent Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz. Trump called that, quote, totally unacceptable and inappropriate before elaborating on his initial reaction in the Oval on. Monday. I would say the ceasefire is on massive life support, where the doctor walks in and says, sir, your loved one has approximately a 1% chance of living. It's unbelievably weak, I would say. I would call it the weakest right now. After reading that piece of garbage they sent us, I didn't even finish reading it. It was just unacceptable. You know, a lot of people said, well. Does he have a plan? Yeah, of course they do. I have the best plan ever. I have a plan. You know what it is? A very simple plan. I don't know why you don't say it like it is. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Were you to allow the removal of all their enriching? Yeah, yeah. Well, they did it two days ago. They didn't. Okay. They did two days ago. They said, you're going to have to take it. We were going to go with them. But they changed their mind because they didn't put it in the paper. I've had to deal with them four or five times. They changed their mind. They're very dishonorable people. The leadership. Exhausting. Who would have thunk it? He's learning a lot of lessons over and over and over again. Maybe not learning them. It drives me crazy when he says, I have a plan. No, that's a goal. Yeah. That's what you want. What a plan. The plan is how you get to that. Yeah, right. That's a destination. That's a dam. Where you need a route. You need a journey. So far as we start week 11 of the war, it doesn't seem like that plan is bearing fruit. It's also funny that he didn't read the whole one-page memo. Yeah, finish. Well, yeah. Get to the bottom of the thing. Maybe there's some good stuff at the bottom. What if there's some pictures? Tommy, why do you think the latest deal fell apart? And what other options does Trump have at this point? I mean, all the details weren't public, but I think that the US sent over a bunch of hardline nuclear demands and the Iranians were like, nah, we just want you to stop blockading the Strait of Hormuz and give us all this shit. And that's our take. And so now we're back. So all the options are bad. I mean, you can restart the war, which is extremely unlikely to lead to regime change. It will certainly lead to economic chaos in the region. You can keep the blockade going and hope that the economic pain breaks the Iranian regime before it breaks the global economy. I don't think that's going to work either. And then you can find a way to declare victory and slink away, which seems like the most likely option. But Iran will probably control the Strait of Hormuz in that case. I'm very interested in how he keeps talking about the leaders in all these different ways. First, he likes the new leaders because they're better than the old leaders. They killed all the old leaders. Then he also does sometimes, we don't know who the leaders are. And then this one was, they're awful. They're dishonorable people. They're lunatics. Yeah. It's also, we've been through so many rounds of reporting in which Trump felt we were on the precipice of a deal and then the talks fall apart. But if you take out the spinning coming from the administration, is it possible that really they've just been far apart the whole time? Because the Venn diagram of on one side, you have Trump requiring a deal that is better than the JCPOA, the Obama deal, because he said that deal was the worst deal ever made. On the other side, you have Iran in a stronger position than when the war began, wanting a better deal than that, including consequences to the U.S. reparations for the cost of the war and the power it's gained from having control of the Strait of Hormuz. Those circles don't overlap. So what are we doing here? Yeah, exactly. And then the reporting is so credulous. And so it feels like we're having this up and down roller coaster, but really we're just dealing with the- It's like kind of strategic reality of this stupid fucking war. Yeah. It sounds like- Which bums me out personally. Same. Well, it also sounds like, and you know, they said that they, in all these plans and proposals that Iran keeps sending back or responding to, it sounds like they just want to keep control of the Strait of Hormuz. No doubt. And why wouldn't they? Or they want sanctions relief. They want one or the other. They need a financial lifeline. Right. But it's also like they're sending over their maximalist position, we send over our maximalist position, and then we just get mad and walk away. That's not how negotiations work. Just get in a room, hash it out, give a little each side maybe we can come to some conclusion but they're just like they're not even trying trump's like i didn't read the one page memo all the way to the bottom um bob kagan the uh the hawkish neocon iraq war supporting bob kagan that one uh just wrote a piece in the atlantic to me i'm not close enough to call him bob i just i call him rob robert bobby bobby yeah uh he just wrote a piece in the atlantic titled a checkmate in iran that starts it's hard to think of a time when the united states suffered a total defeat in the conflict a setback so decisive that the strategic loss could be neither repaired nor ignored uh he then ticks through every conflict since pearl harbor and basically makes the case that trump's fuck up in iran will be more consequential than all of them okay what'd you guys think i just want to just before we get you're gonna go back to it and the the neo the neocon high dungeon of the 2000s i still do not miss like look this is a very big blunder i think it is a little it's a little premature to be saying it's it's worse than pearl harbor oh see i thought pearl harbor was actually one of the easier ones because probably because pearl harbor's thing was like we came back and we won that one pretty decisive sure in hindsight it looks pretty fucking good but a year or so after pearl harbor things were pretty up in the air we're gonna go to iraq because that one was he was like yeah then we left then eventually we left iraq stay more stable and i'm like oh did we a lot of yada yada yada there for iraq that was my big note too like i want to build the biggest tent possible but um his idea was to build the biggest tent possible in iraq and then all's well that ends well because like saddam's not there now i yeah that was a little much for me but this is all like throat clearing around what was truly a bracing and uh uh like just dismal read on the situation including laying out like just how few options trump has because part of the reason he called off uh military strikes wanted a ceasefire is because of the leverage iran had when it was striking uh you know infrastructure in the reason in the region how he can try to declare victory but that still leaves the straight of warm moves how like the the that all the options that trump has are fucking terrible yeah they're all terrible and also the israelis have also just been crystal clear that they don't think the war is over i mean if you watch net yeah i went 60 minutes he he said as much there's also the war in lebanon if you want a weaker ceasefire i could point you to one the one in lebanon where they're bombing each other all the time and there's constant fighting like daily there's casualties all the time um yeah so i agree with this assessment that that these iranians are not going to give up the straight over moves unless they get sanctions relief or something like really big for it um and that we look weak and we look kind of feckless and uh unreliable it's also like the gall of trump saying oh these people are dishonorable like you uh used previous talks as a smokescreen to uh to bomb the leadership um you have ripped up the previous agreement and you may not have liked it but it was negotiated in good faith by the united states which you can you know which uh uh whose authority came from obama to you so you've kind of undermined our credibility there they have no confidence that trump won't change his mind in a couple months and resume bombing if they accept a deal they have no confidence that israel uh won't uh uh bomb iran if it views it in its interest even if there is a deal so just like the the the kind of the the the the kind of the way in which we're like stuck in this morass because trump went into this so half-cocked it's just it's it's it's just sort of gruesome and it's when you step back and look at it i think there were times in this conflict where people said oh you know i remember thinking this at one point oh he could end up just going back to uh like obama's around deal right and then call it a victory but it's going to be like around we were like oh you know you all criticized obama for now that there's no way he gets a deal that's better or even the same as the iran deal it's going to be worse because when the iran deal was made uh iran didn't control the straight of form no doubt like this piece made me think about the like not the i knew about the strategic importance of the straight but just from iran's perspective now they've got the control even they get some sanctions relief they're gonna have to get a lot more sanctions relief and a lot when they're calling it reparations or whatever than they ever were before because they got the straight they have full control of the strait and they're going to have to get a lot more sanctions relief over it now maybe they go for a deal where they charge some tolls maybe they share control with other you know gulf nations but it seems like the the the scenario now where iran willingly signed some kind of a deal where they fully give up the straight of hormuz and it goes back to being like an international waterway seems very slim there's no chance they just got this incredible toy and they're going to play with it for as long as they want until it breaks or someone takes it away there's just no chance also um it could get worse like if trump decides to go back to war the economic cost could be just a resumption of what we've seen but also the houthi rebels could get involved they're in yemen they could start firing at ships in the red sea they should could choke off you know the saudis have been sending a lot of their oil and gas that they can't get out through the strait of hormuz west through a pipeline and then it'll get out through the red sea or through the suez canal if the houthis get involved and they choke off those access points too like prices could hit three hundred dollars a barrel it's a disaster and also by the way we're not even talking about the reason we're in we're there we're not even talking about the reason we're there we're not even talking about the reason we're there we're not even talking about which is the nuclear material the 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium sometimes it's dust sometimes it's critical to get out um it is still sitting in iran and also all of that material was enriched after trump pulled out of the jcpa jcpoa so it's a problem he created and now it's probably not going to solve i like the scenario that he he mentioned where they were all we were going to go in together with the iranians like just a group field trip to go uh to to dig under the rubble and to find all the nuclear dust together i'd go i thought that was a real it's a it's a show i'd watch um i also like and this is so this is around giving up the the straight like through some negotiation then there's the other option of trying to take it by force but that that requires like you know uh u.s navy ships potentially getting fired on um and and around small boats firing on other ships too and and then kagan points out in this piece too even if they are not firing on the ships they can retaliate against gulf energy infrastructure like they did weeks ago before the ceasefire so like they have plenty of options iran and clearly they are fine taking a whole bunch of punishment because you know as the trump administration likes to point out they don't give a shit about their own people they kill protesters all that kind of stuff they surely are not going to care if they're going to inflict a ton of economic pain on their country um like it's not like they care a lot about their people so yeah they're going to have they they're going to have the appetite for a lot of pain yeah that's the part that's sort of like chilling about where we're at because we're in this sort of stalemate in which trump is going to like a loser he can try to declare victory but there'll still be the ongoing cost of us having kind of shown our might and iran remaining in power and now controlling the strait of hormuz or there's escalation and we've already done we've already on you know launched a massive campaign against iran and the regime held together what escalation looks like how far they'd have to go because you the next the next escalation is toward the regime collapsing and that's a combination of economic pressure to to squeeze them that's more an intense uh military action and like it all and while that is happening in even if it were to happen relatively quickly you're still talking about iran unloading whatever it is it's willing to do in the gulf and so you're just there are terrible options in front of america's worst person and this was totally like trump is a drunk guy at the bar who's been lifting a lot who decided to pick a fight with the crazy guy who was cauliflower ear and that guy is kicking the shit out of him and is willing to go a lot further to win this fight than donald trump is and take a lot more pain and it's not going to end well yeah and by the way you also killed his father i guess and there's no gold toilet room like it is like there was something someone said once a long time ago which is like uh if someone is willing to fight you it means they have less to lose yep and uh i don't think i've ever learned that because nothing's ever been a real fight no pot save america is brought to you by neutrophil real change comes from small things you do every day that quietly add up to big improvements that's the idea behind neutrophil it's built around a simple consistent approach to hair health that works from within and delivers visible results over time not overnight i take neutrophil and basically i've had listen you've so much hair there i can't even see your face it will be if it were up to listen if you left it up to nature basically i'd be a great swimmer you know just like nothing but i've used the 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believe kevin has it which of course you should uh who just said oil prices will drop quickly before the midterms once quote the gusher opens where's the gusher i guess in the straight chuck schumer's office now they'd heard about the gas tax bill because he excites him sorry just because he loves it you know he does a press yeah no yeah for sure for sure he's gushing suspending the gas tax good idea or great idea yeah suspend the gas tax release all the strategic petroleum reserve get rid of all the sanctions on iran maybe russia while you're at it just go nuts prices will stay high but now we won't be able to pay for highways or mass transit it's a great idea let's do it uh yeah we already can't pay for those things anyway and over the last sort of half century more and more of our roads are paid for without the gas the asset is supplemental but we still pay for it ourselves i mean having a gas tax is a good idea the politics of suspending it are great just do it this is said said like someone who was on uh hillary clinton's primary campaign in 2008 was she i don't even remember we were forced you guys yeah i had to think about that too because it's like the mandate fight who was no you guys when we did the indiana and north carolina primaries hillary was uh saying we should suspend the gas tax and and obama was saying that's just a that's just a gimmick and it's bad and we shouldn't do it and it's just it's not really going to affect your prices that much that one john mccain sent tire gauges to us that's something different that was that was when that was when we were going to solve that was when we were making we wanted people to check he just suggested people check their tires and they're like you fucking piece of shit we like running on these soft tires cushy it's cushy we're not gonna fill up my tires communist bastard but the uh yeah look the point is it doesn't it doesn't actually bring down the price no it's twice it's what is it 18 20 16 to 18 cents a gallon and then some a little bit more for diesel i mean it's a bigger deal for truck drivers commercial like it does make a big difference uh for people and like that but it's also ridiculous that trump said he would do this can't do without congress um there's some bipartisan legislation that was floating around it might get a little more lift now that he said it but he can't do it on its on his own or i guess he he's not supposed to do it on its own on his own who knows he can try anyway um and yeah of course it robs the government of you know revenue it can't afford to lose because we have a lot of big ticket items that we need to pay for like bombing iran and schools building a ballroom and now apparently painting the lincoln memorial reflecting pool american flag blue which uh along with some other repairs is apparently going to cost 13.1 million dollars according to david fahrenholz at the times this is an apparently it's an 88 jump in the cost of what it's going to take to uh repaint the reflecting pool and you know why it jumped so high because donald trump decided to give a no-bid contract to the guy who did all his pools at bedminster which is rudy giuliani hope he feels better it's also they're trying to sue it just to stop it it was funny the guy that was suing he's like uh we just look it's a process thing but also we just think they chose a bad color which is which you know they did you know it's gonna be the tackiest fucking thing the tackiest blue like come on it doesn't need to look like a goddamn uh uh uh like splash mountain thing like just kind of the best blue is north carolina carolina blue let's just do that unc colors that'd be pretty bright in the reflecting pool i don't know i'm not i'm just making this up why did kevin has it always he looks like dennis the menace just took down the biggest nitrous balloon you've ever seen and then he just spouts like economic bullshit it's like he's the best get him out there get him out there 13 million dollars for the reflecting pool they're voting on the ballroom this week remember that's a billion dollars that they want to add in security that's a lot of security what are we doing to that thing speaking of your boy Chuck Schumer he coined a new term for Republicans because of the ballroom did you see what it was ballroom Republicans he's calling the party ballroom Republicans I know it's one of those it's definitely not using a scalpel they're more of a sledgehammer but maybe he throws out ballroom Republicans and then everyone it's like a signal and everyone says it in a better way but everyone knows what the message is shots me at this point last week that because this billion dollars is in the budget they're all going to have to vote on it and I think that's great it's a yes or no vote on the fucking ballroom they're saying oh it's security security secret service needs it well would they need it if they didn't have the fucking ballroom probably not you knock down the east wing and you got to rebuild it did you not was it a different America in which there wasn't security when you knock down a building did you put that line item in the budget when you were doing up the budget for the new ballroom you knew what the thing was going to fucking cost now it's like a football stadium where these donors are going to have to go to the big unveiling because they're the ones responsible but the vast majority of the cost is the taxpayers because if the actual construction is 300 million but securing the facility is a billion dollars costs that were inevitable and required in order to ever use it it's a taxpayer budget it's a taxpayer ballroom just 100% I'm just trying to add it up here we got there's the ballroom there's the Trump Kennedy Center there's the arch we haven't even started building the arch yet well get going we got the and now the reflecting pool they're also that that UFC fight that's going to that's going to take some doing to put up that and take it down on the White House lawn now some of this is like privately funded landscaping it is of course the it's the it's the worst of all worlds for Trump best of all worlds for us in the politics but it's like it's the worst of all worlds for us in the politics but it's like some of it's being funded by major donors corporate donors who now get special access to Trump because of their donation and then the rest is the taxpayers foot the bill so it's like a good mix of shady influence of corporate allies of Trump and just you know good old-fashioned just you know corruption the reflecting pool brought to you by Raytheon so when you're reflecting on your life you like to think about the drones the like hey we got really the reflecting pool wasn't a problem no I'm open to the possibility that they could use a ballroom I don't think it would have been my priority right but the reflecting pool was just doing its thing it was just sitting it's not the wrong color it looks great it's classic I do think listen I've said this before no offense to Steven Spielberg I think that that World War II memorial oh yeah you've I my this is my position which I think is I don't want I don't want it I don't want the final design trickle-down ballroom does Steven Spielberg design it? no he was part of the class because it was part of the post saving private Ryan Tom it was in the it was part he was helped raise money for it and he was a kind of a big booster of it I don't know exactly what his direct involved he's not the designer of it but he was a big face of getting it done so Democrat takes over we're going to bulldoze the ballroom yeah bulldoze the World War II memorial no no no I don't want that I listen you want to paint the reflecting what do we paint the reflecting pool is that where Jenny and Forrest Gump reunited was that in the reflecting pool yes yeah it is it is it is don't mess with that landmark it's look that this the the painting the reflecting pool kind of undoing that that's an easy one yeah that that also all the gold on the White House that's coming off that's easy the writing on the outside of the oval that's like that cursive gold writing oval this way why do you think this house needs a fucking name tag we all know you everyone knows what it is that's the whole idea of it it'd be funny if they did a big gold like in this house we believe kind of like the Mar-a-Lago au bon pont umbrellas the yellow umbrellas those are all going those drive me crazy it looks just like Mar-a-Lago yeah that's the that's silly color it's a long list well if suspending the gas tax doesn't work and the and the gusher of oil doesn't open Trump does have one other please stop saying gusher gusher gusher gusher begging you yeah it's a snack gusher it is a snack yes Tommy Trump does have one other trick up his sleeve president told Fox on Monday that he is quote seriously considering making Venezuela the 51st US state because there's quote 40 trillion dollars in oil there and quote Venezuela loves Trump isn't this the MAGA fever dream isn't he president because Joe Biden let in too many people from Venezuelan prisons where is Stephen Miller on this one I don't understand like I'm pretty sure every person in a Venezuelan prison would become an American he would make he would actually make an unprecedented number of Venezuelan prisoners quite an amnesty every person in the asylum the worst people in Venezuela would all become Americans it's a it's a good question but I wonder if just to play this out if this administration's Stephen Miller would make sure that they are second-class citizens who have to stay in Venezuela we know how they treat the citizens of Puerto Rico the Maduro's advocate here well they're not but they're not a member they're not there they don't have this is 51st state well also it doesn't matter you need congress exactly it doesn't matter considering oh you're considering it so am i you also need i mean i know that we don't care about international law or the un anymore but it's a flagrant violation of international law the people of venezuela would have to of course vote on this only a flagrant violation of an international law the venezuelans don't choose to to do it that's what i'm saying yeah yeah presumably you'd have to have some sort of vote on it that's what yeah which would be lovely that's quite a presumption also also boy creates a bunch of new interesting borders that presumably would also need walls for mexico to pay for i guess yeah yeah also he said that they love trump and i did look at some polling on this uh it was in the miami herald actually a couple weeks ago they did a big poll in venezuela in january 92 of venezuelans said they felt grateful to trump for capturing maduro that was like a couple days after after the capture and a few weeks ago it's down to 47 89 of venezuelans reject trump's continued backing of uh rodriguez and 78 think the country's on the wrong track under her so honestly honestly him losing support for deposing maduro that quickly it's actually very american to me it's like wow what have you done for me lately bitch i'm 100 sure that we've now officially thought about this longer and deeper than donald trump has but certainly there's an easier way to just steal all their oil than to make them another state yeah that's the end game by the way are we doing that now are we doing that now already the oil is not just like it's like in the amazon it's like very hard to access actually it's a real pain i know i only you know i was flirting with not talking about this at all but uh we saw what happened with greenland there's there's you know nato had exercises military exercises in greenland so we got pretty close on that one rafael lemkin just wanted to shout at us about international law over here yeah look at maul clooney over there i didn't know how to get the first one did you that was very very yeah save that shit for ben take it to the 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positive america is brought to you by cook unity you know how i feel about cook unity in fact i i put my order in uh just yesterday for next week and i was all excited because there's some some new meals that i can get and um had it last night had it all last week it's just great cook unity is the first chef-led meal delivery service that makes your meals in small batches inside local micro kitchens across the u.s not factory so every dish arrives with the kind of freshness you'd get at the restaurant itself meals from michelin starred chefs james beard winners and food network stars in fact when you're picking some of the meals there's a little there's sometimes a little sign at the top that says james beard winner and then you know that that's pretty good yeah that's how you know but also they there's there's different users rating it too yeah i like the rate i use the ratings i'm like oh it's getting to four five yeah absolutely but i've been using it for a while so now i have like 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fellow imperialist xi jinping when he takes his first trip to china uh since 2017 uh naturally uh trump will be rolling a few billionaires deep elon musk and tim cook are joining among others probably because of their diplomatic skills uh pause on that hey tim you're resigning you don't have to do this anymore tim cook you know what when i think tim cook just likes donald trump i think he's i really do i think anyone who thought tim cook was just like do i think tim cook's just a fan i figured he just liked fucking screens no fuck tim cook he sucks wow hope your iphone all right hope your apple cares yeah see you pride tim i guess okay anyway uh so tommy an asian diplomat in dc told politico they're worried that china might offer to help reopen the strait and exchange for american concessions on taiwan which i'm sure if trump read that would be like good idea how big of a deal would that be how concerned are you i mean i i first of all i'm just skeptical that china could actually force iran to reopen the strait and kind of go back to the before times because if you're like china buys 90 of iran's oil but still if you're around you're thinking look we get a couple a couple million worth of bitcoin after i've had every boat that goes by we find a new buyer for that oil like i don't know i i'm i'm skeptical i i asked um a china expert about this quote in politico and his take was like it would likely be more like how can you expect me to help you with the straight or her moves and not sell my iranian friends any more weapons when you're selling weapons to the taiwanese and giving them diplomatic cover um that could certainly happen and trump i think basically said today that taiwan arm sales are up for negotiation which is a huge deviation from traditional foreign policy where that's just not a thing that is discussed with the chinese it's you know congressionally mandated uh law so which he signed like right yeah well this is an interesting thing is like i've always assumed trump could give a shit about taiwan he cares insofar as losing access to their semiconductors would be an economic calamity right and it would be a historic it would be historic ego ego wound yeah but like he doesn't give a shit about freedom democracy human rights religious freedom hating communism all the traditional like things that once animated republicans on this so i assume he would trade away uh taiwan in a heartbeat for a good trade deal but even but she didn't ping like he doesn't need trump to be to make some historic shift even rhetorically like i think if he gets what he if he hears what he wants to hear behind the scenes that's more than enough like yeah you do what you got to do i'm not gonna go after you i mean so we'll see like all that said the trump administration has greenlit huge arm sales packages to taiwan now the the rub here is that those haven't been delivered yet uh they're like 20 billion behind in the delivery of those weapons but like people like marco rubio is making sure that the packages get off the ground and they're not going to be able to get them back so i think that's gonna be something that's gonna be something that's going to be authorized so i don't know and then they're gonna be talking about ai uh a lot as well apparently it seems like a a good outcome on ai seems like it could be um there's reports that they may open a channel of communication to make sure that like cold war style with like nuclear weapons like make sure there's she gives him a chatbot yeah this is me i talk like you want i i want those two going deep on ai i don't know no shit but i would i would like our country cooperating with china on uh on making sure that uh we are keeping the line open on uh ai yeah i talked to bernie about it was it last week feels like time flies but uh like there's obviously a space between like hamstringing whatever advantage we think we have and allowing to sort of unfettered development like there clearly would be some kind of there's a way to have an agreement about some kind of limits uh uh to prevent sort of catastrophic outcomes with ai and like that seems like exactly what we would want them to be working towards and they said they were going to talk about it so i do think that's generally sure that one that place is not ai the nukes the nuclear decision-making process no ai on that yeah and they have they have both agreed so far do that split that off but there's a lot more there's a lot that plenty of other problems that could end the world uh you know bioweapons and the rest of it um all right we haven't had a chance to talk about the uh shitty news we got on friday about virginia where the state supreme court overturned the referendum that voters just passed to create new congressional maps ahead of the midterms uh tommy and dan covered the news when it broke on the psa youtube channel i have to say we crushed it go go that's why you should go subscribe for free subscribe to podsaid america on youtube free if you want to see dan look at it and spicy on a friday okay he does most of the youtubes uh he pops the top oh he does topless youtube that friday yeah for friday under the table camera that's for that's for the subscribers talk about a polar coaster you're dumb you want to be nice anyway nobody put this in the comments on message box that's the only way dan will know this happened every shot we'd be fucking cool fucking narcs oh anyway what was i going to say oh yeah there's been some more developments on the potential redistricting fallout in Virginia and other states ahead of the midterms. Here's glass half empty. Nate Cohn, of course, calculated that Republicans could now lose the popular vote by more than two points and still keep control of the House. Then there's glass half full. Jonathan Martin is out with the column arguing that Republicans still might lose many of the newly drawn districts, which by definition will be more competitive. Amy Walter at Cook Political basically said the same thing. I think you guys probably talked about that on Friday, I imagine. I think she thinks that when all is said and done, the realistic gain is probably like five seats in a good scenario. Yeah, they could net like 11 or 12, but probably won't. Right. And that's because of the Democrats still winning those tough districts, not because they would still get to redraw them. And Jay Mart argues that they're handing Democrats a generational opportunity to mobilize outraged black voters. Case in point, Republican Representative Ralph Norman said on Monday about the state's lone Democratic congressman, Jim Clyburn, who's one of the longest serving black members in the House. Quote, Well, that's, you know, that is part of the point of representing one district in the state is you represent some people in the state and not all the people in the state. How are you guys processing the news generally and specifically on the question of whether this is all as bad as people think? And on that point, some breaking news while we were recording this, the U.S. Supreme Court did rule they lifted the injunction on Alabama that they had in place before now allowing them to pursue their their new maps. Shocking. See, those dickheads, they voted forward their new, you know, map proposal in the middle of a tornado warning. They just kept going. They're supposed to evacuate. They're like, no, no, no, stripping away black people's voting rights is more important to us. So what do you guys think? How bad? So I've seen a couple of different numbers, but basically, even with these new maps, if we have, you know, if we went by, let's say, four percent, right, nationally, the House, the House margin is four percent. Democrats still win the House. I get that's an important one. Just to put an exclamation point on that, because that was if if Louisiana, Alabama and South Carolina all go, which now seems like we are definitely that scenario. And if we won the popular vote by four in that scenario, Democrats still win the House. Right. And so I'm all for doing like a round of worry and recrimination. But I would say that in this political environment, the deeper the deeper problem would be not having confidence that against a president with this, this approval rating with both kind of on the politics and on the policy has been as bad a president as you could ever imagine, as destructive a force as you can ever imagine, enabled directly by Republicans who deserve to be held responsible for this president's misadventures. We ought to be able to beat that four percent. We should focus on that, because if we do that, then not only do we overcome their advantages in the gerrymander, we can win those Virginia seats that on the old map and we can actually prove that some of their maps were drawn too aggressively and make them make them. I'm more nervous the next time they look at doing this to try to redraw the maps because the Republican incumbents will start to think, oh, if there's even a slight wave, I could lose my seat. Yeah. I mean, Democrats won the House popular vote by eight in twenty eighteen. So if we're thinking and hoping and expecting this cycle to be better than even twenty eighteen, then we should have no problem in the House. And look, if we're not winning by eight, if we're only winning by four, then something else went wrong. Exactly. And more than redistricting. If we're if like you said, if after all this, Democrats win by four or five or six in this kind of year. And so worse than we did in twenty eighteen. Maybe they like the ballroom. Maybe they like five dollar gas. Yeah. And maybe people were like upset they had so much money left over after they filled up their tank. Yeah. People hate it. They hate having all the options with what to do with the money. But yeah. And I'd also say if this does galvanize people and we are able to win the House, suddenly you have people showing up in the Senate races that might not have otherwise. And it's sort of, you know, Republicans can be hoisted by their own petards. Yeah. Nate Cohen points out the challenge is the the median district House district now in the country will have voted for Trump by five and a half points. Sweet. So that means to win back the majority, you're winning a lot of not all, but you have to win some significant amount of seats that, you know, Trump won by five, five. Look, it's we've already been doing in every. Yeah. Right. Yeah. The swings from from twenty four to these specials average, I think, 13 points. You know, these are base elections. Democrats are already more motivated. Hopefully they will all learn about this, be angry about it, be even more motivated to turn out. And the good thing about Trump is he just things are as bad as they've ever been for him politically. And he's like, give me a shovel. I'm not done digging billion dollar ballroom, one point five trillion dollar Pentagon budget. Let me drive my stupid car on a fountain for some reason. He's like wasting his time on stupid shit. And look, the bigger long term problem here that will outlast Trump is the. Concentrated power of the state legislatures in red states, which they have because they have gerrymandered their state legislative districts in such a crazy fashion and in many cases, like in North Carolina, know that if the full state elects a Democrat as governor, which happens in places like North Carolina, Wisconsin, then the state legislature, which never has to worry about competitive elections or Republicans losing, just takes all the power away from the government. So like at some point, whatever Project 2029, whatever long term thing we're doing, like we have to figure out a way to win back power in some of these state legislatures in some of these southern states and other heavily Republican states that have gerrymandered themselves on a state level. Forget about the federal level into such a place. And we know from the Constitution, right, that it, you know, endows state legislatures with a lot of power when it comes with elections, certain inalienable rights like life like that. Yeah, but that is, you know, and on that note, if Democrats do control Virginia, I don't know if you guys saw the mini news cycle about Virginia. It was a mini news cycle. Yeah, it's over. It's like a mini war. We're talking about this morning. It's already over. Anyway, they were considering whether to change the retirement age for state Supreme Court justices. So to bring it down in order to get rid of all the state Supreme Court justices on the Virginia Supreme Court and appoint new ones in time to change the maps and then have the new democratically appointed Democratic Party Party appointed state, Democrat, state Supreme Court justices approve the new maps and in time for the midterms. First of all, first, they have to get a bunch of new they have to replace those justices because they've been retired by the government at the age of, I think, in decrepit 54. I mean, first of all, shout out for create points for creativity, creativity, local news, some local news outlet in Virginia floated this idea. And all of a sudden, we're talking about it. It's real dog. Another thing says a golden retriever can't be speaker of the house situation is without a doubt undemocratic. Yeah. Terrible precedent, the kind of thing that voters would absolutely despise in this climate absolutely would do it. Yeah, I mean, you know, the governor of Louisiana is just talking about on TV how he's like thrown out ballots. And he's like, it's not my fault. Yeah, I'm courts fault. Now you did cancel an election. Do we really think Abigail Spanberger, Governor Spanberger would have wanted to, you know, kind of hemorrhage all the political capital she built up with independent Republican voters doing this early on? I doubt it. I bet she has other things she wants to see Greg Sargent's piece in the New Republic on this one when it when it the reason. They're not doing it. So May 12, which is the day you're listening to this. That is the deadline set by the Department of Elections for having congressional maps in the system in time for early voting in June ahead of the August primary. So they couldn't pass the law to lower the retirement age to get rid of all the judges to appoint all the new judges to reach on the maps to send it back to court. Because the technology because because the technology is so old, it takes a lot of time to input new districts into the computers. I don't know what that meant. The computers. If we lose, fuck it. Are we putting like, are we putting the maps? Like, are we like a floppy drive? Yeah. Is it punch cards? Like, I don't know what we're doing. Like, how big is it? Is it a room? Does it overheat? Like, I don't understand. Can you get Claude? But the idea that we could potentially lose the house. That's Claude. Claude, can you help in Virginia? The computers. If called upon. Virginia. The Virginia government's computers are too slow to be a democracy. That's where the potential. Did Greg Sargent just call an old person by accident, like a Luddite who doesn't know? I think it was like the guy that runs the state Senate. He was the one that was saying the deadline. Yeah, I think. No, no. He got a real guy on the phone. No, I don't think Greg Sargent got got by like, hey, I don't even. He was talking to a real person. But that guy was like, hey, listen. It was Grok. Yeah. Love the idea. It was. Love your idea. Yeah. I mean, look, my my take on it was OK. Drawing bikinis on all the state legislature. On all the districts. All the districts have just magnificent, magnificent Yavos. The look at these cannons. Look at this. OK, it's just so we. Yeah. Virginia State Senate Majority Leader Scott Cervell. Yeah. I just mean, was he old and doesn't know computers? No, no, no, no. That's fair. But it's a good one. I'm calling him the Jim Comey of fucking Virginia. No, I don't. I don't. I don't think that's fair. No. Look, the thing about it is 86. That guy, he's the one who picked up the phone. Yeah, never. Don't make them. It could have been Spanberger. She didn't pick up the phone. Yeah. Well, smart. Yeah. No, that's why she's governor. Yeah. I'm not taking that fucking call. Oh, the crazy. I will get rid of all the judges because the democracy to save democracy. I've gotten rid of all the judges. They're worse than us. Everybody get behind me. We're going. Come on. Gavin Newsom's breathing down her neck. Yeah. Gavin Newsom. We could have. We could have put him on a raft and send him off to fucking Hawaii. That that that fucking institutional fucking fag. We could have had all democratic districts, all democratic districts. What kind of coward was he? Why is Gavin Newsom such a coward? Yeah. Put that out there. No, but just kidding. But if you told me right now that we there's no time issue, we don't know what the future holds. We can still win the House. We should fight to win the House. Yes, this made it harder. But the idea that if we If we knew with certainty that our only path that having some check on Trump was doing this. Was updating the machines. Was buying a new laptop. Was Tim Cook's software update. Updating the fucking, updating. He's not going to give me now. Updating to Sierra 15.2 so we can upload the map so the new judges that are young and vital, just the 32-year-old new Democratic judges could approve the map. I'd be like, okay, I get it. Maybe it's worth the risk award. Second year late, yeah. But everything can get worse. And look, I believe Republicans are leading us down all these escalatory paths all along the way, every step of the way. But this would be a new one and it would be on us. Yeah, big deal. Here's what I'm going to be upset about. They're expanding courts. No, here's what I'm going to be upset about Democrats is it is clear that any state where Democrats have control, either of the governorship or the governorship and ideally the state legislature, if we do not act to maximize the number of seats that we win between now and 28, because this cycle has clearly already passed us by. Which Virginia will have a chance to do. Right, which Virginia will have to do. If you decide to take a pass on that, yeah, then you're fucked. But like, I expect New York, Virginia and Colorado better get in the act. Minnesota can, I believe, Wisconsin can, Maryland I think can squeeze out another one at Illinois. But J.B. Pritzker probably won't be bulldozing the courthouses. You know, I'm guessing that's not going to be part of it. You know, the problem is the Virginia state constitution, commonwealth, that gives, you know, the legislature the authority to appoint the judges and gives them certain terms so that you get a bunch of Republican, it's actually probably fair for democracy. No, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It'd be great for the country, but. They can't, they can expand from seven to 11 seats as you need actually like a big, a super majority in the legislator, I think to prevent this exact scenario. Sounds like a good model for America, actually. Right, yeah, yeah. One more thing. But again, we have to do things as a country and not as individual states, which is why you need to eliminate gerrymandering as a country. Back in this quarter, what? Can you just make a decision? Well, I'm about to say, the U.S. Constitution does not require any specifics on expanding the number of justices in the Supreme Court. And that is just, a custom. And I'm, now, are we, have we ever, did the Biden administration ever finish that report? Whether we should do, I can't remember. Where were, where were we on that? Good point. Hey, where were we on that report? Yeah, you know. I think they did put it out. It's on Merrick Garland's to-do list. Oh, okay. Yeah. Pod Save America is brought to you by HIMSS. ED is way more common than most guys think. Millions of guys deal with it at some point, and that's exactly why HIMSS offers a straightforward way to handle it HIMSS connects you with licensed healthcare providers online, giving you simple access to legitimate ED treatment options from home. No awkward appointments, no pharmacy lines, just complete a simple online intake, and a provider will review your information to determine if treatment is right for you. 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Right now, the midterms are the biggest story in American politics, but however they go, the Democratic Party is going to have to do some serious soul-searching. Join us, Washington, D.C., November 5th through 7th at the second annual CrookedCon. It's going to be the Positive America hosts and some of the smartest people in politics. We're going to try to answer some big questions. Stuff like, if we won, how did we win? If we lost, how could we possibly have lost? And with 2028 around the corner, where do we go from here? If you believe in democracy, community, and fighting for the future, now's the time to grab your tickets to CrookedCon 2026. Head to CrookedCon.com to get your tickets now. All right. Anyway, why worry about 2026 when we can speculate about 2028? Nice. AOC made some news over the weekend when she sat down with our pal David Axelrod at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. Boy, was there an event that was just designed for us? Yeah. Axe at the IOP interviewing AOC. Good times. We reviewed the IOP tape and I'll tell you all about it. No? Yeah, pretty good. 2017 joke. Where she provided the terminally online among us plenty of content to engage with, as people have been over the last couple of days. There was one response in particular she gave to the age-old question of whether she's planning on running for president or Senate in 2028. We should talk about in which she answered by pivoting to a Washington Post editorial last week going after her for saying that it's impossible to become a billionaire without breaking rules and abusing workers or paying them not what they're worth. Take a listen. It was very clear this was a veiled threat, right? This was the elite saying if you want this job, you just stepped out of line. They assume that my ambition is positional. They assume that my ambition is a title or a seat. And my ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go, Senate, House seats, elected officials come and go, but single-payer health care is forever, a living wage is forever, workers' rights are forever, women's rights, all of that. Wish this president would come and go a little faster. Yeah. What did you guys think? I thought it was, in terms of non-answers to questions about are you going to run for president, that's one of the better ones I've heard. Yeah. They went to the crowd to a guy named Shuck Chumer, who was like, answer the question. Yeah, we've all heard a million politicians duck that question. And usually, it's some version of like, I'm not thinking about that right now. My priorities are on the state of Virginia and my calendar. It's like, she made it bigger. She made it about what she wanted to do, the people she wanted to help. I thought that was nice. It was well done. Now, the nitpicking response that we kind of hinted at is legislative accomplishments are more durable, but they're not forever. The Supreme Court overturned Roe versus Wade. But I think that's a little too literal. We all know the point she was trying to make here. I feel like we would have written the line forever. And then the policy nerds or the lawyers would have been like, more durable is more accurate. Which is correct. It would have been more accurate to say that. Almost forever. ACA is still hanging on. Nearly forever. Yeah, by the skin of its teeth. That's right. I did think it was completely wild to have a Washington Post editorial, not a column, but an entire editorial from the Ed Board, owned by-- Jeff Bezos-- being like, hey, stop picking on billionaires. It's so funny. Well, he's like, I'm going to read you the editorial board so that it focuses on free markets and not attacking success. And it's like, made promises kept, I guess. I don't know what that editorial board would do, yeah. I watched the whole thing, though. I'd never heard her talk about the specific experience of going from candidate to overnight celebrity. That was a really interesting story. And how just head-spinning and insane that was. And then the part about what-- did you hear the story about why she didn't go to med school? Like, her dad got sick, passed away, actually, and her mom started working on these jobs. I mean, it's not just like the bartending story that makes her feel like more of a human being than any other politician. It's the very recent past in economic hardship shit. I don't know. It's just a very compelling event. It was worth watching the full hour, I think. Yeah. I will say that the whole conversation about should billionaires exist, to me, is not the most productive use of time on either side of the debate. Because it's like, here's the thing about billionaires. I just want to make sure that they are taxed appropriately. I want to make sure that they can't use their influence and power to change the laws and have a bigger megaphone than everyone else in the country just because they're rich. But it seems like an academic dorm room debate to be like, should they exist? Should they not exist? If they exist, does that mean that they broke the law or not broke the law? I don't know why we need to be debating that in the first place. So I feel like it's-- I was thinking-- there was something about the online debate that was very frustrating to me. Because there's a lot of people talking past one another. There's a few aspects of the online debate that we can get into. But we can start with the billionaires one. And I was trying to figure out what was bugging me about it. And it is, I think, because you end up in this conversation in which the terms are moral and fuzzy, terms like earned, legitimate, deserved. And those are-- because it's moral language. And I actually think the debate over the kind of morality of who can amass vast sums of wealth and how they do it is not like-- I don't think it's-- I think it's more than academic. I think the way we have it is academic. But what was interesting to me is the response. Like, it is absurd that Jeff Bezos' paper is writing a defense of billionaires. And what was interesting about the defense is that they always land on celebrities like Taylor Swift and Seinfeld and people like-- Likeable people. Well, likeable people and people that-- like, you know, nobody had to pee in a bottle for Taylor Swift to write the music, right? Like, nobody had to sew sneakers with their little hands, right? So like, they-- Are you going to see that documentary about the Error Store? How many-- how many children were working those gears? Yeah, it seems like she had to pee in a fridge. She had to pee in a few bottles. Well, maybe she did. Maybe she did. Scooter Braun pissed himself a couple times. Yeah. Was that girl? But like-- but then-- so it's like, oh, because they really earned it. And what the kind of underlying defense of it is like, well, Taylor Swift, by dint of talent without exploitation, created more than a billion dollars worth of value. And like, I think I largely agree with that. But where I kind of-- but they are talking past the deeper argument, which is a system in which one person can accrue all that wealth. Like, even Taylor Swift, like, she's protected. by intellectual property law. She's been able to take her vehicles on the road the roads and all the rest. And it's not about like, like the, the righteousness or the morality to me. Like, that's just not what I care about. I think it matters a lot in politics. It's like a system in which those benefits accrue so much is both wrong on the front end and the back end, the incentive structure and power structure of the economy, and then the tax structure on the back end. And so whether billionaires should or should not exist, if a lot of them do, it is because the something is fundamentally broken in the system and they have the ability to exploit that wealth that has kind of also wrecked our politics. And like that to me is what makes it worth having. Yeah. And, and for me, that brings us to like, all right, so what are the policy considerations here? What are we going to, what rules and laws are we going to put into place to make sure that the system is more fair? How do we tax wealth? And it goes into regulations and lobbying and all the, and all the corruption stuff as well, right? There's, there's all that. But, and I also think, I think about Ruben Gallego and what he would always say after the 2024 election is that Democrats with Latino voters failed the big ass truck test and that people, people in this country want to be rich, working class people want to be rich. And do they all want to be billionaires? Do they think they can be billionaires? No, but they want to be wealthy. And what they just want is to like, have a, you know, fair playing field, whatever you want to call it, whatever cliche you want to bring out, but like people want to make a lot of money. And they also want to make sure that people who are absurdly rich, like pay their fair share in taxes and don't have more power and influence than everyone else. Yeah. And I, but I think like Democrats end up focusing on the tax side of it and not as much on like the deeper kind of, uh, like structures that mean individuals, like whether they have, whether they have a union or not, whether they have other protections, like let's say non-competes and things like that, all of which like kind of mean as, and as like more, like all the productivity gains are sort of going up to the top, which means the individual has less negotiating and bargaining power than they used to. And their dollar doesn't go as far because of all of our failures across housing and all the rest. And to me, like, those are the questions that I think Democrats struggle the most to answer. We have the least compelling answer on like up river from the taxes. Uh, one last thing we have to talk about, uh, gas prices, maybe four 50 a gallon, but transportation secretary and road rules, all-stars veteran, Sean Duffy really wants you to get out and take a road trip so much so that he and his wife and nine children have been apparently doing their own road trip over the last several months, which they've documented, uh, in a gauzy documentary series premiering soon on YouTube. Duffy's wife, Fox news host and fellow real world and road rule star, Rachel Campos Duffy. That's how that's where they met, uh, described the project as really wholesome, good family stuff. That's an antidote to the quote porn hub world we're living in the fuck kind of road trip to Chigo. Well, she was on real world road, real, I can never say real world road rules challenge. Yeah. It's, it's hard. Yeah. Anyway. Uh, here's a, here's, here's a clip. What a beautiful family. Hi, it's just Adam, Mr. President, president of the president of Trump. We're inviting you along with our family on the great American road trip. The Duffy's they've got tons of kids. I think they have like 11 kids, nine, nine or 11, something. Is there a difference before kid rock became kid rock? You're traveling all over the country. You're basically an arrow star van. Dad's real world house. If I never lived in this house, none of you would be here. Was that that looks so boring. Was that antidote to porn hub or no? Uh, well, I mean, he's got a lot of kids, so something's working. All right. That's all. That's so many. First of all, you can't road trip with nine kids. What are we driving? Is it a school bus? Cause that looked like a little car. So we just leaving them behind. It's a lot of also bullshit that they're really driving around the country. They're flying places and then driving around and filming it. Right. We assume. Yes. No, you might be wondering who paid for this. Massive boondoggle. Um, 501 C four called the great American road trip, uh, Inc, which says it fully funds its own efforts to celebrate and share America's story. And, uh, whose sponsors happen to be industries with a business in front of the department of transportation. So that's helpful. Um, and the department later confirmed that taxpayer dollars paid for the secretary's travel to a bunch of the stops, but not his families. And the whole thing is official business anyway, because he's the transportation secretary and he was doing some transportation there. I guess your job is driving. Right. Dude. Remember when the planes were all crashing and like Sean Duffy was the guy who was going to fix it. Well, I just watched the guy get hit on the runway in Denver the other day. I don't know. Maybe don't road trip around so much. Look, you know, this, first of all, this would bug me less if a, they didn't have a bunch of, uh, sponsors who have business in front of the department of transportation. And if they were Democrats, right, John? Well, no, I was going to say, I was actually going to say, uh, you know, you know, who fucking wouldn't stop talking about Pete Buttigieg and criticizing Pete and Chaston Rachel Campos Duffy. Rachel Campos Duffy. When they spent two months, when Pete took two months paternity leave because the twins were in the NICU. Yeah, they were. And she criticized him for that. And so it's like, okay, and now, now you're going to go do this. It's crazy to film a seven month reality show. They said that he like popped in for a day here and a day there, but it's like, whatever, if he wants to do it on his days off, it's not, none of these people are fucking doing a good job anyway in the cabinet. It's all a grift. I would say he's one guy, not my Sean. Yeah. He's one guy where it's like, dude, like you got like real legitimate ongoing like management problems at your department. Yeah. And if, and if butt rocket Duffy can't fix it, who can, you know, that's what his nickname was in the, in the real world. Um, but why was it that because he, uh, would run around the house streaking and mooning people. There's, there's, there's, there's the rocket. I remember he did a front moon, I think too, out a window in one of the episodes, but also on the show, Cyrus, Rachel, Rachel was, yeah. Rachel Campos is. Boston's a pretty good series. There's so much reality in his youth. I don't need that. There's too much reality TV. But rocket's a great name, but rocket shirt, Trump, Sean Duffy, Spencer Pratt torturing us in the mayoral race here. Like all these annoying reality people are just popping back up and ruining the 2026 Sean Duffy. I defended you as one of the lesser, uh, offenses in terms of the actual cabinet performance so far. And that remains the case. But this is tough. I also look as a rule, like if someone's producing their own reality show, it's just more boring. That's just how it goes. You got the only reality shows like, oh, it's wholesome. Like what would you think? That's why people are going to Bravo con. No, they want to watch these bitches throw shit, you know, and get into it. He was also a lumberjack. Yeah. We're going to chop some wood. That part of the thing. He was a lumberjack. Oh yeah. Wow. I didn't know that. That was a part of the real world Boston thing. Yeah. Huh? That's right. That was his, that was his shtick that, that and butt rocket. I don't remember butt rocket. I'll send you the video. I thought, I thought that was an old joke that was going to be like, I've said it too many times. Um, also flagging that he was briefly NASA administrator. He has remember that he wanted to keep the job, get some other rockets up there. You know, he's got the expertise. He has a history of he's worked with, he's worked with all kinds of rockets. Anyway, is that it? That's it. That's our show for today, everyone. Yeah. It was a good one. It was a gusher of a show. Dan and I are going to be back with a new show on Friday. So I want to check that out. I think we started, this is a new ending. This is a new end segment of Pots of America. I want to apologize for calling Gavin Newsom a woke. Uh, I want to apologize for suggesting that removing the gas tax would cause Chuck Schumer to come. Uh, I think I regret saying that or applying it. Now I read saying it. Oh, it was ass rocket. Sorry. Oh, well, same thing. I was just being family friendly pickup. Uh huh. Unlike me. You know, a real rump, a real rump rocket. That's something different. Speaking of Tim Cook going to China. What? Oh, fuck. End the show. We're out. Credits. Pots of America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Farrah Safari with Ree Cherlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kiril Pelleviv, David Tolles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Singel. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. Hey, everyone. My name is Elijah Cohn, and I've been a producer here at Crooked Media for a decade. I love making our shows with the smart, creative people who work here and hearing from all of you who listen every week. But the thing that I'm proudest of is that video we made of Yvette Gromaswamy grunting while hitting baseballs. No, wait, sorry. The thing I'm proudest of is the work we do through Vote Save America. See, we don't want our show to be a joke. We don't want to be a joke. We don't want our shows to only leave you feeling anxious about the state of the world. 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