Can Dems Put Woke to Bed?

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Celebrate their anniversary with us and save 60% on your new SimpliSafe system and your home security. At SimpliSafe.com slash crooked, that's 60% off at SimpliSafe.com slash crooked. Plus, when you order, write in our show name in the How Did You Hear About Us survey to let them know we sent you. Don't forget, there's no safe like SimpliSafe. This is Troy Millis from Earn Your Leisure. If you run a small business, you know how important it is to stay on top of your numbers. That's why I want to tell you about Xero. That's X-E-R-O. Xero is a platform built for small business owners that brings accounting, payments, payroll, and analytics to your business. 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. 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 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. You'll understand. You'll understand. Just a really interesting person. A firefighter. My kids would love this. Yeah. He's big into firefighters right now. Well, they're going to listen. I think a lot of our listeners are going to be big into firefighters after this conversation. Brought it up. Excellent. All right. All right. But first, let's check in on how the president's war in the Middle East is going. NPR. Here's a headline from NPR. Haunted by Hoover, Trump searches for an endgame in Iran. CNN decided to go with. Trump has a Carter-style Iran problem as the economy drags before the midterms. We got a Hoover. We got a Carter. What else? It's more Nixon for the trifecta. Yeah, no, he's definitely doing. Yeah, he's definitely doing Nixon. Nixon at the Department of Justice. Carter in the Middle East. Hoover, Hoover, Hoover on the bread lines. I mean, he's really it is really all of them. And and in fairness, the comparison to Carter is even more apt than that because the Strait of Hormuz is a hostage. That's the context for lots of reporting over the weekend that the president is desperately looking for a way to accept defeat in Iran after the regime made it clear they're not giving up control of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump is also weighing dropping his demand for a nuclear deal. I told Axios that he is, quote, low keying it with Iran and only semi negotiating at this point. And then on Monday, responded to Iran's demand for reparations by demanding reparations from Iran. Take that. A lot of neocons losing their semis. Sorry, Tommy's not here. They were never they were never semis. Yeah, no, that's right. What are you talking about? Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that the Iranian regime is intentionally dragging the war out so that Trump loses the midterms, probably because they're watching clips just like this. You said in June that this was, quote, the strongest job market in your lifetime. By what metric? The bottom line is that if you look at the overall economy, then things are really, really booming. Trump's administration has only added five hundred forty eight thousand net jobs so far, which is considered very slow growth. It's growth, but very slow. Two million jobs were created in the last 18 months of Biden's presidency. Are you really arguing that your numbers are better than that? Well, I disagree with your number. We'll have to follow up on email. I know you don't negotiate with the Iranians, but you do talk about the economy and you said you're bullish is going to be a heck of a lot of traffic moving there every single day, right? Like if I wouldn't call it a lot. How do voters feel about the president's work on jobs? You know, these are the types of numbers. The numbers that will make a lot of Republican members of Congress lose their jobs come November. You can see it right here. I mean, just look at this trend line. Trump's not approving on jobs. He is now twenty two points underwater swimming with the fishes, swimming with the fishes. That was like what kind of code switching was Harry doing at the end there? It's like extra New York. How does old Donnie wriggle his way out of this one? Love it from the beginning. They hadn't said they were going for unconditional surrender. That they were going to prevent Iran from being able to project power in the Middle East, that they were going to fundamentally reorder the power in this critical part of the world. And what he had done, not unlike what he had done when he had a midnight hammer in the past or killed Soleimani, like done a series of strikes and then claimed that the nuclear program was set back in a way Barack Obama could have never dreamed through his deal. Maybe they could call a blue, you know, bombing the nuclear sites and sort of incapacitating a large percentage of Iran's military as some kind of a victory if they reopen the Strait. But now Iran has proven that the U.S. military, despite all its might, combined with Israel, cannot stop it from controlling this vital waterway. Trump looks weak. The country is not behind it. There's all these reports about our depleting military capacity. And now at the end of it, the best. He's going to accept is we're back to where we started. Now, to be clear, I hope that happens. I would rather us get back to the Strait being open and not having this on again, off again war in the Middle East and all the instability and danger and chaos that that entails. But it's still a total capitulation by Trump. And I don't think the Strait is going to be open because Iran has recognized correctly that this is their sole point of leverage now. And that's why there was all this reporting last week that Iran and Oman were like heading towards a deal. And I guess they have negotiated it. But Iran's basically like, yeah, we negotiated this with Oman, but we're not opening the Strait until the U.S. ends the blockade, U.S. forces out of the region, compensation for the war, sanctions relief. They're asking for all of it because they don't really want the deal because they actually want to lord it over Trump. And. You know, and from Trump's perspective, he does it like he keeps going, you know, they talk about exit ramps, he keeps going past different exits on the highway and each time he goes past one, the next exit is worse than the last one, because now what can he actually do? He can't he doesn't want he's not talking about a military strike. Remember, he's talking about horrible, the worst military strike since World War Two, and we're going to destroy them as early as last week. We were just talking about that. And today he was asked and he's like, you'll see, you'll see. But we don't have the munitions. We're running out of munitions. We there is no intelligence that said that any further U.S. strikes would bring them to the negotiating table or do anything or cause them to change their behavior in any way. So basically what he wants is for the Strait to reopen and then say a nuclear deal will happen some other time. But he can't even do that because they're not going to open the Strait. And they're not cooperative rhetorically. Right. Like he really, really what he wants is for this all to just go the fuck away. Right. Like everyone just shut up about Iran. I don't want to talk about it. about it anymore. I don't want to think about it anymore. We won. I'm done. It's over. Everyone stopped complaining. And so he does these threats to say they're coming back to the table. They don't cooperate and say we are back to the table. They have this annoying way of not helping him with his PR problem. Right. Because they can read the news and watch clips like we just did. The Guardian says that there's two factions in Iran arguing about their strategy on this. One thinks that if Trump is weaker after losing the midterms, he'll have less reason to deal. The other thinks that losing Congress will force Trump to negotiate. What do you think? My instinct on this is that it is no easier for Iranian political factions to predict Trump's conduct than it is for us to predict Trump's conduct. I think that there's a third door, which is and this is, by the way, something that some of the neocons have been wish casting for, which is Trump is a little bit constrained by the politics right now because all of these Republicans he's dealing with do not want to be saddled with an ongoing war in the United States. And so he's going to have to deal with it. And the midterms and the cost of gas and and the anger from the part of Trump's base that were convinced that they were voting against foreign wars. So they want all this to stay pretty quiet. If Trump, whether he wins the midterms or loses the midterms, there are those who believe that will give him the flexibility to finally do the escalation that they're desperate for him to do. He'll be he won't be running again. Other Republicans can criticize. There can be a but there's a version of this where losing the midterm may weaken him politically but might put him in a position to do something drastic and quite terrible. Yeah, I was thinking about the other way and that like, because I don't know that escalation does anything at this point, because I don't know that they can he can bomb them into submission since they've hit all the targets. I do think he could give them more. He could capitulate more. And you could see him doing that again. And after the midterms, just to get it off his plate and to go around saying that he ended the war and he's a peace president and like it's a terrible deal and everyone tells him it's a terrible deal, but he doesn't care because he just lies. Yes. And then he gets, you know, he's he's doing his big kind of president at the end of his term. Yes. Doing his sort of like big diplomatic achievements that he can kind of put in his museum tower. Part of this is a wish that the elections are somehow a hinge on which there could be some change in the dynamic. The other argument is the Trump we have today is that Trump will have six months from now. He doesn't give a fuck what happens to these Republicans for the most part, other than how it affects him. He's already said that in many interviews. What's driving him is what will drive him then, which is how his ego is reflected in the embarrassment of losing a war, being able to claim that he got a better deal than Obama, what have you. That's the case in January as it is today. One person who seems less afraid of pissing off Trump these days is Bibi Netanyahu. He just said that he's not afraid of the US backed peace plan for Gaza, saying that the IDF won't withdraw any forces until Hamas completely disarms and that they're not afraid to, quote, stand up to the US. That would be Israel. What did you think that's all about? Yes. He also said again that as long as he's prime minister, there will be no Palestinian state, neither in Gaza nor in Judea and Samaria is what he says. But the West Bank and that's regardless of whether Hamas is in charge. So they can negotiate and deal with what it means for Hamas to be disarmed. And there may be legitimate disagreements inside of that, even though Benjamin Netanyahu is not a good faith actor and there is no disarmament that would be acceptable to him, obviously. But there is an actual policy question in what it looks like for Hamas to be disarmed when you're sort of leaving those weapons inside of Gaza. Fine. But if he's saying there will never be a Palestinian state, he's been saying for a while. Yes. But he's saying even now, after they've leveled Gaza, even if even as Hamas has agreed to the terms of this deal, which means handing over power, even in the deal in which there will be an international force, like all of these steps, the steps that would have to happen and that should be what determines the creation of a Palestinian state that Israel recognizes, he is saying that that cannot happen on his watch. So you have Trump now saying, you know, on the back of the Trump administration, kind of quietly saying he's got an election in October. He's trying to protect his right flank. Let's wait till after the election, which, by the way, is a large as he does not afford people like John Cornyn and and Cassidy and the rest of the rest. But OK, he gets let's say they they then Yahoo manages to stay in power. He gets the other side of this election. Then what he is saying he will never agree to a plan in which the Palestinians have a state, which means he will never agree to a plan in which Israel is not the sovereign in Gaza and the West Bank. Right. Which means that they will he'll never agree to a plan where Palestinians and people who are living in the West Bank and Gaza are anything but second class citizens. With fewer rights than Israelis, which is if people, you know, people who are pro Israel get upset when you call it an occupation or that it can act like an apartheid state. But when you're talking about the West Bank and Gaza, like what what do you call it if there's never going to be a Palestinian state and Israel is just going to control both areas the entire time? Are they going to make them full citizens of Israel? And it probably doesn't sound like it. You have Israel taking more and more of Gaza for the security perimeter. They no longer even really recognize the original border of Gaza as where a Palestinian state would begin. You have settlement expansion going on at a pace. They are doing everything they can to make any kind of a Palestinian state, both politically and practically impossible. Meanwhile, you have those who I think are rightly incredibly disgusted and critical of Israel, saying that a two state solution is now ridiculous and stale and dead talking point because of what's happened. They want a one state solution in which every which Palestinians have equal rights. Those that are pro Israel, that is anathema to them because they believe in a Jewish state. If you believe in a Jewish state and you find it repellent at the idea of Israel being an apartheid state, then the answer is a state in which Arab Israelis and Jewish Israelis have equal rights. But there is a Jewish majority that requires a Palestinian state in which they can govern themselves and live, live in freedom and autonomy. And that is the reality. And Benjamin Netanyahu is the obstacle to that possibility and everything else. You can blame all the rhetoric you don't like. There's tons of anti-Semitism, but it is this Israeli government and the Israeli people backing it that are now making Israel this pariah nation around the world. Uh, The EO calls for the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine called the MMR to be given as three different shots, even though they're not available separately. It asks states to revisit vaccine mandates, which is their choice, and it pairs down the group of vaccines that should be recommended for all kids taking Hep A and B vaccines, the flu vaccine and the COVID vaccine off that list of recommended vaccines. Somehow, though, what Trump, RFK Jr. and noted health expert Stephen Miller said about vaccines in the Oval on Monday was even worse than the EO itself. Large amounts of like vats of vaccine are currently pumped into your child's body. You know, there are some groups that have virtually no problem with autism. And they, you know, I have to say this, they they're groups that aren't big into the world of vaccines. And. Nothing bad can happen from what we're doing. Nothing bad can happen. It's possible it doesn't work. I don't think that's much of a possibility. Frankly, we're going to learn a lot. The U.S. passed all of 2025's measles total by July so far this year. Two thousand three hundred seventy one cases, 37 new outbreaks versus two thousand for all of last year, a little over two thousand for all of last year. MMR coverage among kindergartners has fallen from ninety five point two percent in 2019. Twenty twenty to ninety two point five percent. So good job, everyone. And now we're going to be telling kids to and families to split the shots up somehow, which will mean more missed visits. Yeah. I mean, what do you think happens if you tell everybody that to go to the doctor three times instead of one time? You can answer the question. The countries that have done this in Japan split up the MMR vaccine. And what do you end up with? You end up with outbreaks of mumps and rubella. That's just what happens. This is all. And, you know, we'll talk about Bill Cassidy and his capitulation on on Blanche. This is somebody who is in a position of power. He is a doctor. He believes in vaccines. He had a moment where he could have stood up to this and he took the ridiculous false assurances from RFK Jr. at face value because he wanted to be convinced by RFK Jr. So he could avoid the hard vote and voted. And now we have as destructive a health secretary as you could imagine in this job. Being alive is already challenging. We don't need to put it on hard mode like that is what this is like. Vaccines are a miracle. This is all based on false science, like even like this idea to like, oh, you know, we give our kids 72 jabs or whatever number of jabs. Like just that is a number based on giving kids the flu shots. And that they are not counting the shots. The other countries also give their kids just not real. And then on top of that, because they think of vaccines as somehow harmful, even though there's no evidence that they are harmful. In fact, they are one of the great miracles of modern life. They have changed the world. They've made being a parent a very different experience than what it would have been 100 years ago. When other countries don't give kids vaccines, they react by saying, can you believe it? We're giving our kids more vaccines. Yes. That's cool. They're not willing to spend on some of those vaccines. They're not willing to add them to the schedule. They're rationing fucking health care over there in Europe. The day the Danes are rationing the health care. We're giving more vaccines than they are. And part of the reason we have to do that is because our health system is so much fucking worse that we don't catch a bunch of stuff that they might catch in a universal system. And so when you remove some of these vaccines and say, what could happen? Well, what's going to happen is there's gonna be a bunch of kids that get happy. There's gonna be a bunch of kids that don't get vaccinated for rotavirus. And they're going to get sick in that window because the doctors that recommend these vaccines and recommend them happening when kids are born or early on are not fucking malicious. They're not looking to harm kids. They're not sadists. They know that if you increase the window, if you cause more delays, if people don't show up to the doctor inside of that group of kids are people that don't get hurt, maybe permanently injured, maybe die. That is what's going to happen. I'm bummed about it. Wow. I'm really mad. I'm going to need a hearing check. Makes me really sad. It's the CDC in their own website still says that there's no published evidence of any benefit from separating MMR. It's just in the way these things get like a sort of seep out into the public consciousness. We're getting another example of it. We got one just today because they have they're still, you know, trying to do a number on Fauci. And so they got his phone, his government phone, and they released all the texts. Yeah. And there's there's one text where he's like, oh, one thing we should we should look at as we're developing these covid vaccines is, you know, if there's any effect on on miscarriages. Right. Because there's like a thrown out a hypothesis like that's something that we should we should look at. These are new values, a new vaccine. It is a new technology. Like, let's make sure that if it causes some kind of response by the body, that there isn't a higher incidence of miscarriage. We need to know that about this vaccine. A completely reasonable question for. Fauci to ask. So it was January 2021. He said that the second dose of the covid shot theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the first trimester. So that's something to think about. Then they tested it. Of course, it was like by the time it was widely available, like it was fine and they had all the right recommendations. They withheld approval, by the way, for pregnant women for a while. For a while. Because of this reason. Yes. So they did like everything they were supposed to do. Now everyone is like Meghan McCain is like, put him in jail. I'm serious. Put him in jail. And and then now they're they're they're recirculating this debunked theory where there's this study that apparently shows that I mean, I know you don't. They are. They are numerically illiterate. They're medical. Katie Pavlich, the mandated and doctor recommended covid-19 shot for pregnant women was effectively an abortion shot, according to new documents just released by Senators Johnson and Paul. The authors of this study. Claimed a miscarriage rate of twelve point six percent. But the raw data revealed an eighty two percent miscarriage rate. Is that what happened? An eighty two percent miscarriage rate. No, they read the study wrong. They read the numbers wrong. They're all fucking idiots. And every single right wing, not every single one, but all these right wing accounts now are putting out that there's an eighty two percent miscarriage rate for the covid shot. So completely irresponsible and fucking dumb. It's also we all live in the world. A lot of pregnant women got the got the. If there wasn't a some eighty percent chance of miscarriage because of the covid shot, that would be one of the worst health catastrophes that would be it would be like fucking children of men out there and they're just first of all, to get to they're just misreading the number, even that twelve percent of that might sound like a lot. Right. If you're just if you're just casually consuming this information, the point is like a lot of first trimester pregnancies and in miscarriage. That's why people don't tell their family until they're through. The first trimester, what they found is when you looked at all the data, there wasn't a spike. It didn't go above. There wasn't a statistically significant increase in miscarriages. That's all that. And they look at it and they do the best they can. They weigh the data against the safety that the covid vaccine provides. And these are scientists and doctors doing their best to try to protect pregnant women, to protect children, to protect people from all kinds of viruses. And because of the conspiracy addled minds of the people in that room, they can make none of. None of them doctors, none of them doctors, none of them with medical degrees. And and forget even the recommendations, like forget like that. So maybe that Jay guy, the seat one, whoever Jay Buck, whatever his name is, but like, OK, these are these these are recommendations that would harm people 100 percent. Just the way they talk about that, that's a vaccine injecting the little ones, the jabs, the 70, it's all meant to it's it's it's all meant to make people question, be afraid of these vaccines. Meanwhile. The vaccines we give today are so different than the ones that were given even 20 or 30 years ago. They have much less of the antigens in them. They're much more precise. We've learned a lot about vaccines because science is amazing. And so the dozen or so vaccines that kids will get in early childhood today actually have less, far less like a tenth as much of the kind of antigens that was in one pertussis shot 30 years ago. We have we have figured out how to do this in a way because because the people doing this research. Care so much because they didn't become, you know, become they're not researchers in vaccines because they're what, like power, mad covid mask people know that they're doctors trying to provide us do the best care, do the research for the reasons they got involved in medicine in the first place. And they're these people are like decided it's a fucking conspiracy to give kids autism. Meanwhile, I don't know, given the state of our fucking our education system, our health care system, our infrastructure, maybe we could use a little more autism, get people on the road. I don't know, given the state of our fucking our education system, our infrastructure, maybe we could use a little more autism, get people on the road. It's not that hard. Look at a John right now, right in the eyes. He can't look at me. Who has autism now? Neither of us. - Well, one lighthearted moment in this whole thing was, As someone, one of the reporters asked Trump afterwards, you're a proud father. Would you have vaccinated your children differently? And this man with like straight face just doesn't even skip a beat. Just as I did. I did. I took I took my children for five different vaccinations. I went with my wife and we took each of them for we separated out all the vaccines. Do you think that man has ever taken any of his children to a doctor's appointment ever? Do you think he knows that they do you think he ever knew who their pediatrician was? Can you imagine Donald Trump in the same room as one of those toys where you move the little things along the wires with? Imagine him sitting against the wall and there's just like a kind of big red stripe behind him, you know, and he's walking into the suit and tie to he's got to take work off because he's got to take Don Jr. to get a vaccine. Come on, buddy. You'll get a lollipop at the end. It's me, Donald Trump, taking my son. He and Ivana were just going together to the doctor's office. I would have loved someone to follow up on that question. Be like, oh, when did you when did you do that? What pediatrician? Where did it where did they go? Famous hypochondriac Donald Trump sitting in a waiting room with a bunch of coughing children. Inconceivable. Inconceivable. He didn't he just he just missed his son's wedding. What are we talking about? Anyway, right before the vaccine event, Todd Blanche was sworn in as the next attorney general in a private ceremony in the Oval Office. On Saturday, the Senate voted to confirm Blanche and the only no's were Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins. But three yeses from the three members of the so-called YOLO caucus of Republicans, John Cornyn, Tom Tillis and Bill Cassidy, who had this to say. And on giving his family protection from IRS probes. That's totally wrong. Totally wrong. And so I will go back. This is not a black or white decision. That is wrong. And no American should be targeted by the law. But no American should be above the law. And that, frankly, almost weighed to vote no. Wow. Actually, it's a it's quite a black and white decision. There's there's a yes vote and there's a no vote. He's either he's either confirmed or he's not confirmed. I will say that in the in that oval, the vaccination event, some reporter was like, so is the weaponization fund dead? And he said, well, that's up to the attorney general now. Just like we thought. Yeah. The fecklessness of Cassidy and Cornyn and Tillis, three people that Trump's personally ruined their careers. He got involved to get them out of office. He successfully did it. He has now put forward as his attorney general nomination, someone who's oversaw the politicization of the Justice Department, unlike anything before in American history, which is a tough category. RFK was the attorney general. He who personally met with Ghislaine Maxwell, Maxwell oversaw her transfer to a cushier prison, has overseen a Justice Department in which they've gone after Lisa Cook and James Comey and fucking the the the sandwich thrower all the way up and down in any like so beyond the pale, so obviously unfit, so clearly a moment to just stand up and say no, as you could ever imagine in the Senate. And then this guy has the audacity to then claim it was a hard decision. He talks about tearing up in this interview with given the incredible amount of responsibility on his shoulders to have stood in those hallowed halls and been responsible for such big decisions, much like he always imagined it could be to be on that in that storied Senate chamber. And he is saying it as someone who completely failed his moral responsibility. He will that he completely gave up that power. To Donald Trump in a way that is pathetic and that defines him. His whole life is defined by his decision to be a tool for Donald Trump, a stooge for Donald Trump. And he's giving interviews about how weepy he was at the having had the opportunity. I mean, look at it this way. Sometimes we say these people do this for Donald Trump because all they want is their job and their title and they're afraid. Honestly, it was none of those things. He lost his job, lost his title. He doesn't have anything to fear anymore. He's just. And he just thought, OK, sure, it's Todd Blanche. It's a kind of laziness. He said something about like, well, it wasn't about like the perfect attorney general. It was just like maybe another one would be worse. I really think they've sorted Todd Blanche into that serious guy who talks honestly behind closed doors. And that's what they've convinced themselves. But this is where this is how they all like love Rubio still. Right. In their mind, Rubio is like the adult in the room, even though he is like capitulated on just about everything that Donald Trump has asked him to do. Right. And says crazy things in public. Now, same way they can see. Doug Burgum, as a serious and reasonable person, even though he's out there saying that the reflecting pool was destroyed by by vandals. The other part of this, too, is they act. They're acting so powerless. They had so much power. Cassidy Collins, Murkowski, Tillis, Cornyn. They could have come together and said, we want to ban by law any kind of insurrectionist fund. We want a public assurance from Todd Blanche that he won't consult with Donald Trump about ongoing cases. They could have. They could have in law. They could have passed a law that said no settlement with the IRS could carry forward into the future, that it can only be. There's all kinds of things that they could have done with their actual power. That was not impossible. It just required some work, like actually getting together and figuring it out and caring enough to do something without acting like every vote that happens to you is like there's no forward planning to it. It's like, well, that's the vote today. Nothing I could do. He's acting. So it doesn't fucking matter. It's really wild. I would love someone to really. I mean, this is no, I wouldn't, because what's going to happen is Todd Blanche will continue to do horrible things. And then someone will ask them, you know, what did what did you think about Blanche doing that? And maybe they'll say, oh, I'm so disappointed that he did that. I never thought he would do that. I was reassured. You know, he gave me his assurance. And boy, am I. It's like, you know, it's like how Susan Collins talks about Brett Kavanaugh and Dobbs, you know? Yeah, that is the and like Susan Collins now gets to have this vote. No. And as everyone, the point people have made again and again is that she only votes against Trump. And it doesn't have a consequence. This is what's happening here. But I do think there's like an alarm that's not going off. A dog that never barks with Susan Collins, which is. What kind of fucking non-leader is she? She has all this power in the Senate. She's head of the Appropriations Committee. She could have gotten some. There's so much she could have done with this group of people. She's still good. They could do it right fucking now. They never will. He is desperate. It is a it is a close Senate. Mitch McConnell is, quote unquote, recuperating at home. You know, his his doctor, Jonas Salk, says he's getting better. Clara Barton says he's doing quite well. So there's that. He's working from home. Some kind of home. All right. So that's it. Todd Blanche. Todd Blanche is our new attorney general. He was the old attorney general. We're not going to notice much of a difference. He's just going to continue doing whatever Donald Trump tells him to do. Personal lawyer. Now the attorney general, but still the personal lawyer. All right. Let's get to the midterms. On Monday, Speaker Mike Johnson. Launched an exciting new messaging effort called the Contrast for America. Inspired by Newt Gingrich's famous contract with America, which most of the people alive don't remember anymore. Aiming to reframe the election as a fight against actual communism. That's not a joke. It's if you go to the website, which I don't encourage you to try. But if you go there, it shows the history of communism and different milestones and different communist takeovers. And then it compares. Then it compares. It compares Democrats wanting to raise taxes to that. They call that communism. Now that's now that's communism raising taxes. Republicans are betting that their only chance to win the midterms now is to capitalize on the Democratic infighting over a few DSA candidates and also more progressive Democrats like Abdul winning their primaries. The cycle. Here's AOC giving her theory of the case to ABC's John Carl on Sunday in response to questions about Wisconsin frontrunner Francesca Hong and Abdul doing his best to pivot to. A general election message. What do you make of those controversial statements? I'm sure you've seen. I mean, she's, you know, the Thanksgiving dust up. She says she doesn't, you know, still believe that. But, you know, the abolished prisons abolished police. My understanding is that is is that Francesca Hong has made clear her present stances to her. She's moved away from. Right. She's moved away from it. And I have a local city councilman that has this. Saying woke one was crazy. And I think that we all share in the goals of having as low a crime rate as possible. I think that, you know, during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today. When asked about Hassan Piker's comments on 9-11, Senator Bernie Sanders called it a dumb statement. Do you agree? Do you disavow those comments that America deserve 9-11? Of course. Of course, it was a dumb statement. And of course, I think Hassan himself would say that was a dumb statement. He disavowed it. I want to be held accountable for what I say and what I do. Look, I'm less concerned now with who I'm campaigning with, a lot more concerned about who I'm campaigning to. So Republicans are hoping that Democratic, quote unquote, extremism will be for this midterm cycle. What the Dobbs decision was for 2022, sort of a way to change the subject away from a deeply unpopular incumbent. What do you think? You think it could work? I don't. I don't because one is a fear mongering message about Democrats trying to make it. every Democrat sound like the craziest thing people saw on the internet. The other is a real decision having real negative consequences on people's lives that the Republicans actually did. I also think it is part of, you know, they can't, there's no campaigning that they can do to diffuse the fact that they overturned Roe. They did that. They wanted it. And in fact, a lot of the people who were very happy to see Roe overturned also supported abortion bans at the six week mark or with no exceptions for rape or incest or the life of the mother. So they were saddled with their actual position. This is fear mongering about Democrats to make people think that they can't have, I don't know, universal health care and a tax code that was as high as they were in the communist days of America in 1993. I don't think it could work. I mean, it could work, but I think that it'd be one thing if Republican candidates, in an alternate universe, were out there being like, you know, Donald Trump, we break from him sometimes because he can be extreme. And these Democrats are extreme too. We're the only thing holding the line between crazy Donald Trump and crazy Democrats. Of course, that's not what they're going to do. They're all in for Donald Trump. So I think that, I think it'd be tough. And also, it depends on like, most people when you are, I mean, we saw this in the New York Times Santa polls of the Senate battlegrounds from last month, which is, you'll get a majority of voters in that poll in the Senate battlegrounds, at least said, Democrats are too far to the left. They think the Democratic Party is too far to the left. But when you ask about the Democratic Senate candidate running in their state, they don't think necessarily think that that Democratic Senate candidate is too far to the left. And so in midterm, this goes race by race. And if, you know, if you're a Democrat running that race, and they try to tag you as a DSA candidate, or they try to say you want to abolish, prisons, like you just say, No, that's not what I believe. Yeah, this is what I believe I have, I have this agenda that is not my agenda. And so you know, they'll I mean, on the margins for, you know, voters who aren't paying attention until they go cast a ballot. Could this work? Maybe I don't know. But I think in a midterm for most voters, it's probably going to be going to be tricky when you get down to the individual race level. Yeah, I guess. Will it work? Well, yeah, it's going to work on some people. This is they're trying to make Democrats their job. Fundamentally, what is American politics today? It is a from the right is an effort to make extreme Republicans seem reasonable and reasonable Democrats seem extreme. And to pretend that politics is ultimately not about what the tax rates are, and who gets health care and who doesn't. That's what everything that's why they got a fucking former NBA guy trying to get into the WNBA. It's like, it's all part of one big thing. The I was thinking about Francesca Hong, because I joked about it, love it or leave it. And I went through the tweets and they are quite silly. And this is the moment where we're going to talk about these things because the primary is wrapping up. We're having an intraparty debate right now. This is the moment where Abdul pivots to the general where there's the most sore and hurt feelings where we're trying to figure out what worked and what didn't. You're trying to reconcile all these things. In Wisconsin, whatever happens in the election, let's say Francesca Hong is the winner. Maybe she is. Maybe she's not. Either way, Tom Tiffany, right? Like, oh, my God, I can't believe she tweeted that about Thanksgiving. Tom Tiffany, objected to Wisconsin's electors. He signed on to the to the to the Ken Paxton lawsuit to try to overturn the election. He continues to say that there were hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes in Wisconsin. He said that the Trump should cut off funding to Madison, that Wisconsin, the state he's trying to lead, should get less money because it is not going along with Trump's immigration policies. He did not. He refused to say that Trump shouldn't invoke the Insurrection Act. He is. He he sponsored a resolution in Congress to support Trump for sending people to fucking Sakat in El Salvador. He's an extreme and radical person. And if you ask people, do you want a governor who was in a bad mood in Christmas in 2020 or somebody who believes in deporting people to a foreign gulag and support sending more money to ICE and cutting taxes for billionaires? Like, where do you actually come down on this? I think people, if given the choice faithfully, would choose somebody who maybe said some kooky stuff. In the past. And that's our job is to get back to that. I don't think there's voters who are going to be like, well, her Thanksgiving tweet was crazy. It's going to be they're going to think, oh, she wants to abolish police or she wants to. And I'm afraid about crime. And so she's going to have to do if she's the nominee reassurance of people that she cares about public safety and do it in a way that is convincing. I also this is my own. Maybe this makes me a bit of a neolib shill. But there was a time, Democrats really enjoyed hating communists and really kind of got into it about how stupid and deadly and dumb and ideology is that like there was a kind of consensus that fascism and communism were programs for morons and losers that were deadly and stupid. And we should fight them with everything we've got because we believe in a democratic and liberal order in which we protect people from the worst kinds of destitution and have a safety net and give everybody opportunity, but also support the freedom to say what you want and pray how you want, but also, start a business and create products and try to build things and innovate like that was sort of what we all used to believe. And one way to deal with the communism crap is to have Democrats out there who are willing to say, like, I believe in free markets as long as they're fair and give everybody a chance, which is something a lot of Democrats used to be a little bit more comfortable talking about because they were less afraid of being attacked by people on Twitter. Well, I mean, I think Abdul even in the primary towards the end was talking about like, because he would be asked, Oh, aren't you DSA too? And he was like, No, I'm I, I believe in free markets. I like free markets. Yeah, you know, and look, Francesca Hong, in fairness, she's like, she's been saying, like, well, I'm a, I was a small business owner, you know, the challenge is like, when you call yourself a socialist, it's like, well, what does socialism mean? And this is the whole thing with, you know, well, defund was actually just a slogan. And abolish is just an aspirational abolish police and abolish prisons. That's just an aspirational thing. That's not real. Well, then don't use the fucking slogan. No, it's just an extremely unhelpful way of achieving my vision. Right? It's like, it's like, then you're, then you're upset that people don't understand that you actually have a nuanced view of public safety, because you embrace the slogan, abolish police, like, of course, they're not going to understand that you have a nuanced view. If you use that slogan, or you just say you're socialist, that's what you probably shouldn't call yourself a socialist, right? Because, because, like, I think there are plenty of people that are democratic socialists to our socialists, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But a lot of people ascribe to it, because they think being a democrat is correctly cringe. The word liberal was actually maligned by republicans for a long time. And they're really social democrats, right? That's what they are. They are social democrats, which and I really do think there's a lot of people that have convinced themselves that democrats are just sort of incremental socialists, right in both directions. But I think there's socialists that believe that about democrats. And I think there's, there are people that there's a kind of, and there are lefty democrats who believe that about that somehow, we're going to have to get rid of all of them. But I think there's a lot of people that believe that about democrats. And I think there's a lot of people that believe that about democrats. And I suppose to having a framework for viewing the world in which government helps to address inequities and solve problems, but fundamentally, you do believe in in all kinds of freedoms, including the freedom, the freedoms that go along with a free market. Yeah, it's just, if you believe in Medicare for all and wealth tax on billionaires or abolishing ICE, or whatever it is, just say you believe in those things. And just talk about those policies. Like the labeling doesn't seem like it's helpful in any way, shape or form. But I don't know. That's just me. Pod Save America is brought to you by HIMS. ED is more common than guys talk about. The good news, getting real treatment is simple and through HIMS it's 100% online. 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Burgers, fries, sandwiches, chicken. Noodles. Chefs use it. Restaurants use it. You'll understand. How do you feel about woke one was crazy as a way to explain the excesses of, uh, I guess it's just 2020, maybe 21, whatever that time period was. First of all, I think it's. It has the benefit of just being kind of true. And I saw a few people talking about this, which is, okay, we're now saying kind of more publicly what we were all saying to each other in private. Like, boy, we've lost our minds a little bit, haven't we? And to me, what's interesting about it is, like, I, like whenever I, I care less about what people were saying on the internet and more about what our candidates were doing. And I think about everyone raising their hand about decriminalizing the border, um, or kind of taking kind of more lefty positions. It's what saddled Kamala with the sort of the, that's, you know, that, that, that, uh, questionnaires from the height of this moment of woke 1.0. And. Images like the, you know, probably the, you know, Pelosi kneeling with the Kenti cloth was maybe, maybe that was a little much. And, but what, but what, but what was happening then was, first of all, there was, we were dealing with a once in a century pandemic. We, we were having a genuine and important conversation nationally. We were talking about systemic racism and policing. It did lead to a lot of important conversations about reform. But I do think that a lot of people felt like they were performing something they didn't totally understand or believed, and they would leave the criticism to others because they just weren't going to take on that work. Right. And so everybody kind of went along with certain parts of it, but they weren't totally sold on. Right. Or they, maybe they didn't say it themselves. Right. But they didn't want to get in the muck. They certainly weren't going to go out there and saying, I actually don't believe in defunding the police. There wasn't a lot of equity. There was a lot of, you know, there was a lot of value in poking your head up above the trench line there. Yeah. Well, I mean, when you think back to like, what was woke one, right? Because now we're just saying, oh, it was all crazy. And it, and, and you're right. People like at least people on the left kind of instinctively know what that means, but it's like worth talking about what it is, what it was. And I do think it's like three different things we're talking about here. There's there's policies. Right. And so there was defund the police was the big one, but there was also abolish the police. Abolish prisons, which I don't even, I didn't even remember from then, but now we're seeing all the tweets from back then abolish borders or open borders or decriminalize all that. So there was that, then there was language that was used and there was like, there were words that no one actually uses in, in real life that were chosen to replace words that had been deemed offensive, but weren't always offensive. Well, even in your interview with Francesca Hong, she talked about justice impacted individuals. Right. Which is interesting because I remember when I interviewed, uh, Andy Beshear and he, and I was like, what did Democrats do wrong or whatever? I asked him some question about Democrats and what he would change. And he's like, well, we use language that, you know, people it's, I don't know if he said faculty lounges, but it's that kind of idea. And he said, you know, like justice impacted individuals. I remember when he said that to me, I'm like, is he just saying that phrase to like pick out something to, to mock? Because I'd never heard that. I was like, what is he talking about? And then she said it to me and I was like, oh, I guess that is something justice impacted individuals. So there's a whole bunch of language that made the left and Democrats seem like completely out of touch and that they don't speak the language that most people speak. Right. Then there was the public shaming. I won't say cancel culture, but public shaming, right. Which is there was a tendency and this was mostly on the internet though. It bled into the primary a little bit, uh, in 2020 responding to like someone's statement or position that you disagree with. By trying to yell at the person, label them bad, shame them, uh, instead of persuading them that they're wrong or calling their idea bad or their statement by like they were bad. Yeah. You know, like that's, and it's like also the difference between like, that statement seems a little racist versus like you are a racist for making that statement, um, or sexist or whatever it may be. And so there was a little, there was, as we were discussing, to be solved, systemic racism, police violence, a brutal way of treating immigrants, whatever it may be. There was this belief that if you yelled loud enough or took a strong enough stance and called out the people who were taking the opposite stance loudly enough that like that would be the way that you fight it. And I think that since then, people have learned that maybe the most effective way is to try to like bring people along to persuade them. And then, you know, if you can't vote against them or organize against them. Right. But it's just there was a there was like a substitution for real politics because the discussions were happening online and people were just doing a lot of yelling and name calling. Yeah. It also like there was it followed. So so Trump wins in 2016. The Me Too happens in 2017. You have a series of terrible terrible. Killings by the police that follow and then into the end into the pandemic and then the death of George Floyd. And it was this moment of saying, look at what we've tolerated. Right. Look at how much injustice was sort of baked into all of these systems. Look at how much we were ignoring that was in plain sight all around us. Now is the moment we're going to tear these things down. We're going to tear these systems down. And that was exciting. And it was exhilarating, I think, for people, especially for activists who suddenly found that there were millions of people in their homes seeing their messages. They weren't out at bars. They weren't at they weren't in an office. They weren't living. They weren't at a park. They were home watching their screen. And and all of us collectively were sort of taking in a lot more of this and more receptive to it. I mean, we were we were you know, we were doing pods from our homes and you just knew that you put everyone was seeing it all at once. Right. There's a lot of people going out to do jobs that they had to do. But as a side, our culture was being made by people fully paying attention all the time. And I think that's a really important thing. And all of that was it meant that everything was heightened and you lacked the feedback loop of being in the world. Right. You lack the feedback loop of talking to someone face to face and trying things out. And also, by the way, stepping away for a little bit. Right. Well, there was also a thing, too, where so, you know, George Floyd's murder and a very important discussion afterwards about reform, reform, policing, systemic racism. And then, you know, there would be some vandalism and, you know, you know, windows being broken and, you know, people spray painting a cab. All cops are bad. And then some people would be like, well, that's not great, you know, to do that kind of stuff. And then the response you get is how can you care about that when there are these bigger issues? And the truth is, it's the reason you care about that is because the rest of the country is watching as well. And there's a most people, a majority of people who think police brutality and police police killing is a problem and very bad, but also they like police in general as a concept. You know what I'm saying? And so, like, for those people, if you tell them, no, no, no, it's also OK, looting and vandalism and saying that all cops are bad, like that's OK, too. Like, they're just not going to agree with you. Well, I also I I do think that there was an impulse. And especially in like a kind of a political show like this or political political debate more generally, there was a I don't remember what the book was called, but the thesis was something like looting. OK, I were I work for a major news organization and my book is called Looting. Yes, it's terrific. You know, it's like sort of but it's sort of written in some academic speak like looting and the praxis of freedom or something. And I remember feeling this at the time because it was so heightened and the Internet was such an intense place that you would you would say, well, hold on a second. These things are counterproductive, right? Like this leads to backlash. We're trying to avoid that backlash because the cause is so just right. Like because the cause of of accountability for for violence against people by the police is so important because it's like, yes, but because the cause is so just and important, that's why you have to be careful. That's why you have to be extra extra, like think harder about persuading people. Well, and and so then you say that's. So therefore, because the looting or the damage will be taken out of context, even if the vast majority of people are peaceful, it will be it will cause a backlash. But even in that moment, there was a kind of social pressure, again, simply saying because looting is wrong, because that business being destroyed hurts the people that work there, the people that own that business, even if it is a big company, by the way, but it hurts the people that work there that aren't for a big company whose jobs depend on it, but a lot of them are going to be small businesses. And that is just simply morally wrong. Even if the ultimate cause for the anger, what led to the protest itself is just, it is just wrong, even if it weren't counterproductive. And there was very little space for that. But here we are years later, and actually the failure for more politicians and people in authority to remember those lines and assert those lines in the same way, by the way, a Bill Cassidy or a John Cornyn are afraid to draw those lines. They are paying because they went along with a kind of style that the country has now looked back on with a lot of disdain. I will say, on the other hand, after AOC made those comments, I saw a lot of center-left folks who sort of always thought that the woke one was a little crazy, just not being very thrilled that she was just laughing it off. And they want a more serious explanation about what actually was crazy and what progressives have learned and sort of like more of a mea culpa on this. And I understand that, but also it's like political leaders on the left moving away from some of the. The fringier, unpopular positions that they took in the past is a good thing. And like one way to incentivize people changing their minds like that is to welcome it when it happens and not complain about it. Because I think changing your mind is good. Apologies are good. Recognizing that past positions weren't the best is good. It's almost like in a different way, it's when a Trump voter is like, oh gosh, I didn't think that was a good thing. I didn't think that was a good thing. is part of the problem is, OK, fine. Time is flattened on the Internet and in political ads that the fact that now people are walking away from certain styles of rhetoric or positions that were more extreme than they want to take right now. Good. Those old clips are still coming out. Kamala paid in blood for what she said in 2020. We are for what we are all paying in blood for what Kamala said in 2020. So part of it wasn't just her, to be fair. Of course not. Most of them that ran. Of course, it wasn't just her. It was everybody. It was it was a it was a cultural kind of like whatever, a cute cultural moment of people kind of kind of kind of in the sort of reverie. But regardless. One way to get past it, it's not just disavowing it like I appreciate Abdul now saying that was dumb, but people can smell when someone wants to say something. And like there's a difference between saying and Hong did this. Well, there's a between saying like what I'm running on is what I'm saying right now. And these are my current views. And I've said things in the past and I don't stand by all of them. And people evolve versus just being like, look, I said some stupid fucking shit in the past. And like looking back on it, I don't really think that anymore. And you can trust that I love that as a governor of this state, that I will support the police. I believe in policing the people that the people, some of the most vulnerable communities in our society depend on having good, responsible community policing that they can trust. That's what I want to build. I don't want to abolish the police. I think that that's dumb. And I regret embracing it as a slogan because it doesn't actually capture what I think. Like there is a way of talking about this that is going to honor your values. That doesn't just you're not just going to get past it. No one's just going to get past the robot. Like these are my positions now. I will never talk about what they were before. And by the way, like AOC knows that, of course, like AOC is like that. Oh, she I think she I liked it. No, I agree. Yeah, I thought it was great. But no, but I think she's trying to signal showing like this. There is a way to talk about this and kind of honest. An authentic way that helps people see past something you may have said a few years ago. Yeah. You know where people are going to be able to hear a lot more about the best path forward for Democrats. And maybe we'll even have a conversation about whether woke one was crazy or not. Where, John? Crooked con. Crooked con. It's happening in D.C. the weekend following the midterms. And we've said this before. There's a special rate for friends of the pod subscribers. But those tickets, they're running out, running out of those special front of the pod tickets. So you got to head on over to crooked con dot com to grab your tickets and if you haven't subscribed already, become a subscriber. Get ad free episodes of all your favorite pods and support independent media. And a bunch of episodes you can only get on our description. All kinds of secret episodes. All your friends are talking about them. That's right. So before we move off this, it's Election Day as you're listening to this, both in Wisconsin, where Hong has been in a commanding position for a while now, and in Minnesota, where the Democratic primary for the open Senate seat that Tina Smith is vacating is happening between Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan. She's been on the show and Congresswoman Angie Craig. We tried to get her on the show and it's tightening more than more than people expected. Any final observations on either the Wisconsin gubernatorial race or before we move on to Minnesota? I did notice there is one last state navigate state navigate poll that has Hong at 44, Crowley at 22. He gained seven from their last poll. Undecided nine. Calder Roy's at 11. Brennan five. And Barnes is still at six in that poll. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, I do think like the fact that the Republicans have gone behind Tom Tiffany has meant they haven't had any kind of fractious primary on their side. We've had one on ours. I do not think we have Shredder assaulting glory in this primary. I don't think it looked particularly you have the lieutenant governor dropping out because of some sort of alleged campaign malfeasance by the campaign manager. It didn't reflect very well, especially in a state that's been dealing with a scandal around fraud and Medicaid. You have Crowley, who got out and got back in at the behest of Tony Evers, the governor who could have run again. People thought he would. Then he decided not to. And so the end result is people feel like, oh, no, we ended up with somebody that has these kind of crazy old posts and has sort of been mired in this sort of right wing scandal for a few days. And all of that, I do think, has obscured the stakes in this election. The next Wisconsin governor, may oversee the the presidential contest that could be close. That person will be responsible for certifying the election. Tom Tiffany is an election denier. And I, Democrats, we have these big emotional anxiety, you know, anxious debates about our candidates. We worry about them saying the wrong thing. We worried about them having extreme positions that are out of step with the voters. The Republicans are not doing that. Tom Tiffany, the voters of Wisconsin do not want an election denier. They believe that they believe in. Fee and free and fair elections and they believe in a society in which when you lose an election, that's OK. You live to fight another day. You don't claim Donald Trump won and try to tell a bunch of your fellow citizens that their vote doesn't count. They don't believe in using the Insurrection Act. They don't believe in deporting people to foreign gulags. They don't believe in this mass deportation scheme in which our cities are overrun by ICE agents. And so we have to remind our we have to focus on painting the extremism of Tom Tiffany as the real threat to Wisconsin. And after Wisconsin, after this primary, we have to get our heads in the fucking game. We haven't talked a lot about Minnesota. Angie Craig, I would say, is the more moderate candidate. She has been Peggy Flanagan has been sort of attacking her on her vote for the Lake and Riley Act, which Craig first defended and then backtracked on. Craig is more pro-Israel. She's called off or she said she doesn't want a PAC money in the way PAC was still doing some fundraising and some spending for her. She also won't commit to not voting for Schumer. Peggy Flanagan is committing to vote, not vote for Schumer as leader. Peggy Flanagan said she would have supported that vote to cut off military and financial aid to Israel that they took. Angie Craig didn't vote for that. And Peggy Flanagan has wanted to, you know, reformize. She has not gone as far to say abolish ICE. So it's it's what we've seen in some of these primaries, but not I would say the differences aren't as stark. As they maybe were in Michigan or some of the other ones. What do you think about this race? The polling sort of all over the place. We don't know. It reminds me a little like the old saying about like, you know, why? Why is the fight so contentious? Well, because the stakes are so low. I'm not saying the stakes, the stakes are low. They're actually quite high. There are big differences between them. But I think in part because people think we can win in Minnesota and because I think Peggy Flanagan is not sort of a DSA city council person. She's a right lieutenant governor that a lot of people really respect. Whereas Angie or Craig is maybe a little to her right or more you'd say a lot to her right, whatever. It feels a little bit less. It's gotten a little less certainly national attention and honestly, a little less tension for me. I've had Peggy Flanagan on the show. I really like her. I really like her. I know no knock on Angie Craig, but I just Peggy Flanagan is just a really inspiring person to me. She has to be the first woman Native American to be elected to the Senate and just a really dynamic and interesting person. I think it is because, like you said, whoever wins, I don't know that it changes like the race rating. I don't think it makes it more of a toss up if Flanagan wins versus Craig or vice versa. So the other reason it might have gotten close is Angie Craig has been going after Flanagan for her connections to the state's fraud crisis that Walls has been dealing with, that the Republicans have been all over. Remember, it's what originally led Trump to send in ICE to Minnesota and all that. So she's been trying to tag her with that. So that might be – and basically saying – making an electability argument saying that if Flanagan wins, that Republicans will spend the whole race tying her to the fraud crisis as well. Now, you could argue that they'll probably do the same to Angie Craig even though she's not the lieutenant governor because they'll just say any politician in Minnesota is part of the fraud crisis. But that's one argument they're having there. All right. Speaking of the Minnesota primary, I don't know if you saw the story about Royce White over on the Republican side. He is a former NBA player who has run before for federal office and is now trying to get in on the discourse about the WNBA and trans rights by declaring that he's entering the WNBA draft. Ennis Cantor Freedom has also made this – another NBA player has also – a former NBA player has also made this announcement as well. White even put on a wig in interviews with Alex Jones and Benny Johnson. White has also made this announcement as well. It's just it's just very predictable what's going to happen every time. And like, you know, I agree, like actually like, boy, politics sure seems not like no fun when you talk about hard issues and get into the nuance of things and question Tucker Carlson about his views and actually sort of interrogate some of these difficult and thorny issues that we're facing or why the right has become so radical and conspiratorial and extreme or what actually drives politics to not work for people when you're not saying it's because Josh Hawley is secretly gay. And and and actually anti-Semitism isn't that isn't isn't isn't connected to what's happening on the right. Whatever you want to say, like, yeah, it gets it gets it's almost like becomes like work. You have to really focus on and spend a lot of time on it. And it sucks. I agree. Anyway, come on. Pod Save America anytime. All right. When we come back, Montana House candidate Sam Forstack. Pod Save America is brought to you by Bilt. 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First, download the Bilt app. Second, link any credit or debit card to the app so purchases at your local spots become even more rewarding. And third, ask the Neighborhood Concierge in the app pretty much anything, and it'll alert you about exclusive member benefits near your home. Download the Bilt app and join the membership. For where you live at joinbilt.com slash crooked. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash crooked. Use our link so they know we sent you. This is Troy Millings from Earn Your Leisure. That's X-E-R-O. Xero is a platform built for small business owners that brings accounting, payments, payroll, and analytics together in one place. You can access reports, visual dashboards, forecasts, AI insights to help you better understand your cash flow and make informed decisions about your business. Uh, do you not? Have the internet? Chefs use it. Restaurants use it. Whatever you're eating. QB it. You'll understand. Sam Forsag, welcome to the pod. Thank you so much for having me, John. So, first of all, uh, let's just give people some background on who you are and what led you to run for Congress. You're a smokejumper, uh, and, uh, this is your first time. Running for office. Just tell people about yourself. Yeah, it's my first time running for anything higher than vice president of my union local. Um, until seven months ago, I worked as a smokejumper for the U S forest service. So in the short version of that, as we parachute into remote wildfires to put them out while they're still small. And I was a leader in my union's local when all the dose cuts began. And what that looked like in Montana is in large part, you know, they said it was all about government efficiency, but the people we lost for the lowest paid workers we've got in our agency. Uh, I mean, when they have fired 360, Montana, it's just. And the forest service just on Valentine's day, two years ago, 85% of them were GS sixes or below making 1970 an hour or less. And my agency, it was people, the people who swing the tools and conduct the science to maintain our public lands. And when I reached out to Ryan Zinke, the Republican in the seat, who should be the person you can reach out to when your members lives are being turned upside down. I got crickets. So I, I decided if he's going to take my coworkers jobs, I'm going to come take his. Just so people understand like how, just to get when Doge comes in and makes cuts to save money. Um, sure. What happens when you're trying to say, put out a fire quickly before it gets bigger, like walk people through what happens if say the equipment you used to rely on is no longer available. Like day to day, what did it mean for them to try to make government more efficient? Uh, yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty clear. None of this was about efficiency. It was about power and consolidating that power in the hands of a select few, including the richest man in the world who happened to be at the helm of this thing, but on the ground, what it looked like even last year, and I know it's worse. Right now is public safety was hampered. I mean, I jumped a fire in early July last year, a time when usually you are not in a state of resource, scarcity, uh, resources being the, the manpower and the people you need to help fight a fire. If you don't catch it with those first eight jumpers on the ground and I'm, you know, setting up a task force and I get told, Hey, I know you're requesting three hotshot crews. There are none available in the region. So we're going to order six contract hand crews instead because they don't have the same capabilities. So we're going to need more people. And that's the only way we get any help to you in the next few days. But what it means on the ground is we all pay so much more for so much less, and it takes longer to fight those fires. And I mean, those stories are endless. And so you're making, I know you've been doing this for about seven years and you're making $19, 1975 an hour, seven years in. And because of these cuts, they have to bring in contractors and private companies that are going to make much more money, uh, and cost a lot more than what the kind of, uh, uh, the trained people would have done. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the real goal here was cuts. And, and privatization to turn it into another source of profit. Um, uh, you know, another story is last year, I jumped a fire outside of steamboat Springs in Colorado and, you know, as jumpers, most fires we catch with the first, you know, four, eight, 12 smoke jumpers on the ground. But when you don't, you step back and you set up a large incident to make sure that you can save houses. We had hundreds of houses at risk in the immediate vicinity. This fire, we ended up catching at around 500 acres. And on the second day I put in an order for pumps and hoses, which is a pretty basic firefighting implement just to get water to. The line and they tell me, well, we used to have a gear cashier in steamboat last year, but they cut that, they shut that down with the cuts. So you're not going to get those pumps and hoses until the end of next shift, because we have to overnight air mail, the pump and hose kit from Denver to steamboat. And we got to drive it up to the line and then we got to get it up to you. So you're not getting it till the end of the day tomorrow. So not only is our firefighting hampered, I mean, I cannot imagine a more expensive way to deliver hundreds of pounds of, of water pumps than that. So you're a smoke jumper and just that basically. You're going to the places where cars can't reach, vehicles can't get to, to try to solve problems before they get bigger. What does that look like if there's a smoke jumper in Congress? Like, what do you see as the problem you're trying to surge to that you view as, uh, uh, failing to get enough attention right now? I mean, really smoke jumping, like a lot of firefighting, right? We're not so different from hotshot crews or engine crews. You're training crisis management and whether it is the housing crisis that we're dealing with. We're dealing with in Western Montana, where we have the least affordable housing market in the country. That's a surprise to a lot of people. Yeah, I think that, yeah, I didn't realize that until, until learning about this. It's be you, you know, you're making 19, say $19 an hour in a area that we think of as rural. So it must be cheaper, but the average house is what, like $500,000 nowadays in Missoula. It's just shy of 600 K. You go to Bozeman, it's around $900,000 in a place where a decade ago it was probably closer to 200,000, um, the Flathead Valley Northwest, Montana, not so different. So the, I mean the crises. Are, you know, it's in housing, it's in healthcare, it's in childcare, where again, median wage is $60,000 in Montana. The average cost of childcare is just shy of 19 K. If you can make it through a waiting list. Um, and these are all crises that so many people have felt like our elected leaders at the federal level aren't dealing with any sense of urgency with, um, I mean, we had leadership nationally, not so long ago telling us the economy's better than you think it is. You know, meanwhile, yeah, me and a whole lot of my coworkers, well, at the end of four years of democratic control. I'm running as a Democrat. Well, yeah, we're making 19 bucks an hour and you're in a community where you'd be lucky to find a home for less than 500,000 bucks and life did not get better. If you're in a situation like that over the preceding four years and people felt like. The folks in power at the national level are not listening to us quite clearly. I mean, what better articulation of a disconnect than to tell people things are better than you think it is while homelessness just doubled or tripled in every major city in Montana over the preceding five years. What's interesting is when you say we've had leaders saying the economy is better than you think it is. I genuinely don't know if you're talking about Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Uh, one thing you said recently is that the national party did everything they could to make it hard for a Democrat to win in places like Western Montana. What do you mean by that? What I mean is we had people at the national level who quite literally were not listening to us. And we have people who are dealing with a housing crisis, 20 miles away from what you and I were talking about earlier, places like the Yellowstone club where you gotta be a multimillionaire just to be considered for membership. and you go 20 miles up the canyon, Canyon, you're in Bozeman. Well, we have homelessness that's doubled or tripled. You have people living in the back of their cars or trailers and people who felt like rightfully their problems were not being solved at the national level. And when that's the case, when things are that bad, process is not an adequate excuse for not dealing with those things. And I want to note, I would offer the national party did all they could to make it hard for a Democrat to win. The Democrat did just win the seat I'm running for. It's Montana's first congressional district. John Tester won Western Montana while he lost the state last year by just shy of a point, even in a tough environment like that. So we know we can win this thing. And the project here is to win in a meaningful way and rebuild the coalition we used to have when we could win statewide and when Democrats could conceive of ever having a meaningful majority in the U.S. Senate. You know, you've seen people talking about like abolishing the Senate. It seems like for a lot of people, it's easier for them to wrap their minds around fundamentally changing the Constitution than winning. In places like Montana statewide, again, even though John Tester represented Montana in the Senate, Max Baucus. What do you think right now is like if I went to Montana and asked a bunch of people when when you think of a Democrat, you think of blank? Like what do they what do they think when they hear about a Democrat? I think right now people think about John Tester, who was our senator until a year and a half ago. And not so long ago, Democrats, had serious power in a place like Montana. I mean, 2009, we had a 50 50 split in our state Senate. We used to have in 2016, we had a Democratic governor, Steve Bullock, who was reelected on the same ticket as Donald Trump. 2018, John Tester reelected again in our state. Democrats have found a way in Montana to win even when Donald Trump is gaining power. I mean, 18,000 Montanans voted for Donald Trump and John Tester in 2024. Those are the people who deserve a candidate who's actually going to speak to our experience and talk about how government needs to be a thing that can make your life materially better when the market is not meeting that need. And government has also been failing on that job for a long time. And I think clearly you look at what's happening around the country or even in our race, right, where I started this primary. Nobody knew who the heck I was in December of last year. And we had a crowded competitive primary that included a candidate who was the Democratic nominee for governor last year. People had been running for a year. And what we saw is that people are running for a year. And we're running for a year. We're really hungry for candidates or for just anybody who can actually reflect our experience and say, like, it's not just your problem, the fact that people can't afford a house. It's not just your problem that when your car makes a funny noise, well, that might mean you can't afford rent next month because I've lived it, too. It is our problem. And of course, people are going to address problems with more urgency if you've lived them. How much do you think the way like the way Democrats we have, obviously, there's a huge problem with the Democratic brand. How much of that do you ascribe to, say, like right wing media? Uh, uh, sort of hammering people, kind of pulling the most extreme versions of a Democrat. And then how much you actually laid at the feet of the Democrats themselves. John, I would say we hold these truths to be self-evident. The Democratic Party messed up pretty damn bad. And they got us into this situation. We had four years of power. Yeah. People were facing massive issues. I mean, between fire seasons, I helped put together the Montana Coalition to Solve Homelessness. We pulled a dozen homeless shelters together from around the state. And we ended up getting some of those homeless shelters together. And the first legislation passed in a Republican supermajority, the first one in state history. And the reason that was able to happen is because the problems were so damn bad. I mean, quite literally, I'm not exaggerating. We have tripled the number of unhoused people in a place like Montana. We're in the northern Rockies. It is not a hospitable place to be living on the streets. People die every year. And I mean, if you were working two or three jobs at a time like I was the entire time I was going to college and still graduating with that and you look up and people are telling you the institutions, they just need to tweak the list. And I mean, if you're little bit, that does not inspire faith. And that doesn't give anyone a reason to be hopeful or to engage with politics. And so what happened? A lot of young people did not engage with politics last year. They did not turn out and vote. And we are now quite literally not the party of working people. Most working people, most folks making under 100K just voted for Republicans or unions. I come from a union background. We have the Gibraltar of unionism in Montana. It's Butte, most incredible town you can go to, Western Montana. Well, half of union members voted for Republicans last year, and a lot of young people didn't turn out. Those are all the people that are the base of the Democratic Party I want to be a part of. And if we can't give those people a reason to actually engage, and we can't show them that there's a place in this party for them, not just for the people who are rich enough to make it through these processes that we create for federal candidates, well, then we don't deserve their support. So let's win it back. So Joe Biden, he's this, I think, longtime centrist figure. He wins in 2020, and he actually tries to bring in Bernie. He brings in Elizabeth Warren. He puts in a trust buster at the FTC. He governs much further to the left than anybody would have expected Joe Biden to govern, still not as far as some people would have wanted him to go, has some success. And Democrats are largely punished in part because of all the obstacles, like the filibuster in the Senate, the Supreme Court. Democrats are in some ways punished because he's unable to fully achieve his agenda. And then who wins? The Republicans, who then immediately deregulate, pass massive tax cuts to the rich, overturn, put on judges to overturn Roe and environmental and union regulations. They got it all. And so when you're talking to people in your union that voted for Zinke or voted for Trump, how do you talk about this? What's your argument? My argument is that I understand why a lot of people like my coworkers and union members, some of them. Voted for the schlubs who are tearing all this down all around us. And man, does it piss me off as somebody who spent a year and a half working with members who, I mean, I remember Kara who lost her job in one day with no cause, no notice, 15 years under a federal service because she just happened to have taken a lateral transfer that year to do more remote work during chemotherapy. Members are getting texts in line at the airport to go to their grandmother's funeral saying they lost their job. They were only making 16 bucks an hour in the first place. But you know what? I also work with a lot of people who, well, if you're making 16 bucks an hour and you're working for the federal government and housing costs have just doubled or tripled in your community and you can't conceive of ever owning a home, well, your life just got worse. And as far as I'm concerned, there are two primary roles for the federal government. First and foremost, it's to protect your constitutional freedoms, right? A lot of those in the Bill of Rights are freedoms from the government. Second, it's to make sure you can meet your basic material needs when the market is not meeting them. And the market was meeting them even worse after four years of democratic control. And you know what? If you are working two or three jobs at a time, or if you're working a thousand hours of overtime, like I had to just to scrimp by through a winter on my mortgage for a 980 square foot home, you might not have the time to follow the intricacies of policymaking or politics. You shouldn't have to, to be able to judge the people in power on what sort of results they delivered for you. And so I would just say like the people we need to win back are a lot of the people who got these folks elected. It's a lot of working people. It's a lot of union members. And it's folks who you don't start a conversation with by telling them that they're wrong. Because it frustrates me so much to hear people's, what I hear often say like, well, do they see, like, why are people voting outside of their own self-interest, their own material self-interest? It's not more in your interest to vote for somebody who's going to make your life worse a little slower than the other guy. Yeah. Also, don't tell people what their interests are, presumably. So there's also been a part of this debate about sort of, how did the democratic party lose the men? What happened to the men and the working class? A lot of people tend to- What better place to address it than a podcast studio? This is two white guys. Yeah, two guys in a podcast studio. This is where we're supposed to solve it all. But, you know, I think Tester has talked about wokeness as being part of this. You said something interesting the other day, which is just that, basically, if you have a member of Congress who's worth millions of dollars trying to be a tribune for the working class, that person may feel a little bit more afraid to, say, push back on trans issues or have a position. That might not have a majority, but actually, they want to be supportive of trans people. How do you think about this? Do you think that the social issues are part of Democrats' problems? Bernie has, because he's such a, kind of, people understand what Bernie stands for, he's had, on the other hand, more room to say, you know what, I don't think we should defund the police, or we do need to have a strong border. I think a lot of it comes back to credibility. And I had this fascinating split screen for the last eight years of my life, where I'm doing wildland fire in the summers, six to nine months out of the year, and then I was doing organizing and advocacy in the winters between that. And I worked for, you know, the Coalition of Homeless Shelters, I mentioned, for the State Library Association, even for the ACLU. And when I, well, when I would be in the middle of fire season, there's not a lot of other jumpers who go do policy work. And so, you bet your tail, everybody wants to ask me about whatever they might have seen on the news. Maybe it was on Fox News. And if we got time in between digging line or cutting line, you know, I'd tell them, you know, that story, well, here are the people that I know in the winters who are just trying to live their life with dignity without government telling them how to do it. And I think that that's a piece that has been lost. And I'll tell them what else I saw when I'm at the state legislature is, well, we just saw in 2017, deep cuts in a dismantling of our mental health services in the state when we had a budget shortfall. And over the following eight years when we had surpluses, did they reinvest in all those basic public health care services that they cut? No, they invested in tax cuts to cut the top income tax bracket year after year after year. And that's the same thing we see at the federal level. And it's, what it is, is it is big brother not watching you because they don't need to now, even though they can, they're singing and dancing while they pick all of our pockets as working people. And by the end of that conversation, a lot of my coworkers are pretty pissed and they weren't pissed about what they saw on the news. They were pissed about the fact that that is why I am poor. And that is why I am poor in a world where we just minted the first human trillionaire. That's something that should make us angry. And that's the sort of grievance of all the festering, misdirected grievances, that kind of economic grievance is what government's supposed to be here to help address. So let's talk about your opponent. Zinke won this race most recently by eight. You said John Tester won more votes there, even as he wasn't able to eke out a victory. It's very, very close right now. What is the case you're trying to make in the closing days to try to get more people to understand why your opponent, just sort of a Trump backtalk radio host, is not exactly what Montana needs? Yeah, the contrast here could not be any better, if you ask me. I mean, yeah, the fellow I'm running against, he was the handpicked successor for Ryan Zinke. He dropped out of this race about four months ago in good riddance. And he dropped out because he saw that wasn't going to be easy for him after a whole year spent gutting basic public services that people like me might have depended on as a kid. Someone whose belly was full thanks to food stamps sometimes, gutting our public lands, where if there's a consensus issue in Montana, it's our public lands. And so what did he do? He dropped out with 48 hours until a filing deadline and immediately endorsed this fellow, Aaron Flint, who was a far-right talk radio host. He spent the last 10 years in an air-conditioned recording studio spewing hate and hot air, nothing against air conditioning. What's wrong with it? I think you're sort of losing me a little bit. There's nothing wrong. You do a lot of good work in an air-conditioned recording studio. Sorry, continue. Well, and the guy is a political pundit, and we have plenty of pundits and political puppets in Washington right now. I would offer, there's no dearth of those. We got enough of them. What we do have a lack of is working people who know what it's like to be working three jobs at a time and still paying your rent on a credit card. I know what that's like. People who actually know what it's like to have your belly full because of food stamps, or thanks to food stamps, when your parent falls on a hard time. And people who don't have that perspective are going to perhaps fight with a little bit less urgency when SNAP benefits get used as leverage during a government shutdown, like they did this last time around. When half of my members were furloughed at the end of those six weeks, and a lot of them are showing up at local food banks that are also having to curtail food benefits because some of that comes from SNAP. It just feels like across the board, there has truly been a lack of urgency. When we had the political will to pass really big, important legislation, like you mentioned, like the IRA, right? Well, a whole lot of that money never actually got out the door. And people are hurting right now. I mean, if you were on the edge of not having your home, like Kathy, whose house I was at, Kathy lives in my home. I mean, I don't know if you live in my house. She's in now one of 4,000 mobile home lots that are owned by out-of-state private equity firms in the state of Montana. And Kathy's lot rent has gone from 370 bucks a month to over $800. Kathy doesn't have 10 years to wait for all of these resources to propagate through the system and for half of them to go to large corporations so that maybe her life gets better. Like Kathy needs help right now. And it feels like we did not deliver that help to people who really desperately needed it. And well, what happens? The party out of power gets elected and it turns into something really scary. And I think that's what's going to happen. And I think that's what's really scary and dangerous. There's also a big fight in Montana now over data centers. There's a lot of, there's a lot of outside money. They see, you know, Montana, it's cool. It's a lot of land. You can build a lot of big facilities. Yeah. Where are you on building data centers in Montana? And how does that contrast with the Republicans? Yeah. Well, my opponent got the better part of a million dollars from American Mission, one of OpenAI's super PACs just in the month of May to get him through his primary, even though they tried to make sure no one could run against the guy. So what we're up against is a pretty terrifying amount of money that this industry is planning to leverage in this election. I think 150 million, they're planning to drop on elections just this year. For us, well, we have a proposed center that is in theory going to use more electricity than every residential home in the state of Montana. And our power rates have already gone up 30 or 40% in the last three years. So what I would offer is we need to pass a damn law at the federal level saying we can't build these things until and unless they show that they're going to provide all their own power. It doesn't have to be on-site. Off-site's even better. Put power on the grid. We need it. Ideally, carbon neutral power. Making sure that they're not going to dirty our air and water. I mean, you see these terrifying videos of dirtied water. Well, there are more water-efficient cooling systems. They cost a little bit more, but this industry, they can afford it. They're planning to spend 4 trillion bucks on data center development in the next seven years. Right now, we have none of that. All we have is an executive order trying to preempt state regulations on AI. And where I am too, I'm coming at this, I'm also a relatively young candidate. I think that this technology is perhaps the biggest existential threat that we've got as a country. I mean, we've read the sci-fi novel before. We're all living in it right now. If their promises are true, well, this is a technology that could cure cancer or it could kill all of humanity. That's a big delta too. It's a big difference. Yeah. And right now, it seems like we're only using it for all the bad stuff. And what, in the last two weeks, you're probably tracking, we had two instances of these models breaking out of the system and hacking into other outfits and they're under a full-scale cyber attack from an AI system and nobody knows. There's no oversight or regulation of this right now, functionally speaking. And if we can't get our arms around it and have real federal oversight and make it so we're ready to pull the plug on this thing, if it poses a threat to the future of our children and our country, like we're going to be in a tough spot. One other issue that's been roiling in Montana is, in part, for all the reasons you're saying, the Democratic brand can be pretty toxic. You have an independent that has a lot of backing from- This is the first I've heard about this. It's the first you've heard of it. No. So for people that don't know about it, basically, there is an independent that's running with the backing of a lot of Democratic politicians. There's also a Democratic candidate on the ballot. Today, as we're recording this, is the last day for that Democratic candidate to drop out so that everyone can coalesce around the independent candidate. Do you believe that Bankman should drop out? Right now, yeah, today's the deadline. I think they just had a press conference the last couple hours. I think it was the third or fourth in the last week between the two of them. Yeah. Each one announcing, "I'm still running. I'm still running." Yeah, they're both still running. They're both still here. Yeah. It's an interesting game theory problem because there's been a Brinkmanship. But what do you want to have happened before midnight today? What I want is to make sure Kurt Almey, who's the Republican running in that race, is not our next senator. And I will be entirely honest, I am so deeply frustrated with the entirety of how this thing has played out. Yeah. I mean, probably North $8 million has been spent to manufacture the situation we're in right now, where neither candidate's going to have a chance of winning against the Republican, as long as they're both in this race. That's obscene. Yeah. That is actually disgusting. Whichever angle you're looking at this from, we've all swallowed a spider to kill a fly. And I mean, $8 million, again, is pearls before swine in a state where people are being pushed out onto the streets because they can't afford the basics. At this point, a coin flip would be better than what they got going right now. And what I've been telling the both of them is that I really hope that they will both sit down in person in a room and sort this out. Because a lot of how we got here as a country is a lot of our national leaders were putting their own ego before the good of the country. And it feels like nothing changes. And well, the reality is nothing changes unless we go change it ourselves. Yeah. It seems like, God, a coin flip would work. Can we just do that? I mean, basically, that's what you're. We want one candidate to go up against the Republican, and one of them would have to drop out, but neither one of them wants to do it, is basically where we're at. And so it sounds like you just want one of them to drop out. And by the end of the day. Yeah. That would be better than the situation we're in, this standoff. But I will tell you too, that Senate race, I have faith in them to sort this out and to exercise the basic skills that my dad, who's a kindergarten teacher, is teaching his students, right? Sit down, look at each other, have a conversation. But whether or not they do that, Western Montana, Montana's first, is where we have a chance to win. Yeah. This is the place a Democrat just won by almost 1%. And I think there's a real temptation to just spend all your time talking about whatever. Yeah. If it bleeds, it reads, wherever the controversy is. But this is a place where we just had turnout in the Democratic primary up 17%. It was down four on the Republican side. This is a place where we can have a foothold in a place like Western Montana or the Rocky Mountain West, or rural America, something that Democrats don't really have right now. So yeah, we're spending all our time talking about that. And whichever way that race goes, I think both of those are very different kinds of candidates. Yeah. And whatever happens by the end of the day, that's what will happen. And then we have to focus on doing whatever we can to win your seat and the Senate race. Absolutely. And people can go to samformontana.com if they want to help out with that. They can go to samformontana.com if they want to help out. And you're going to have a lot of money coming up against you. And in a state like Montana, a million dollars dropped in that race can have a huge, huge impact. Mm-hmm. What do Democrats not understand about Montana? Forget even just the politics, just as a place, what people care about. I think there's a lot of kind of assumptions people make about rural voters, how they view the environment, how they view public lands. What do people miss? I mean, our public lands are a way of life, truly. I mean, you're protecting your gun rights and protecting your public lands. Those are the two consensus issues in a place like Montana, because well, that's what people depend on to keep your freezer full. If you go to your public lands and use them for hunting, that is how people find sustenance. That's what people depend on. If you can squeeze in a Sunday afternoon between your three shifts just to go hiking or skiing, like that's what makes it worth living. And that is not a Democrat or a Republican issue. I mean, part of what pushed me into this race in November when I was thinking about, is it worth leaving behind smoke jumping, which is the only retirement, the only healthcare I had, the only career I really had to run for this office, because whatever the administration tells you, the Hatch Act exists and you cannot run for public office as a federal employee. I got a mailer from Ryan Zinke saying that he's the Teddy Roosevelt of public lands. A year into all of these cuts where my members' lives turned upside down where we're down 20%. We've lost 2,000 red carded firefighters. We're all seeing what the consequences of those are right now. We got smoke choked skies in Montana and less people to fight all those fires. And he's sending out a mailer with his little Teddy Roosevelt hat on and his Boy Scout outfit. Everybody claims they're for public lands, but it's a lot like these other issues. Like public lands aren't just lines on a map. There are a lot of people, most of them not making a lot of money who work their tails off to make sure you can make it up a road to the trailhead or up a trail to access your forest. And a lot of those people are core to the rural economies. If you go down to Hamilton, well, you got Rocky Mountain Labs who's lost 30 or 40 employees so far. You have forest service outposts. These are a core part of our community and our economy and we all just got gutted. And so people are pissed and they should be pissed, but being pissed is not enough. And when people say, well, are your friends who might've voted for these guys ready to see they were wrong? That's not what it is. I think right now people are just angry at both parties because you're paying 420 a gallon, at the pump for unleaded. And we're in another war that this guy started this time that none of us wanted and we're spending billions overseas and all of our lives are worse. So we got to move past being pissed and being angry and talk about re-imagining a lot of the programs that Montanans helped pass. Like Mike Mansfield was the leader of the US Senate from Montana who ushered through the great society and helped create Medicare and Medicaid and NPR and PBS. And these are all the things that are under attack. They're all the things we're called on to re-imagine and expand so people can meet their basic needs and have time to do their job. And I think that's a big time for the kind of empathy and compassion that your neighbor deserves. Sam, I am 43. I'm about to turn 44. Your skin looks great. Fantastic. Thank you for saying that. Could I be a smoke jumper? How, how athleticism, how much is required? Am I past my prime? Is it possible? You know, I fell a rookie at 47. Wow. Looking at you, I mean, you look pretty darn fit just from across the microphone, but no, what's required is it's a six week rookie training program. Most people have got five or six years, five to 10 years of fire experience before you get picked up and about 40% of people make it through. So it's six weeks of getting the hell beat out of you and PT and learning how to pilot a parachute. I want to know what a parachute. No, I can't do it. I forgot about the jumping part. I want to know what the like physical, I would like to know what those, like what, what is like the physical requirements that I would like to do a smoke jumper training. Yeah. And maybe I don't think I can jump out of a plane. I actually struggle from a high diving board to jump into a pool. So I think that's like probably not for me, but maybe I could do the training. Sam Forsag. Thank you so much. I keep forgetting the website. What's the website again? The website is samformontana.com, or you can find us on socials. It's just at Sam Forsag across platforms and I need all the help I can get. It is a rare thing to see a working person in the halls of power. And I need, if everyone pulls together and helps out, well, we can actually make this happen and we can start changing our country for the better. Thank you so much. Thank you, John. That's our show for today. Thanks to Sam Forsag for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show. On Friday, Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Farrah Safari with Reed Cherlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Heathcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kiril Pellevive, David Tolles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. 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