The podcast offers a critical examination of the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, highlighting its reliance on fear-based messaging, including accusations that Democrats support terrorism, especially targeting Muslim candidates. A central and absurd element is Trump’s proposal to give every American a $5,000 dividend—costing an estimated $1.3 trillion and widely dismissed as unrealistic and politically desperate. This underscores a broader decline in the party’s appeal, with low voter engagement, weak messaging, and a lack of authentic political substance. The analysis contrasts this with JD Vance’s speech, which is criticized for being phony, incoherent, and lacking authenticity, reflecting a party unwilling to confront its ideological inconsistencies. Meanwhile, the show promotes Simply Safe home security as a proactive, AI-driven solution that prevents break-ins, emphasizing real protection over reactive alerts. The segment also includes a satirical tone on political performances, noting Trump’s repeated claim of being “on the ballot” as a manipulative tactic to rally support. The episode concludes by underscoring the growing disconnect between political rhetoric and public trust, while promoting wellness, health, and sleep products as part of a broader lifestyle focus. Throughout, the hosts maintain a sharp, critical perspective on the Republican strategy, pointing to its fatigue, incoherence, and failure to resonate with voters.
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There are temperature and water sensors. There are a bunch of motion and window and door sensors. All the exterior cameras run on solar chargers to minimize maintenance. She is a huge fan and says, "You will be too." Right now, you can get 50% off a new simply safe system. Go to simplysafe.com/cricut. That's simplysafe.com/cricut for 50% off. And when you order, please write about PodSafe America and the how did you hear about a survey to let them know we sent you. Don't forget, there's no safe like simply safe. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Welcome to PodSafe America, I'm John Fabra. - I'm Dan Feiffer. - On today's show, we recorded late. So we could bring you our analysis of every single minute of the unprecedented first of its kind, World Historic Republican midterm convention in Dallas, where Trump bribed voters with $5,000 checks. He can't deliver JD Vance, tried to both position himself as the heir to Trump's legacy, but also runaway from it. Republicans marked the 25th anniversary of 9/11 by accusing Democrats of supporting terrorism. And even John Federman made a cameo. And then because this episode is dedicated to Republicans trying to sell themselves, you'll hear love its conversation with the Republican candidate for governor of California, Steve Hilton. - That thing's still happening? - Not a joke. Reached out, we said sure, we'd love to chat. Javier Basera, if you're out there, call us back maybe. We'd love to talk to you too, we've been trying. Okay, Dan, let's get right into it. On the off chance, that you all weren't glued to the special two-night run of Donnie Does Dallas. Here's a taste of what you missed. - And on June 14th, 1946, God looked down on His plan, Paradise, and said, "I need a caretaker, so God gave us Trump." - God bless the greatest president in the history of this nation, Donald J. Trump. - I discovered, as a self-effacing man, of superior intelligence, of empathy and compassion, that was an encyclopedia grasp of the issues and in molecular detail. - Nobody knows that Dom has a bee at the end of it. Most of it, most people make it. Do you am? And that's fine. - Divers rats, extreme candidates, won't rip that heart out of our chest. They hate our culture. They hate what it means to be American. - Please, if you don't mind, don't anybody go to the bathroom. - The Democrats party are advocates for evil. - Are you not gonna be the same for you when it's Trump's party? - He ran a campaign to beat me. He called it beat me. I don't know what the hell he meant by that. - Muhammad Al-Fayat. - It's never Muhammad Jones. - I think we should call the Hormone straight. We should call it the Trumps. I should get something out of it. The Trump straight. - 'Cause you know Lake Ontario, we're gonna call that now Lake American. New Mexico, we think it should be called New America. Some day there'll be a time when I don't get back to the original subject and then you can say he's had it. - These people are sick. So I'm asking you to pretend that I'm on the ballot. I'm on the ballot. - Please pretend that I'm running and get out and vote on November 3rd or sooner. Because in actuality, I really am running. - Now I'm biased, but I think that was a fantastic representation of all the programming from both nights. That was mostly from the first night. If you're wondering what happened the second night, we watched same thing. - Yeah, same thing. - Same messages, sometimes the same exact lines. - Sometimes they say same people. - You see that super cut, you watch that super cut, you got the gist. You got the gist of the two-day convention in Dallas. We saved you about 18 hours for Fox News viewing. - Yep, a lot of glazing of Donald Trump. A lot of scaring people about the terror, sympathizing, commy, Democrats, and his son Piker. - And his son Piker. - Yep, and that's about it. Dan, you were telling me earlier how much you loved those last couple rhetorical flourishes from Donald Trump in that super cut about how he is on the ballot, pretend he's on the ballot, I'm on the ballot, I'm actually running, he did it, he again, he repeated. There was a refrain tonight. He reprised that in his speech where we're recording this Thursday night 'cause we hit ourselves. But he repeated that tonight many times as well. So, the message is clear. He wants everyone to pretend he's on the ballot. - I think it's important to set the stage here for how all of this happened, which is Trump gave a two-hour speech last night. - Who wasn't even on the schedule to begin with? - Just shy of two hours. On Wednesday night, just shy of two hours. Tonight, JD's fan speaks for a long time. We'll get into JD's fan speech. And then Trump gets up there and says, I'm gonna be brief, tired of speaking. I have invited this opera singer to perform for you and where I'm gonna stand here, and you're gonna listen to his music. And then he gave, I think about 30 minutes of the same speech for the night before. - Yeah, just a condensed version in his mind condensed. We were watching it and we're like, should we add some clips from this to the super cut? We're like, no, 'cause it's literally all the same shit, except for one part that we may play at the end. - Yes, which is truly not my part. So now I think we have to play it. It's hard to take any of this seriously 'cause it was so absurd and so bad. But the fact that Donald Trump stood up there at a time which is approval rating is in the low 30s, at a time in which we are mired in a war in around this, cause oil prices went up $10 today during the Republican convention. - Diesel hit its highest price ever at many gas stations. They don't, it hit $9.99 a gallon and they can't go higher. - They don't have another space to do that. - I don't know, I'm laughing. - They never anticipated Diesel this expensive. - It's awful, it's gonna make all his lives more expensive. And the Houthis are out there just about to control another straight. - And that Trump would say, go out there and say, I'm on the ballot, which is the Democratic message. That is what we want. We don't want this to be a race necessarily about Susan Collins or Mike Rogers or John Tusset. This is about whether you want Donald Trump and try to do everything else or you want to send a message on Trump and he's saying send a message to me. The 60 some percent of you who are unhappy with my presidency, I'm reminding you today that I am on the ballot, that it is about me. So if you're unhappy with me, you should vote. Now, some Republican candidates in tough races did attend the event. John Hustead was there, Mike Rogers was there. Many did not. There was no Susan Collins. A lot of House, Frontline House Republican candidates were not there either. Do you think that skipping this event as a Republican candidate was DUM? I'm trying to understand the strategic logic behind Mike Rogers and John Tusset going. - Yeah, me too. - Is it that you need money and all of the Republican money is in Dallas, and so there are gazillion fundraisers in and around this. Is it that you were afraid that if you didn't go, you would anger Trump. - Yes. - And that he would then take it out on you in some way, shape or form? - I think that's the most logical answer there. Or is there some kind of calculation that swing voters are never going to watch this anyway, and that if you are, especially for Hustead, Rogers is a real headscratcher, but especially if you're John Hustead, and you're in a state, the Trump won by double digits. That swing voters aren't going to watch the speech, or watch any of these speeches of this convention, but base voters who might be upset with you or might be thinking about staying home, they're not going to vote for shared brown, maybe they're not going to vote for John Hustead, and they voted for Trump in 2024. Maybe they're tuning in on Fox, and now they see John Hustead at the convention, or I don't know. - Yeah, I mean, maybe they're like, it doesn't hurt. Like, so why wouldn't you go if it doesn't hurt? - Yeah, I think that probably comes out. You're going to get, they've stood next to Trump a thousand times. They've praised Trump. They have the base themselves for Trump. So it was not like,
like you need this moment to do it. But the whole, it kind of gets at the entire sort of idea behind the convention other than just Trump wanting to feed his own ravenous ego. But it's, you know, I think the way that Republican strategists are like recounting this is our bases and probably just enchanted. If you look at the CNN polls and Michigan and Maine that came out, Democrats have a double-dissue enthusiasm. And Vandex, you see this across the board. We got to get the Republican base fired up. Here's the fundamental problem with that logic is that the sort of the falsity and bargain of Donald Trump for Republicans always was he fires up Democrats, be fires up Republicans. What is not true anymore is that Republicans are as enthusiastic about Trump as they used to be. His, the number to watch here is his strong approval among Republicans. That number is right now 20 points lower than it was the beginning of his presidency, 20 points lower than it was right around election day in 2024. And 20 points lower than it was in election day 2018. Yeah. And so now you're just, you independence this week, voters hate you. Democrats are looking, are fired up to run against you. And you don't have the same impact for the Republicans that you did before. And you cannot kind of feel that at the convention when Trump was speaking to. Yes. Because even if you're not pissed at Trump, like this is why the, as you said, the strong approval is important. Even if you're not pissed at him, like the whole feeling I got from that convention and his speeches, especially is like, man, they're just out of gas. It's over. Like that party, like our party right now is there are debates. And there's the, the center left versus DSA and the progressives and old and young and everyone's have it. But like at least everyone's like fighting about something. The Republicans are just like, there's, there's nothing new there. We've been dealing with this. We've been like 10 years of this now. And it's like, it is, it's glazing Trump and the Democrats are going to kill you. That's it. They don't know anything else to say about anything. And like their culture, warship, they sprinkle it. That is like also sounding extremely old and tired in all the lines we've heard before. And in terms of like, people actually tuning in, obviously, you know, we're recording this Thursday night. So we don't have the Thursday night ratings, but Wednesday night where Trump gave his two hour speech. I think it was two and a half million people. Yep, which is flat over one handed. He gets normally at the exact same time on Fox. Right. So it was just, so that's from Fox because CNN and MS didn't carry it. The networks did not do not carry it away and see span and newsmax, I guess you could probably catch it there. But, you know, that's just kind of speaking to the choir. So it doesn't sound like this. And I was looking at that. You know, I always look at that. What's resonating newsletter? Yeah. What's happening online? Nothing. Nothing about the convention was being discussed online today at all. It's a real or breaking through. Sorry. It's just, it's, this gets to your point that just everyone can feel that the Trump era is essentially over. He's not gone. He's still very dangerous. You can do very, very bad things. We're living that. That's right. But his political relevance is over. He's less interesting to people. He's less frightening to people. He is, he, his ability to dominate the conversation is, is, is greatly diminished. He's just, he's still talking fewer people are listening, fewer people care. And that just, you can feel that through the entire convention. Now, speaking of non-official party conventions, have you heard of any big gatherings coming up on the Democratic side? Perhaps the history making incredible gathering that's going to come up in just a couple of months? Well, I have some of the smartest strategists, some of the least boring politicians and us. Are you referring to the one, the only cricket con 26? I am. I am. I am referring to the one and only cricket con here in an organic plug. Yes. Because we love an organic plug. And to let everyone know that there are still tickets available not many, but there are still tickets available. There's still discounted tickets available if you become a cricket subscriber, which is, and by the way, it is a perfect time to become a cricket subscriber. There's no better time. There's no better time because you get ad free episodes of all your favorite podcasts and you get to support all the great work we're doing here to try to push back against right wing media. And so you just have to go to Cricket.com/friends and become a friend of the pot. I'm going to add to this because we did not do a good enough job pitching this recently and Elijah yelled at us. Yeah, he did. Which was a weird distraction. Man, but that's neither here nor there. Look, we are 60 some days in the election. Poles are coming out every single day. Some are good. Some are bad. Some are frightening. Some are hopeful. If you want to survive, please this next few months here. There's only one way to do it, John. Polarcoaster with Dan Fyfer. How do you get Polarcoaster Dan Fyfer? You subscribed. Anyway, I think that was a good plug, Elijah. Yes, just so the Elijah will get off our ass for a minute. So believe it or not, Dan, buried around the one hour mark of Trump's speech on Wednesday night. There was something of an announcement. Probably two generous to call it a policy proposal. Let's listen. Only I can make this promise to you. And here is my promise. If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them, because of our economic tremendous economic success, like in history, we've never had anything like what's happening. But because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000. Yeah, sure, pal. Even Trump's biggest fans didn't seem totally sold on this one, in part because it would cost an estimated $1.3 trillion. And also, it will never happen. Here's Fox's Laura Ingram asking Trump a pretty reasonable follow-up when she interviewed him on Thursday after the speech. Why not just give the money now if you have the money. They can't. I'll tell you what, because the Democrats can't do it because with them, it's negative growth with us. It's so positive. What? What? What do you think of this one? I was saying this to love it earlier. We did a YouTube thing. Like it seems to me that the entire purpose of this was there's a lot of people out there who don't pay a lot of attention to politics. And I'm going to try to fool them because if they are scrolling through their phones or looking at a screen and they see Trump wants to give $5,000, maybe they will have no idea that I could have given them a dividend over the last two years. And in fact, promise to do so never did, even though I had a Republican Congress for the last two years. And maybe they'll just not know any of that and just think, oh, a vote Republican and get $5,000. And they're just counting on those low information voters who don't pay much attention to politics to just to fool them basically. No one is that dumb. What goes along with being a low information vote America. I'm confident there are people who are already in Trump's cult who will believe him. There is no one who is skeptical of Trump who thinks he's going to give them $5,000 and they vote for Republicans. It doesn't survive like one Google search. Yes. Well, it's not even that mean every person knows that paying someone for a vote is a crime. That's one. Two, Trump has already promised them a $5,000 doge dividend, which he did not give. He also has already been giving out money to people from the tariffs, but not to people to corporations. Like it's so stupid. The people who he's trying to fool are the people who are the most skeptical politicians. Making insane promises is insane promise. This is another example that everyone from Trump to his aid to the entire Republican Party are just fucking mailing it in. This is one of the stupidest, most embarrassing ideas that any politician has ever offered in United States history. It's so insane. It's so stupid. It can't be done. It costs basically the entire non-defense discretion, non-entitlement portion of the entire government budget for this. It would massively increase inflation. These are checks three times larger than the stimulus checks, which were limited people who made $75,000 or less. So he's wants to give $5,000 the Elon Musk for voting for him. Like what a stupid fucking idea. This is not a, he's going to give the $5,000 pretend to give the $5,000 to people who don't vote for him. Yeah. That's the other thing too. Everyone gets it. It's fair. Everyone gets the $5,000. The billionaires, the millionaires, everyone, but no one's getting it because when he wanted to give like a $1,000 dividend or a $2,000 dividend or less, reporters went and interviewed all the Republicans in Congress and they all said, no, we don't want to do this because it would increase the deficit and increase inflation because we are in still an inflationary environment thanks to Trump and his tariffs and his war. And so Republicans don't want to do it. And then he also said in an interview Thursday, oh, well, I don't think I need the Republican Congress to do this. I can just, I can just cut the check and give the money, which is also not true at all. Not legal. There's no money. There's no money. There's no money. There is the cost of, they said they pay for a tariff money. 300 billionaires. That's the cost of the revenue is an order of magnitude greater than the entire tariff money that we have run it. About four times, about four times the amount. Yes. And we've already given, we're already giving that money.
away back to Amazon, Apple, Walmart, et cetera, because the terrorists were legal. >> Yeah, it has been enjoyable listening to various Republicans try to defend this or at least answer it. I think Ted Cruz was like, well, it depends on how it's structured. JD Vance was like, well, I think that maybe we could make it so that the rich people don't get the 5,000 and also, you know, I think, oh, he said, I think he just said, yeah, maybe the rich people won't get the 5,000 and then didn't mention it at all in his speech tonight. >> I think no one mentioned it in their speech, but Trump, I don't think. >> The time story about how Republicans were really super into this idea and this great line about how defending the policy was left to Trump's more intellectually versatile allies. >> Who are they? >> Ted Cruz. That's true, that is true. Ingram did manage to get one clear definitive answer out of Trump on a related issue. Take a listen. >> Are you going to campaign harder than you've ever campaigned in this month? But isn't this just as important, Mr. President? I mean, your whole legacy is on the line. >> It's never as important, look, I'm campaigning for other people. When you say my legacy, I'll be a block. I'll end up being a blocker. I'll block all their bad stuff for two years. It won't be the same, but I'll be a blocker. What can I tell you? >> That's interesting. I didn't see the end of that before. He's kind of resigned to potentially losing this thing. It is, it was a great question from Laura Ingram. >> Is that the answer she expected? >> Well, that was going to say, yeah, it was not the answer she expected. More of a bad answer than a good question. But he got caught in his own trap there. Because it's like, pretend I'm on the ballot. It's all about me. It's all about me. She's like, okay, well, it's all about you. So are you going to campaign really hard? No. >> Well, the difference here is, what was on the ballot last time was not just his presidency, his freedom. >> Yeah, his freedom. His freedom. He also is going to, I mean, if he loses the midterms, he's just going to say the Republican sucked. >> They ran away from him. >> Yeah, they ran away from him and they weren't good candidates and he tried his best and he campaigned as hard as he could. But like, what are you going to do? It's not Trump. I tried to make it Trump, but it wasn't the real thing. People are smart and they can see when it's the real thing on the ballot or when it's not. And I tried to say just pretend, but I guess people just can't pretend. They're smarter than you give him credit for. So that'll, that'll be that. >> Pods, America's brought you a AG one. Hey, remember summer's f*cking dead is over. And that means it's time for what? It's time for fall. All right. And you know what autumn's all about? Getting shit done. All right. We're getting back to school. 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This country was handed down to us by our parents and their parents before them. We received this national birthright and we are going to fight for it by elected Republicans this November. We just had a protestor interrupting us and waving the Mexican flag. Well, my friend, if you love Mexico so much, get your ass over there, I'll buy you the plane ticket. If you ever feel down about our country, ladies and gentlemen, just take a look at the beautiful ladies right behind me. Ladies, I'd like to know what you had to drink because I'll take two of them when I'm done. >> What do that mean, do you think? >> I think they were drunk and they were being rowdy. I didn't notice it until he said it and then I was watching them for the rest of his speech and they did seem a little boisterous perhaps. I don't want to accuse them. >> He was so surprised that people being excited and one of his speeches, they assumed they were drunk. What do you think Dan did he win you over with that speech? >> He did not win me over. I am very curious of your take as a speech writer on this speech. I'm going to tell you right now what I think the reception is going to be. I think that the press and the establishment, the political establishment large is going to be very impressed with at least the reception to this speech and view it as the official, unofficial, I guess, kickoff of fans' presidential campaign where he made his most compelling case for himself today. That's why I think it's going to be covered. I do think they'll definitely see it as the unofficial kickoff and I can't tell how they'll receive it, but why do you think they will receive it well? >> Because people generally don't applaud when he speaks and they applaud it here. How would you describe the case he made for himself? Not breaking, not stepping on a rake in the middle of it. I don't think he made a very good case for himself, but I don't think the people that sort of the figure skating judges who grade these things, pay a lot of attention to the consistency of the argument or how the message plays outside the room. I think in this room he did a much better job of sounding kind of sort of sane and coherent compared to all the other speakers who sounded fucking bananas most included. >> I think he's got a potentially unsolvable problem. That's for sure. >> I'll start with your first point about how it gets judged. My favorite line from you has been the Democrats are reading the Stage Directions. It's like all I can think about now when I see Democratic politician. JD Vance, to me, is the Republican version of reading the Stage Directions. He's also the Republican version of another problem we have in our party, which is the too many front-of-the-class students who are like, "I'm going to study my way to the presidency and I'm going to make sure I listen to all my strategists and do all the things that I'm supposed to do and that pull well and I'm going to write the speech in the right way and I'm not going to be crazy like this one and I'm going to walk this tight rope and I think he is a smart person. I don't think JD Vance is dumb. And he's very smart. And so I think he is thinks that he is going to study his way to the presidency, write the speeches, work on the speeches, deliver the speeches that he's supposed to give, deliver the messages that he's supposed to give and it is going to fall incredibly flat because
Because it doesn't sound authentic, he sounds so phony, he, like, he doesn't have the problem of sounding crazy. That is absolutely right. But that is no longer, I think, how he is going to be judged as the 2028 race goes on. Like, there is no other Trump, right? And Trump is crazy. And then there's Republicans who sound crazy and all that kind of stuff. But like, I just think that he doesn't, his problem is not that, like, he sounds too fancy. His problem is that he's too fucking boring and phony and smarty. And like, I just don't, I don't believe that he sold any of those fine lines that I'm sure, like, I don't know if they pull well, but they're, like, you said, I get, they're not crazy, right? But like, I just don't think it's going to wear well. Yeah, I don't think it's going to get any, I don't think it's going to get anyone excited. And I don't think he is going to be able to elide the, I think he's not as smart as he thinks he is. Correct. Which is he thinks that, like, he had this whole part in the speech about, he talks about Charlie Kirk, right? This is the day that the first anniversary of Charlie Kirk's assassination. And he remembers Charlie and then he uses Charlie to talk about the war in Iran. He doesn't say Iran, but he says Charlie hated war. And I know that there are a lot of young men who love Charlie and we're big fans of Charlie are now are disillusioned. And you know, if you're disillusioned and maybe it's about war, just know that like you can have a disagreement and be on a different side of one issue and still not throw out the baby with the bathwater and vote for the crazy Democrats vote for us. And if he thinks that he is going to solve the problem of Donald Trump breaking his promise to not get involved in more wars by like some rhetorical flourish, where he's like using Charlie Kirk's death, like, I just, it's not going to work, it is, it is too cute by half. I want to stipulate a few things here. Sure. I was speaking to how I think the press is going to receive it. Oh, yeah. And that's the question of low expectations. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the expectations of JD Vance are understandably quite low because he's a pretty terrible public speaker from a pure performance, right, like the how he sounded, how he was received, how he filled the podium. This was probably one of his better moments and there are in a lot of good moments. So it's not saying a ton. I think I agree with you that JD Vance is not as much as he thinks he is, but I think his bigger problem is that the voters are smarter than JD Vance thinks they are. Yeah. Because everything, like you can listen to it and it is, like he really is like a softest, like it is, he like is weaving these arguments together and it like each individual sentence makes sense. Then you step back, particularly if you ever knew and I've both done this, you'd go back and read the speech afterwards and it makes no fucking sense. And it's like full of inherent contradictions. His problem is, and this is nothing to do with the kind of species, like how he delivers a speech, even becomes great at giving a speech, it's not going to solve the problem is the only good politicians or politicians who truly understand who they are. They've gone through some period of self discovery and JD Vance is no idea who he is. He is just, he is a, he is a shapeshifter, a code switcher for whatever works in the moment, right? He is one way when he's in at Ohio State, he's one way at Ivy League Law School. He is one way when it seems like Trump's going to lose. He's one way when he thinks Trump's going to win and he is just constantly trying to do what he thinks makes sense in that moment because he did, there is no set of values or morals or personal code that dictates how he should respond in a moment. He is dictated. And so that inauthenticity is what, that is like the core defining principle of every losing presidential candidate of this half century. It is, it's what had killed Al Gore, it's what killed John Kerry. It is what destroyed Mitt Romney. It is what hurt Hillary Clinton, like across the board. This is why people lose and he has all the makings of a losing presidential candidate. Now, that's because I have to dominate the right person because sometimes bad candidates do win, but he is very, very flawed candidate. But you could, like, I was watching that speech and every single line, you're like, I know what he's doing here. He was like hitting the maha notes at the top where he's talking about all the boxes. Checking all the boxes there, exactly. And then even the way he handled the Heckler seemed, I mean, we were all joking false flags flagged because it was so like, there's the Heckler, I'm going to stop the speech and I wrote this whole speech, but now I'm going to have to do, and he actually said this. Now, I'm going to have to do something different and turn to the Heckler and go back to him and then he was like, so proud of himself. And it's like, you know, maybe it was just in the moment and it wasn't staged or whatever. I'm not going to fucking throw any conspiracies, but it was like even that, which was potentially ad-libbed seemed like it was staged, and I mean, it's just, it's so phony, it's so phony. You really saw that, not just in the speech, but when he had been doing that interview a few weeks ago where he's like, decides he's like, this is the moment I'm going to defend Usha against Abdul, else I add, and it just seems like even that, it seems the whole thing about his pop-all and Abdul, it all seems so fake. And that part, like that would work, his whole, you know, retort to Abdul, that would work if people didn't remember that he was the guy who went out there and said, yeah, we pushed these completely unproven false conspiracies that Haitian immigrants were eating pets because I disagree with Joe Biden's policy of allowing them to legally be in this country. And so I'm going to admit that we just pushed false conspiracies because we wanted to get attention to that fact. It's like, we all remember you said that. So you can't be all offended by accusations of racism now and xenophobia now when we all just remembered what was happening in that campaign and suddenly be so offended by all this. I mean, even his, like, he had this line about Tel Rico, right? And he's doing the, like, Tel Rico can't stop talking about transgender children, which is crazy. That's true. You know, right? It's like, there's one time a one interview where they were like, Tel Rico was like, I love transgender children because he had just seen them that day and they've made a whole thing about it, right? And so his line is a guy that age who was so obsessed and focused on transgender children, I don't know about you, but I never want to see that guy's web browser history. It's not a good place. That is a line that also wouldn't survive one follow-up question from a interviewer. It's like, oh, so you're saying that what evidence do you have that James Tel Rico, like, wants to fuck kids? Is that what you're, because you're talking about as web browser, like, what are you talking about? You love to hear JD Vance answer that because he would fall apart because he, it's a line. He can't, like, Trump could handle that. You asked Trump that question. He would do his Trump thing and he would get past it and it would be like, oh, what's Trump whatever. JD Vance couldn't get away with that because there is no answer to why did you, why did you say that line? >> Yeah, yeah. What did you make, put aside Vance's performance? Like this was the clearest distillation and one thing I'd say about the speech is just, it was really a lot about him for just a midterm campaign speech. So he really was viewing this as his introductory presidential election speech, but let's just put that aside for a second. This was the clearest distillation of what their campaign strategy is, which is the, even if you don't love the Republicans and the things we've done, it's not as good as you want, prices are still high. We are at war. The Democrats are fucking crazy for, like, do they handle that part well? Is that strategy where are you at all? >> I don't think he handled it, like, again, he went through, he went through the, the deleted tweets of many, many, many of the Democrats. >> Well, that's what I'm saying though. It's like, if I was trying to make that argument, I think there are, maybe not like, okay, saying that, you know, he's talking about the deleted tweets from Will Lawrence and Michigan 7 where he said, like, fuck the nuclear family in a tweet, right? I think it is hard to pin that on the entire Democratic Party since no one else has said anything close to that even if they're deleted tweets. And so what she's again is something that's easy for someone to find out. And so if I was going to make that argument, there's plenty of other positions the Democrats have taken, and maybe a lot of Democrats have taken, that I would try to build an argument around about why those positions are out of step with the American people. Just like not picking a few tweets from, like, one House candidate here and one House candidate there, I just think that act is going to get old. And the whole party has this problem, Trump had this problem, especially in 2020, which is like JD Vance talks like he is so fucking online, and the reason we all get it, and probably the reporters too, I mean, to your earlier point about how they judge it, like, everyone who is super online and super engaged in politics and political fucking junkies who can't get off their phones, know all the things JD Vance was talking about, he's going to get out on that trail as a candidate for president and start saying some of this shit. And most people are going to be like, what do you mean? What are you talking about? Yeah, this is that you've hit on his big, like Trump is overly versed in his, in the lore of Magus stuff and right-wing media. That's because Nally Harp prints it on hands it to him, but JD Vance is like in the dark quarters of the internet. His brain is, Trump's brain is not warped by the algorithm because he's not looking at the internet in that same way. JD Vance is is, and he is emblematic of this much bigger problem that you see with Republican and strategists.
which is they their brains are all pickled too and you know whenever I'm doing political experts react in reviewing Republican ads they're all two steps over the line because they require some sort they both require a belief in the worldview of Fox News about what is actually happening out there that we all live in this dystopian world where you know MS-13 is killing everyone on the street corner and you have to understand like chapter in verse of the lore of Maga and like that JD Vance has it but that speech had that problem like you and I were like that's will Lawrence is tweet but no one knows who will Lawrence is or that's his tweet or what the fuck he's talking about right like I look he's he is trying to put a like I think every vice president who's running probably has to look at the president be like okay what what don't people like even in my party about the president that I served with and like what's my how am I going to differentiate myself mostly not everyone does that apparently not everyone does that but the successful ones and clearly in this speech you you could tell the JD Vance like there's so much talk about family and kids and he wants like a family friendly Maga version and that's what he's going to try to put forward it's very like national conservatism he wants to like sand the rough edges off that he doesn't want it to appear to mean but like if he does have any kind of belief it is the belief that he has espoused many times in speeches that we probably won't hear again where he talks about like it's blood and soil nationalism yeah like that's that is what he believes if he believes anything and I think he's smart enough to know that that doesn't wear well with the general electorate at all and so he's trying to sand down the rough edges on it but it's just I don't it's going to be hard for him it's going to be hard but we'll see uh did you see Marco Rubio today asked about his potential plans to run for president in 2028 and he said quote I don't know what the future holds but I have no plans at this time at this time does you take anything from at this time or do you think it's just reading too much into it no I think it took a very specifically at this time meaning he's keeping the door open yeah it's going to be interesting to see how that friendship with Vance a close friendship wearing over time and then if we can get a Vance Rubio Hague set Ted Cruz primary oh my god because Ted Cruz is deadly serious and he's talking Ted Cruz is running he hates Vance you know we make it wow I'm trying to think of that that's a quite a stage I don't think Rubio and Vance both run together right my suspicion is Rubio does not run but Vance obviously runs and maybe Cruz runs too yeah I think that's probably right um anyway we have enough time to talk about that later uh you're hearing this on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and while Republicans uh chose not to align the convention with the day itself the people on stage uh and on Fox News did take the opportunity to paint Democrats as terror sympathizers particularly Muslim Democrats like Abdul El Sayed and Zoran Mamdani uh let's watch I know what they're capable of and I know what happens when America becomes afraid to call evil by its name September 11th isn't something that we deserved no matter what Abdul's buddies say Abdul's is funding his campaign with money from terrorist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood he wants to represent Palestine I want to represent Michigan and on 9/11 could anyone have imagined that Comrade Mandami would be the mayor of New York when he goes down to 9/11 it's I hate to even say this Laura but you know it's a message to Osama Bin Laden that look we conquered New York it's going to be a tough message to deliver yeah there's a lot of Osama Bin Laden there's a lot of questions about what's coming on there um one that crazy woman was it is he said he's counseled woman in New York so that's not just elected official that's not that's not that's not just a fucking you know random yes yeah I wish I had seen that clip a thousand times and it was until you told me that she was an elected official paid for with taxpayer dollars people in New York have voted for her some she has received some votes from people there's just like when we are afraid to call evil by its name is this name evil is that what Mike Richards is saying or have we stopped saying evil now like I'm not sure what he what what is going on there um it is true that no one on September 11th 2001 could have imagined Mandani would be mayor because he was nine so that was surprising I mean what do you what do you make of all of this this is this has been a real drum beat that is now crescendoed here on the anniversary of 9/11 with it and it mostly it's about a duel in Michigan I mean they're still doing it the most dangerous what it's about it's about a sunpiker well it's it's I think it's mostly about a duel but it's trying to they're using a sunpiker yes is the easiest way to try to stop a duel from winning I just am not sure like this is Fox has been doing this for 25 years now this is there is this a there's been this sense that after 9/11 like the way to win was to portray democracies on the side of al-Qaeda and that worked in 2002 or 2004 it's sub-working 2006 it hasn't really worked since then and with every passing year it's less effective and had just there are a lot of things that they are going to do usually I'm not that is just pure anti-Muslim bigotry nothing else like it's just incredibly offensive just openly racist in every way she performed the there are a lot of things they're going to do to try to paint a duel outside of sort of the mainstream American political conversation all a lot of it is going to be racist it is going to be quite offensive I really don't think the one thing that a sunpiker said which he has a apologize for about 9/11 is a particularly effective attack do you think it's some even more effective when they spend a lot of time at the convention showing giant photos of Hassan and a speedo that I don't know how that would affect the Republicans I'd like to see their web browsers all right one last topic to touch on here reluctantly on Wednesday evening John Federman made a surprise appearance by video to introduce his fellow Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick let's watch introduced this great American a great senator and yes he's in a different party but I'm proud to count him as my great friend so for everybody in Dallas I'm here to introduce Dave McCormick compelling piece of content regardless of how you feel about his appearance so this got a lot of attention of course Democrats were already fuming at Federman for closing up to Republicans love and I talked about this on on YouTube on Thursday but would you like to weigh in on this I find it very irksome that he did this I think that the fact that John Federman today is the exact opposite of what John Federman ran on only four years ago and that is incredibly frustrating and it is a real disservice in betrayal to the doors of Pennsylvania but people don't let you in on the secret we have one goal and one goal only keep John Federman in this party for the next two years until he loses his primary in 2028 but she will certainly lose because his approval for anyone Democrats is like 45 points underwater yeah so it sucks it is annoying he still votes with this 90% of the time he's mostly just trolling us all of the time by going on Fox News and doing very very annoying things and obviously the things he has said about Israel and about people who are of good faith critics of Israel incredibly offensive and terrible but like we're stuck we're stuck with John Federman for two years because if he leaves makes it that much harder to get the Senate majority I yeah I thought it was irksome and then I saw like he put out a statement right afterwards and said I'm still a Democrat and if we win and take back the Senate I will be the 51st vote for Democrats like I promised I would be or something to that effect yeah and so like now he could change his mind of course but if that's where he is right now then that's where he is right now and you know yelling about it flipping out about like what I just what is it going to do what is the purpose what rather like what is the what is the what is the usefulness of this each individual person can be mad and should be in particular your better Pennsylvania should be mad the people of power in influence from the party who are like get out of the party that helpful we need him in the party unfortunately no and and the reason we need him is I said this before but say it again like having him as the 51st vote if that's what he is could be the difference between you know we're placing Sam Alito or Clarence Thomas or God knows someone else with Eileen Cannon for 40 years on the Supreme Court or not so it's like you know and yeah he has broken he is he's voted to confirm a lot of Trump's pointies cabinet officials he's broken with the the Democrats on some like government shutdown stuff but judges 42 out of 46 Trump Trump judges he has voted against he and he is not voted for a single appellate court judge.
from Donald Trump. So even if it's just judges, that he's voting with Democrats on and just voting with Democrats to make a Democratic majority leader, leader of the Senate, that's good enough till 2028. It is good enough. >> It's not fun, but that's what we got. >> Yeah. All right, Dan, before we go, the Republican convention did wrap up with Trump's very similar condensed version of his Wednesday night speech, given again, on Thursday night. There was one new part that we should leave you all with. Let's take a watch. >> Please raise your right hand. I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States. That loves her so much, she can't even breathe. That I will go out with my family, my friends. I'll do it anyway. I don't care if I'm registered or not. I'm going to try and cheat like hell like they do. And we are going to vote on November 3rd, or we are going to vote before that. You know what happens if you don't vote. You go to hell, you know that. >> Take it from that guy. That's what I'm taking. That's how I'm taking a list of five. >> That's our best strongest list too. Go vote. Go vote. Do register. But go vote. >> Yes, no cheating. I don't think you're going to hell if you don't vote. >> No, I don't think so either. But go vote. Go vote. >> All right. When we come back, Republican candidate for governor of California, Steve Hilton. >> Potsy of America is brought to you by Bilt. Here's a question. Are you getting rewarded for paying your rent or mortgage right now? If the answer is no, you need to check out Bilt. Becoming a Bilt member means earning points on every housing payment no matter where you live. Bilt points can be redeemed for flights. Hotel is Lyft rides, Amazon dot com purchases, future housing payments and more. You can get all these great things. There's restaurants on there. You can get built home delivery powered by go puff, gift cards, built new AI neighbor and concierge. Doesn't just answer questions. It executes tasks from paying your rent and handling a lift to booking dinner reservations across 50,000 plus partners. It handles your to-do list while automatically applying your membership benefits. First, download the built app. Second, link any credit or debit card to the app so purchases at your local spot become even more rewarding. 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 built app and join the membership for where you live at joinbuilt.com/cricot. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T. com/cricot. Use our link so they know we sent you. >> I'm Nate Silver. >> I'm Galen Druke. >> And I'm Claire Malone. >> We're back. This time with our friends at Crooked Media for a new show called Still Counting. >> Yeah, numbers are hard. It takes very easy. And frankly, numbers have only gotten harder. What does the data actually say? How do we reconcile that with the other things that we're seeing in American politics and around the world? And how do we use that data to understand or maybe even dare to predict the future of American politics? >> He's the Republican nominee for governor in the state of California, Steve Hilton. Welcome to the Pot. >> It's great to be here. >> So, I want to start by saying that I appreciate that you reached out to the show to come and talk to us. I give you a lot of credit, especially when we have not been able to book Democratic candidate, Javier Basera. >> Is that right? >> We have, we tried in the primary. We are still trying. I believe we have not heard back from our most recent inquiry and maybe he'll do it. Maybe the best service I can give you is like, finally, you'll get Javier. Now that I'm, I think it's going to work actually. I actually do. Now, I want to start with this, what is your pitch to Democratic voters in this state who may be frustrated with Democratic governance here, but cannot imagine voting for a candidate endorsed by Donald Trump? >> I totally get that just to be clear. I'm on the road the whole time in California and we're doing events up and down the state, town halls, hundreds of them now, and increasingly Democrats are coming. And they ask questions about that. So, I really understand of most of my friends, Democrats, and most of my life, actually, my friends have been on the other side of the political divide. So, I totally get it. That's the first point. And it's a totally reasonable question. And I think that the simple answer for me is that I'm not, first of all, I'm running for governor, not him. Secondly, I'm not, I'm not an idealog. I'm not particularly tribal, actually, when it comes to politics. Most of my career has been in business. I'm a pragmatic, kind of problem solving kind of person. We can all see things are going wrong in California. I just want to fix what's wrong about this beautiful state that's so amazing in so many ways. But we can all see, it's frustratingly off track. Everything's so expensive. We can get into that. But you're not going to get someone who's trying to tell you how to live or what to do or impose any kind of, you know, world view in that sense. You're just going to get someone who wants to make it easier to live, to run a business, do something about some of the visible problems we have, like homelessness. That's the pitch, really. You don't have to, you can still be anti-Trump, as many millions of Democrats in California are strongly so and vote for me. You don't have to change your party. You don't have to change your politics. You just have to vote for change in this election. And there's one last thing I'll say, which is a very important way. You hear the word change, you know, better than most in elections the whole time. Actually, in this instance in California, there's another word that I think is just as important and that is balance. So we've had 16 years now, where one party's been running everything. And I just think most people would agree that's not healthy. Whoever it is, in history, when you've got that kind of political dominance by one party where that's right or left, it ends badly. And I just think having a bit of balance in the mix, you know, it's very likely that not just that Democrats will control the legislature after this year's elections, but they'll continue to have a super majority. So we're just talking about, you know, this is not a mega takeover of California. This is just a bit of common sense balance in the mix. So I think that for me, and I assume for a lot of others, to be open to voting for someone who's not just endorsed by Trump, but supports you continue to support Donald Trump. You believe he's a good president? No, I don't agree with everything he's done, not at all. And I think, but do you support Donald Trump right now as you're sitting here at this table? Well, would I vote for him again? I mean, he's not on the ballot. I don't, I haven't really thought about that. It's a sort of, you don't know right now. I'm calling, I'm saying, do you support Donald Trump? Donald Trump is the current president. Do you support him? I think what would you order a question? I disagree with a lot of the things. Do you think he's a good president he's doing? I think that again, I think these are too broad. So I think it comes to specific things. And that's fine. But the reason I'm pushing on that, I'm sorry, I want to move off of Trump, but I think the problem right is that it'd be nice if we could separate what's happening in Washington, what's happening here. But I think there's, it matters, right? Because there's a threshold question for people who may be bothered by what they see as kind of feckless misrule that we have in California. I am, right? But I worry, right? That like I, I would love to vote for a change, right? I worry that Javier Becerra doesn't represent that change. But there's threshold moral questions that anyone I could possibly support would have to pass. And I want to challenge you as to whether or not you pass those. That's why I'm asking that. These specifics, let's do it. What are you worried about? So you said recently that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, yes, right? However, in 2020, you said it wasn't a fair election right after. You said that you wanted McConnell to have a full Senate investigation into the 2020 election to be a majority leader. You said the FBI directly interfered in the 2020 election as recently as may. You're refused to answer us to whether Biden won. Now I understand why you would say now. And I'm glad in July, you did say Joe Biden won the election fine. I always said that. By the way, that may thing is weird. I know exactly what you're talking about. It was a, it was a, it was a classic kind of on the campaign trail thing. I was in, we were on the road. And it was, I think you're talking about the MS, MS, MS, yes. Exactly. And I mean, I've always said that. I've always given that answer. I've never maintained any of that. I've never said anything different. And so they kept going on about it. I said, I've already said it. I've said it. But so, so I don't think I've ever, you haven't evolved on this issue. Not on that one. Now, the other thing on the, on the, who won the election? No, I've never believed anything different. On those specific things like immediately after the election, when there was a lot of conversation about what happened and so on, everyone was saying what I was saying then, which is, okay, let's say Biden was saying that. Mitt Romney was saying that. Whatever they were saying was that we should have a, you know, the questions have been raised about the election. We've got to make sure everyone's, you know, those questions have put to rest and properly investigated. This is where I think you're very, you're very smooth. But that's what, but you said what Romney and Biden were saying. Yes. Very different than what you were saying. You were saying that the election is in dispute that America's becoming a banana republic. You've said our, you've recently said our electoral system is a joke. Well, it is in California. Even the New York Times said,
We take too long to counterbalance, agreed. But what I'm hearing right, you're saying that, oh, I always believed that Joe Biden won the election. However, there have been times when I've been reluctant to say so. And I support someone who is lying about the outcome of something fundamentally sacred in a democracy. But I believe Donald Trump, I supported Donald Trump's election in 2024. Even though he denied the results of an election that you're saying Joe Biden won fair and free in a democracy. Again, I think we've got to be really precise about it. I think everyone can see that the 2020 election was really messed up. It was in the, COVID was going on. Yeah, very a large number of last minute changes were made to the voting system that were done in a bit of a rush driven by the need to accommodate COVID rules and people couldn't, you know, like, okay, we got to do mail-in voting because people can't show up. All these things were done. But you've also, you see, this is what I mean. Now I think you're saying better. I think it was a uniquely messed up alert. But you also said it was because Democrats wanted to do, to boost democratic votes to have an unfair advantage in the election. I think the Democrats should leave the more mail-in voting would help them. Yes, I still believe that. I think that's what, now, I think that's because of the sort of a once-in-a-century pandemic. You know, you think it was a procrastination. I think there's no question that they believe. I think they still believe. Now why did Democrats enact ballot harvesting? For example, in California, all these different rules, the seven-day counting-after-election day, I think that they believe, because they're postmarked by election day. Well, but not necessarily postmarked. You can hand-write it. You know, there's all these things that people just look at, and look at it, including the York Times, as I say, and say, look, come on, these things just don't pass the smell test in terms of what makes sense for making sure people, you know, you have elections that people have confidence in, we get a result quickly. And I think 2020 was a uniquely messed-up election. And I think that the criticisms I made at the time and still have are totally reasonable. Now, in terms of the outcome, I mean, I've never challenged the outcome. I really haven't. But the points I make made, then, I still would reiterate now that I think that there were problems with how those changes were made. They were rushed through that meant that you had all this kind of swirl of, you know, complain and uncertainty and whatever. Well, you, and see, I think that that's, it was, but I think that's, you know, that was 2020. It was the middle of the pandemic. You're trying running election in the middle of a pandemic. Changes were made to the system. And I think that they were done in a rush and in a way that undermined confidence in the election. And so I really believe that today. And so when Donald Trump, if questions, the results in other elections, you think that is wrong? Yeah. And so I said, in relation to our elections here in California, you've just recently, for example. And you don't have, and, and, but you see, like, this is someone that is, for, for Democrats like me, it's like, we are trying to run a democracy in one of the, the, the great important things about a democracy is you fight to the end, but you have some forbearance that if you lose, you go home and you lick your wounds and then you try to fight another day. You agree with that, right? Right. Right. And that's morally reprehensible. Okay. Is it? What? Is it reprehensible? Look, I want to, I, yes. Okay. But I just, yes. But this is why it, but it matters. Right. I speak for, I think I represent. This is a little bit like the MS, MS now conversation, which is the reason that I find this conversation. I think it's, I think it's an extreme view to take this particular issue and make it the determinant of, of, of, of an assessment about where you, of who you are and what you believe. I think it's one of thing, not one of many things. There's lots of reprehensible things about what politicians say and do. And so I just don't think it's how I, I don't, it's not how I think about stuff where you have a kind of litmus test that this is the one thing where you say, because, because this all that person thinks that says that whatever, I'm not going to pay any attention to anything else. And I just, that's not how I think about it. So I'm reluctant to give these sweeping assessments of things. I, I, I disagree with what has been said about the 2020 election, yeah, I've said that many times. I also disagree with how it was conducted. Both things can be true. Okay. So you are the son of Hungarian immigrants. And I think you've talked quite movingly about why your family left Hungary for the UK and ultimately for the United States. And you've also talked about what it was like to be detained when, because you had a, so probably your passport and there's a problem with, I believe, your son's visa. Oh, yes. I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm, I would just, I think people would be interested to hear sort of, like, why did your family leave Hungary, right? And, like, what are some of the ways in which that has, that has reflected in your politics? So there are, as three people involved, actually, my, my mother, my father, my stepfather, also Hungarian. My parents divorced when I was young. And England, my dad went back to Hungary. I really grew up with my stepfather. And so they came in different ways. My mom came, I don't know, I remember the story now, but she was, I believe she was studying English at university in Hungary and then had an opportunity to go to England for a few months. Right. I don't know how to check with her after this. And, and then met my dad who'd come to Hungary via Australia where he went. He was a famous sports guy in Hungary. And he was the goalie for the national hockey team, played in the Olympics, Winter Olympics. And then when he stopped playing, I remember that there's one story that I really remember. I mean, he died when I was much younger as well. And I only spent like vacations with him, but I do remember him telling me that after he stopped playing, he got into business, he had a paint factory. And I just remember that going, I didn't really understand what he meant. He went on and on about how the communist took his paint factory. And he was quite stride and anti-communist and he's quite well known. So he left it after 1956 when the revolution was crushed by the Soviet Union, went to Australia with his first wife. They spilled up. England. And so they all came slightly different ways. I think then they met in London, working in, I think they were both working in the restaurant that he threw airport. Then by stepfather grew up in a village in a rural, you know, setting in the western side of Hungary. And then his story is different as well. So he was 14 years old. And he and his brother and his classmates heard on the radio that the Russians were coming. He was young like a Zodrosok in Hungarian, I remember him saying that phrase. And then they just ran, it's not far from the border with Austria. And they ran. And they literally climbed barbed wire fences and whatever. And he says, I mean, again, he's probably, doesn't know for sure, but he says that many of them were killed in the attempt, you know, getting out. And he ended up with his brother in a refugee camp in Austria. So they all had a slightly different pathway. So on immigration, you have Zodron, I think, a right distinction between illegal and illegal immigration. And you've basically said some version of in many ways, many times that there ought to be more cooperation with ICE because the lack of cooperation of what leads to the chaos and the targeting of people who are nonviolent offenders. And there's general kind of antagonistic toxic brew of hostility, yeah. So the problem I have when you say that is it would be nice if that were true, but California may be attacked by Republicans were being a sanctuary state, but the sheriffs and police still notify ICE about rebels. Right, and ICE can still enforce removal orders here. And there doesn't seem to be a difference between cooperative and non-cooperative states. So if you're in Florida or Texas, huge number of deportations, same as in other places, we're still hitting about something in the 70s percent of which are sort of nonviolent offenders or no convictions, right, 5 percent violent. And that's true, regardless of the level of cooperation, the cooperation just seems to increase the number of deportations, right. And if you accept that as true, does that, would that change how you think about the role of California's governor? I think the number, the number one thing I believe is that we just got below the temperature. We got to find ways of handling this better. And I think there are examples in the past of where this was handled better. Clearly everyone is grappling with a situation where you've had 50 years of terrible broken immigration policy in loads of different ways. And so that's just hard, you know, you're dealing with a difficult problem because you've got a legacy of an unaddressed problem that everyone just passed the buck for years. And so I think that that's the, it's not easy, none of it's easy. But I think the way it's been so, the confrontation and the demonization and all this rhetoric, I think it makes it even harder to deal with the hard problem. So my number one thing is, can we just lower the temperature a bit?
sit down and try and figure out how we handle this. First of all, of course, everyone knows federal immigration policy. You don't affect that. The question for the government is like, how do you respond here? And that's my goal. It's like, let's find a way to work together, which Gavin already says he is doing. And if you look at California's sanctuary state law, SB 54 passed in 2017, there's a whole section in there, which I've read a long section, which lists all the different areas where you can have at the discretion of the state cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. In fact, California's sanctuary state law was criticized by the left for being too accommodating on that front. Let's see, but this is the thing. It doesn't really just boil down to cooperation. It's well, what kind of immigration enforcement would you support as governor, right? Because whether the kind that doesn't know, I don't like a tool. If this is what you're getting at, just be direct about it. I really don't want to see raids into communities and to workplaces. Any of that, that is, I hate to see that. So you oppose that. Well, I don't, yes, okay, I oppose it, but I don't think I can do about it because you're not in charge of it. But if you can decide whether to coordinate, whether to, yeah, you could play state resources to coordinate in those enforcement actions, or you can do what the Gallup California has done. It's a, we're not going to break the law, but no, we're not going to participate in these actions. And then that is described as a lack of cooperation, which leads to the deployment of federal agents in a big kind of sweep. Yeah. So, so I know Tom Homan, well, I've known him for years. And I, you know, he's the, he's argument. You can challenge it, but I'm just, you know, he's argument is that we wouldn't need to do those kinds of enforcement actions if we had more direct cooperation. And we see, and it's, and it's not true actually that the, the cooperation is as Gavin would would want you to have it because, or regularly in California, we see stories where that hasn't happened, where, where, where people who, we just saw case in the Bay Area, just the other week, a brutal murder of a, of a, of a elderly gentleman in the community who is just the life and soul of the community's family bereft, the community's bereft by someone who everyone watching and listening would agree should not be in the country in illegal immigrant, multiple violent crimes and was let out by a judge and was in the community. Now, it shouldn't have happened. And so I, I hear what they say that well, actually, this is all bullshit from the Trump administration because we do cooperate on the cases where people agree, which is the violent criminals. That isn't the case because you see stories, there's another one just, I think this week or last week, where you see examples of that not happening in California. Let's say those cases are wrong, but cooperation outside of those cases. Why would the lack of agreement between California and the federal government mean you need to do enforcement actions at home depots and, and work sites and other people that they, that they should have been able to, to be, that they wouldn't need to look for because they would have been handed over by California, state and local law enforcement. And so it's the argument. And so you would, would you, would you sort of deploy state resources as governor to support enforcement operations? Because here's a problem, right? Regardless of whether you would go after them. I wouldn't want to see them. I don't like seeing, and I would want to not have in California those kinds of operations. Correct. Absolutely. And so I would, you know, my, what would I actually do? I would get on the phone with Tom, who I know, and say, right, how are we going to handle this? Because I don't want to see that. Californians don't want to see that. You know that. It's not, it's obvious that the Californians don't want to see that. You've got a job to do. I've got a job to do. How are we going to do this in a common reasonable way? That's, that's what I would actually do. Right. And then the current policy is to pursue a level of deportations that requires going after non-criminal. Well, I hit the numbers. You can't do the numbers that they want to hit. But I don't know if that's still the case. I totally accept that there's been a shift. You just, the numbers, the data's clear that in the early period of the first, of this Trump administration, the balance was mainly the, the kind of, the kinds of people that the vast majority of Californians, Americans would accept shouldn't be here. And then that shifted. And the balance has gone in favor of those who don't aren't in that category. And I, but I sense that it's going back in that direction. You sense it? I, yes, because of the response to what happened in Minnesota. I think they're response to what happened in Maine. Well, they think they turned on the public temperature for sure. I don't think there is any evidence to suggest they've changed their enforcement priorities. They've certainly done less of the Christy gnome, a Bavino kind of whatever, shock and awe. I'm glad that's gone. But they have not replaced that with a less draconian overall policy. Well, again, my, my, my right response will be to sit down and say, right, what's, what's the deal here? What are you doing in California with the biggest state with the highest population, very large immigrant population? What's the plan? And, and just tell me what you're trying to do as, and I'm the governor and I'm going to make sure that we don't have these scenes and we don't have this confrontation. And yeah, we don't have those kinds of raids. I don't want to see that. Pots of America is brought to you by policy genius. It's so annoying when you learn that those little things, everyone recommends you do to set yourself up for success like meal prepping, resetting your space or putting out your work to a close before bed really do make life easier. A quick act of preparation can make all the difference. 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Yeah numbers are hard it takes very easy and frankly numbers have only gotten harder. What does the data actually say how do we reconcile that with the other things that we're seeing in American politics and around the world and how do we use that data to understand or maybe even dare to predict the future of American politics new episodes every Wednesday starting September 9th subscribe to still counting on youtube dot com slash at still counting podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. So if you are the governor you know a lot of what you'd want to do the tax break for people making under 150 is that the number it's not a tax break it's no state no income tax income tax and a number of other changes you'd have to work with the legislature have you thought about how you would do that how you would approach that yeah I mean it's a huge question because I mean there's basically two questions which is how are you going to win and I do appreciate like you said you appreciate me being here I appreciate you having because I you know you probably sitting there thinking why am I talking to this guy he's got no chance of winning but I think that there is a shot I know it's an uphill battle but I think that there's a level of frustration and I think we can do this but the second big question is well what can you get done in the context of a legislature that's pretty likely to continue to have a democrat supermajority and there's the first point I'd make is that I'm used to that right people may know me from TV or whatever analysis a candidate but while most of my career has actually been in business running small businesses doing startups and whatever I did spend some time working in the government in the UK I was senior advisor to the prime minister David Cameron he's a conservative prime minister but it was a coalition government it was two parties there's a conservative party the liberal democrats and I helped I was part of the team that negotiated the coalition agreement I shared an office in 10 downing street with my opposite number from another party from the liberal democrats and so I actually temperamentally I'm a you know I'm I think that they'll find when I get there that I'm perhaps not the caricature that they've heard about and I'm easy and constructive to work with that's the first point attitude and Lee I'm looking forward to working with them the French called it cohabitation you know that's it's normal it's not that unusual in other systems the second point in which in Washington it's not it's not unusual you know you've had examples of presidents and legislatures of you know different parties so it's just unusual in California the the second point is that in the primary here in California for governor there were many examples where the some of the other them not the ones that made not necessarily Bacera but some of the others we constantly we're agreeing with each other that's constantly agreeing with Matt Nehan on
housing policy, for example, Katie Porter actually said it, one of the debates we had that she adopted my tax plan. Now, just to be clear, then it was your first hundred grand tax-free. Now, one of the points of feedback we got in the primary was that given how expensive everything is in California, the fact that in many counties now, the official level for being low income is 100 grand or higher, we raised it to 150 and reduced another, the flat rate tax above that to make the math work. But, you know, Katie Porter agreed that we've got the quickest way to get more money in people's pockets, particularly working class people, is just paying 9.3% income tax. That's higher than the top rate in most states, is to eliminate them from state income tax altogether. Katie Porter agreed with that principle. And so I think that actually there will be things where we can work together, look at the other point, is that you do run the executive branch and it doesn't mean you can do everything, but on the regulatory front, there's a lot you can do through appointments and giving you direction to some of these agencies that are making everything so expensive and complicated in California. Are there any specific new some executive orders on, say, abortion access that you would repeal? No, there'll be no change to any of that. And you support, would you be, there's obviously the looming threat of the Trump administration trying to crack down on access to abortion, abortion care. Yeah, but it's in the California, no, you're not in California because it's in the state constitution. I mean, that was proposed by referendum, very overwhelmingly. Right, but there's all kinds of mechanisms, the federal government can use to try to claim certain Medicaid funding can't go towards health providers that provide abortion care or family planning. Would you say clearly that you will stand up to the Trump administration to protect the access to abortion in California if they try to undermine it? Yes, no, but I'm not sure. Yeah, in principle, yeah, I mean, I'm seeing the specific things you're talking about. And do you support the right of Californians to make decisions about gender affirming care? Adults, yes. Adults children. So you don't, if a parent and a doctor and a teenager come to a difficult decision that a transition is in their best interest, you believe the state can stop that. So I think that the most important work that's been done on this was actually in the UK and the National Health Service, a model that the Democrats, well, certainly though on the left want to see here, universal health care, taxpayer funded, Medicare for all, and it was the longest study, the most detailed and in-depth study is the cast review two years plus because there's a lot of concern about it in the UK. And Hillary Cash is a very, very respected doctor in the field and just just make that report is very thorough and impressive. And it says very clearly and strongly, and this is now the policy in the UK with the National Health Service that up till, you know, and up for children, gender dysphoria should be treated through therapy and so on, but not through irreversible surgical procedures. That's the policy now in the UK and I think that's right. So regardless of what the sort of, that's a policy around access to state-funded care, right? Yes. So that would be the UK, yes. Right. And so what I'm saying is in the United States where we have a different, different sort of sense of freedom, right? In part, that's why people oppose universal health care. They don't want the government making those kinds of decisions. You would say that regardless of who's paying for it, do you believe doctors, parents have the right to make these decisions or can the state come in and tell them the kind of care they can't provide? You know, just to take an extreme example, you know, we don't, we have freedom is not unconstrained. Of course. But there's obviously a place to protect the dream, man. Of course. Of course. We have many policies and laws, laws protecting children, including protecting them from things their parents might want to do. Of course. Of course. And I think this is what category is for me. If you were a governor, would you have signed or vetoed SB 79, which for my housing on transit? Because I actually don't, I can't find you having a clear position on the law. Yes. You would have signed it. I was strongly against it. I would not have signed it and I campaigned against it. You would have vetoed it. Yeah. You don't believe in building more in forcing states that are forcing the municipalities that are refusing to approve more housing at a time when we have a massive housing shortage, you would not support forcing them to do. No. So just to be clear what, look, we got to build more. I just did a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago called a new decade of building. And we absolutely have to build more because we have the highest housing cost in the country, the lowest homeowners, absolute crisis. But I think right now, the attitude to that and this bill for 79 falls into exactly what we've seen. So the turn of centrum, Berkeley, the real source of expertise on housing in California. This is what I, it's actually the first issue that got me involved in this whole era of politics in California. I didn't intend it to run for governor, but I could see that this was such a massive issue. It's the number one reason people are leaving California for housing costs. And so I worked on a ballot initiative. This is going about more than four years or so now. And the components of it were to cap developer. I don't need to go into the details. The point is the, although we should, because it actually gets into why housing expense, but I want to answer your question first. At that time, this is like four years ago, there have been a hundred plus bills passed. And they enacted in the last, in the previous five years, trying to encourage more housing to be built. And they'd barely move the needle. Things like the ADU bill and so on. Just all these things. Well, one of the reasons because of abstinence at the local level, preventing building, which is why this law was meant to address exactly. And it won't. Because what, it's got fundamentally the wrong approach, which is that we're trying to, because of this argument about density, I completely disagree with the density argument. I think rather than try, that I think we should be expansive and open up building in places where people actually want things to be built. And then I traveled all of this state. There are many, many areas where people and communities and councils want to build housing, but they're prevented from doing so because of the density argument, which says the current development boundary is perfect and we can't go any further. Now, if you look at the actual numbers on that, the proportion of our land area in California that's developed at all is about 6%. In terms of where that puts us nationally, we're about the middle, we're about sort of 20 if something like that. So we are not a, we're already pretty dense in terms of the, the, the small, the relatively small proportion of our land mass that's actually developed. There's so much space that we could use to build the housing. What I've said, I've said I want to see new towns and cities built. I'm a small supporter of California forever, for example. And that would mean we could build on a much greater scale, much more quickly, including the kind of housing that people want, especially when they want to start and raise a family, which is single family homes. That's what actually the research shows people want. And you can therefore, this attitude of saying the only acceptable form of housing construction is apartment buildings shoved into suburban neighborhoods. I think that's very limiting and I think that's not, but that's not what the law does. The law doesn't ban building anywhere else. It's just part of, first of all, part of the rules too, but part of the reason there's so much pressure to expand the footprint of where we can build. And I'm not against that is because we have so thoroughly failed to build the housing required in the places where people want to work in. But like if you, if you, if you are housing, the housing that demand would suggest is, you know, but by market forces non-stop. But I mean, if you, if you buy a single family home in a suburban neighborhood, you've, you've, you've made an investment in that particular lifestyle. And to be told that that's just going to be upended and you're going to have apartment buildings at the end of your street with no provision for extra parking, there's going to make, you know, traffic and nightmare. There's going to completely change the character of a neighborhood. I disagree with that. So the, the law right was written to address that. And so, in so far as cities can make their own plan to avoid violating the kind of character. No, no, yes. 179 is very aggressive. It's like within one mile of transit of any kind of transit. There's a by-right to build up to seven-story apartment building. Uh, if cities and states fail, if cities and municipalities fail to create plans, well, I mean, city of Los Angeles, that's different. That's the reason. Los Angeles has an alter, Los Angeles currently has an alternate plan right now. They've voted to do an alternate plan to build up against is, like, joins me in opposing this. Of course, doesn't that make you nervous? No, you think you're right. You think that's great. You think, I think good for her because she understands that the, the, the infrastructure, you know, everything, you know, but not just transportation, but, you know, utilities and so on. It's, it's a massive, um, uh, you know, expansion of the numbers of people that need to be supported by the existing infrastructure, which can't easily and quickly be, um, adapted, like you can just throw up an apartment building, but you can't change the whole
you know, traffic plan and utilities and sewage and all that. And so I think that there's a massive issue in California, which is the state at the state level in Sacramento imposing things on local communities that don't want them and I disagree with that. Look, one of the main kind of ideas that I've championed throughout my, in business actually, as well as in government and in all the things in the books I've written, is the decentralization of power. I've always believed in that. And I strongly believe it in that in this case. So I completely disagree with that whole direction of policy. The rena numbers, that's the regional housing needs assessment, the way that they're aggressively going after places that don't build enough. And the simple way I put it is instead of forcing housing into places that don't want it, that's allow housing to be built and the places that do want it. Who wants it as it sort of matters, right? The vast majority of people in Los Angeles have said very clearly they want lots of new houses, lots of new housing built. They want more apartment buildings, they want more, they want more housing of all kinds, single-family, multi-unit apartments, they want all that kind of housing. The problem, right, is that California has a bunch of onerous rules, regulations, systems. That's true. You prevent that kind of building, right? Well, just prevent any kind of building. Exactly. It's just the delays, right? So this, so while this is one, I think, relatively small part of the store in housing that the bill you talked about, the much bigger point is that we need to make it easier to build affordably. And that does take us back to the ballot initiative that I tried to make happen, which had then had two components. Number one is dealing with, actually, Matt Mayhan, that Mayor of San Jose, who ran for governor, didn't make it into the top two. He and I totally agreed on this, which is impact fees. Developer impact fees is like a hidden tax on housing. The Turner Centre in Berkeley estimates that in many cases, up to 20% of the cost of a new home is straight up fees. These developer impact fees used to be a couple of grand. Now it's like way more than that. And we need to cap them. So that's one part of it. Sorry, they look at this housing thing and say, "Well, it's all about the nimbis and the imbis. It's so much more than that. Let me give you a second example, which is in terms of the the seek work process. Seek was the California Environmental Quality Act, passed in 1970 or so. Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson wrote about it in abundance. It's a massive obstacle to getting anything done in California. But one of the main reasons that that's the case is not just the act itself and the rules and process contained within it. But the fact that over the years it's been a private right of action has been attached to it. So anyone can file a lawsuit using sequa as a pretext to block anything. 70% of sequa lawsuits are filed to block housing. Most of those are actually filed by unions to negotiate what they call project labor agreements in order to extract benefits like what they call skilled and trained workforce, which means union members only, prevailing wage, which is two or three times market rate wages. So there's a whole kind of system here that has, you know, over the years has built up that makes housing impossible to build affordably. Yes. Agreed. I don't, and it's an emergency. It's an emergency in this thing. Yes, I agree, yeah. And yet this bill that would not stop anyone from building single-family units or new towns which should hopefully begin to address the massive shortage that exists inside of places like Los Angeles and San Francisco, right? And where we have not built enough housing to keep up with the population, you're opposing it. And I don't want to force housing into places that don't work. But you can't say that, but we do want it, right? It's a small subset, wait, it's a small subset of people that take advantage of these processes, which you're criticizing to prevent action, right? You will have, right now there's a housing development that's meant to be built in in Woodland Hills, California on a golf course that's going to be housing, right? That's infill housing technically. And they are suing to stop it with the help of a city council member because they're claiming it might be a habitat for mountain lions. Now that's bullshit, right? Now the state might have to come in. And the state may have to come in to force them to do this. I think that's right because I think they are not serving the city or the state of California. Now that's top down for sure and regrettably so. But to address an emergency, don't we need to have the state come in and say, "Hey, it's taken local concerns but we need to build to prevent California from losing more people to taxis." Yeah, I agree it's an emergency, but there's so many. But I also don't think that we should completely ignore the people who live here already and violate their property rights. And also the kind of lifestyle that they've invested in. And I think that we don't need to. I think this is where I think that's right. I think it's a antagonistic attitude, which is that the only way we get housing is by sticking it to their imbi. I'm not trying to say that I agree with it. I don't think it's necessary because there's so much space we could be building in California. But you look at what happens in a neighborhood, right, where they preserve the character of the neighborhood. And then the housing prices go up year after year after year. And slowly but surely, the middle class and working class families that used to live there are priced out and wealthier people come in. And the buildings don't change but the character does. Yeah, but that also happens when you do the apartment approach where you've got gentrification through these luxury apartments that get built in working class neighborhoods and that whole hipster gentrification process. You see it all over the world, by the way, not just California. That's another version of it. And that's a version of it that the people who are going to pro-forcing housing into neighborhoods agree with. And I just think that I think the whole conversation has just become very ideological and I think that rather than practical. And I just think there's a much simpler solution which is to free up more of our land for building, including in the form which is what we used to do in California when we were like the build, build, build and the suburbs of Southern California, the UC campuses, the state water project were the amazing things we used to build. We can do that again. And that's why I've said a lot that we, I'm excited about the potential if we can just get people to buy into it, have new towns, new cities, new university campuses. You know, we've got to be much more expansive in our attitude right now. It feels very narrow and pinched and kind of antagonistic and I don't think it's necessary to do it like that. And by the way, I'm fine. But you understand that building those new developments also puts strain on highways and resources. We have new reasons. It's crazy to say we can't. But I really am a bunch of things is what we should be going for. But in the same way that we have to improve our infrastructure inside of this. Yes, but it's much easier in a green field site. It's easier. Quick look, we can just like the way we can take. I mean, that's what they're doing in Texas. Building, which is why there's a lot of it. There is a lot of, well, yes, there's a lot of reasons people are moving to Texas, which I would agree with you on. But a lot of times when you build these single, build a community and highways and roads, the tax base ultimately cannot support the long term maintenance of these kind of less dense areas. That's just a fact of what happens in some of these sort of sprawling in a lot of time in parts of San Diego, County, Orange County, you know, in the Empire, where that's kind of development has worked fine. I'm just there are trade-offs that go along with this. That's all. All right, you said voters shouldn't decide the election based on who they hate in Washington. Okay, one role of the governor is filling Senate vacancies. Oh my goodness. So Adam Schiff is frog marched to Guantanamo. Yes. There's an unexpected vacancy in the Senate. Would you pledge to nominate a Democrat given that the two seats currently held were voted for? You would. Yeah. I pledged to nominate a Democrat because of vacancies. I mean, I just think you've got to owner the vote that people took. You said your friends with half of Trump's cabinet, which half? Well, it's okay. There's a form of speech. I don't know how many in the cabinet? I don't know. Maybe half. I don't know. So I can tell you that some of them are wrong with the time. So, um, Rollins, the Ag Secretary, Exathline, I know obviously from, you know, we're colleagues at Fox Bobby Kennedy, Doug Burgham. Tulsi's no longer, was she in the cabinet? I don't know if that can happen. It's DNI, technically cabinet. I don't know if she's not there anymore. Who else? I don't know. I'm hearing from a producer. There's 16 members of the cabinet. Okay, so maybe half is just slightly. The point I'm making is that I was shortened offy. Transportation, big, big role for us. I guess it's a Fox News thing. Yeah, a lot of friends now. Well, a couple of them were actually Fox News. And then, and then I'm just trying to think probably the people I, I mean, Bobby Kennedy, I've gotten to know since the, since I left Fox, um, but some of them I probably would have met there and interviewing them and that kind of thing. You are, you talk to your gal, but actually, I tell you when I met Tulsi was, when I ran my, my startup crowd pack, which was a platform for trying to get big money out of politics. Great job, by the way. I'm kidding. Exactly. Well, you know, you got to try these things. And, um, and we met. It was at a conference in New Orleans. A kind of conversation was called. It was great. Jennifer Lawrence was the keynote speaker. It was a very, uh, and I met Tulsi and who else is? Oh, Mike Gallagher. They had a Democrat and a Republican, um, talking about the problem of money and politics. Yeah, so we go back quite a long way. Have you talked to RFK about vaccines? Not about vaccines. No. You would support encourage Californians to get vaccinated. Yeah, I think, I mean, Jay Bata-Char is a very good friend of mine. Um, um, and I trust what he says about this. Um, and,
That's basically my position. I have a lot of confidence in his approach. I mean, I really, you know, for example, on the COVID vaccine, you know, I was very struck by what he said about that, which seemed to be a very common sense position. And so yeah, 'cause I got that. Favorite sandwiches in California? Oh, well, the thing that comes to mind, 'cause I just had some really good ones lately of the Bar Me, the Vietnamese. I was in Lil Saigon in San Jose, and it was just unbelievably good. This play, I did an amazing event there. It was a fun, very crazy event. It was great. And then we had lunch afterwards. And I do love Bar Me, and I've always loved them, but that was particularly good. And that's the one that comes to mind. So you talked about how you want to sort of change people's caricature of you. And right. Well, I don't know, I want to change. I'm just saying I think that we're fine. Yeah, I'm not that, yeah. I have to say, yeah, it was interesting watching the way you've been campaigning versus sort of the way you were as a host. And I'm wondering if your caricature of Democrats has changed based on what it's been like in California, campaigning sort of outside of a cable news environment. So the thing I was, I mean, it's not the whole answer, but what I think of when you say that is that, and I say this all the time, because I got a lot of people say, love, what's this Fox News thing? We remember you as something completely different when you're in the UK. You are the one that tried to make the conserver a party. I mean, I'd ever used this term, actually, but it's going to modernize it and so on. And I wrote a book in 2015 called "More Human" "Designing a World Where People Come First." Actually, the big theme of that is decentralizing power and so on. And I would always say, look, I've never said anything on my Fox News show that I didn't believe or don't believe. But I didn't say everything I believe. And so that's how I saw that. It's a particular job. And I think that, you know, to be fair, I would be pretty-- I don't want to say it's not true to that even-handed, but I would attack Republicans on that show. I had a segment on that show called "Swamp Watch," which was really, you know, going after corruption and so on. I had a huge amount of blowback when I would go after Republicans, which I did regularly, and prominent one, you know, Ted Cruz or Kevin McCarthy or whatever. And so I think that, I don't know, I don't want to get anywhere else, but I definitely made an effort to not be tribal. What do you mean about Democrats then? Well, I think that there is something about Fox News, which I think exist in many ways to assuage uncomfortable thoughts out of people's minds. That's, I think, part of its function. And that is especially important when it comes to sincere objections to Donald Trump, which is where we started and we can end here. You know, when you were talking about the Trump Trump's first impeachment, you said of Democrats, they hate the president, they hate supporters, they hate how they think, they hate their faith, they even hate their food. They hate the fact that this president is delivering concrete results and they're terrified that they can't beat him. Now, I'm a Democrat. I think my view on his first impeachment is sincerely held and that it was deserved, that even right now he should be impeached and removed for a set of high crimes and misdemeanors, corruption, abuse of office. That is a sincerely held view. I certainly don't hate people's food and religion. In fact, I was just the Minnesota State Fair and I eat, I eat like a Republican. So, but I do think it matters because I think what that is is trying to tell people that supporting Donald Trump doesn't say anything bad about you. That these people don't really believe these moral critiques. And then you embrace someone immoral and you're asking us to say, oh, don't let that bother you. But it's something fundamentally broken about a politics that can embrace someone as unfit as Donald Trump. And so, do you appreciate that a lot of Democrats in this state genuinely believe he's a threat to this country and you would be representing them? Yeah, I can, I know because we talk about it. I hear it very clearly and I disagree with that. Like I said, there's many examples starting with Trump, but you know, like all the time, I'm seeing things that I think about it very narrowly now in terms of California where I don't agree with that. I really hate that. I wouldn't, you know, I'd argue strongly against that if I were there now. Everything from UC funding to, I don't know, the business with the Yosemite, I'm going to have looked into it, but seems pretty bad to me. So, I think that on a case by case basis, I'm very happy to say that I wouldn't be at all, you know, reluctant to disagree and challenge them. I hear what you're saying on that. I think what I was channeling there is a very strong sense that there really was, and it was captured by Hillary's deplorables comment. I mean, that was a real clarifying moment, I think, for a lot of people. And I don't want to suggest that it was representative of every Democrat. I, of course, I don't. But, you know, there was something to that that was visceral. And I feel like that is what a lot of Republicans feel. They feel look down on. And they really do. And they feel look down on partly because of who they are. And all those things I listed, the faith and the food and whatever. And you see it in some of the commentary that people make. And I don't know, you'll say which examples. I mean, just I'm just 10 years now. You've got to tell me. No, but I would say, I'll, you know, sure, she said deplorables, dumb thing to say, apologize for it. Yeah. I'm now had a decade. A decade, I'm not saying some of the most heinous, vicious things, not just about politicians, but about California, about our people, about a place we love that you're trying to run. And I appreciate you trying to strike this balance, okay? But I don't, but it's not doesn't seem to be as much what you did on. I get why you'd be doing it while running to lead California, but yeah, but it for a lot of us, it's not a balancing question. It's a moral question. I understand that. But I guess I've been, because I've done a lot of different things in my career. I left Oxford in, in 1990, 30, 60 years, I actually, you know, added it up because when you run for a, I'd never run for office before, you get three words to describe yourself on the balance. Okay, what I've done, different things I've taught at Stanford, done a startup, run restaurants, written books, been on TV, worked in the government, a bunch of different things. So I, I actually added it up. Most of my career has been in business in the private sector. Most of those years, starting and running my own businesses, however, in, to spurs in that 36 year period, I've been in and around politics and the media a lot. And I guess what, including my, you know, my first job, my first real job was project manager for a construction company, but my first job out of college was, I took a gap here and did that, but was working at the conservative party. I've been around a long time, in and around politics. And I guess I just, I've seen a lot of things that you could say are reprehensible. I don't think that anything I've seen is uniquely bad. And I think, you know, things just, you know, things seem from, in the moment to have particular kind of, you know, significance attached to them. And I think increasingly with everything's amped up in a way it wasn't before, because of social media. But then things move on and you're onto the next thing. I remember it like, which, for example, back in the day, in, in, in Europe, the first, there's George W. Bush, was unbelievably unpopular in Europe. Everyone now thinks, oh, Trump, and it's so embarrassing because everyone in Europe thinks we're so, you know, you go there and everyone's talking about Trump and how could you elect Trump? Whatever. That was exactly the same with George W. Bush. And so I just think that I tend to not get, I don't know, I just try and focus on the stuff that you can control and things that are practical, honestly, that's truly how I see it. So I don't know. I don't, I try not to get amped up about stuff. That's all I do. Steve Hilton. Good talking to you. Thank you for coming on. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Good luck on the campaign trail. Thank you. That's our show for today. Thanks to Steve Hilton for coming on. Field correspondent Tommy Vittor will be back in the feed on Sunday with a conversation with Abdul El Sayed. He was in Michigan today. Tommy, obviously, Abdul as well, but Tommy was in Michigan and he'll also give us an update on how things are feeling on the ground there with just two months until Election Day. Have a good weekend. Bye, everyone. Pods in America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Ferris Safari with Reed Chirlin, Elijah Kohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Heffko, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, David Tolls, Mia Kelman, Brian Young, and Naomi Sengel. Our staff is probably unionized with the writer's guild of America East. I'm Nate Silver. I'm Galen Drew. And I'm Claire Malone. We're back. It's time with our friends at Crooked Media for a new show called Still Counting. Yeah. Numbers are hard. Take ser easy. - New episodes every Wednesday, starting September 9th. Subscribe to stillcountingonYouTube.com/atSillCountingPodcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Simply Safe home security uses AI-powered outdoor cameras and live US-based agents to detect and deter intruders before they breach a home, offering real-time protection and peace of mind.
The company’s system includes a range of sensors and is solar-powered, with seamless installation and full functionality, as highlighted by a satisfied user who recommends it to others.
A major political critique of the Republican convention centers on its repetitive, disingenuous messaging, including false claims of Democratic ties to terrorism and a misleading "dividend" promise of $5,000 to all citizens, which is economically unrealistic and widely ridiculed.
Summary:
The podcast offers a critical examination of the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, highlighting its reliance on fear-based messaging, including accusations that Democrats support terrorism, especially targeting Muslim candidates. 3 trillion and widely dismissed as unrealistic and politically desperate. This underscores a broader decline in the party’s appeal, with low voter engagement, weak messaging, and a lack of authentic political substance.
The analysis contrasts this with JD Vance’s speech, which is criticized for being phony, incoherent, and lacking authenticity, reflecting a party unwilling to confront its ideological inconsistencies. Meanwhile, the show promotes Simply Safe home security as a proactive, AI-driven solution that prevents break-ins, emphasizing real protection over reactive alerts. The segment also includes a satirical tone on political performances, noting Trump’s repeated claim of being “on the ballot” as a manipulative tactic to rally support.
The episode concludes by underscoring the growing disconnect between political rhetoric and public trust, while promoting wellness, health, and sleep products as part of a broader lifestyle focus. Throughout, the hosts maintain a sharp, critical perspective on the Republican strategy, pointing to its fatigue, incoherence, and failure to resonate with voters.
FAQs
Simply Safe uses AI-powered outdoor cameras to detect suspicious activity at the home perimeter and alerts live US-based agents who intervene to scare off intruders before they reach the door. Unlike traditional systems that only alert after a break-in, Simply Safe stops threats before they happen.
Simply Safe protects families by preventing intruders from entering through proactive intervention. Its system stops threats before they happen, helping restore a sense of safety and normalcy within the home.
The system includes outdoor and indoor cameras, temperature and water sensors, and motion, window, and door sensors. All outdoor cameras are solar-powered to reduce maintenance.
Yes, customers can get 50% off a new Simply Safe system by visiting simplysafe.com/cricut. When ordering, they should mention 'PodSafe America' and the survey to qualify for the discount.
Trump proposed giving every adult citizen $5,000 if Republicans win both houses of Congress, but the plan is estimated to cost $1.3 trillion and would significantly increase inflation. It is widely considered unrealistic and financially unviable.
The convention used the 25th anniversary of 9/11 to portray certain Democrats, particularly Muslim candidates, as supporting terrorism, a strategy criticized as anti-Muslim and racially offensive.
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