Donald J. Plump

Today's presenting sponsor is SimplySafe Home Security. We all promise to digital detox on August vacation, I don't. But you can't actually unplug if you're anxiously checking your security camera feeds when you're poolside. I mean, that's a little different than digital detox. That's not Twitter. Simply save lets you put the phone down because you know live agents are helping to watch the perimeter. Well, that's nice. Unlike traditional security systems that only alert you after a break in is already underway, SimplySafe is designed to help stop intruders before they get inside. Smart AI-powered outdoor cameras detect suspicious activity at the perimeter and alert live US-based agents to step in. SimplySafe's agents assess the threat intervened through the outdoor camera to scare off trespassers and call for 911 dispatch. Our CEO, Cindy recently had a SimplySafe installed in her home. She actually installed it herself. It was so easy and now she's pretty happy with it. Installation was quick and easy and all the components have worked smoothly. The app's easy to use and gives her a total peace of mind to say who's dropping by. Or if you want, you can easily chat with visitors through the camera even when you're away. SimplySafe has been protecting your world for 20 years. Celebrate their anniversary with us and save 60% on your new SimplySafe system at SimplySafe.com/Cricket. That's 60% off at SimplySafe.com/Cricket. Plus, when you order, write in our show name in the "How did you hear about a survey to let them know we sent you?" Don't forget, there's no safe like SimplySafe. Every big story starts with a question. Why did this happen? Who's behind it? And what happens next? That's three questions. I'm considered this from NPR. They answer those questions every week day by going beyond the headlines with a reporting context and analysis that help you make sense of the biggest story of the day. The news doesn't stop at what happened. Get the full story. Listen to Consider This from NPR wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Plot Day of America, I'm John Faber. I'm John Lament. I'm Tommy Dittor. On today's show, we'll talk about Trump declaring "economic D-Day" against Iran, but also maybe against Canada and the American people. We'll also cover JD Vance's return to the campaign trail, complete with mentions of his pop-up, Sharia Law, and his friendship with Susan Collins. We got a quick midterm update that includes the weird meeting between Hakeem Jeffries and Jared Kushner. The long-awaited, Duffy Family reality show finally hits the airwaves. I've been desperate for this to pop up on YouTube. As I have most Americans, need someone to watch for a Salt Lake, comes back. Later, you'll hear my interview with Congressman Seth Molten, who faces off against Senator Ed Marke next week in the last big primary contest before the midterms. But first, we have some big news. The newest podcast, Joining the Crooked Media Family, is called Still Counting, hosted by Nate Silver, Claire Malone, and Galen Druke. You might remember this crew from the 538 pod, which we always thought was one of the smartest, most entertaining shows about politics out there, before 538 was shut down by the corporate media last year. There's some big, some big corporate mouse who will remain nameless. But now, Nate, Claire, and Galen wanted to get back on the air ahead of the midterms, and we are thrilled that they've chosen Crooked as their new home. Tam, right. Each week on the pod, they're going to dig into the latest in politics and polling to break down what's happening and why, but they're also going to cover everything from elections to betting markets to AI with their trademark rigorous analysis and plenty of hot takes. You can hear the trailer right now by subscribing to Still Counting, wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube at Still Counting podcast. Great for the audience. Huge get for us. Huge good. I, like, Dan's Polar Coaster is fantastic, and I will continue to listen to it all the time. But I need a little more of a polling junky fix. Wow. I think he's still counting in my life. I just need more. I thought it was going to be a yes and a hand, not a butt there. It was a yes and a foot. Exactly. It's basically for positive America hosts is like selling drugs outside of school. The first hits free. What a thing. Tell me. I like keeping Dan on his toes. I hear this and be a little like Dan. Hey, Dan, you know, prove us wrong. Prove us wrong, Dan. All right. It's not, it's not, it's not a no, but it's not a yes. We're not a, we're not a full hard yes on Dan. Despite the yes, we Dan merch that's everywhere. New episodes of still counting drops September 9th, and yeah, we're very excited to have it. Subscribe. Nathan Clare and Galen. Subscribe right away. Join in the fam. All right. Let's start here with the news. Donald Trump continues to bankrupt America by waging war against two of our greatest adversaries, Iran and Canada. We'll get to that in a second. But first, we should talk about breaking news. But a third war, Trump is losing against another longtime adversary he's been personally obsessed with for years. Let's listen. Let's go on the fat drug, the fat drug, F-A-T for fat people. Anybody who uses a table, don't ask. And a friend of mine who's very fat, and I want to say, you know, he could be a famous guy. He's begging me not to release his name. He's a very highly neurotic, very fat, sort of a fat slab, I would call him. I bought the fat drug. I said, I didn't know you used it because it's not working. And the governor is a big fat slab. Jesus. We can't do that, sir. You can't call J.B. Pritzker fat big. Please. You know, some people say, never use the fat word. And I know. I would never call anybody fat. I have my own problems. Well, he sure does. Because here's Sunday's headline from the Washington Post. Easter say Trump's weight poses a significant health risk. The president has gained about 20 pounds since his campaign, according to his statements and those of AIDS. So back in June, the White House had to publicly refute speculation that Trump was on an experimental new weight loss drug after stat news reported that a 79 year old man with government connections got early access to the drugs. I guess the White House was telling the truth. Yes, it turns out that Trump is not like reckless gay guys in West Hollywood buying compound versions of this drug from China. Does that happen? Yeah, I think so. I just want to say for the record that Favre and I wanted to lead with Canada and love it. I locked the door of our production meeting until we agreed to start with the GLP. I just start with fat. I said, desert. I said, desert. Hey, it's August. Let's have dessert for dinner. All right. It's pancakes for the fuck. Trump clearly has been. Yeah. I love the moments in those videos where he hesitates, where he goes, and this person, they're fat. I want you to know, I put that super cut together myself. There was like 10 more clips of him just saying fat, fat slob. He tells the story about the friend like 50 times. One other thing to know too is this is the, this is the figures that they're telling us. I feel like even slowly trying to get the number back to a real number. So he may not have gained as much as they're saying. On the other hand, based on the weight and height they've released, his BMI is 29.7, which means if his weight was one pound more, he would be technically obese, which I'm sure he would not like. And so for all we know, they've kind of brought that number down a pound or two. Yeah. They may have been telling the truth about him not being on this experimental GLP one, or he could just be eating through it. It has happened before. You could power through it. I'll power through it. So as they track his weight, they cite when he was arrested in Georgia, when he was booked, they released that he was 6, 3, 2, 15, which was John L. Ways playing weight when he won two Super Bowls in NFL MVP. Isn't it amazing, by the way? Well, muscle is heavier, so. Isn't it amazing, by the way, that we're just kind of, you can just say something like, oh, you remember when he was arrested in Georgia? Yeah. Because of his mug shot, because the president is a convicted criminal. But also, gained 20 pounds since 2024, is an 80-year-old, almost obese man, I don't know what I even want to say, but what's he going to, he's going to turn over a new leaf right now? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he's one to really make a lot of resolutions and try to keep him. Well, no well done burger today, just the steamed fish. It was also their response to this story was to attack Joe Biden, who is currently recovering from cancer. So that's a classy move, as always, from the White House. Did you see the video of Trump's workout that was on Twitter over the weekend? No. Oh, this actually really good. Yes, you should roll this thing. Thank you. That is the clip. I showed my children this morning when I was laughing and I was like, he's trying to like, why are you watching that? And I was like, it's a work thing, and he's like, what is it at work? And I was like, well, sometimes we watch clips. Some of the robots falling and then people laugh at them and then we laugh at it and then people watch us laugh at the videos and Charlie's like, oh, I want to do that job. It's a good job. It's a good job. I just have a point of personal privilege about the robot, Olympia, that's going on. The world's humanoid robot games in Beijing. So they keep saying things like, oh, this is the fastest robot. This is the fastest robot. And it's like, okay, but like, we have lots of robots that can go very fast already. I guess they just don't have human legs. They have to have a human leg to them. Because that one makes a difference. I think so, yeah. You're saying like, oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. I think it's a humanoid. - The humanoid. - The humanoid. - Oh, it got to be humanoid. - Yeah, it's gonna be like it's coming to kill you. - There's also like weird dogs in shit getting paraded around. There's a guy riding a giant dog. - Yeah, that was nightmare fuel. That's really bad. No, I think it's great that we should give them thumbs and also that open eye every once in a while. I was like, yeah, we lost a couple. We think they're in the pacemakers now. (laughing) It's like, well, sorry everybody. We're gonna, we've realized the error of our ways again. And now we gotta, we put a, just a, here's the thing. We put a lock on the door, but one of our guys fell in love with the robot and unlocked it. And so we gotta figure out how to make them less sexually charming. And we're not sure how to do that. - But you know what? There's only so much we can do 'cause China. - Yeah, right, yeah. - And the rest of the ones who cut the China, they're doing karate kicks. They're drop kicking like six years old. - So what do you want us to do? If we have a few escape the sandbox, what do I mean? - Yeah, sorry. - You got a crack, crack, a couple eggs. - Come on, I supposed to not IPO. - Oh, right. - Make an omelet. Anyway, there aren't, we do have some more consequential, but no less absurd Trump stories. Soybean farmer Scott Besant announced Operation Economic Outcast on Monday, a series of new sanctions against Iran, and the threat of much larger sanctions down the road that he likened to the most significant military invasion of the 20th century. But there seemed to be a bit of a gap between Besant's framing and the reality. Let's listen. In the Second World War, D-Day marked the historic beginning of a campaign with our allies to target and drive the enemy from its positions, including those in third countries. Today, in that same spirit, we are launching an economic onslaught against Iran's financial connections around the globe. Around the globe. - You described this as an economic D-Day, but D-Day wasn't a threat of an invasion in the US and give a timeline to Germany. So why not impose this sanctions today? - Well, we were giving everyone the opportunity to remedy bad behavior. Why would I want to blow up the global financial system? - Extraordinary sentence. Extraordinary sentence. Crazy. That is, I saw that as like what an absolute fucking doof. Because it's like, first of all, is that what you're threatening? We're supposed to be the good guys. And then also, if you're suggesting that the thing you're going to impose is basically a global economic crisis, it does signal to the people you're threatening that you're deeply concerned about the risk you'd be taking, which you've consistently shown yourself willing to back off of when you get close to the line because they know that you can back off right before you go through your various threats. - Those mules must be terrified, huh? - 2,500 Americans died on D-Day. So, you know, some downsides that do. Yeah, the pissy cadaver calling, that's what I call scoppessing. Calling this economic D-Day is so funny because I cannot overstate how mundane this sanctions announcement actually was. This is just click stuff they roll out all the time. For example, they try to make it sound like they're sanctioning all these new sectors. They mentioned gold in the aviation sector. But if you look at US sanctions over the years, we've been sanctioning gold, the sort of gold industry since 2011 and the aviation sector since 2008. So, this announcement today is not going to make the Iranian regime, the RGC kind of give up. I think it's a lot of bluster, it's a lot of rhetoric. It's a lot of them trying to figure out what they do to get through the midterms. The scary thing is, I think the Axios report on the sanctions today mentioned that they're considering restarting the war after the midterms are over. So, you'll have one in the wars or time to with the midterms. That's always. - Yeah, I saw that. - Well, in the blowing up of the globe. So, I had to dig into this because basically there were two things today. There were like sanctions against 60 Iran-linked people, entities, vessels that like you said are pretty mundane, very like a typical day of jewelry time. And then there's the threat of major sanctions that would blow up the global economic system, which is sanctioning any country that does business with Iran, China, for example, which he would not take off the table, but would also not mention. - The only thing that would matter is secondary sanctions on China, to a lesser extent, India, maybe Russia, maybe Turkey, but there's no way that they're gonna do a bunch of secondary sanctions on Chinese banks, for example, in advance of the Xi Jinping visit. Nor do I think they would do them period because the Chinese will retaliate against us and the Iranians will retaliate against us and it'll be a big dust up again. - Which leads you back to love its original point, right? Which is, so, it's just bluster or else, if it's not bluster, it's blowing up the global economic financial system, which I guess they don't wanna do until after the midterms or maybe they'll just bomb after the midterms. - Well, the other part of just the threat in Axios about how we're gonna maybe resume the military campaign after the election, which by the way, as I think in part, like I hope it's not true. I hope they're doing politics with their own neocons that they're trying to keep in line because they're not doing the retaliation that a lot of these people want. They're doing sort of, they're doing sort of, these sort of threats of future economic sanctions, but if it is a real threat, and I assume Iran might have to take it as a real threat, then they are telling you in advance, hey, we should conflate economic activity with military activity. If Iran is going to potentially retaliate against economic sanctions with military force, one argument against it would be that it would be escalating the war, but the U.S. is promising to escalate the war potentially after the election anyway. The other part of it too, so I just, in the best and op-edery announced all this, in a written like he asked a large language model to write like a Victorian with a head injury. It's just like over the top, ridiculous thing. But in any set, we refer to something called Pascal's wager, and basically he says, people working-- - I knew that was gonna be triggering for you. - People working with the ranch would be careful. - That's a little dazzle-esque. - Because of Pascal's wager, which basically says, you can't know for sure if God is real, so act as if God is real, because if it is, boy, you'll wish you believed, which is philosophically confusing, but whatever. And so he seems to be suggesting that countries may want to do a deal with Iran because in the short term, it's quite beneficial to them. But they should be careful that even though partnering with the U.S., per Besson's argument, has no benefits whatsoever to the point where you can't even tell if the United States exists. We could exist, and if we do, boy will be mad. That's sort of what he's, that's sort of the position he's trying to direct. I guess not just to, by the way, also to Korea, to other countries that are desperate to try to figure out how to get out of this sort of-- - The UAE is the one who most recently cut a deal, seemingly with the Iranians to avoid getting fired at all the time. Did you guys see the Barry McAfrie tweeted, quote, "In my judgment, the U.S. armed forces have probably permanently lost access to fix the Persian Gulf bases. Iran now poised to control access to the Gulf states. U.S. will have to negotiate new access in Western Saudi Arabia, Israel, Southern Europe. It's like an entire recalibration of our security architecture in the Middle East because we have lost this war." - Just sort of by accident. And in case you're wondering how seriously the rest of the world in the markets took this today, oil went down to 1/2 percent. - 1/2 percent? - Not a bullet. So it's all crazy. I don't think anyone's too worried or takes Scott Besson seriously, and it seems like with good reason. (upbeat music) Pots of America is brought to by article. Article makes it effortless to build a home that lasts without the boutique markup. They're curated collections of mid-century coastal and scandy furniture are designed to mix and match perfectly so you can create a cohesive design or look that will stand the test of time. We have some great article furniture here in the office. We have for a while. They have a nice couch, they got some chairs, very sturdy and it looks really good. It looks fancy, even though it's very affordable. Article offers fast affordable shipping across the U.S. and Canada with options for professional assembly if you prefer a hands-off experience. Have a question or need help with your design choices. Article's customer care team is available seven days a week, offering knowledgeable support and even free interior design services to help you get your home just right. With articles 30-day satisfaction guarantee, you can shop with confidence knowing that if you're not completely in love with your new furniture, you can easily return it. This piece of mind ensures you can invest in your home without hesitation. Articles offering are listeners. $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more to claim, visit article.com/cricot and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. That's article.com/cricot for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. Pots of America is brought to you by the Working Forests Initiative. The Working Forest Initiative is a coalition of forest products company set out to establish and advance a common understanding of the broad range of environmental economic and societal benefits generated by working forests. At the heart of this coalition are working forest professionals whose mission is to keep America's working forest sustainable. In composing roles like GIS analysts, biologists, hiring managers and accountants, these teams ensure that more trees are planted than harvested for future generations. Planting is what makes forest sustainable. And replanting generations of trees ensures a continued critical role. Working forests play in the fight against climate change. That's what the Working Forest Initiative is all about. As managers of working forests across the US, they're led by a single guiding principle to plant more trees than they harvest. More than one billion trees are planted and working forests each year and less than 2% of the land is harvested. Through modern sustainable management methods, working forests have become an integral part of the effort to mitigate the most harmful impacts of wildfires and ultimately reduce wildfire risk more broadly. Learn more about what America's working forests are doing for all of us at workingforestsinitiative.com. (upbeat music) So the Trump administration did save the more serious action for the far more dangerous adversary, Canada. The president has announced 50% tariffs on all Canadian cars, trucks, auto parts, [BLANK_AUDIO] steel starting January 1st, again, after the midterms, because he believes the country has been, quote, "ripping off the United States for years." He also announced that, quote, "Canada will be treated like a state no longer," and threaten, quote, "someone should get these clowns to fall in line or the consequences for Canada will be far worse." This all comes after trade negotiations with our once-closest ally, fell apart Friday night, which led to Trump slapping 50% tariffs on $20 billion of Canadian exports. Prime Minister Mark Carney's response was that the U.S. attacked his country and is now at war with Canada. He promised to retaliate dollar for dollar on September 8th. JD Vance was asked by a reporter in Maine on Monday what he'd say to Americans worried about the new tariffs, and here's what Vance said. We have to remember, Canada is a state -- sorry -- is a country that has under-invested its military that, quite literally, would get invaded by a foreign country were it not for the umbrella of protection provided by the United States of America. You think you got that joke from Rubio, the big joke stirring the administration? That was so canned. Where are you in slip? Canada is a country. Not. It's really. It's on suck. Politics can be confusing and complicated. The president -- someone who comes out of a presidential campaign usually doesn't make you uncomfortable every single second you see him on screen. Just every time he is speaking you're just like a little bit -- I'm just uncomfortable. I'm uncomfortable. Everybody, see your weapon. Unleash. They finally unleash JD Vance in the campaign trail again. Yeah, let JD -- BJD, they wrote on an African. So for reference, Canada is our second biggest trading partner, which means a lot more products are about to become a lot more expensive for Americans and Canadians. Anyone cared to explain why the president may have just blown up the relationship with our closest ally and made life more expensive for everyone? I can try. If Trump is mad that Canada has been raving us off for years, he has mad at his own team's deal that they cut the USMCA, so that's what we're operating under. I've heard a couple of different theories for why the talks blew up. The first theory you hear is that the U.S. tried to insert some 11-th hour provisions to the deal. That were just a bridge too far for Mark Carney, the Prime Minister. Some of the -- specifically, they wanted to exclude medium and light trucks from the reduction in tariffs the U.S. did, which would have made it unprofitable to produce the 4-DF-150 in Canada. The deal could have weakened some French language protections that are very important and go back. Well, there's something -- this is like a third rail, like you do not fuck with this stuff in. But also, why did we ask for that? It's not of our fucking business by language, by the bilingual labels. I'm sure certain companies hate having to print stuff in French on the side of a pill bottle. Look, I know. It's stupid. Well, that's that. If you want to sell in Quebec, you've got to put in the front. You have to. And if Carney messes around with this, Quebec will succeed from Canada, so it's a big deal. And then there were some provisions that would have repeated Canada's ability to cut trade deals with other countries. I don't really understand that one. There's also kind of a personnel argument that you hear. Well, there's also the big one was also they wanted exclusive access. We wanted exclusive access to their critical minerals. Yeah. And Carney was like, Canada would never give that to anyone when he's talking about that. No, we're keeping it open. Yeah. We're keeping it open relationship with our critical men with our tungsten. There's also reports that the U.S. trade rap James and Greer was like professional and you know, he speaks French. Like he's like a pro to work on. And then what? Trader. Let Nick came in at the end. The Commerce Secretary. Best news speak gay. What's he saying? To let Nick go involved in negotiations they went to shit. And then there's the politics of it all, which the political reality at this point for Mark Carney is the politics of fighting Trump are so much better than cutting a deal that requires you to make concessions and then going to and having to explain that. Because voters in Canada, remember the whole 51st state thing. They don't think it's funny. They haven't forgotten JD Vance. And they don't trust Trump. They think that he's going to tear up any trade deal that they signed in a year. And the Canadian nationalism has been kicked up in a way that's been really durable. A friend of mine was in Canada the other day watching TV and the commercials would be like lays potato chips with potatoes grown proudly in Canada. It was like, you know, it's like an ongoing thing. And so the other thing for Carney is like all the reasons Canadians might oppose this deal vary by region. So like in Ontario, it's the auto industry and Quebec, it's the cultural stuff about the French language. The parts of the country, it's like lumber provisions and like stitching that all together is a pain in the ass. So for him, he's like, you made it easy for me. Now I get to punch you in the face with my 60% approval rating, you being weak Donald Trump and going into your midterms where you're likely to lose. Like, I think Carney thinks it's worth the risk. Well, I mean, he's not asking to reopen the talks, Carney probably for those political reasons. And also because he gave a speech where he said, I am outlining a new approach for countries, countries that are kind of in between these sort of great powers that are battling. And it is that we can find a way to stitch together these other kinds of arrangements without conceding, without giving up. And he can't, if he means that, and I do, I do, he means it's in cereal. I don't think it's just politics. He has to prove it in his own negotiations. He can't signal to Europe that they need to stand up to Donald Trump. And then when he's faced with that himself, he can be capitulates. And the Canadian reciprocal tariffs, I think, go into place September 8th. Trump was like, ours will go into place in January, which is already him kind of, you know, caving. Well, at least blinking. Yeah, well, we just talked about Iran, right? And so that is the axial story, right? Like they might restart the war after the midterms or the sanctions for the trading partners with Iran or anyone doing business with Iran is, we're threatening that, you know, past the midterms, right? And now we're doing the Canadian tariffs, past the midterms, at least on the auto parts. So it is going to set up an interesting dynamic, which is, it seems right now, like the White House is like, okay, well, we don't want to, at least some people in the White House. We don't want to fuck ourselves for the midterms too hard. So maybe we can delay this stuff to laugh for the midterms. But if they, it sounds like whether they lose or do better than expected in the midterms, they still want to do all this damage after the midterms, which will set up an interesting dynamic for the 2028 primary in which JD Vance, who we just heard from, presumably is going to want to run for president, or maybe Marco Rubio or whoever else, and now have to deal with the fucking bigger mess that the administration seems like they're planning to cause. >> Yeah, I also, before you get to 2028, take Trump at his word. Like there are a lot of people running, we're going to get to Susan Collins. Donald Trump is saying, I am going to put in place a giant tax increase on January 1st on Americans, because Congress will not pull back the authority it is vested in Trump to do tariffs without congressional approval. This has the power to prevent those taxes increases from going into effect. That seems to me a pretty big issue, that people could be talking about about what happens. I mean, obviously Trump has the ability to veto, but it would be nice to get people on record about where they stand on him doing this. >> I think they're all going to run on it. I mean, in Michigan, obviously, the auto industry is like the biggest fight they're going to have. So I'm sure of tools, I know of tools all over this. In Iowa, it'll impact John Deere, which is an important industry there, but also farmers who sell ag products into Canada in Maine, it's all about lumber. And I think there's a bigger question of like, we know Trump loves tariffs, but we don't really know why. You know, like James and Greer seems to want to kind of reorder the manufacturing business and bring it all back to the U.S. from China, and I think a lot of people support that. Scott Desan seems to think that tariffs are a way to collect revenue and just make money for the government. Then there's another group that just seems to think they're a way to bully other countries and get them to do whatever you want about whatever issue. And that's kind of, it seems like where Trump kind of lands on this. Like I think I assume he is more interested in looking tough and looking like he beat up Marcarny than he is in getting some extra milk into, you know, a Canadian company. There's one more. There's one. The other, I think, and Vance has sometimes flirted with this is that you accept lower growth and the cost of tariffs because you reorder the economy around old school manufacturing which were the jobs for men. And even though you give up service jobs growth, you give up all the benefits of a modern globalized economy, it creates a, it's more about the kind of old school values of a kind of work we used about. We used as a society view as important. But even though that aside, it is hard to overestimate what a dumb fucking political move this is. The number one issue for voters across the political spectrum is the cost of living, everything's too expensive and they don't just think it's a bad economy. They know they blame Trump for it and specifically they blame Trump's tariffs for it. Like it is maybe his, one of his most unpopular policies, certainly his most unpopular economic policy over the last several years. And now he is doubling down on it if not in fact in a threat at least before the midterm. So there are going to be headlines about tariffs for the midterms. And of course, he's already levy tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. So that's going to, you know, that'll have an effect on things. So people are still pissed at the tariffs that he's slapped on everything before this. Now there's headlines about more tariffs and we are 60 something days out from the midterms. It's fucking nuts. Yeah, it's not smart. Okay, so let's talk midterms. One person noticeably absent from Vance's event in Maine was Susan Collins. This is the second time she skipped out on the Vance event in Maine this year. So I'm sure she was thrilled that the vice president told the crowd in that speech that Susan Collins is a, quote, dear friend who has been to his house, quote, probably a half dozen times. - That's not a dear friend. (laughing) Sorry. - Collins has been trying to convince voters that she hasn't become a rubber stamp for Trump, despite voting with him 95% of the time. The latest move was a statement asking the president to quote, "Consider the negative impacts "his trade war with Canada would have on Maynors." On the Democratic side, things have been relatively quiet since Troy Jackson locked up the nomination to replace Graham Platner on the November ballot. But Jackson's campaign is beginning to heat up, finally getting on TV this weekend. With this great 30 second spot featuring Jackson's mother. - Troy was born to two teenage parents, and we struggled a lot. He didn't use that as an excuse. He used that as fuel to make things better for other people. - Troy never talks about what he's done. But somebody will come up to me in the grocery store or some place in town, and they'll say, "Troy helped me get a sewer, "Troy helped me, "help me get my mother into a nursing home." If you need help, he's gonna be there for you. That's who he is. - I'm Troy Jackson, this is my mom, and I approve this message. - What do you guys make of the Jackson campaign so far? And do you think he's doing enough to nationalize the race so that it is about a vote for Trump versus a check on Trump? - So there was this ad. There was another ad or video he filmed just sort of sitting on a stoop, talking about Elon Musk dumping money in the state. There's another-- - To the Cragemog shot. - Yeah, yeah, it was very, I'm shot from below for sure. I didn't notice that, Tommy noticed that, but I-- - I thought it was innovative. - It was good, I mean, we've used that technique here at Plaza America, but sometimes against, without our consent, we'll look at the video and be like, "Hey guys, that's three crutches." But, and then-- - So I'll turn to name for the podcast. - Yeah, and then there's others where he'd sort of say, like, according to our enemies, but I say, "Let our haters be our motivators," but the, and that's what Troy Jackson said as well in that ad, but he also was doing a lot of like, like, kind of, the accent is the accent, and he's like, "Look, I don't care. "I don't give a damn if you're, I'm not gonna do the accent." But Democrat or Republican, like I just, we just want to get these good things done for people. So there is a war right now because he is coming into the campaign late, kind of introducing himself, and as he's doing that, right? Like as much as they want to nationalize the race, Republican groups are dumping millions of dollars into May, calling him like a dirty politician and kind of trying to define him negatively. So I don't know what the mix should be. I think he's trying to fight awarded to find himself 'cause he came in so late. Part of it is all the attention, like the national media should probably help nationalize this race a bit because people, boy, a lot of people stop caring about Maine once it stopped being about Democrat on Democrat and started being about Democrat versus Susan Collins. - Yeah, that, I mean, that ad was a good biospot, but it's definitely an older version of politics, more parochial version of politics. It's like he helped me get a sewer in my community. That's not nationalizing it. That's not making it about rubber stamping the Donald Trump agenda. I'm nervous about this race. I mean, like shout out to the Maine Democratic Party and Troy Jackson for like turning this thing from platinum to his race so quickly, that's genuinely impressive. I think it was like literally a month ago, right, when he accepted the nomination. - It was longer. - I do think I did that does. I do think, you know, they need to go on offense every day. I mean, JD Vance visiting Maine is a gift to the Jackson campaign. I saw that he was highlighting Vance calling Collins, his dear friend on his Twitter feed. I hope they're doing more with that. The Canada Trade War is a huge opportunity for Troy Jackson. Like Troy Jackson's political career started because he led a group of loggers to the border of Canada and blockaded the road to protect Maine loggers from getting their job stolen from them. - Where he's from, he's from Arusta County, which is like the border county between Maine and Canada. Like he should, he could go there today. And speaking of nationalizing the race and explain what a 50% tariff does to a logging town. - Right. In premieres, we're talking about blocking electricity to America from Canada. If that happened to Maine, it would hurt them a lot. They get a lot of electricity from Maine. - People love electricity in Maine. (laughing) - I know, they've seen a lot of pulling on it, but my sense of it in Maine is that they're just fans of electricity. - Data centers, yeah, electricity good. - You know what, you'd think it'd be 100 to zero, but I think it's about 95, because everything is, but yeah, they're pretty pro electricity up there. - Yeah. - Iran, ongoing disaster, Collins does not do anything to stop the war, ICE is hugely controversial. Susan Collins gave a terrible interview the other day where she was asked by someone. She got like door stopped at the elevator in the Senate. It was like, why did you vote to send 70 billion to ICE? And she was like, it was for body cameras. That's like, that they never turn on when they're killing Americans. So there's, there's a lot of opportunity there for Toyota Action to make the campaign about Collins as a rubber stamp for Trump. There's also this concerning report that Elon Musk is preparing to spend $100 million on the midterms, and a lot of that will be focused on Maine, so we don't know where that's gonna go, but maybe you could jujitsu that back on Collins, we'll see, but we started to do. I'd like to see a little more, you know, we gotta be aggressive, we gotta make about her. - Especially in this race, because like, you look at all the polling, and this has been true, since planner is in the race, still true today, Maine does not like Donald Trump. Maine is not happy with Donald Trump. Majorities of voters, if they were gonna go to the polls, they would vote against Donald Trump. And they did, in 2024, they voted for Kamala Harris. And so, the way Susan Collins gets elected here is, and it's a little different from the other races, they're gonna try to disqualify Trojaxon, but the real emphasis in why the White House is gonna let her criticize them, is showing that Susan Collins is some kind of an independent voice, right? And so, she wins if enough voters are like, I really don't like what Trump's doing, but I don't really know him, and she's actually delivered for Maine, and she's kind of like an independent voice, and she came out against these tariffs, I just heard her say that, you know? And so, like, the only way to win this race is to tie her to Donald Trump as closely as possible, and make and nationalize this race in every way possible. And I think Trojaxon has to do that. And that was, look, that was the criticism of Platner, one of many, like after he wrapped up the nomination, as people were like, oh, he's going after Susan Collins, too hard on being corrupt, and everything else, and being part of an establishment Washington, he's not tying her to Donald Trump enough. And that was fair criticism, but like, that's now that's what Trojaxon has to do as well. He has to tie her to Donald Trump. - Yeah, I'm just, I am, you have to do that while part of their strategy is to try to define Trojaxon as unacceptable or corrupt or worse in some way, and he's unknown, and part, and, you know, I'm sure people have in the back of their minds that Democrats went through this bruising primary with sort of these, like, unsavory figure in the end, like, that he's tired with that. So I'm sure it's like a difficult balance of trying to figure out how to just get people over the line of knowing who you are, that you're okay to vote instead of, you know, stable, reliable Susan Collins. So like, that's, I'm sure that's part of what we're seeing in the ads, and the question is, how do you make moments when there's a national, when JD Vance is there, when there's a tariff thing? Well, also understanding, probably has to do some work to counteract what will be a day loose about him. - I do think that 95% numbers should voted with Trump 95% of the time. It sort of reminds me of what we did to McCain in '08, right? There's a Senator who was seen as more independent, a Maverick, and all we did for the three, four months of the general election was be like, this guy voted for George Bush 90, something percent of the time I can't remember now. - Yeah, JD Vance tried to get ahead of that by being like, and sometimes she annoys me by being so independent. He's like, what a subtle line, JD. - I know, I know, I know, I know. - What, it doesn't look very obvious. - What's he doing in Maine? You know, he's like, she, like, he's campaigning for her. Again, like-- - She can't show up. - And she can't show up. It's all a little bit like it's the Vance show. - Yeah, only the page showed up. The Republican nominee for the Maine Second District, not even the gubernatorial nominee showed up for the Republican side for JD Vance, so he's popular. (upbeat music) - Positive America is brought to you by Helix. I don't know about you, but sleep is the most important thing in my life besides my family. - They're connected. - A really good chance that I, they are very connected. Thank you, John, for seeing me. - I've got a good night's sleep. - Having a great day. If I got a bad night's sleep, I am almost guaranteed to have a rough day and good sleep starts with the right mattress. Upgrade your sleep quality with a Helix mattress. How do you know which mattress is right for you? You take the Helix sleep quiz and it'll match you with the perfect mattress based on your personal preferences and sleep needs. They have over 20 mattress models, so you can find the perfect model for you. Helix delivers your mattress right to your door with free shipping in the U.S. The happy with Helix guarantee offers a risk-free customer first experience designed to ensure you are completely satisfied with your new mattress. So you can rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges. Plus, Helix offers a 120-night sleep trial in a limited lifetime warranty. We got Helix mattress at our house. It is unbelievably comfortable. It's in our guest bedroom. Anyone who sleeps there says they love it. I bet multiple people say to me, where did you get that thing? And I say, Helix, take the quiz. Let's ship it to your house. Couldn't be easier. Go to helixsleep.com/cricut for 27% off-site-wide. This offer is exclusive to Potsative America listeners. That's helixsleep.com/cricut for 27% off-site-wide helixsleep.com/cricut. Potsative America is brought to you by Zippercruiter with everyday interaction becoming increasingly impersonal. Someone going just one extra step can be huge. Like when my doctor takes the time to call me with test results instead of sending them electronically, I feel like a human being again. Yeah, it's nice. If you're hiring, great candidates can also go the extra step and tell you why they're interested in your job on Zippercruiter. It's a way to stand out from the others in the pool. And right now, you can try it for free at zippercruiter.com/cricut. Zippercruiter's new feature shows you the most interested qualified candidate's first so you meet the right people faster. Their powerful matching technology finds qualified candidates quickly. Candidates can tell you in their own words why they're interested in your job. We've used Zipper Cruder here at Crooked Media, we've hired a bunch of people. It shortened the process, it helped us find great people really quickly and just cut through a lot of the, you know, slower processes and other sites out there that are just not as effective. Try Zipper Cruder and meet great candidates who will go the extra step for your job. Four out of five employers who post on Zipper Cruder get a quality candidate within the first day. Free at Zipper Cruder dot com slash Crooked at Zipper Cruder dot com slash Crooked. Zipper Cruder meet your match on Zipper Cruder. Speaking of him, he also recently weighed in on the Michigan Senate race during a visit to his hometown in Ohio. Here's what he had to say about Democratic candidate Abdul El Sayed. El Sayed, this guy running for Senate and Michigan, he once argued not too long ago that criticisms of Sharia law were rooted in white supremacy. I'd love to go back in time and tell my papal that there's a man who claims to stand for working people who says not only should we have Sharia law, but if you criticize it, you're a white supremacist. That's not my papal's Democrat party, my friends, just a, just a, just a, just a collection of real authentic people in there. Also, notice how we just, just kind of got in there, not only is he, I think we should have Sharia law. Right. What are you talking about? I know. I was like, he makes Abdul's name sound weird. He's like, El Sayed. And he's like, my pee-pop, pee-pop, papal, like a fuck off. Yeah. I think I said papal earlier. People are a lot of different names. Yeah. So Abdul responded on MSNOW by pointing out that Vance was cherry picking who gets to be defined as American and distracting from the issues. What do you think of that response? In general, like, what is the best way for Abdul to handle all of these Islamophobic attacks from people like Vance, from people like Mike Rogers? I've seen a lot of them are just like, not even like thinly veiled lies, like very obvious lies, like who he just loves Sharia law. He loves Sharia law. It's fun. Like, there's more Vance to it. He kind of performs as like the sophisticated version of Trump and there's like a way in what you take as rhetoric and you can find some shred that they can call it the truth somehow. But then he'll go back to their eating the cats and their eating the dogs or he'll go there as like he wants Sharia law, which is just a lie, just just lying to people. I think he's doing, like, I don't know what a more defiant or direct version of what he's already been saying, sounds like, but like, you can just say what this is. If this election is a referendum on Trump's policies and whether people want in the Senate a rubber stamp for what Trump will do, then Mike Rogers will lose. And everything about what the Republicans are doing is going to be to try to hide that or muddy that or make noise around that. And if this is an election about healthcare, about jobs, about someone looking out for the middle class in Michigan, about someone who will actually kind of go to the Senate to advocate on behalf of people in Michigan, as opposed to for Donald Trump or whatever, or kind of siding with the corporations that are trying to kind of cut their taxes even more, deregulate. That's what the race is about, then I'm doable when they know that. Pop-hop versus Sharia. Yeah. Yeah. His response to JD was like, called him boring, which I like, just unequivically true. He made a line about Peter Teo, which I don't know that most people get, like MSNOW viewers probably get it because we're all political junkies, but most folks don't. And then he went into this thing about how, well, you know, do you think JD Vance looks his wife's parents in the eye and tells them that are not real Americans referencing Usha Vance? And again, it's like, it's a good point that I'm not totally sure everyone would understand. It's also point you could make about Donald Trump and Melania, by the way, because her parents are not born in the United States. I did, like, there's the, this is a distraction thing. I think that is true and it's valuable. I didn't wonder if it's missing a beat that just kind of like undercuts the suggestion that he's an extremist, which is like JD, I played fucking college lacrosse. That's not the most like sharia compliant activity or something that just gets at like, I love America. I'm an American. I grew up playing high school football. I'm from Michigan. My name's Abdul. I'm a doctor. I'm a union member. Like, enough of this fear mongering crap. And he does that. He says like, I'm a jewel from, I've always been a jewel for Michigan. It's also, yeah, distraction is sort of the right ballpark, but you got to kind of put a finer point on it by being like, like every answer has to go back to Mike Rogers at this point. Mike Rogers and JD Vance and all these people, they're saying all this shit because they have nothing to say about why everything's so expensive in Michigan. They have nothing to say about what a disaster Donald Trump has been for Michigan over the last four years. They're just going to make this entire race about Sharia law and Hassan Piker and all this other bullshit because they have nothing else to say about anything that you care about. And I think that like he's, and Mike, and they may know that it's a pretty weak argument that Mike Rogers is just going to go to the fucking Senate and have another, another two years of doing whatever Donald Trump tells him to do. Yeah. The thing about the Usha point is like, so he's a hypocrite, right? And like I said, it's like, it's just, this is sometimes it's just like, hey, like start, you're not going to win on points. It's like, like, that's a logical argument about how you should, like, what, he's racist towards you, but not towards his wife. Like, I don't, like, it's sort of, it's, it is beside the point and just sort of done with hypocrisy arguments or kind of, well, what about this? You know? Well, it's learning. And their goal is to sort of lure you into an argument about identity and culture and race, right? This is like, you know, Bernie tweeted today too, like, well, you know, you talk about Hassan Piker, but, you know, Jake Lang is in Michigan, the January 6th rioter, and he's got a connection to Mike Rogers, which is, is true, you know? And then Mike Rogers is like, well, I'll disavow him, I'll disavow Jake Lang. But also will abdual disavow Piker, and now we're like in a back and forth about, you know, disavow off. I know. It's a, man, classic disavow off. I think Lamar's like a mayor's bet on a sports game. Yeah, there's, there is something about the, like, I, those are pretty lame. The other side of it, right? Oh, where is this? I bet she said these, she steaks from Chicago, Philly, whatever. I wasn't listening. I was waiting for my turn to talk. No, it was no. It was so rare. What I was trying to, what I was going to say is, yes, there's like the tit for tat for how you respond to these things, right? And, and then there's sort of the proactive rhetoric, whether it's in responding to the soundpiker thing, which he did, right? He's not just ignoring it. He is responding to it. And then what you're doing proactively to address those kinds of things. And I will say, like, I read the statement he put out in response to the backlash to a comment from Hassan Piker from his fucking stream, because we've all decided that Hassan Piker is the main character in American politics. You know, fuck news on these. There is every third figure, it's just, it's Hassan Trump, and then just a socialist that chosen at random, basically, maybe a trans swimmer will get in there. But that's it. That's what's on Fox News. And so, like, his response is-- Well, it's also in the third way and some other Democrats and, and, and, and, uh, D.S.A. people, right? Like, a lot of people are invested in making this on the main character of the minterms. But if you look at that statement, it, like, I think all the sentiment inside of the statement is good. It's very like, uh, it's very careful, right? It's very careful statement and not, like, I would, that there needs to be, if he's going, like, if he's trying to prove to the Jewish voters in Michigan that he would like to come home, despite having had 30 or 60 million, 60 million dollars worth of ads dumped on his head, uh, then, then, like, the same language that he would use the defiant language about saying, this is why we need Medicare for all, or, like, this is why we need to take on the corporations. Like, that level of defiance is certainly welcome in describing anti-Semitism, right? Like, like, it's a very, it's a very kind of careful language as opposed to something that's like, it's more, more, in the style that he's using on every other issue. That's all. There's also some interesting news about Rogers, uh, over the weekend, uh, Axios reported that allies of Rogers asked APEC to rethink their involvement in the Michigan general election, urging the group to, quote, get involved without putting the group's name front and center. Uh, the New York Times followed up with reporting of their own, noting that, quote, APEC leaders have privately voiced unease with a plan that makes APEC appear as if it is hiding. Uh, none of this has stopped Rogers from fundraising with APEC. He attended three APEC fundraisers in LA over the weekend and a fourth on Monday. What do you guys make of the request from, uh, from the Rogers camp? I mean, I think it tells you a lot about how toxic the APEC brand has become politically. I think ultimately what they're doing there is saying, just don't spend on your own behalf, funnel your money to some other super back and have them spend it for you, which is what APEC will probably do. Yeah. Although it does make APEC look incredibly weak if they can't even run ads, although they normally don't run ads in a general election. They usually just screw around and democratic primaries taking out progressives. So this is new for them, but it's, uh, it's a punch on the gut. But also APEC has run tons of ads under the name of his other organizations and not, they're ads during this primary and nothing to do with Israel at all. They were about sort of accusing him of being anti-women and other things like that. So like, they already are running a campaign, which at least for most people, they're trying to kind of make it about other issues and not about APEC. Seems like they wanted the headline, the Rogers campaign. They wanted a headline out there to say that they are, uh, resisting APEC, uh, because they know that it's toxic, right? Like that. I think that, uh, I'm sure they're the ones that leaked it. I, that, that is, I guess I, like, I, the politics are a little simpler for a Republican and a Democrat. Right? Like, I don't totally understand why he wouldn't want. I think because, I think that it has become so toxic that it is not just toxic in a democratic primary now, but APEC is toxic in a general election. Right. I guess, I guess what I want to understand is who are the voters? I guess there are, there are some Republican voters who might just stay home, right? Cause any, right? That are like, independence, some voters that are just, that, that, that, that, that. APEC is extremely uncomfortable with a independent voter. But I think the important thing is he's still doing fundraisers with them like he's talking. It's a double hit because he's still allied with APAC and doing fundraisers, but he's also talking about both sides of his mouth. He just wants them to hide the spending. He wants the UDP to cut a $30 million check to name your fake, like the crypto-fairshake because I'm crypto funder, whatever it is, and have them run the ads. One time he had another piece this weekend with the headline, "Angry Ohio voters could turn their state purple again," which details how Ohioans frustrations over data centers, rising prices, the war in Iran, could put not just the Senate seat, but the governor's race in a series of house races in play for Democrats, Nan Waley, a former Dayton mayor who ran for governor in '22, told the Times, "I've just not seen people this pissed." What do you guys think? Too good to be true? We're turning Ohio blue? How surprised at how bullish Nate Silver was on Ohio, let me talk about this in the last episode. Jim, the former congressman posted something on social media where he said, "You can get mad at me for posting this, but I'm just delivering the message. The biggest issues for independence are Iran War, gas prices, food prices, utility bills rent." Today, Trump is further dragging out the Iran War, maybe indefinitely. That keeps gas prices up. That impacts food prices because of fertilizer costs. He started a trade war with Canada, which is going to jack up food and maybe utility costs, and then Trump threatened to veto his only accomplishment on housing. That wasn't his finest moment. Also, Nan Waley had another quote in that piece, she said, "It comes down to, you hate everything, you can't be mad at the Democrats because they don't control anything." It's like, honestly, that is what might get us over the line. It's like at some point, there's no one left to blame, but the Republicans that have had complete control over most of Ohio and now the country. Last but not least on the House side, the Times had another story that raised eyebrows. The private meeting between House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Jared Kushner, where the two discussed, quote, "potential areas of common ground." This comes as Democrats reportedly prepared a lunch, numerous investigations into the Trump administration should they win back the House in November. What did you guys think about Jared and Hakeem meeting? What kind of common ground? I think, maybe, in the West Bank. I mean, yeah. Look, this triggered me deeply because I, obviously, I'm not a big Jared Kushner fan. Look, my fear, big picture, is that, and this is not really about Hakeem Jeffries, but he's a part of this. The Democrats will, once they get the gavel and have oversight, authorities waste time with like sternly worded letters and requests for things instead of just subpoenas right out of the gate. And those demands for documents and oversight have to include the Trump family and the Kushner family in Jared's firm. And Kushner is going to have very powerful allies calling around to Democrats. Maybe there are people that he's friends with who are rich people in New York or Miami who are also donors to Democrats and saying, "Go easy on Jared. He's a moderating force. He's one of the good guys. Look at what he did with the Abraham Accords, which we all have seen have brought peace to the Middle East members since they were put into place." And remember, Corey Booker voted to confirm Charles Kushner, Jared's dad, as ambassador to France because of their preexisting relationship. So I think that's why those reports were triggering on a substantive level, and on just a political level, it's like, "Why would you take this meeting now?" It just doesn't make any sense. There's nothing you're going to work on. Absolutely nothing. Yeah. My reaction was like, "What is the common ground with Jared Kushner? He's not a housing policy expert." He has no government job. He has no government job. He's just a private citizen with a lot of interests. If you want to talk with the White House about finding common ground on cost of living, go talk to someone in the domestic policy council. Talk to the president. Go talk to the speaker. Go talk to the president, right? And maybe Jeffries is, you know, and the White House, I guess, through Jared is pricing in that Democrats are going to take the House, and Jeffries wants a channel to the White House that is in Trump, which is like, "That's fine, but again, that's not Jared Kushner." He doesn't have a government job, and you can't take a meeting like that quietly and then be surprised when the reaction is, you know, a signal about how confrontational that you're going to be over the next two years. It's just like, "What do you think you're going to do that and quiet me with Jared, and then everyone's going to just assume the best intention?" Well, this is, I think, the deeper problem, which is, and Dan wrote a good message box about why there's so much consternation around this. And it is, to Tommy's point, that people are afraid that as speaker, he won't be standing up to Trump enough, that he'll be too conciliatory. But like, I don't. What is your theory of power in a second, in the. If you're the speaker of the House, you have the Senate, you don't have the Senate. Is it about launching investigations? Is it about a publicly defiant posture, but you're back-channeling with the administration? Are you going to be drawing lines? Well, if you do what I think certainly Democratic voters want to see from a Democratic House majority, there will be no successful working relationship with the Trump administration. You will be doing subpoenas. You will be doing investigations. You will be trying every day to get to the bottom of deeply embarrassing stories about corruption, ties to the Epstein files, failures, chaos, abuses of power. Like that is what every day will be about. Trump will hate you. Trump will want to destroy you. Trump will be saying you should be in jail. He will be putting the DOJ on you. So what exactly is Jared, who we already did a version of this in the first term, ineffective, ineffective, feckless, careless, Jared, going to do for you? What is your back channel with this guy who didn't preserve the Paris Accords, really didn't do much of anything going to get you, certainly before the election, let alone after? And now he spends his time spending billions of Saudi dollars on God knows what. He's trying to colonize an island off of the coast of Albania, and that's not going very well. He's only meeting with a Russian oligarch who is this economic channel to Putin. Everything Jared's doing in Trump 2.0 is really, really sketchy and not something you want to be affiliated with in any way, shape, or form, in something that demands a lot of scrutiny. A lot of scrutiny. Chuck Schumer is probably pretty happy about the meeting, because it's not him. Yeah. He's like, "I didn't do this one." He's like, "It's a tip-toe run, I think." All right. The other questioner is buying the Lakers, probably. Oh, that's right. Bob. Bob-maker. All right. One last thing before my interview with Seth Molten, after months of delays, the Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, finally released his YouTube series, The Great American Road Trip. All six episodes are out now. Each opens with a disclaimer that no tax dollars were used to fund the show. Instead, there are several corporate sponsors, many of which share a theme. If you can pick up on it, Boeing, Toyota, Shell, United Airlines, Royal Caribbean, Enterprise, Intercar, Lyft, and the U.S. Travel Association. The team put together some lowlights for you to enjoy, so you don't have to watch the rest. Here they are. And as I say, I've been carrying a luggage ever since. I carry your babies and you carry my luggage. If I do get it, I feel like you can't say no. To Harvard? Yeah. Well, me and my mom can say no. They have professionalized, figuring out how they can take good, young girls like you, and I think corrupt their minds. I went to an extremely conservative school in high school, and I'm part of an extremely conservative family. And that if I go to a liberal setting, that's a way more rounded education than if I go to a conservative high school and then go to a conservative college. That's just being kind of one side in any way. Like they're so good at it, you'll see young people go to a conservative school with a conservative family and they get perverted and contorted. And now when it comes to the trains, it's my fault. Not me. The house has set up for the two of us to room together. We're going well though. It was fun. It was good. We called our bitch. I did not. We got it. Dancing even poorly is really enjoyable. Maybe we'll have a little dance in our human heart. We're a rock star for doing the show trip. Thank you. It'll be fun. Oh boy. Oh. Oh boy. Dude. I did not watch that yet. That was troubling. I really am. It's so funny. This idea that there's kind of this idea in the kind of whatever, the conservative Gen X boom or mine, that the reason their kids turned against them is because they went to colleges where they were as if young girls had their minds perverted. Meanwhile, meanwhile, you look at the discourse around college or like, hey, we got this problem. Our professors don't seem to be reading anything that's submitted to them anymore. Also, the kids are using Chatchee BT in the classrooms. No one seems to be doing any of the work anymore. It just seems like, I don't know that they're very good at indoctrinating us to believe in anything, let alone specific liberal ideas. Yeah. It's like Alex Jones. They turned the frogs gay with the water kind of stuff. First of all, this poor kid, like, doesn't want to be having this conversation on camera for it to be released to a total of 16,000 viewers so far on YouTube going great for Sean Duffy. What? What a weird. Well, also, it's like, it's not even like she's saying, I want to rebel against my conservative upbringing. Basically, just like, I'd love sort of a well-rounded point of view. You know, I've got the conservative point of view, and I had high school. And now I'd like to, you know, a well-rounded liberal point of view to be like, no, absolutely not me and mom will say no. It's the other, like, there's just some slap mom in the ass. I mean, it's infantilization. Like, there's a, like, there's like, oh, would you, like, you will be, like, why do you think your kids don't have the ability to hear an opposing idea? Like what do you, what do you, what do you, what do this, like should be an adult, you know, young adult? It's like a person going to college, a time where people, by the way, you are able to serve in the military. You're allowed to do all kinds of things in a dub vote. And you don't believe they can handle a college professor telling you something liberal. Like what, how little respect do you have for people? - Dude, you did road rules. - Well, what are you lecturing your child about? They're like, they're learning environment. You want real world road rules? The challenge, like how you and mom met? - It's okay to go out and live your life and be around people who are different than you. Maybe you'll learn something. - What a potential next White House press secretary, Rachel Campo-Stuffy. - Yeah, I don't know. - Is Scott Jennings coming on a little too strong? - I don't know, Trump said something nice about him last week when he was asked about it. - Yeah, but it was very like cursory. - He's good. (laughing) - It's funny because there was the, there was the Scott Jennings is in the running. He had a dinner with Susie Wiles, sort of a new cycle, which was immediately followed by the Scott Jennings is overdoing it. He's terrible. The White House hates him, new cycle. So you can see a lot of posturing in the media. It's not at all clear to me where Trump is heading. - We'll see. Up next, my interview with Congressman Seth Molten, and also we are currently out to Ed Marcus team as well, hoping to get him on ahead of the primary. That's up next. (upbeat music) Today's show is sponsored by strawberry.me. You're probably no stranger to seeing self-professed career coaches advertise their services on social media. It can all feel a little ad hoc, a little vague, and might leave you wondering, is anyone being helped by this? With strawberry.me, you don't have to wonder because hundreds of their satisfied clients have left glowing reviews about what professional coaching has done for them. Here's a little sampling of those reviews. My coach was amazing. The experience was transformative. I landed a new job within weeks, and how about this one? It helped transform me back into a high-powered leader following my extended maternity leave. - That was mine. - That was you. When so many people go out of their way to write a positive review about something, you know that something is special. So if you're feeling stuck at work, do what tens of thousands of people have already done, go to strawberry.me/cricket, and claim 50% off your first coaching session, that's strawberry.me/cricket. (upbeat music) - Seth Molten, welcome back to Plaza of America. - It's always an honor to be on the pods, so thank you very much for having me back, John. - Of course. So your primary against Senator Ed Markey is in a week. The only three polls taken in August have you down 28, 15, 33 in the most recent poll. Do you think the public polling is all wrong? Or do you think you can make up a lot of ground by next Tuesday? What is your internal polling show? - Internal polls have this very, very close. I think the polling has been wildly off in just about every primary across the country, and the energy that we're hearing on the ground, the numbers that we're seeing on the doors is incredibly positive. People want change, but at the end of the day, this will be about who turns out for this election, and we have a great turnout operation that will help us win. - Your central argument is about the need for generational change, which has already worked in several democratic primaries. The cycle, though usually it's been a young progressive defeating an older moderate. I know you called yourself progressive in the last debate, but do you think it's fair to say, would you call yourself more moderate than Ed Markey? - No, I wouldn't. I think there are two progressors in this race, and if you look at our policies, I mean, first of all, Senator Markey and I pretty much agree on policies. There's really very little where we disagree fundamentally. Some of my policies are actually more aggressive and progressive than his, like my affordability agenda, for example, but there's no policy change that I've made in this race. This is always who I've been. It takes some time for people to get to know you, and as I've been doing town halls all across the state, I think people have seen how committed I am to change, because it's not progressive without progress. And at the end of the day, Senator Markey has been advocating for a lot of things that he's advocated for a very long time. And yet, fundamentally, there are a lot of problems that are just getting worse. Housing costs keep going up. Energy bills are twice a national average here in Massachusetts, and it's just people admit that the status quo approach is not working. And so I've proposed some transformative ideas to address these things, and I think that's what voters want right now. Just to look at one policy difference, Markey's for a Medicare for all, single payer version of Medicare for all, you're for a public option that lets people keep employer coverage. There's a good amount of evidence out there that even a robust public option is the more popular, more achievable option, even though it's more moderate. Why isn't your argument that your positions, some of your positions may be more moderate, but they're also more likely to win and pass and easily achieved? - Look, I think that achievable is absolutely part of the argument. In fact, there was an op-ed and they bossed in Globe today that said that Molten's policies are achievable and Markey's are not. I mean, he was re-elected in 2020 on a promise to pass Medicare for all in six years. He also promised to pass the Green New Deal and yet voted present on it himself when it came before the Senate. It's got fewer co-sponsors today than it did when he first introduced it. So again, it's not progressive without actual progress and on this, you know, the question of healthcare for all, we both support universal healthcare. In fact, I've gone so far as to say it should be a human right, not even debatable, whether you're a citizen and immigrant, you know, homeless on the street, it absolutely is a human right. I think that's good for everybody in America, but I actually want to get it done. And that's why I stand with President Obama, which just says, yes, you can have Medicare. If you want it, literally everybody can have Medicare if they want it. But if you're a union that's fought for years to get a great healthcare plan that you really enjoy, you can keep it. And I made a commitment to keep going to the VA from a healthcare when I was elected because we know the VA's got problems and I wanted to see them firsthand. There are a lot of vets who want to continue being able to go to the VA as well. - What's your specific argument as to why marquee's age matters? Is it that he specifically isn't up to the job because of his age or that 50 years is just too long for anyone regardless of age? - I think it's three things. I mean, first of all, it's not personal, you know, I mean, it's kind of against the idea, this establishment idea that one person ought to be able to hang onto a seat in Congress for 50 years, even if the world is, you know, passing him by. So it's kind of this like establishment idea that the personal power is more important than public service that as a vet, I really resent. The second point though, is that if we win the Senate, John, it will almost certainly be by just one vote. And we cannot afford to have someone miss a vote due to a medical issue or anything else. And potentially have that turn into another conservative Trump-appointed Supreme Court justice. The stakes are just too high. And we should learn the lessons of Dianne Feinstein and Joe Biden and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And of course, on the other side of the aisle, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and recognize that there's just simply a risk when you re-elect somewhat at 80. He'd be closer to 90 at the end of his next term than 80. But the third reason, which I think is really resonating right now, is that you've got to have a new generation of leaders to take on a new generation of challenges and opportunities. And in the last debate, we were asked about AI. And Senator Marky explained to Massachusetts that he can't tell the apps on his phone or iPad apart. He doesn't know which ones use AI and which ones don't. And that's tough, you know? After the debate, he tried to clean it up by comparing AI to an automobile and saying, we ought to regulate it the way we regulate seat belts. I mean, how are we going to make this technology safe if the senators don't even understand what it does? What specific regulations do you favor for AI? Well, first of all, we ought to learn from all the lessons of messing up the regulations for social media. And actually, Senator Marky talked about how he's been the architect of some of those regulations. His 1996 telecom deregulation bill opened the door for big tech to come in, make billions and billions of dollars, but have absolutely no accountability for things on the internet. Now, he's tried to walk back some of that. But we all know the internet is unsafe. I mean, I've got a five-year-old and seven-year-old at home. I dread the time when they get on social media. And we know that their suicide risk goes up, that the harm that can happen just from being on social media. It's very real. And Congress has totally failed to regulate it. So number one, we've got to make AI safe. And that means holding the AI company's actually accountable. At number two, we do have to win the AI race against China, because we don't want to have zero accountability here in the United States, because everyone starts using models from overseas. And then the third thing I'd say is that there will be job displacement. Now, we don't know exactly when it will happen or what it will be. So rather than try to anticipate where that's going, like, remember a few years ago, and Democrats said, oh, we'll just retrain the coal miners to be computer programmers. And then they'll be fine. I mean, even if that was realistic back then, these are like the first jobs that are getting automated out of existence by AI. So I think we have to have almost a FEMA-like disaster fund approach to dealing with job loss, a federal fund, to say, look, if every paralegal in their country loses their job within a month, we're going to help. We're gonna bail them out until they can find new jobs. I think that's good. going to be critical as well. You mentioned China. I feel like this constant tension with the development of AI is someone proposes regulation. Someone proposes slowing it down. The counterargument is, well, yes, we want safeguards, and we want regulations. But we can't let China beat us. So it's used as an argument to just keep pushing ahead. What is the balance between making sure that we're not all using Chinese AI models, or even if we do nothing about AI, even if we stop AI tomorrow here for some reason in the US, obviously it's still going to be with us. It's the rest of the world is going to move ahead. So how do you regulate AI without letting China win this race? I think it's a great question, John. And this really is the administration's argument, right? They basically say, we shouldn't have any rules. In fact, we should just do exactly what all the AI executives tell us to do, because they're the experts, and they're going to win this race against China. I do not think these two things are mutually exclusive at all. I mean, no one wants to fundamentally use a model at the end of the day that is unsafe. In fact, there's a good chance that governments will just shut things down that are unsafe. So there's no reason why the winning model shouldn't also be the safe model. I also think that the wrong way to do it is for the federal government to say, OK, we're going to just make all the rules, because we all know we're not going to keep up, like we're not going to keep up with the technology. That's why I talk about accountability. I think the big problem with social media and big tech companies is that there's just no accountability whatsoever. If I were just starting to see big tech care because there have been successful lawsuits for the first time against them for the things that show up on their platforms, we've got to make it clear from the very beginning that these AI companies are actually liable. And that will force the kind of self-regulation that we've never seen appropriately with social media, but it also, importantly, will be able to keep up and therefore stay competitive with China and other countries around the world. Bernie Sanders recently wrote a letter to AI leaders, like Sam Altman, Dario Amade, and Mark Zuckerberg, following the news that their companies lost control of their AI models. First, it was open AI and then clod, and then anthropic and meta said the same thing. So the letter said, "In the interest of humanity, "stand by your words, pause AI development. "It is not too late to avoid disaster. "Stop building machines that humans cannot control. "Do you agree with Bernie "that these companies should pause AI development?" - I mean, no, John, as you said, like the world is gonna continue developing AI. I mean, China may only be a few months behind us depending on who you talk to. So just pausing it is not smart for the United States for, I mean, look, do you trust, at the end of the day, the United States of America or communist China to make AI safe? I certainly trust the United States of America as many problems as we have back here, but again, we have to make big tech accountable. And so fundamentally, I agree with Bernie that they are not doing enough to make model safe and to show accountability for their behavior right now, but the answer is not pretending that this is not gonna happen. Bernie's also got to bill for a moratorium on data centers. What do you think about that? Would you support a moratorium on building data centers for a year or longer until we can figure this out and people in more local communities and states can have more of a say in where these data centers are going? - I think it should be up to local control. Like I think that people in communities that are gonna be impacted by data centers, both negatively and positively should make these decisions. And there are some communities that want data centers because of the tax revenue. There are a lot of communities right here in Massachusetts that are really nervous about them jacking up electricity prices when electric bills are already way too high here in Massachusetts. There are a lot of people who are worried about pollution for good reason. So my view is that this should be local control. These should be local communities making decisions. The federal government should not be forcing data centers down everybody that anybody's throw. But at the end of the day, when there are local communities that say no, we want this business. We want this here. We want the construction jobs. A lot of unions are very in favor of these data centers because all the jobs that they bring. Then it's a good thing for our data to sit in data centers in the United States and not in data centers overseas in China where we know that they do not respect privacy. They don't have proper controls over intellectual property. I think it's already a problem that big tech companies and AI companies use our data without our permission or any benefit coming back to us. But it could get even worse if there's absolutely no control over our data because it sits overseas. There was another odd moment in an earlier August debate that I wanted to ask you about. At one point, you asked Marky why he'd take a meeting with a lobbyist on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein. This was based on a 2015 email in the Epstein files where a colleague of a lobbyist named Bob Crow said he'd had an initial briefing with Marky about getting the son of a former Senegalese president out of prison. Epstein paid for that lobbying. But both Marky and Crow say the meeting never happened. Three independent fact checks found the claim mostly false or unsupported. There's no evidence that the briefing with Marky took place or that Marky had any idea Epstein was involved. You also took $2,000 from Bob Crow, which you later returned. But considering all that, do you still think it was fair to suggest that Marky took the meeting and did a favor for one of Epstein's pals? - Well, look, if you look at the email, the meeting happened. And it's not a surprise that Senator Marky would sadly not tell the truth about this because he's been lying a lot in this campaign. I mean, he said that he does not take corporate pack money and he does. He said that he does not take fossil fuel lobbyist money. And he does. The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald have documented these things. So unfortunately, he's been lying to his supporters throughout this campaign. And it's not a surprise that he would be dishonest about a meeting that emails clearly documented occurred. But my question was actually very simple. It was simply just why would you take a meeting? Because this actually does go to the heart of an issue that I'm hearing all across Massachusetts, which is that people don't see the Senator. I've done over 50 town halls across the state where anyone can come, and it was like hundreds of individual events, but anyone can come to over 50 public town halls and ask me any question that they want. And I often hear we never see the Senator. I've never been able to get a meeting with him. I've never been able to ask a question. So this simple question I asked is, why would you take this meeting on behalf of the lobbyist working for Epstein and not and not take meetings with constituents? And that is representative of things that I'm hearing on the trail. But it's possible that it was just a call between this lobbyist or a colleague of the lobbyist and Markey staff and Markey had nothing to do with it or had no knowledge of the meeting. And the email didn't say a brief to staff. I mean, I've worked in the Congressional Office for 10 years, a big difference between, oh, we breathe, molten staff or we breathe molten, right? I mean, it's pretty clear. But look, he could at least return the money. I mean, the point is a lot of voters ask, like, why can't we get access to our Senator? And this just goes to the heart of that question, like the wealthy and the well-connected, even if they're connected to a convicted felon, seem to be able to get meetings or briefings or whatever you want to call it with senators, and yet ordinary people in Massachusetts can't. And that's a change that I would like to bring if I'm elected Senator. We've actually won as many democracy awards from the Congressional Management Foundation as I think any other office on Capitol Hill, and including ones for transparency and constituent services. I mean, literally the best office in the country for constituent services. And that means people can come to us at all times for anything. In fact, we do get a lot of constituent services requests from other congressional districts, which is, I can't get an answer from that congressman or that Senator, so we're coming to you. And I think that's the kind of service and the kind of access that people in Massachusetts want and deserve. Yeah, I was going to ask, because obviously corruption is a huge issue thanks to the administration and Donald Trump, but also it's just you can tell people are sort of fed up with some of the things that you're talking about, just broadly with Congress and Washington in general. It sort of reminds me of 2006, and when Democrats took the House in, it was an anti-corruption message. You know, back then, there was sort of a series of proposed reforms if Democrats took back Congress, what they could do on ethics and lobbying. I remember when I first started working for then Senator Obama, he spearheaded some of those as well. Have you thought about legislation, ethics reforms, lobbying reforms, anti-corruption legislation that you'd like to pass if you're a senator? And additionally, even if there are things that you can't pass, legislation, you can't pass, just sort of rules for your own office that you want to put into place as Senator. Yes, absolutely. So first of all, I was the first office on Capitol Hill House or Senate to ban prediction market trading for me or my staff. And that's set an example that other offices have followed, but that's a great example of something that we've already done internally, and those bands should, of course, be passed into law. I also think that we need campaign finance reform. And we've tried for years to get it. As you've said, people have proposed this for a long time. It's been difficult with the Supreme Court. A novel approach that I've been pursuing is to tie campaign finance reform to term limits. And the reason why this is an interesting combination is that campaign finance reform tends to be more popular with Democrats. Term limits tend to be more popular with Republicans in Congress, and yet both are wildly popular with the American public. So we could make a compromise. Each side could eat a little crow. And we could do something that would, I think, be fundamentally good for Congress and raise our esteem in the minds of the general public. But it's been proven difficult to pass without some sort of grand bargain like that. I've also co-sponsored three congressional stock trading bands. And I think that I've also disclosed my whole family's taxes in this race, which Senator Markey has not. I think that kind of transparency is just helpful. And of course, some of these were unwritten rules. We had disclosure of taxes amongst all presidential candidates until Trump came along and just refused to do it. I think one of the biggest lessons that Democrats have to learn after the second Trump administration that we clearly didn't learn well enough after the first is that just pretending we can go back to normal isn't enough. We need these kinds of fundamental reforms so that the next person like Donald Trump doesn't come and just completely abuse the system once again. You had a line in one of the last debates that said, "If you're happy with your electricity bill tonight, vote for the Senator. Expand on that argument a little bit for me." What is the thing Massachusetts doesn't have because Ed Markey has held this seat? It's just innovation in change and an urgency to get these problems fixed. Because electric bills are not a new problem. And we've had high electricity rates, high gas prices for a long time in Massachusetts and they haven't been addressed. And in the last debate, Senator Markey thought rather indignant and he trotted out a list of things that he's done on this issue. And I said, "Look, Senator, I respect your work on this. I really do. In fact, I've supported many of those measures myself. But we've just got to admit that it's not enough when our electric bills are twice the national average. It clearly hasn't gotten that done." On housing, for example, there are a lot of tweaks in the system that have been proposed and worked on for a while. But housing prices are skyrocketing in Massachusetts. And one out of three people here in this state thought about leaving just last year because it's unaffordable to live here. So I've proposed a totally transformative initiative to make it faster than driving to get around Massachusetts by turning our commuter rail system into a fast regional rail system like they have throughout Europe. It would finally connect north and south stations where every train from the north would flow through the South and West. I'm down in the Cape right now. It took two and a half hours to get down here. That should be from Salem in like 45 minutes, right? Now, this has been shown by a recent Harvard study to take 155 million cars off the road and spur hundreds of thousands of units of new housing. In fact, this is one of the things that the globe recently cited as a really achievable project that we just need next generation leadership to get done. And Senator Markey has proposed improving rail service to Western Massachusetts. His proposal would have rail service in two and a half hours, which is actually slower than the same trains applied the route in 1950. That's just not the change that we need to address these problems. Yeah, so like, I mean, you've said that a lot of your policy views and an ideology are similar to Markey. There's obviously a generational argument there. But like, specifically, what do you think a Senator molten actually delivers in the next six years that a Senator Markey does not or would not? Like, where would you guys differ in terms of, okay, a vote comes in the Senate and you'd vote one way and Markey would vote another way? Yeah, great question, because we really do agree on most policies. Like, for example, we were just talking about housing. I mean, we obviously both agree that we need to bring housing costs down. I just admit that what we've been trying hasn't worked and we need to do something much more transformative like this regional rail initiative. I don't think that really translates into a different vote in the United States Senate. But I'll tell you something that does. And that is voting for Chuck Schumer. When I started this campaign, I said from day one, I'm not going to vote for Chuck Schumer. I'm not going to run on a platform of next generation leadership here in Massachusetts and then go to Washington and support Senator Schumer. Senator Markey not only supports Senator Schumer, but just took $62,000 from the Senate, out of the Senate victory fund. The fund that's supposed to flip seats from red to blue in Michigan, in Ohio, in Alaska, in Maine and other states across the country where we need to flip seats to win back the majority. Senator Markey took that money out of the victory fund. The Democrats of the off-crossed country have contributed to it to bail out his own campaign. And so that's a huge difference in approach. I think you know, John, I've been working for years to do the opposite, to actually use my platform of Massachusetts to raise millions of dollars for candidates across the country through my serve America initiative that's recruited, mentored, and supported amazing leaders, like Mikey Cheryl, who the governor of New Jersey, who just endorsed my campaign. Andy Kim, Melissa Slocke, and in the Senate, Governor Spanberger, and real leaders in the House, like Lauren Underwood, John Hayes, Chrissy Hula-Han, Pat Ryan. You know, these are people who all flipped seats. And I think that a senator in a safe blue seat like Massachusetts should really be invested in winning majorities across the country, not taking money out of the fund to win majorities across the country, to cling to power for another six years. Last question for you. Set Markey aside, you spent a couple of years arguing that this party is broken. Democrats are heading into a midterm environment. It's very good for the party, but the brand is still underwater. If you had to name the single thing the Democrats are getting wrong right now that has nothing to do with anyone's age, what is it? Is it people know one thing about the Democratic party and it's that we're opposed to Trump? And that's it. They don't know what we actually stand for. And that's opposition, but it's not leadership. And I think when people are scared and hurting as so many are across the country today with costs skyrocketing, a mega controlling everything in Washington and Trump just completely reckless and disgusting, frankly, as this racist president, people don't want just opposition. They want leadership. And it's an interesting way that I've sort of illustrated this in my town halls where I'll say, okay, ask everyone here, several hundred people, whatever it is, how many of you are opposed to Trump's immigration enforcement? And of course, every hand in the room goes up, right? And then I say, how many of you can tell me what Democrats' immigration policy is? And that's this question of thousands of people and you don't get a single hand. And this isn't some idol or esoteric issue. I mean, this is the number one issue today with ice terrorizing blue communities all across the country. It was one of the top two issues in the 24 election that we lost across the board. And yet for Democrats not be able to say what our immigration policy is. Now, people are gonna ask, okay Seth, what's your immigration policy? Three quick points, prosecute ice. Yes, it should be abolished. The institution is completely broken. Immigration enforcement should go back into the Department of Justice. But it's not enough just to say, poof, you go away. We need to hold these people accountable. Again, that's a big mistake. We made not doing enough of that accountability after the first Trump administration. Number two, create an immigration system that actually incentivizes people to come here legally, not illegally, because for many people, they find it just easier to walk across the border than actually go through the bureaucracy to become a citizen. And then number three, we need a pathway to citizenship for families and kids who are already here and part of our communities. Now, those are three broad points. We could spend 45 minutes debating the details. But the point is, there you go. Like that's my immigration policy. And my experiences, you get a lot of nodding heads. But when most Democrats can't even articulate how we're going to fix this problem, it leaves a lot of people feeling that the party is out of touch. And I think we just got to get back in touch. Last thing I'll say is, I ran for Congress because I saw the consequences of failed leadership in Washington serving in the war on the ground in Iraq. A war that Senator Markey voted for. There were a lot of people making decisions in Washington that were totally out of touch with those of us who were fighting in the sand in the mud in that war of choice. And I think there are a lot of people across America who feel the same way today that Washington and these establishment people who've been there forever are really out of touch with the everyday struggles of America. And the party that can better demonstrate that we're listening, we are hearing, we are responding with real leadership to fix those problems on the ground. That's the party that's going to win. I'm confident that Democrats can get there, but I'm not sure where they're completely. And that's why I've been willing to challenge the party establishment as I'm doing in this race. Seth Moulton, thank you, as always, for joining PiSave America. Enjoy the cape. If you pass through North Reading, tell people I said hi. Don, thanks. It's been an honor to work for your family and friends in North Reading. That's right. That's very much how I district. Yes. All right, take care. Take care. - Thanks again. - Thanks to Congressman Moulton for joining Dan and I will be back on Friday. Pods in America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Ferris Safari with Reed Jerlyn, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Heffko, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Carol Pelavy, David Tolls, Mia Kalman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is probably unionized with the writer's Guild of America East. (upbeat music)