Bernie vs. the Robots

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You can access reports, visual dashboards, forecasts, and AI insights to help you better understand your cash flow and make informed decisions about your business. Learn more at Xero.com. Welcome to Ponce of America. I'm Jon Lovett. Today on the show, I had a great conversation with Senator Bernie Sanders on AI super PACs and his journey from a kid on a kibbutz in Israel to a senator in Israel. To a senator trying to prevent weapon sales to Netanyahu and trying to save humanity from robots at the same time. And then you'll hear my conversation with our friend and journalist, Peter Hamby, founding partner of Puck News and host of the Powers That Be podcast on the Democratic shakeup in Maine, the governor's race in California, some news on the DNC, and how the left ought to confront political violence. But first, here's my conversation with Bernie. Senator Sanders, welcome back to the show. Good to be here. Good to be with you, Jon. So I watched your panel last night on the existential risks of AI. You had researchers from North America and China. It was a bracing experience. There's a, just for people that may not have caught it, MIT's Max Tegmark says, we'll be like animals in a zoo. And then another researcher named David Kruger says, zoos, most of us won't be so lucky. What did you take away? Why did you want to do this conversation? Thank you, Jon, for asking. Thank you for asking me about that. I am not a tech guy. But I'm sitting around and I read and I listen to people. And it is clear to me that AI and robotics are the most revolutionary technologies in the history of humanity. They are going to transform life for every man, woman, and child, certainly in our country and around the world. How the hell do we ignore that reality? Why is there not massive discussion about the impact of AI? For example, all right, who is pushing AI right now? Who's pushing AI and robotics? The richest guys in the world. Musk, Bezos, Ellison, Zuckerberg. What do you think they want? Do you think they're staying up nights worrying about your family? I doubt it. Number two, there are economists all over the place who estimate, no one knows exactly, tens and tens of millions of jobs are going to be lost. What happens to the people who lose the jobs? Think they'll automatically go out and get another job? That does not appear to be the case. We got kids hooked to AI bots for emotional support becoming increasingly isolated. Should we worry about that? Yeah, we should. Politically, I won't get into what it will mean to our democracy and politics in America. It's a big deal. But what last night, was about is having very knowledgeable people talking about the real possibility that AI will escape human control, become independent, do its own thing. And the likelihood that that could lead to catastrophic implications, including extinction. So my job is not to fearmonger, but it's to say, wait a second, you got Nobel Prize winners, Geoffrey Hinton saying this. Do you think we might want to take a, take a deep breath and think about where we go from here? Yeah, there's this strange fatalism about it. And I think about when we've gone through other big technological changes. You know, it wasn't assembly lines that put kids in factories. It was people that own the factories that made that decision. It's not, you know, it's not the technology itself that's being unleashed and hitting our kids and affecting our, you know, our media. It's the people who own the factories and who own those tools that are distributing them and profiting off of them. How do we, you know, there's this way in which this technology, it seems like magic and we kind of lose our senses. And one of the things that came out of your discussion last night is treat these, treat what this company's product, like you would a Toyota or a tortilla chip. So like what kind of regulations would you like to see if we sort of got our heads out of our asses here? Well, Tegmark, Dr. Tegmark from MIT said, look, you go to a San, which shop, right? You know what? It is regulated. The health department comes in to make sure the food you're eating is edible and none shop is clean. And yet the AI guys want to go forward with this revolutionary technology with no regulation. There is an enormous amount of work that has to be done. But John, the first thing that has to be done is that we have got to say, slow it down. Let us get our hands around it. The AI safety element about AI becoming independent of human control. You, Jisha, what do you do? Well, clearly you bring people from all over the world. Last night, as you know, we had scientists from China. Bring them together to sit down, to advise governments around the world about how we slow this down so we don't lose control of the technology. In terms of economics, if millions and millions of workers lose their jobs, what do we do? Well, you know, if we're somewhat extending unemployment, ain't going to be good enough. We're going to have to be thinking about a whole new social contract, et cetera, et cetera. This is all that I'm saying here. This is a big, big deal. Congress is way behind where it should be. We need some serious discussion. So you had Chinese voices as part of this conversation. Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, posted a criticism of you saying that the real threat is letting any nation other than the United States set the global standard. What's your response to that criticism? Right. Mr. Besson, the billionaire, and the Trump administration, billionaires working with Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, and a host of other billionaires who dominate AI. They're not a threat. Hey, we should all trust them because they have the betterment of the American people. Well, forgive me, I don't accept that at all. So I think in China, they are smart enough. Look, this gets me thinking about the nuclear arms race. You had a conservative Republican named Ronald Reagan sitting down with Gorbachev, then the premier of the Soviet Union, talking about the reality that a nuclear war would not be good for the Soviet Union, not be good for the United States. They worked together on a nuclear arms treaty. You know what? The world, human race losing control over AI ain't good for China, ain't good for America, ain't good for the world. Of course, we've got to work together. So as part of this, you put forward, you propose a moratorium on new data centers until we have these kinds of safeguards in place. Your colleague, Senator Mark Warner, who's a pretty, I think, a mild-mannered guy, called it idiocy, because he's worried about losing this race to China. And I don't think he is, you know, he's not Trump. He's not Zuckerberg. What do you say to that criticism for people who both agree there might need to, that there do need to be safeguards, but also as much as we worry about these billionaires having so much sway, it would be worse if control of this technology by China surpassed us. This is not a race with, this is a question of scientists sitting down and figuring out how we can prevent this technology from escaping human control with calamitous impact. I cannot believe that any sane person would be against that. That's my view. So this is not, you know, we got to get, you can compete with China all you want, but we have got to do everything that we can to prevent what some scientists think is a very dangerous situation. Yeah, I guess I agree with that, but it's almost like these are two separate questions, right? Because if we were to slow down and China didn't slow down, it's not preventing this. Look, the moratorium is not the end. All that I want from the moratorium is to give up. You know, maybe I'm crazy, John. Maybe I am. I know one or two people have told me about it, including my wife. If scientists who are Nobel Prize winners, guys who've gotten the Turing Award, which is the major award given to, people in computer science, if they say to you, that humanity is in danger. Do you think you might want to do something about it or am I missing something? You tell me. So, no, I that the percentages are also someone's. Oh, there's only a 10 percent chance humanity is destroyed as well. I don't like those odds. Only a 10 percent chance. John, I know I'm with you. This is the point. The point is that what? Again, either I'm nuts or a 10 percent chance. Yeah, that the whole world might be destroyed. Yeah, I think we might want to get to work to prevent that. And this is preventable, by the way. It's nothing to do with competing against China coming together to prevent what might be a catastrophe. Right. It seems like that, like, you know, you mentioned this in the past and last night, you know, President Trump and the leader of China, Xi, they're going to meet and AI may be part of what they're discussing. What do you hope? What do you hope would come out of that kind of conversation? I was glad to see that. The Wall Street Journal reported that that will be part of their agenda. And that's a very positive thing. And I hope that they sit down and say, look, your scientists in the United States, scientists in China agree this is a danger. It works to nobody's advantage to allow this to happen. OK, not China, not the United States. Bring together the scientific community, develop some protocols to prevent that. You don't want a technology that can escape human control. Can we bring that about? We can, but you're going to have to have people from China, the United States, other countries working on something which would eventually then, I suspect, and a little bit over my head here, you know, become something like an international treaty. Right. And then and then in between that, right, there's so there's the kind of broader threat of this technology escaping our control. But in between there and now there's the ways in which kids are getting. There's the ways in which kids are getting sucked into this technology. There's the ways it's affecting our media. And it does seem as though the industry would benefit from a set of regulations that allow them to compete on non-evil aspects of the technology and continue to develop and grow and improve the technology in ways that are beneficial to people rather than these sort of toxic and parasitic implications. Let's get to another issue and to ask, you know, this is not because members of Congress are dumb or don't know what's going on. This has a lot to do with the power and the financial resources of A.I. and their super PACs. We're talking about many, many, many hundreds of millions of dollars coming into the midterm elections right now. So you're running for Congress, OK, and you had a kid and you worried about the impact of A.I. You think you're going to stand up and say, well, you know, I think we need some sensible regulations here. And then the industry says, really? Well, I guess what? I've got to. The $10 million check going in to negative ads against you, which takes us, John, from the dangers of A.I. to a corrupt campaign finance system which is undermining American democracy. So I talked to Senator Chris Murphy about this recently, and he's worried about this, too, that the Democrats won't draw an effective contrast with Republicans. You know, Trump and the Republicans, they forget sensible regulations. They they even try to prevent state regulations. So they try to take us in the other direction. But but what Murphy was worried about is because there's this sort of Damocles of all this cash hanging over Democrats heads that people will not take a strong stand. What what do you say to Democrats who worried about that? Well, Chris, what Chris told you is right. But it speaks to the need for us to be honest about where we are as a country. Look, all of us are concerned about Trump's pathological lying, his attempt to undermine democracy. In so many ways. I think every Democrat on an independent caucuses with the Democrats agrees with that. But there is another threat to democracy, and that is the power of big money over the political process. And that is why I circulated a letter with a number of my colleagues saying that while we work, what we must work to overturn this disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision which allows billionaires to spend as much money as they want to buy elections, at the very least, Democrats within Democratic primaries, their presidential primaries, as well as congressional and other primaries, got to get super PAC money out of those primaries. Yeah, no, you sent that letter this week. It actually follows a letter you sent about a year ago. This was to Senator Schumer, to Ken Martin, the head of the DNC. Basically, you know, let's first where super PACs inside of our own primaries and. You know, Ken Martin responded by saying he's in spirit behind it, but that that his hands seem to be tied. What is the reluctance, do you think, of just fully embracing this kind of and he's smiling? All right, John, what's happening? Tell me. It's not it's not a very hard question to answer. What do you think the answer is? What do you think the establishment Democratic establishment is doing right now as we speak, hustling this money? Oh, they're right. That's right. OK. You know, they are hustling money from AI industry, they're hustling money from APAC, hustling money from crypto and from other special interests. All right. They got that money and they use what they do with it, what they do. But this is really insidious. And I think progressives increasingly understand that that money often, which comes, by the way, from Trumpers, Republicans is going to be used against progressives and decent people who are running in primaries. 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 Crooked Con. It's going to be the Posse of 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 Crooked Con 2026. Head to crookedcon.com to get your tickets now. X-E-R-O. Xero brings accounting, payments, payroll and analytics together in one platform, giving you a clear picture of your business. With reports, visual dashboards, forecasts and AI insights, Xero can help you better understand your cash flow and what's coming in and going out. It's a simple but powerful platform built for small business owners and designed to make managing your business finances easier from day one. Join 5 million customers worldwide who use Xero to manage their finances. 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. We're going to try to answer some big questions. Stuff like, if we won, how did we win? And with 2028 around the corner, we're going to have a great time. If you believe in democracy, community, and fighting for the future, now's the time to grab your tickets to Crooked Con 2026. That's X-E-R-O. Xero is a platform built for small business owners that brings accountability to your business. So, I wanted to go back to just, I'm glad we talked about the Super PAC money from AI. But I do want to talk about the economic implications because that's the other part of this existential threat. You've talked about attention. You've talked about tax on companies that get rid of jobs for automation or for robots. But to the point of the scale of this problem, if really 100 million jobs could potentially be at risk, to your point, we'd have to think about a much different social compact. Right now, if a company hires a worker, they pay payroll taxes. They are charged money for every worker on the books. Right? And we've actually shifted the burden of taxes towards that. We've shifted the burden towards income and towards labor and away from corporate income. If a company buys a machine to do that job, according to our tax code, you can not only pay no taxes on it, you get a depreciation, you get a credit. So, any, the proposal you have is a sort of mitigation, but the whole code is tilted against human beings. Look, I think, you know, we have not yet, although we, our main thrust right now is to say, slow it down so we can get our hands around all of this. And I just had a meeting today with, my staff to start working on what a sensible solution would be. And it ain't easy stuff because what we're dealing with is unprecedented problems. But to your point, this, in my view, goes beyond saying, oh, we got to extend unemployment benefits. Fine. Yeah, we need what's called a trade adjustment assistance. If you lose your job to AI, we'll retrain you. Fine. It goes a lot deeper than that because this technological revolution is so sweeping that what we need to be talking about is a new social contract. All right. It's not saying, hey, you lose your job, you can get unemployment. Great. We need to go a lot deeper than that because you may never get another job. You're a 50-year-old truck driver today and you're replaced by a driverless vehicle. Well, you're going to go out and get a job. It's not like you can walk down the street and get another job. That job may not be there. So we need to think really in new ways as to how we address these crises. Yeah. You know, I'm talking to you in California and we live in a kind of signal example of this because we are in the what the fifth, fourth largest economy in the world, driven primarily from, you know, a half dozen companies in Silicon Valley that are growing exponentially, but don't hire, you know, they're not hiring at a rate to match the scale of their growth. And if we have a tax code in which we've lowered the rate, right, we basically have said we our tax code says we would rather a company be gigantic and employ no one than be kind of profitable while employing hundreds of thousands of people. That is what our tax code currently prefers. Let me throw something else out to you. And again, the truth is nobody knows exactly what is going to happen. Honest people have differences of opinion. It's the nature of the job loss. How quickly it will occur, et cetera. But if, underlined if, tens of millions of people lose their jobs, they're not paying any taxes at all, are they? How are you going to sustain programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, et cetera, et cetera? How are you going to sustain government? You know, so, you know, these are profound questions that we've got to address. But bottom line is, I think we're talking about a new social compact. How do we make sure this revolutionary technology improves human life economically, socially, psychologically and, of course, prevents any kind of catastrophe? Switching gears in April of last year, only 15 Democrats voted with your resolution to block weapons sales to Israel. Now, two weeks ago, 40 Democrats joined you. There is a profound shift happening. Obviously, that is. It's driven by the ways in which Israel has conducted its military campaign in Gaza, the way it has been expanding settlements, its incursion into Lebanon. What are you observing about this shift in Democratic politics among your colleagues? And what does it tell you about where we're heading? What it tells me, and by the way, it is not just Democrats, it's Republicans as well. And I think you're going to see movement. In the direction you described among Republicans in the not too distant future. Look, we have an economy in which 60% of our people live in paycheck to paycheck. People are hurting, can't afford health care, housing, educating their kids, child care, et cetera. Then they look up and they see that President Trump wants to provide billions of dollars of military aid to the extremist Netanyahu government in Israel. And they look and they say, really? Well, what has this government done? And we all know that Hamas is a terrorist organization that attacked Israel in a horrible way, killing 1,200 people. Israel had a right to respond, but they did not have a right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people. 2.2 million people in the area killed 72,000 of them, mostly women, children, and the elderly. Injured something like 170,000. That's more than 10% of the population killed or wounded, wiped out almost the entire infrastructure. And what people, including myself, I think have concluded. This is a genocidal attack. So people are looking. Then they say, well, that's bad. Why are we giving money to a government that does that? And then we wake up a few months ago and Israel has gotten Netanyahu, after 40 years of effort, Netanyahu finally found a president who is willing to go to war against Iran, tax Iran in the middle of the night. Great. We're off to a good start. Great. We're off to another war. Price of gas is now going up. We're killing schoolchildren in Iran. Israel now is in Lebanon displacing over a million people, killing bombing civilian neighborhoods. As you indicated in the West Bank, like vigilantes now killing Palestinians, destroying farms, destroying homes. Who in their right mind wants to continue to fund a government that does that? And the polls tell us that. And Democrats look at the polls and they say, I go home, I hold a town meeting. Everybody says, why the hell are you funding Netanyahu's government? So they're beginning to catch on. And as you indicated, more and more now we have 40 out of 47 members of the caucus who are saying no more. Yeah, I mean, this has been an issue in primaries across the country right now that are playing out today. Janet Mill suspended her campaign, which means that Graham Plattner will be the nominee. He's somebody that's been outspoken about this. What did you have any reaction to what what happened in Maine? Yeah, I do. And I got to tell you, John, you know, I've been all over the country. And you have to trust me on this. But whenever I talk about what was going on in Gaza, just people would stand up and, you know, really express their feelings. This is a very emotional issue for people all over this country who do not want to be complicit in killing women and children and destroying all of Gaza. So I think, you know, what Plattner is doing, he has run a brilliant campaign, to my mind, not dissimilar. Maine is obviously a very rural state, but not radically dissimilar from what Mamdani did in New York City, which is clearly the largest city in America. What did they do? They both have taken, brought forth an agenda that is prepared to take on the oligarchs and the big money interests. Nobody or very few people in America think that it's okay that the top 1% now owns more wealth than the bottom 93%, or that Elon Musk himself owns more wealth than the bottom 53% of American households. I think that makes sense. So Mamdani talked about it. That's what Plattner is talking about. And they have an agenda that speaks to the needs of working people, health care for all, education for all, etc., etc. So I see that happening not just in New York City and Maine, I see it happening in communities all over this country. Tomorrow, as a matter of fact, tomorrow we'll be in Ohio, then I'll be in Minnesota, then I'll be in Detroit with Abdul El-Sayed in Detroit, Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota, Mr. Poindexter, Brian Poindexter in Ohio. People now are raising these issues. Working class people are sick and tired of the greed of the big money interests. They want a government that represents all of us, not just a few. So you spent time in Israel as a young man on a kibbutz. You've talked about being part of the Jewish tradition of social justice. A few years ago, you wrote about this. You said your pride and admiration for Israel lives alongside your support for Palestinian freedom and independence. What do you say to people, especially younger Jewish people, who find it impossible to feel any pride or admiration for an Israel that does not uphold Jewish values? Well, look, right now you know that I'm in Israel, but I don't like, and Netanyahu pushes this all of the time, that if you are critical of the horrific policies of the Netanyahu government, you are somehow an anti-Semite. And that is totally absurd. As it happens, my father's family was kind of wiped out in Poland by Hitler. I am not an anti-Semite. And in fact, anti-Semitism is a growing and serious problem all over the world. What has gone on, for whatever reason that I am not the most knowledgeable guy in the world on, Israel over the last number of years has become gone from being a moderate liberal type country to a right-wing extremist country in which, by the way, Netanyahu is not even the worst. I mean, you're talking about guys that are really kind of racist, guys who really want expansionism. So we have got to oppose that government. And hopefully the day will come when Israel will elect people who understand that we need to, they need to be working with their neighbors and not just simply trying to dominate them in terrible ways. What do you say to, to younger people, especially younger Jews who now feel, you know, they, they, they grew up seeing an Israel led by Netanyahu. They've watched these atrocities unfold over the last few years, and it's led them to believe the problem just isn't Benjamin Netanyahu, that there's something fundamentally wrong about the project of Israel. I don't have a magical answer to that right now, but right now what I am trying to do is to make sure that the United States government is not complicit in the horrific acts of the Netanyahu government. We can talk about, you know, where we go from there, but that's where I am right now. What do you think if you saw that 20-something Bernie Sanders on a kibbutz and you said, hey, 60 years from now, I'm going to be fighting in the Senate against the robots? Well, it's kind of, and by the way, I will tell you when I was, you know, I don't know how much you know about the history of the kibbutzim formed by, you know, Jews who left the anti-Semitism of Europe. When I was, these were very, very progressive entities. Women, you know, it was democratically owned and controlled. Women had rights that they didn't have in the United States, were leaders in a way that was not true. Older people were playing an active role. It was an interesting and novel model, which I happen to believe in. But obviously that is not what Israel, Israel is about today. And going from where I was as a kid to being a United States Senator dealing with these issues, it's been a long journey to say the least. Yeah. Senator Sanders, thanks for your time. Good to talk to you. Thank you, John. Thanks to Senator Sanders for joining us. When we come back, I talk to Peter Hamby. Right now, the midterms are the biggest story in American politics, but wherever they go, the Democratic Party is going to have to do some serious soul searching. Head to crookedcon.com. To get your tickets now. It was going to rival anything that was already built, and that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page. That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day. Through what Allen's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world. And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night. To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing, it's a beautiful thing. With the fans' experience, it's incredible. It gave me a lot of pride. AT&T, connecting fans to what they love. Connecting changes everything. AT&T. That's X-E-R-O. You can access reports, visual dashboards, forecasts, and AI insights to help you better understand your cash flow. And make informed decisions about your business. This is Matt Rogers from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. Okay, we've been talking about QB Mail for a minute now, Bow. And wow, the feedback we're getting. I mean, so many of y'all love this stuff. You're stopping us in the street going, I love QB. And if you're thinking, wait, what is QB? Uh, do you not have the internet? It's the OG Japanese. Mayonnaise. The one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. Once you know it, you start seeing it everywhere. People ask what makes it different from basic mayo. Well, the answer, egg yolks. QB is made with egg yolks only, giving it this incredibly rich umami flavor that elevates everything. Burgers, fries, sandwiches, chicken, noodles. Chefs use it. Restaurants use it. People who really love food and flavor use it. Whatever you're eating, QB it. So if you haven't tried QB yet. Find the bottle with the red cap and see what everyone's talking about. You'll understand. QB, the original Japanese mayonnaise. Peter, welcome back to the pod. Good to see you. Good to see you, Jon. All right. So I want to start with your piece on political violence. Uh, you wrote, "Democratic elected and other party leaders vehemently condemn political violence all the time, but many on the left have become too comfortable celebrating violence or bad luck that befalls their Trumpian enemies. They are too loose with their language, too cozy with conspiracies that can lead to a dark place." Now, you're very clear in this piece, which you wrote after the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, very clear about the ways in which the right looks past Trump's calls to violence, exploits tragedies to target the left, but even still, I am sure there are people hearing this and thinking the most powerful person on the earth encouraged an insurrection, seeks to jail his enemies, celebrates the deaths of people like Robert Mueller and Rob Reiner. And you're talking about random people on the internet. So what are you seeing and why do you think it's important? I think the phrase "random people on the internet" actually matters, first of all. And I do want to say thank you for saying that, acknowledging that part of the piece, because I felt like I wrote 10 paragraphs about Caroline Leavitt mischaracterizing or lying about how various people, Hakeem Jeffries, used terms like "warfare," quote unquote, to refer to, refer to redistricting, the redistricting wars. I mean, we've both been in politics for a long time. People use words like "warfare," quote unquote, to refer to redistricting, the redistricting wars. People use terms like combat or murder, suicide or just violent martial terms. This comes up in sports commentary all the time. Shakespeare was familiar with metaphor as well. And I consider Hakeem Jeffries the Shakespeare of people that do the alphabet. Yeah, I do too. I consider him an ass of people who do the alphabet. He would like that reference. I think that the random people on the internet thing matters. And I thought about this with John Favreau, other John, who after Charlie Kirk was killed, noticed, yes, random people on the internet, random TikTokers celebrating his death. And even as I was walking in here, Taylor Lorenz posted a tweet or maybe not a tweet, maybe a blue sky or a thread that people are using the sound of Charlie Kirk getting shot, the gunshot, to do quick cut edits of outfit changes. And that just, again, diminishes, I think, what happened. And like you don't have to like Charlie Kirk. I don't – this is the other thing, John. I know coming in here, like this is a founding principle of Crooked Media. And I feel like this came from John Lovett brain, which is the DC media's tendency to both sides thing. That is not me. And for the people listening, I'm not that journalist. But I was there in the ballroom. And part of it, too, is I've read polls, right? Like, in the first Trump term, obviously, in the Obama years, you know, people blamed Trump and Republicans for the crazy for the conspiracy theories. Voters did. NPR had a poll, I think, in 2017 saying 70% of voters blame Trump and Republicans for the toxicity in our politics. And, you know, there was a moral and intellectual high ground, I think, in the Democratic Party. There hasn't been widespread political violence coming from the left since the 70s with the Weather Underground, Black Panthers, et cetera. There's obviously been anti-government violence. You've got like black bloc Antifa types and whatever. But there has been an uptick in partisan motivated, not just violence, but plots. There was somebody who showed up at the Capitol last year, wanting to kill Pete Hegseth. That person was arrested. There's obviously two of the three assassins, attempted assassins on Donald Trump sounded like they had left leaning political views. And again, back to the random people on internet thing. It's not coming from democratic politicians. It's not. It's really not. Now, there's like jasmine crockett posted conspiracy theory the other day that the attack on the washington hilton might have been a false flag or whatever the problem is the diminishing power of people like me and the mainstream press and the diminishing ability of normie politicians to you know get out there in the information ecosystem and have people hear them that stuff is being replaced just by noise and slop on the internet and it does seem like to me and i think the evidence in the polling bears this out that you know liberals and progressives uh and by the way some of these people might just be fake bots they might be they might you know jd vance likes to totally and the right completely exploit you know even the fringiest thing that you found in the internet and pretend it's like the mainstream view of the democratic party and i make clear in the piece as you read democrats aren't the ones saying this it is though kind of ambient on the internet and i think i actually wanted to ask you about this the michelle obama they you know when they go low we go high thing that's that feels dead and gone and like millennial cringe at this point in the second trump term there has it has been celebrated that like we're going to fight dirty uh it's and i'm not i'm not trying to be civility police either dude at all but like people just feel like okay we're going to play on their terms get in their sandbox we're going to throw punches, call names, and then, you know, then maybe, maybe you end up with a guy who's got a screw loose, who hears all this stuff on the internet and thinks, I've got to go kill in the White House, I just think that it's easier to hear hear the crazy stuff that the algorithms have poured gasoline on than it ever was. And you just hear it more on the left than I think you used to. Yeah, it's like there's so many parts that you have to tease out, right? And there's a big distinction. It isn't coming from the vast majority of Democratic politicians, right? And there is just a distinction between how responsible elected Republicans are, including the president, versus how responsible elected Democrats are. Even this week, we saw what is obviously a ridiculous prosecution of James Comey, the number of Republicans refusing to criticize that or openly embracing that. Members of Congress saying, well, look at all the other bad things Jim Comey did, right? It is distinct from political violence, but embracing the jailing of your political enemies on specious reasons is adjacent to a politics in which people can celebrate political violence. But the challenge is most Americans deplore political violence. All the mainstream politicians on the left can deplore political violence. 95% of people say the right thing. Then the next day, 100% of people spend the day talking about what the 5% said and how heinous it is and how it's actually justified and all the rest. You know, we at Crooked Media, I feel like we take some flack from all directions for this, but we obviously denounce Republicans when they try to exploit political violence. We also try to go after what we see people, when we see people justifying it. John, as you mentioned, did that as well in the piece. But if everybody but a few are doing the right thing, but we end up talking about what the wrong thing is, like, I don't know what the right thing, how do you respond in a media environment like that in which we try to model best behavior, the Democrats say the right thing, but you have Republicans that are going to pull out the worst comments from the internet. You have an algorithm that's going to pull out the worst comments from the internet. You have an algorithm that's going to elevate the most exciting and morally depraved comments. Like, what do we do? Okay, I agree. There's a problem. What do we do? Yeah. Well, that's getting you to say that. I know, I mean, you're a sophisticated thinker about this stuff. So it is important to say that there was a problem. And I want to say, this isn't just my feelings. This is me being a hack political journalist. I should point out, also in the piece, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which has measured this and has kept track of incidents, 2025 was the first year ever that left-wing violence and or plots surpassed right-wing violence and or plots. Say, that's only eight plots. That's only eight plots. And this is another thing I need to say. Again, like the left was, there was no violence, no plots for like 30 years. Most of the actual deaths from political violence in this country over the last 30 years have come from right-wing political violence. And we're talking like in the hundreds. Okay. And so, yes, the baseline for Democrats and the left, whatever the coalition is, though, it just has ticked up. And I think you're though, right, John, I remember when I worked at CNN back when you were in the White House in the 2010s, there was this like, do you remember watching like cable news in that era? And CNN, where I worked or wherever, like a random Republican state legislator in Missouri would say something loony about abortion or something racist about Obama. And we would all elevate it and be like, this is a example of the Republican Party being nuts. And while the Republican Party does have a tendency to accommodate, and by the way, this is just history, you know, the birchers and the conspiracy theorists and whatever, you'd hear from someone on Capitol Hill, like someone from like John Thune's office, like, why the fuck are you talking about this random guy in Missouri? And so, that is a kind of thing that kind of always has. By the way, since then, that random state senator in Missouri is now like probably on Capitol Hill in the mainstream of the Republican Party. I just think it is what you guys do. It's that you have to call it out and say there's no room for it. And the other thing we're talking about isn't just violence. It is the conspiracy theorizing. And those two are not the same, but they are connected. You know, the people who I think tend to commit acts of violence, they're not the same. They're not the same. They're not in the name of politics, like seize on conspiracy theories. They do. And I noticed this on Snapchat when I put I work at Snap and like posted on Snap. I had a bunch of people in my comments being like fake stage, whatever. It's not we don't know that those people are even Democrats. They could just be some teenager like on like sitting in their basement somewhere. But there this has been happening again. This gets to the higher intellectual standard that I think Democrats themselves to. In Obama's term, at some point, some press conference in the tansuit era might have been like Ed Henry. It was like in the White House briefing room. And there was the latest outrage of the day, whatever somebody wanted Obama to be outraged about. I think it was Ed Henry said, you know, Mr. President, why are you more outraged? And I tried to look this up before coming and I couldn't find it. Someone listening, please find it's probably in Favreau's encyclopedic brain. But Obama looks at him and goes, because I haven't read the briefs. And that was Obama being a lawyer. But it was also just a smart person who hewed closely to facts and didn't want to like spout off on something where he didn't like know the baseline information. And we've come a long way on the Internet since then. Like social media has rampantly changed how people's instincts when it comes to responding, gathering facts. And, you know, I think that's hurt everybody. It's hurt everybody. I just think that you see it more now on the left than you used to. I sting out that article with a quote from Isaac Asimov, who was a became a big Democrat later in his life, hated Nixon, like just a raging Democrat. And he said, like the anti intellectual strain in this country was always on the right. And liberals would fight ignorance with knowledge. And conservatives would fight knowledge with ignorance. There's a lot more ignorance out there, man. And I think that's a big part of the reason why I'm here. I think that's a big part of the reason why I'm here. I'm a big fan on the left now. I'm sorry. There just is. And like maybe I'm just being idealistic about, you know, the great thinkers of the American left and what they cared about compared to the right. But it just feels like the fever swamps of the Internet are just grabbing otherwise normal people and yanking them in. And it's depressing to me. Yeah, there I I don't know. It's hard not, you know, you know, to be nostalgic for how we used to have information. I do. I look, I see it, too. And I do think it's more than just a few random people. There is something that has happened. And it isn't coming from the politicians. I do think there's a bigger shift. And I think it's important, as you pointed out, that political violence in our country still is very, very rare. And so I feel like there's these two ideas you have to have in your mind at the same time. One being that we can't allow acts of violence by individuals who are united, regardless of ideology, by a willingness to do violence. Right. That's the most important thing about a mass shooter, about the person that shot Charlie Kirk, this person, the person that shot at Gabby Giffords. Right. That they are willing to go to this extreme and do violence. And sometimes their rationales are cogent. Sometimes their rationales are nonsense. It's the act of violence that unites them. And there's something rising, whether it's people willing to shoot up a school, people wanting to go out of a blaze of glory. And we cannot arrange our society around that. We can't allow that to warp our politics. Too much because it is so rare in our society. But at the same time, like it does seem to be like an emergent property of the amount of vitriol, hate, lack of empathy, cruelty on the Internet and beyond. I think that Trump is both a cause of and a symptom of. And I and it's and I struggle with how you think about those two things. But the comfort that people have, right, whether it's the shooting of the United Health Care CEO or the the the the the killing of Charlie Kirk, that is morally wrong before you even get to whether it will encourage future violence. It said something really ugly about our politics and our culture. And I do think that that is real. Yeah. So that that's like that's the thing I struggle with. There's something else interesting. I just this is an obvious thought, but I just thought about it. When you think about Luigi, you think about the Butler shooter. We don't know his politics. And the guy from the Hilton, all these people and the Charlie Kirk shooter are young. And like, obviously, there's the the idea of the school shooter and the serial killer and the lone wolf killer out there tend to be white men. But all of these examples are people who grew up online. We grew up online. But like in middle school and high school, I just had AOL. Like these people grew up phones in their pockets. And so that they have so many more touch points to dark places on the internet, but in dark places, that's sort of what I'm talking about. It's that, you know, like, Jennifer Welch on the I've had a podcast the other day was entertaining these conspiracy theories about how Trump was, like, this was a false flag so that he could develop ballroom. I'm not saying she's spreading hate speech. But like, that's one of the ascendant podcasters on the left. Like, I just there aren't any real epistemological boundaries, I feel like, at this point. And you can be a liberal and listen jennifer welch or this or go on a twitch stream or whatever um but all of those young people like you said i'm not being nostalgic for an old media time necessarily i'm just like i call myself a student of media history but they don't know a time of like monoculture walter karnkite anything there's no shared facts and like all you know it just the conspiracy depresses me yeah like the conspiracy theory embrace that we see across the board i do think there's something about some people think it's just fun by the way like i have friends who are like conspiracy theories are fun yeah there's something about the way in which the internet encourages you that that we're all being encouraged to embrace easy and quick comfort in across our lives and social media does that right like you don't have to have any discipline of attention whatsoever you can just get get a jolt of something fun something funny something outrageous whatever get a quick like hit of an endorphin or an emotion uh you don't have to leave the house to see a movie you can just stay in bed whatever you can have food come to your house like we have we're very we're easy easy to satisfy discomfort uncomfortable with any kind of discomfort and uh when there's something horrible that happens like the killing of charlie kirk in which you i think morally are called to denounce the killing of someone you found reprehensible that tiny bit of friction that tiny bit of discomfort the whole there's a whole algorithm that's telling you you don't have to feel that anymore and the same thing with someone trying to to assassinate donald trump because of views you might agree with wouldn't it be nice if their way you didn't have to sit with that for even a moment well guess what there is because it turns out maybe it was staged and we live in a crazy world in which there were legitimate news stories that in hungary trump's ally there was a plan to stage an assassination attempt to help uh victor orban in the final days of the election that is that is real reporting about something real that very well could have happened in the world there's also a conspiracy theory that trump wouldn't leave office if he lost of course of course and there was a conspiracy theory that a powerful cabal of of uh abusers were protecting jeffrey epstein like a lot of a lot of people have uh come to believe that conspiracy theories had some merit and the truth is the great conspiracy theories always do begin with a kernel of truth in them or a lot of the great ones do like so i understand like where that impulse comes from and i understand how the internet feeds it yeah i just think that um it is incumbent upon democratic politicians to try so hard to keep the what was ernie in the trash can like whatever just like push push it down like mark kelly came out with the was that is oscar was the oscar right bernie's or burton they're just a happy gay couple yeah sorry no offense the happy gay no um mark kelly put out i mean who cares what mark kelly thinks but like a sub step i care sure i care what mark kelly i care and i i think you said the other day on this podcast referencing chris murphy talking after the for the united health care murder um i forget the anecdote why did this come up i think like nate silver wrote about it that he's sort of said like i acknowledge why people like hate insurance companies what what did i don't i don't remember i i was referencing people who had i was referencing that someone i think like a prominent conservative had said that the shooter at the white house correspondence dinner his rhetoric is indistinguishable from that of chris murphy as if that's an indictment of chris murphy got it that's what i was referring to i believe i think i don't want to pair like miss cass with chris murphy said he's probably listening um but again the press certainly has less power than we used to um and and you know maybe wrongly the press was the arbiter of common decency for many decades in this country um but you know politicians are akin to where people get a lot of news now influencers creators they're famous people on the internet that's who they are and uh they have a responsibility to call it out when it happens it's just really hard like again this is in a leaderless party no one like attention matters getting attention matters this is one of my beats like ro khanna can call it out chuck schumer can call it out alissa slotkin can call it out but you know which which random normie in ohio is listening to any of those people well look i think sometimes in our politics we treat democrats like the protagonists with agency and republicans are the the villains who will do what villains do i sometimes think we do the same thing with people on the internet now that of course democratic politicians are going to say the same thing but there's nothing we can do about the the influencers but i influencers have responsibility and i think part of this is i think there are some insane youtube tiles out there man there are some for sure but but the i don't know i i think sometimes we have to if the people who are going to be helping to shape what people view as the kind of bounds of appropriate political discourse if that's not going to be coming from politicians or mainstream media if it's going to become from people on the internet then that comes with responsibility you know i like in in 2024 i think a lot of people felt like you had people in the kind of manosphere the the kind of independent kind of right adjacent podcast world embracing their power but not their responsibility right their their power to influence their power to get big people on their power to reach tens of millions of people but not their responsibility they're just an unfrozen caveman lawyer they don't know what's right yeah yeah i'm just i'm that's funny about that i have some data on this this week the ap came out of the poll about media habits and it's a really interesting poll because they also pull teenagers but um all the elite sort of things that we we do as former dc-ers and political junkies listen to podcasts subscribe to newsletters um i'm trying to think of some other ones oh pay for subscribe to news um vast majorities of americans don't do those things they really don't and and by the way podcasts a little different because they'll also watch it on youtube or whatever um and i think that's um but the one thing that has really popped is influencers and creators for a long time in these polls could be pew could be ap that ask people how they get their news social media was just sort of an umbrella term that could be snap it could be youtube it could be meta whatever clips of mainstream content by the way as well totally um but they actually asked specifically about influencers and creators and near majorities of americans say they get news from influencers and creators now and that's a huge shift in just a few years and so that gets to what you're saying about responsibility influencers and creators are now on the par on par with according to this poll local tv news radio terrestrial radio still matters search engines still matter uh way more than like ai um and like television and so like that's just really really taken off and i agree with you and you've seen that with the ovon and andrew schultz after the election when you know they're deporting uh rounding up and deporting people and separating mothers from their children uh or whatever doge i didn't vote for this um because i was just playing the humble unfrozen caveman lawyer uh but they have i i think they're becoming more responsible actually at least in terms of acknowledging their power these people were at the inauguration for the president united states and but and i and i i do think that we we're due for a similar turn on the left of people with big platforms who reach a big audience uh viewing a little bit more than what you're saying and and like you know we're here and we try to have honest conversations but part of being having i think part of what being responsible it is is you try to be honest critical where you think it's helpful critical maybe we think it's unhelpful but needs to be said at times but view view what you're trying to do is as more than just saying what you happen to think or feel in that moment right like that's what i think the difference is between what obama did in that press conference you're talking about and what a lot of members of congress do every time a camera comes in front of their faces which is just take a moment and say you know what i'm going to take a beat and make sure that I'm sharing good information or like interrogating a bias for one moment or knowing that even if I feel something in the moment that I believe is true I know that I have a responsibility to my audience to not become a tool of the right yeah I also think I I really want to pay you guys a sincere compliment and I'm friends with you we live in the same city we socialize I get that um I still listen to this podcast despite knowing how personally annoying each and every one of you is because you are willing to interrogate uh collective assumptions on the left you are willing to tangle with those ideas um you know we saw it this week with the Ken Martin interview but you you guys frequently will have people on and I I think this a lot about a variety of left-leaning media um you don't just tell people what they want to hear you tell people sometimes sometimes maybe not as much as other news organizations what they need to hear and I think that's really important because I do think that maybe this is the Obama you know example but like wrestling with ideas is like really good it's really good and healthy and not there's just such blind partisanship now and this is where I will say on both sides that you know the battle for ideas is hard well it's hard to inhabit uh not the middle but it's hard to present nuance to people. That's why I wrote 10 paragraphs in that freaking Puck article before I could get to the point, because I had to say over and over again, Trump inspired January 6th, Trump inspired mail bombers. The Trump Republican Party welcomed Nazis and liars and mainstreamed this poison. But social media has taken it to another level and other people are getting yanked into it. I think what we're talking about, and that's very nice of you to say, it is not my experience that there's a lot of blind partisanship on the left. My view of where we're at right now is actually- But sorry, blind negative partisanship. Blind negative partisanship, that's for sure. No, I agree with that. But what I was going to say only is that I think what we're circling, which I think relates to the conspiracy theories, the willingness to celebrate or tolerate or even just minimize political violence, it's forbearance, which is just the idea of restraint and being willing to lose and willing to take a shot to your ego at times in politics. This is why us old millennials are the best generation. We are the best generation. We are the best generation because- We were vaccinated against Republicans by George W. Bush. Continue. We had debates in our dorms. You know, at Georgetown, we had something called Red Square, which was a free speech zone. I know that sounds anathema now, but like you could have debates and interrogate things. You didn't have social media poisoning it. You know, I don't know. Maybe that's an elite view, but- Baby boomers went to the right. Gen X is the last redoubt of Donald Trump right now. Well, boomers, by the way, boomers are, I wrote about this last year, boomers are drifted to the left because boomers now are hippies. Boomers are our parents. So they still hold on to some, you know, pluralistic values. Gen X is the bad one because they were Alex P. Keaton. Like the thing that happens is your politics in your twenties, like that's what it generally is later in life. And so the Gen X folks, you know, put aside all the rock music and pop culture. Like those are the Alex P. Keaton. So yeah, the Gen X has really kind of moved to the right, but then also some of the Gen Z has moved a bit to the right and millennials are actually not moving to the right at the same degree over time as previous generations have. The millennials are holding out greatest generation. Thank you. All right. Breaking news from Pond Save America. And not only do you get all of that great content and ad-free episodes, you help support independent pro-democracy media. It is one of the most important ways you can help support what we're building here at Crooked. So go to crooked.com slash friends to sign up now. It is genuinely how we help get more good information to more people. So thank you very much. Crooked.com slash friends to sign up now. This is Matt Rogers from Lost Culture East. That's with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Lost Culture East. Okay, we've been talking about QP Mail for a minute now, Bow, and wow, the feedback we're getting. You're stopping us in the street going, I love QP. And if you're thinking, wait, what is Kewpie? It's the OG Japanese mayonnaise. Kewpie is made with egg yolks only, giving it this incredibly rich umami flavor that elevates everything. Chefs use it. Restaurants use it. Whatever you're eating, Kewpie it. So if you haven't tried Kewpie yet, find the bottle with the red cap and see what everyone's talking about. You'll understand. Kewpie, the original Japanese mayonnaise. At Coldwater Creek, save 15% on orders of $75 or more with code IHEART. Celebrate the holiday season with thoughtfully designed styles, quality fabrics, flattering fits, and artful details. From festive gatherings to cozy moments, Discover comfortable, versatile looks that inspire confidence wherever the season takes you. Shop holiday styles and more at ColdWaterCreek.com and save 15% on orders of $75 or more with code IHEART. Again, that's code IHEART at ColdWaterCreek.com. All right, let's hit some more topics. Platner, Janet Mills out. Politico reported yesterday on calls from Democrats for Schumer to drop his involvement in the Iowa and Michigan primaries. What was your reaction to the Mills news and the general state of play in these primaries? Surprise, but not surprise. I think Mills got in late. Plattner got in, what, last August, September, went super vile, raised a lot of money. Great vibes for the moment nationally for Democrats, you know, raging against the establishment. I am more looking forward than thinking about the surprise because he was up 33, 40 points in the most recent. I think Emerson had him up 33 at the end of April. this is a jump ball race like it's going to be very hard and they are grand platner does have baggage it's not even the the totem conf tattoo or whatever it's the reddit post i think we saw uh an article in the free beacon today which is an oppo dump for republicans um showing that platner you know paid for his house with a loan from his wealthy father not the va like he said I just think there's lots of stuff there. And by the way, all this is to say, he can still win. Trump's at like 33%, 34% approval. I think Maine is tougher than certain states, and here's why. And again, he can win. A lot of times you win with a pure contrast. And she's unpopular, Susan Collins. I think her own faves are like 57%. They got to win there. They got to win Alaska. They got to win Ohio and Iowa and all these places. Maine is the oldest electorate in the country. So it's also not very partisan. You've got a third of the state is independent, John. So, you know, that helps someone like Plattner, I think. Like I'm not from the system that could appeal. You've got that Maine second congressional district, which was represented by Jared Golden for a while, who's a moderate and different. Like Plattner's a lib. Golden was a moderate. Both have tattoos. But he won in Maine too, which is a district Trump has won in the last two presidential elections by being just a purebred moderate. Jared Golden. So, you know, putting on Reddit that black people don't tip, that women shouldn't get so drunk that they get sexually assaulted. Honestly, I love this episode that I forget which content it was from Crooked Media, but Pfeiffer and Alex Wagner did a piece on this a couple weeks ago. And it was really interesting listening to Alex. I thought she was very sharp because I think a lot of the initial commentary supporting Plattner when jumping the race was coming from men and when these posts came out not that alex wagner wouldn't vote for graham platner or susan collins but like i think women might be a little squeamish about this uh about him in a race against a woman that you know has successfully won over and over and over again also brought some reporting to the show uh i learned from some republican pollsters that they had 12 to 13 percent of uh susan susan past susan collins voters going for janet mills in this election so that plays to what schumer was probably thinking about like this is an independent older state and we need someone safe to run against someone who's been reliably re-elected so platner's got some work to do i think to reassure he's a young millennial with tattoos a history of inflammatory reddit posts we don't clearly i think republicans are sitting on more stuff like that's why I brought up the free beacon example. And he's got to convince voters in a state. It's like an old state. And it's going to be tough for him. But in this environment, Trump's approval ratings are absolute dog shit. That's why we're talking about Alaska. That's why we're talking about Maine. That's why we're talking about even Ohio and Iowa. We're in the homestretch here of the California governor's race. The two highest vote getters Post Smallville, we've seen polls that show Becerra rising. CBS poll this week had Steve Hilton leading with 16, then Steyer at 15, Becerra at 13. Other polls have Becerra higher. Where's your head at on this race right now? I think someone smartly framed it this way to me. And look, nationally, you might not care about a governor's race. California matters. Gavin Newsom will set a tailpipe emission regulation and the rest of the country will follow. That's what California is. So yes, these candidates are underwhelming. Someone compared it to the 2020 presidential primary, where you've got not just Tom Steyer, once again, spending a lot of money, but you've got all these candidates who fail to catch fire. They pop in certain moments and fade. Javier Becerra is just sort of emerging. The last four polls, two independent, I think, and two sort of partisan, have showed him climbing and having clear momentum. Steyer and Katie Porter are having a very hard time connecting with high information voters. Their negatives are very high. For all the money that Tom Steyer is spending, they're kind of hitting a ceiling. Becerra has kind of come from behind to go to the front. I didn't quite get it either. It kind of came out of nowhere organically. He hasn't spent a lot of money on television. I believe he spent the money he has, I think he spent. Yeah, he went up on TV like three or four weeks ago. At a key moment when he had- Swalwell dropped. Well, I think as Swalwell was dropping, before Swalwell dropped, he's up on the air. And so he's up on the air and all of a sudden there's all these Swalwell voters saying, "Whoops." Yes. And Javier Becerra is a boring person. Javier Becerra, I talked to someone in the Biden administration about this Saturday, kind of aloof as HHS secretary. Not incompetent, but just sort of like, he's not lighting the world on fire. But he does have two things going for him right now in this governor's race, which is by the primaries in June. There's a lot of confusion among voters. People don't like his choices, and they're just kind of falling back on him, which is sort of similar to the Biden experience in 2020. You can win the primary with 23% of the vote, 25% of the vote. I'm not saying it's totally the same. And he's Latino. I mean, a third of the state is Latino. And I think the first part of that spot that went on TV about a month ago, it wasn't like Prop 50. It wasn't like Adam Schiff versus Katie Porter, like, "We got to stop Donald Trump." It wasn't like Swalwell. My parents were immigrants. And it leads with bio, and then it gets into working class, affordability issues, healthcare, prescription drugs. And so for all of the, forgive my term, libslop that you see in some of these TV ads and campaigns, just raging against Trump and trying to go after the hardcore college educated white MSNBC viewer voter, he reaches a different kind of voter than just that. And that's the thing. Porter, Steyer, Swalwell, there was no data suggesting they had any numbers of people of color in this state. And so Becerra is just emerging as a safe choice right now. Steyer's going after him already. He's not a great debater. There's two debates coming up this coming week, I think CNN and NBC. So we'll see if he can make it all the way to June. But he is the one with momentum right now, but it's sort of like boring momentum. I don't even have a word for it. Yeah, I know. I watched the last debate. There was another debate this week. Oh, it was terrible. Terrible. The first debate. And there was a moment where they were all asked if they would support a per mile tax for electric vehicles, because California has a very high gas tax. I think it's like 60 or some odd cents a gallon, maybe a little more now. And so there's this idea that, well, if we switch to electric vehicles, then no one's going to be paying for the roads, even though California has the worst roads in the country, and we pay the highest gas tax in the country. And so there's this idea that, well, if we switch to electric vehicles, then no one's going to pay for the roads. And so the question is, would you support a per mile tax for electric vehicles? And it got to Becerra, and Becerra said, well, it's definitely something we ought to perhaps take a look at. If that's something the voters are interested in, then I could get behind it. And then you go to, I think it was one of the Republicans, and they're like, you're going to make everybody log all their miles? Hell fucking no. And I was like, that makes. There's the passion on that stage. I talked to Katie Porter about this in my conversation with her, that California is in an emergency. We are losing people. We are losing our industries. And the only people up there that seem to have fire about it were the Republicans. The right-wing sheriff guy was talking about the humanitarian crisis of homeless people. And again, his ideas are probably not great, but he had passion. And you nailed it. I meant to say this about Becerra, actually. None of these people have big ideas. Steyer's like, we'll break up the utilities, pass a billionaire's tax, whatever. Well, there was a question, this was a moderator issue, actually, in the CBS debate, where they said, what are the first things you would do in the event of an earthquake? As governor, you're governor, you're in that seat. What are the three things you're going to do? The thoughtful political leader would have said, well, let's think bigger. How do we not get in that position in the first place, whatever? But they were all very content to be like, Becerra included, well, we'll call in the first responders, and I'll call the federal government, and then we'll figure it out. Like, just, that's the other thing. Beyond all the charisma and the horse race stuff that has characterized this race, nothing exciting. Like, big ideas are powerful. I mean, I know Bernie's on this episode, too. Like, there's, Steyer's trying to sort of be in that lane a little bit, but everyone else is just sort of like, we'll figure it out. Well, this is where I press Katie Porter on as well, because she's talking about this plan to exempt a hundred thousand dollars from, or people making up to a hundred thousand dollars from the state income tax. And she has a way to pay for it, but, and fine, like, help people. California is very unaffordable, but like, the problems are so kind of upriver from that. Like, we're, like, the reason California is unaffordable when it has, like, the income tax rate hasn't gone up. What's gone up is the cost of housing. What's gone up is the cost of living in our state. What's gone up is, and what's gone down is the availability of jobs for, in Hollywood and other industries. And, you know, I talked to Bernie. By the way, the housing conversation, at least in the CBS debate I watched was infuriating. I mean, Matt Mahan, at least, was like, here's what he did in San Jose. I want to build this many units. Tom Steyer said the same thing with people housing, but like, people just say, like, we need to build more housing. No shit. Like, I don't know. There's just not, there just weren't a lot of compelling ideas there. Yeah. It's, it's been pretty frustrating, but I had a good conversation with Porter. I hope we get to talk to Becerra. And so I think I'm going to talk to Steyer next week. So we're going to talk to all those. Candidates. Last question. Why, hey, why'd they call it Puck? Is it after, is it after the, the Midsummer Night's Dream? Yeah, yeah. So it's a Puckish, it's a Puckish organization. It's a mischievous literary inspiration. Okay. But I think John Kelly, who, who created Puck, very literate man and thought Puck would be an inspiration because we like to be a little mischievous, I guess, in what we do. Yeah, you're Puckish. Please subscribe. Thank you. You as a person, I would have called you- How would you describe Puckish, the adjective? What, what, how would you define that? Uh, um, a Puck, a mischievous is a very good word for it. I would say, um, mischievous with a joyful quality. Oh. Is what I would say. I like that. My wife would like that. Thanks, John. You're in, you know, a little stinker, you know, kind of energy. Uh, uh, Peter Hamby, thank you so much. Good to talk to you. Good to see you, man. And that's our show. Thank you to Senator Sanders. Thank you to Peter Hamby. We will see you with a new episode on Tuesday. If you'd like to add us to exclusive podcasts, go to cricket.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review. That helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Cricket. Pod Save America is a Cricket Media production. Our producer is Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Cherlin is our executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Carol Pellevive, David Tolles, and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. 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 Cricket Con. It's going to be the Pod Save America hosts and some of the smartest people in politics. If you believe in democracy, community, and fighting for the future, now's the time to grab your tickets to Cricket Con 2026. This is Dr. Laurie Santos from the Happiness Lab. Research shows that social connection is important for happiness. And something that research comes back to again and again is that the little moments together matter more than we think. And that's why I'm such a big fan of rituals. Think about the glassware you use for all your dinner parties, ones that make your events feel right without even thinking about it. 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