Is It Gay to Flip Texas?

Pod Save America is brought to you by SimpliSafe. Between the midterms, the never-ending news cycle, and daily personal to-dos, your brain has too many tabs open. That's why you need the reliability of SimpliSafe to help you close the home security tab in your crowded mind. They've got it covered. I've set up a SimpliSafe, incredibly easy to do. Definitely gives you that peace of mind. You don't have to worry about it. The app is great. The customer support is great. And SimpliSafe, you can customize your system to fit your needs, and then it ships right to your door. The app-guided setup is simple. There's no drilling required, so you can install and arm your system in under an hour. SimpliSafe is more than just a security camera. It's a comprehensive system of sensors, indoor and outdoor cameras, and 24-7 professional monitoring. In the event of an emergency, SimpliSafe's 24-7 professional monitoring agents will dispatch help when you need it. Over 5 million people value and trust SimpliSafe with their home security every day. Right now, our listeners will get 50% off a new system when you sign up for professional monitoring, and your first month is free. Just visit simplisafe.com slash crooked. That's half off at simplisafe.com slash crooked. There is no safe like SimpliSafe. America's 250th birthday calls for a history as sprawling and contradictory as the country itself. A history of the United States in 100 objects, produced by BBC Studios and 99% Invisible, tells this story one object at a time. Told over 100 episodes, join host Roman Mars as he reveals the fascinating story behind a collection of often overlooked objects, each of which sheds light on key moments in American history. From a gold coin found in a shipwreck that triggered financial panic to a tiny screw that kick-started an industrial empire, every week, one object will open the door into an extraordinary, often shocking story, about who we've been, what we've built, and what we've allowed ourselves to forget. New episodes of A History of the United States in 100 Objects are released every Tuesday. Find it in 99% Invisible, wherever you get your podcasts. Crooked Con is coming up right after the election, and we have just added a bunch more great names to the lineup. We got Governor J.B. Pritzker coming, Senator Chris Murphy, and then over from the House side, Ilhan Omar, Robert Garcia, Sarah Jacobs, Jamie Raskin, Sarah McBride. We also have Carlos Eduardo Espina, Simone Sanders Townsend, Eugene Daniels, David Pakman, Jessica Tarloff, Heather McGee, and then all the other people that we've announced on the website, plus more to come. Great list. Check out the full lineup and get tickets right now at CrookedCon.com. We'd love to see you there. That's CrookedCon.com. Discover a spectacular island destination with crystal blue seas, endless sunshine, and the cool Bahamian breeze. Baja Mar, located in Nassau, Bahamas, offers your choice of three luxury hotels, the richly refined Rosewood, the playfully hip SLS, and the stylishly modern Grand Hyatt. With over 45 restaurants, bars, and lounges, Baja Mar serves up delicious dining from world-renowned chefs like Daniel Bouloud and Marcus Samuelson, nightlife venues like the new John Batiste Jazz Club, and the Caribbean's most luxurious casino. At Baja Mar, you'll find every pleasure under the sun and one-of-a-kind experiences for the entire family, like Baja Bay, our 15-acre lush tropical water park, interactive wildlife experiences, including our daily Flamingo, world-class golf, tennis, spa, and so much more. Visit BajaMar.com today and discover a vacation destination where memories are made for a lifetime. Baja Mar, life spectacular. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, we're going to talk about the news that U.S. and Iranian negotiators are on the verge of an agreement to keep negotiating. Also talk about Trump using our money to cover statues in gold and the push to put his face on a new $250 bill. Exciting. Also talk about Republicans losing their minds over James Tallarico. Rubio topping Vance for the first time in a 2028 poll. Sorry. Great stuff. Couldn't help myself. And Jill Biden finally admitting that her husband's debate performance was so bad she thought he was either having a stroke or on drugs. Deep breaths. Then, could Democrats have a chance at a Senate seat in Mississippi? Democratic nominee Scott Colom stops by the studio to make his case. Before we start, if you are not a subscriber to Crooked Media right now, what are you doing? You're just listening to all these ads on Podsave America and Podsave the World and Offline for nothing? You could be listening to ad-free episodes. You could be supporting independent pro-democracy media, which is kind of important to do right now if you've been looking at the news and seeing what Trump's been doing to the media landscape. And also, we got cool subscriber-only shows like Polar Coaster with Dan. We're going to be talking about James Tallarico versus Ken Paxton. But if you really want to nerd out on that race and hear all about the polls and Dan's take on this, you get to listen to Polar Coaster this week. All right, Dan. Another day, another siren emoji heralding a deal to end the war in Iran that appears to be an agreement to keep talking about the nuclear program that ostensibly led to the war in the first place. That's where we are. Axios reports and other outlets have confirmed that pending final approval from Trump and the Ayatollah, legislators have agreed to, quote, a memorandum of understanding that says the Strait of Hormuz will reopen for, quote, unrestricted movement by commercial ships in exchange for ending the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports. And then everything else, including sanctions relief and Iran's uranium stockpile, will be the subject of negotiations that will take place over the next 60 days, during which time the ceasefire will be extended, despite the tit-for-tat airstrikes between the U.S. and Iran over the last year. The last few days, so not off to a great start there. Questions remain. Will Iran go back to enriching uranium? Will they get pallets of cash? Will they still control the Strait? No one knows. But Trump addressed this last question during one of his marathon cabinet meetings on Wednesday. Would you accept a short-term deal that allows Iran and Oman to control the Strait? Nobody's going to control it. It's international waters, and Oman will behave just like everybody else, so we'll have to blow them up. We don't need oil. We don't need the Strait. We don't need anything. We don't need anything at all, which is why we're making the deal. And also, we're going to control the Strait. No one's going to control the Strait. If Oman doesn't let ships through, we're going to blow them up. It all makes sense. Here's what a senior U.S. official told Axios about the deal. Quote, This is an agreement to get everybody to the table. We will work out the details in negotiations. That's not these negotiations that are leading to the deal. That official was referring to. That is, the future negotiations that will happen. Trump mouthpiece Scott Jennings responded to this story by dutifully tweeting, The U.S. appears to be getting everything we want. Is this everything we want? Getting people to the table? Well, it's an existential question, John. If you want very little and you get very little, did you get everything you want? Just saying. Very good. Very good. I mean, it's kind of hard to believe that the thing that there's been so much breathless reporting on so many siren emojis over the last couple of weeks was simply an agreement to keep talking. And I know it says they're going to open the Strait of Hormuz for unrestricted commercial traffic. Now, the problem here is there are still mines in unknown places all across the Strait of Hormuz. Some of which Iran was laying just this week. They were laying more mines. That's what started the airstrikes again. I wouldn't say the Strait is open. I'd say the Strait is slightly ajar because obviously some ships will get through. There are these ships that are stranded there that the U.S. was pledging to, which we then abandoned that after like one six hour period. So, and is it better that the United States and Iran are not bombing each other? Yes. Is it better that maybe a couple of ships will get through there? Yes. Is this the Treaty of fucking Versailles? No. This is a very minor. It's not even an agreement. As you said, it's an MOU. So, cool. Right. Like, of course, it's great to cease hostilities because no one wanted this fucking war in the first place. At least most people in America didn't want it and the rest of the world. But the questions here are simple. Like, is Iran any further from developing a nuclear weapon than when this war started in February? No. We did nothing to push back the Iranian nuclear program that Trump hadn't done with the first round of strikes last year. So nothing has been achieved on that front. Is the regime any less radical? No. In fact, the regime is now more radical. Are the Iranian people any closer to freedom? No, they are not. In fact, they are going to be more repressed by an even more radical regime. Is America any safer? No. Is the Middle East any more stable? No. And so what did all of that cost us? Well, 14 American lives, tens of thousands of lives in the Middle East, at least $50 billion and counting of taxpayer dollars that have gone to fight this war and an estimated $4 billion in higher fuel costs so far. So that's what we had to pay. Those are the costs that we had to bear for, for getting abso-fucking-lutely nothing except maybe the straight back open, which it was at the beginning of the war. And it's also not like Iran was on the cusp of a nuclear weapon when we started this process. The whole thing is so stupid. The whole thing is so fucking stupid. It's like, it's mind-boggling. We've been talking about this for so long that this has happened because it's so stupid. The enriched uranium they are going to negotiate to figure out what to do with is only there because Donald Trump pulled us out of the Iran deal so Iran went back to enriching uranium. All the uranium that's there has been enriched since the end of the Iran deal which Trump pulled us out and now. There wouldn't even be more enriched uranium to be talking about if Trump hadn't gotten us out of the Iran deal. The best case scenario here is that we spent billions and billions of dollars. We used up all of our missiles. Five years. Five years to rebuild the munitions. That's the estimate. Which I'm sure will be a boon for a bunch of defense companies in which Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. have invested. The American troops have lost their lives. People all across the region have lost their lives. And for nothing. The best case scenario is we have a deal that is worse than the one Obama cut 12 years ago or whatever it was. And we are very far from best case. And now, do we think the Iranians really believe that if these negotiations over the next 60 days go poorly, that Trump's going to start bombing them again? Like what? Right before the midterms? No. They know he's not going to do it. Well, actually, he might. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe. But I don't think this is a great play in terms of keeping any kind of leverage. Over the Iranians at this point, they know they can close the Strait whenever they want. So and lay mines whenever they want. So that's what's happening there. I'm sure the deal could be announced any minute now. Who knows? We'll just look for more siren emojis from from Axios and look for look for Scott Jennings to just sort of regurgitate whatever the administration tells him to, because that's what he does. All right. So the White House press corps was briefed on the potential deal, as well as the latest bad economic news by struggling. We're going to talk about that in just a little bit. Scott Bessant, the administration's resident populist, Bessant had to contend with news that inflation has now risen to its highest level in three years and the GDP grew even slower than previously estimated in the first quarter of this year. Oster Goolsbee, the Chicago Federal Reserve president, told The Wall Street Journal that the U.S. economy is moving in a, quote, stagflationary direction, which would be the worst case scenario. Scott Bessant's response to all of this? OK, doomers, I believe we've already seen oil prices come down substantially. These are short term challenges that we will get over and I think we'll move forward. Is inflation sticky because the PCE was at a three year high? Well, first of all, PCE today month over month was point two, which was we're looking at decimal points, but the estimate was point three. Are you seeing signs that American households are dipping into their savings to pay for the higher costs of things? Gas and groceries. And does data like that concern you right now? So a lower academic literature would tell you a lower savings rate can mean one of two things. The kind of the doomer view that you took or that people have more confidence. I'm no economist, but does the literature say when people are dipping into their savings during a global energy crisis that they are confident they are doing so because they are confident about their finances? They are confident. They need to drive their car to work, but they're confident. So, you know, we've had a number of auditions since Caroline Leavitt has been on parental leave. We had J.D. Vance, we had Marco Rubio, and now Scott Besson took a turn at the podium. And let me tell you, I don't know. I don't know if I don't know if he was the kind of soothing voice that the that the American people were looking for. Yeah, there's just I just don't know at this moment in time where, you know, somewhere between. Two thirds and three quarters of Americans are very mad about the economy. Economic anxiety is at the highest level possible that you want to dismissively arrogant Wall Street centimillionaire. I think he is to be your spokesperson. You don't want someone who exudes like money coming out of their pores. As Tommy refers to him as a pissy cadaver. It's fair enough. It looks like that. I think question now is like. If this. Deal is signed today, would it actually help get inflation and growth moving in the right direction again before the midterms? It would lower oil prices, which will eventually at some point in time, lower gas prices because oils because oil futures will come down. But, you know, we're not going to see anywhere near the sort of traffic going through the straight that we had before for six months at the earliest and probably longer. And even if and the true economic damage is. Done here, right? With the growth has been stunted. Inflation is up. It'll take a while for all of that to come down. The Fed is even thinking about possibly raising interest rates again because of the PCE numbers that Bessette mentioned. And but let's just put aside the economics where I feel deeply uncomfortable talking about them. Focus on the politics where I am mildly more comfortable is. Look, people's opinions about this economy are pretty set in stone. People's opinions about Donald Trump's handling of this economy are pretty set in stone. People are going to start voting in a couple of months. And even if things do get a little bit better, which seems highly unlikely, we know from years and years of data that people's impression of the economy lags the reality by months. And so even if things got a little bit better, it's unlikely to be to help Republicans this fall. A CNN business reporter, their business reporter, David Goldman, was asked about like when when we might see three dollar gas again. Guess which year he said. For three dollars gas again. It's not going to be 2026, is it, John? Twenty thirty two. Twenty. Well, that's I would say I was going to guess 2030 just because by the way you asked that question, that's it was going to be far away. But that's even further than I thought. That's what your reaction was similar to CNN's Pam Brown, who also was like, what did you just say? He's like, yeah, well, by the time he's like, if you just look at the futures, this is what the futures market say right now, because it would have to be down to, I think, around seventy dollars. Oil would be have to be seventy dollars a gallon and up seventy dollars a barrel. And, you know, it's like down to hovering around one hundred now. So it's not where it was at with like one hundred and twenty. But to get from there to seventy. Yeah, it takes the straight being fully open for quite a while. The other thing about the straight is is not just boats moving through the straight. It's that Gulf countries cease production because they could not get oil through the straight. And so they have to restart production. And that takes time. And that is on top of the facilities that were damaged. From the Iranian missiles as part of the war that Trump started. One area of the economy that's undeniably booming construction firms that Trump has contracted to make the nation's capital look like one of his failed casinos. The New York Times reports that the no bid contractor hired to paint the reflecting pool, a tackier blue, is, quote, being paid an inflated and excessive profit margin. You don't say the Times also reports that the administration has funneled over 60 million dollars worth of national park. Admission fees toward repairing the pool and some of D.C.'s fountains. There's also apparently a five million dollar contract to coat a bunch of equestrian statues by the Lincoln Memorial in gold. What? This is all ahead of America's 250th birthday celebration, which Trump is merging with his own. The president will ring in the big eight zero with a UFC fight on the South Lawn. And they've just started to build the arena. Which looks like a Roman Coliseum that's being sponsored by Axe Body Spray. That's that's what it looks like. It's real. A real eyesore. The White House has also announced a list of musical artists who will allegedly perform for this summer's festivities like Flo Rida, Vanilla Ice, C&C Music Factory, Milli Vanilli and Young MC. I say allegedly because already Milli Vanilli and Young MC have said they're actually not performing. This just in the Commodores. Also said, absolutely not. They were on the list as well. So that list is dwindling. Dan, did you follow how the Young MC and Milli Vanilli things played out? Young MC, I think, did not realize what he was signing up for. So he pulled himself out. Milli Vanilli seems to claim, based on a very bizarrely worded statement from the quote unquote real Milli Vanilli, that the Milli Vanilli that was booked was a Milli Vanilli cover band. Now, if you cover band of a cover band of a cover band, Milli Vanilli is also a cover band of Milli Vanilli. So it's a rusting is Russian nesting dolls of cover bands here. Didn't one of them die? I think we only I don't know if we have Milli. I think it's only Milli. Milli or Vanilli dead. Let's see. OK, I don't know which is which, but one half of the R&B dance duo Milli Vanilli, Rob Pilatus is dead. The other half of the duo, Fab Morvin, is alive. That's what Wikipedia tells me. OK, well, either way. Either way, no, the Milli Vanilli will not be performing as for many reasons, for many reasons. Yes. If he actually could get the original Milli Vanilli performed, that would be impressive. Now, of course, while all this is going on, you know, Trump can't be paying attention to all this. He's he's he's focused on what's really important. Let's listen. You have one in particular, a very long lake, we call it the Reflecting Lake between Lincoln and Washington. You have the longest, like two thousand four hundred feet long. That's longer than the tallest. Milling in the world. If you set it on the side and we're now covering it with the most beautiful blue, very thick. You think of it as a very sophisticated form of rubber. No leaks, no problems. And it's beautiful. It's called American flag blue. That was the color we chose. Thick rubber doesn't leak. That's the blue. That's the blue that we're going for here. Just just covering the Reflecting Lake. Calling it the Reflecting Lake. It's also what Trump is looking for in his personal brand of depends. But. there you go there you go So there's also this story today that Trump is pressuring Treasury officials, the people who print the money in Treasury, to put his face on a special $250 bill in honor of America's 250th and in honor of Trump, of course. And this made me wonder, like, OK, the corruption, huge political problem, the biggest political problem, I'm sure. Obviously, all of this also looks extremely out of touch while the economy is in the shitter. You think people also might feel just a bit uneasy about Trump's messianic rebrand of America here? I mean, it's just like the face is on everything. The name is on everything. There's fucking gold everywhere. It's a little fucking creepy. OK, so I want to get to that question. But can we dig in on the $250 bill for a second? Yes. So Besant was asked about this at the briefing. And he pointed out. He pointed out that there is a law that says that you cannot put a living person on money and that there's a bill before Congress. It was passed in, like, the 1800s. Yes. And it was after George Washington, our first president, refused to put his face on currency while he was alive. And so there's a bill before the House and the Senate right now that would lift that restriction for the purposes of allowing Besant to put Trump's face on the money. And my message to I'm going to speak directly to Mike Johnson, John Thune. And frankly, every congressional Republican. Immediately, if you do not immediately go to the Capitol right now and vote on that bill to put Donald Trump's face on our money, then you are traitors to the MAGA cause. You are weak, woke liberals. You have to do this. Vote for it right now. I can think of nothing. No better use of your time. I got a better idea, Dan. Remember, they all went home before the Memorial Day break because they couldn't come to an agreement on the budget bill. It was supposed to fund ICE and all the other bullshit in there, like the one point eight billion dollar slush fund for January six rioters. Democrats have the ability to offer amendments in a in a voterama process. So if I was Chuck Schumer or a Senate Democrat, I might offer an amendment about this. And let's put everyone on the record and see what they think. See what all the Republicans think about the Donald Trump's face on the two hundred fifty dollar bill. I like that. That's a great idea. You you have really grown aged into it. You legislative strategist late in life. So that's great. All right. Let's get let's get to that. Let's get to the meat of your question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Basically, do I think voters are creeped out and maybe a little scared by Trump basically cosplaying Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, pick your tin pot dictator? Look, I think. The biggest political problem here is that Trump is focused on dumb, self-serving shit instead of lowering people's costs like that. It's the fundamental thing. You add a side of pretty blatant corruption to it. That's pretty bad. I think people see the Trump putting his name on everything, his face and everything. And I think maybe last year they would have seen that as scary. I think this year they think it's stupid because the Trump of twenty twenty six and other Trump's twenty twenty five twenty twenty five. He was single handedly destroying federal agencies, sending mass agents everywhere. He was astride the world. He was bizarrely popular. And now he is a. Deeply unpopular, doddering old man who can't stay awake in meetings. He he is losing wars to Iran. He just looks weak. He seems different. He just seems smaller now. And you see that in the polling where majority pluralities of people in large majorities of independents no longer describe him as strong. They see him as weak and indecisive. And I think so. I think should people be creeped out by it? Absolutely. I think the approach is probably not fear. It's derision. I was going to say, I don't I probably. I probably articulated it wrong. I don't think it's fear like, oh, no, scary dictator kind of thing. When I said uneasy, I feel like people look at it. And first of all, I think part of this is me when the ballroom thing first happened, not thinking that the ballroom was going to be a big deal and then realizing that the imagery of the East Wing being demolished was more powerful to people than I had imagined and not just from a corruption angle. Because at that point. At that point, it was just we're going to knock down the East Wing and I'm going to build the ballroom. Right. And and it wasn't just like, oh, he's not focusing because we didn't have the war then. Right. But it was still like, what are you what are you doing? I think that people have not there's going to be a lot of focus and a lot of attention on Washington, D.C. over the next couple of months because it's America's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary birthday and there's going to be a lot of activities in D.C. And so those images are going to be broadcast and everywhere and just like people tuning in to. What's happening in D.C. with like Trump's face on the Justice Department and his name on everything and the gold everywhere. I kind of just think it's a small thing, but I think it's just sort of adds to the like, what the fuck is happening right now? Like, it doesn't make you feel it doesn't make you feel good about America at a time where people most people will want to feel somewhat patriotic or happy about America's two hundred fiftieth birthday, making it all about Donald Trump. I do think like cuts to the core. Of what? Like, it bothers people in a like a fuck. This is not our country. What is this kind of way? Yeah, I think that's right. I think it's also just people are going to see it and be like, why is this such a high priority? Yeah. Like, yeah. What? Yeah. And it all combines. I think it's like, what are you what are you doing? Pod Save America is brought to you by Policy Genius. This summer, you might be looking forward to taking a break from the never ending news horrors and spending. Time with your family, which means you don't want to spend your summer wasting time on personal admin. If you don't have to policy, genius lets you check life insurance off your to do list in minutes and get back to your summer. Knowing your family is protected. Policy genius is an online insurance marketplace that allows you to compare quotes from some of America's top insurers side by side for free. Their license team helps you get what you need fast so you can get on with your life. Easily find what you need. Coverage amounts, prices, terms, no guesswork, just clarity. Policy genius helps you find the most affordable policy that meets your needs. They'll also answer questions, handle paperwork and advocate for you. Throughout the process with policy genius, you can see if you can find 20 year life insurance policies starting at just $276 a year for $1 million in coverage. Head to policygenius.com slash crooked to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com slash crooked. Pod Save America is brought to you by Z Biotics pre-alcohol. Let's face it. After a night with drinks, I don't bounce back the next day like I used to. I have to make a choice. I can either have a great night or a next day. That is until I found pre-alcohol Z Biotics pre-alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented. It was invented. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's a buildup of this byproduct, not dehydration. That's to blame for rough next days after drinking. Pre-alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. Just remember to make pre-alcohol your first drink of the night. Drink responsibly and you'll feel your best tomorrow. I love Z Biotics. I went to Vegas recently. I had one before I had a bunch of drinks and lost a lot of money. That's not Z Biotics' fault. That's my fault. That's my fault because I love the action. I love the action. And I'm going to have a bunch of Z Biotics when I get married before because, you know, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to turn one on, I think. From the crack of the bat at the stadium to the start of wedding season. Hey, May is packed with back-to-back reasons to be out. Don't let a rough morning after keep you on the sidelines. Drink pre-alcohol to stay ahead of it and make the most of every Saturday this month. Go to zbiotics.com slash crooked to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use crooked at checkout. Z Biotics is backed with a hundred percent money back guarantee. So if you're a Z Biotics fan, you're going to get a hundred percent money back guarantee. So if you're not satisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money. No questions asked. Remember to head to zbiotics.com slash crooked and use the code crooked at checkout for 15% off. There's just a bit more corruption to discuss before we move on. This is, uh, this is just sort of your standard issue corruption. Uh, according to ProPublica, a Trump advisor and family friend, Peter Navarro, remember Peter Navarro? Uh, he did all the tariffs that everyone's enjoyed so much. And jail time. He did jail time. Jail time and tariffs. Yeah. Um, so it turns out. It turns out he pulled some strings last year to funnel a $620 million Pentagon loan to a North Carolina startup owned in part by Donald Trump Jr. What do you think? As an early, early wedding present. Like we talk all the time about the crypto schemes and the Qatari jets and all the other like very extravagant and extraordinary corruption. But there really is just a staggering amount of, as you said, mundane corruption, just like funneling contracts to your friends. So that they can make money off tax off the taxpayers. And Trump is probably, although not definitely going to pardon his sons before he leaves. Maybe Peter Navarro will cross the threshold of people who will get pardoned, you know, because he did serve time for Trump for a while. Um, and he already has a pardon, I believe, or at least a commutation. Um, but the people who actually facilitated this, people who work in the Pentagon, people who work for Peter Navarro, they're not getting pardons. And they're probably going to see the inside of the jail cell because of it. And that is happening across the board. And like, there are a lot of people who think who are serving their Maga Lords, they're doing what they're told, and they are going, Trump's going to pardon his close friends and his closest aides and the rest of those people are going to be in under tremendous legal jeopardy because of what they're doing. I realize it's easy to become numb to all the stories about corruption and all the numbers. But what happened here is, uh, this is a pretty clear cut one. They set up this office in the Pentagon called the Office of Strategic Capital. And, uh, this was set up in the, in the Biden administration in the. The idea was, uh, the government wants to, um, give out some loans to, uh, companies. startup companies that are involved in developing rare earth minerals, because we don't want to depend on China for that. We want to depend on the U.S. And so this is good. It's good for the government to sort of help these startups that are doing this. It was a they had one billion dollar lending authority under Biden. Donald Trump comes in and they they they increase it from one billion to two hundred billion dollars. So now it's two hundred billion dollars that the government is handing out to these companies. And in the Biden administration, there's a process. You bid for this. If you're one of these companies, you apply. There's a rigorous process. They decide to take you or not. They reject some companies. They just obviously we want to give loans to the best possible companies because it's taxpayer dollars that we are giving to these companies. So we want to make sure they're the best ones, except one company, Vulcan, skirted that entire process and in fact didn't even apply. The White House, Peter Navarro, calls the Defense Department and was like, you got to give the money to Vulcan. You just got to give the money to Vulcan. And that is the company, the small company in North Carolina that Don Jr. had just invested in just a couple months before this. And once it got the money, once it got the huge contract, the valuation of the company went from two hundred million to two billion dollars, a nine hundred percent increase. That is how much money Don fucking Jr. made because his really good friend, Peter Navarro, the two of them are very tight. He called up the fucking Pentagon and said, make this happen for Don Jr.'s company. There's so much like this. There is, you know, just for the other day that they about, you know, Trump had a big investment and made investment in Dell right before a big announcement where Dell was going to get a government contract. Same thing with Robinhood. Just it's across the board. Just everyone is robbing the Treasury with two hands at all times. I was going to say, it's not and it's not just like they're using their office or they're abusing their office and just the fact that they have the office to make money. No, no, no. They're like stealing from you. They are. They are putting their hands in the taxpayer pockets and stealing because this is just taxpayer money that's been handing out. And with no accountability or oversight whatsoever, is this company going to succeed? Is it a good company? We don't know. Don Jr. owns some of it. That's all we need to know. Money out the door. Taxpayer dollars only was only a year ago that the government told us that we cannot afford to keep rural hospitals open. Right. Yeah, we can. We can give a favorable contract with a huge profit margin. People who put the weird rubbery. Paint on the on the pool. We can give contracts to Don Jr.'s company. We can encase Washington, D.C. based horse statues in gold. Where's Elon? Where are the Doge bros? Where's the all in pod bros with all the fucking come on, guys, probably investors in the Donald Trump and the Trump Jr. company. Lots of waste and fraud right here. You guys are saying it's all kinds of waste in the government. You've been pretty quiet about this. Fucking losers. All right. The moment from Trump's cabinet meeting that actually got the most airtime wasn't the Iran stuff the thick rubbery coating. It was this. I don't care about the midterms. Look what happened last night. That was the prelude to the midterms. Yeah, man, we noticed. We noticed you don't care about the midterms. It's coming through, coming through loud and clear. He was referring, of course, to the Texas Senate runoff where Ken Paxton, the deeply corrupt beneficiary of a last minute Trump endorsement, absolutely crushed incumbent Senator John Cornyn by almost 30 points. Trump said, look what happened last night. What do you think he thinks Tuesday night demonstrated about the midterms? He's a simple minded fellow, John. And I think he very simple mindedly looked and saw that a candidate he supported won a race. And then he then presumes that candidates that he support will win similar races in the fall. Now, what Trump is too simple minded to understand is that among the people who voted in that primary in Texas, I imagine Trump had a eighty five to ninety five percent approval rating. These are Texas primary voters. When people go to the polls in the fall, Trump will have somewhere between a, I don't know, forty two and thirty two percent approval rating, depending on the district in the state, which seems like a slightly different environment for his candidates. Also, I think I just want to say this. Ken Paxton was winning this primary, whether Donald Trump endorsed him or not. He may have won by more, but there were reports in private that private polling had Paxton up 10 points before Trump's endorsement. We knew the runoff that even though. Cornyn got the plurality of votes, there was a strong majority when you added up Wesley Hunt and Ken Paxton votes, there was a strong majority of Texans who did not want John Cornyn. And when incumbents go to runoffs, they almost always lose because the reason they're in a runoff is there's 50 percent of people who look at that incumbent they knew and said, give me someone else. Yeah, I was going to say also the turnout was so much lower. Did you see some of the estimates on turnout? Like it looks like between the two of them, there's a lot of turnout. There's a lot of turnout. Between the first race and the runoff, Paxton got about 7,000 more votes in the runoff and Cornyn lost about 400,000 votes between the first race and the runoff. So it seems like a ton of Cornyn's voters just stayed home and decided not to vote. And then the most engaged, craziest MAGA voters turned out for Ken Paxton. Yeah, which was always sort of the fear. And it's not like this was the only race on the ballot. You also you had congressional runoffs and you had a very important general runoff as well. So I guess we could talk. Let's talk about how they're going after James Tallarico, who's now the Democratic nominee in that race. And then we can sort of talk about the race ahead from now until November. It does seem like MAGA World is a bit more nervous about Tallarico than they're letting on, as evidenced by their subtle new strategy of questioning James Tallarico's masculinity. It's very subtle. I don't know if you can figure it out. Paxton uses victory speech to call Tallarico low T Tallarico, tofu Tallarico and six gender Jimmy. Stephen Miller tweeted that Tallarico will make history as the first transgender Senate candidate. And here's the game from Fox's The Five on Wednesday. This baby lotion, soft child. He does. He looks prepubescent. The major factor in this race, Greg, is whether Tallarico's vegan. You say you have a girlfriend. Why don't you name her? Are they going to have a coming out party or is she still? Going to stay the secret girlfriend? And is this totally not fake girlfriend also a vegan? He looks like such a beta male. He was he was beta. O'Rourke was his big brother in the after school program. They'll say they'll say, but he's a seminarian. How dare you not? He put the semen in seminarian. What do you think they're trying to tell us? They dislike his policy agenda. I get it. I get the line of attack. And there is. There's a universe where you can execute that line of attack, maybe in a way that's somewhat effective. Feels like if you're already calling him a gay pedophile in May, not a lot of runway left. Where where are you going? And where are you going to be in October? I am curious about what is driving this attack. Like, is it in the data? Or are they just echoing the thing that Trump said on Air Force One two weeks ago? I think some of it is like instinct, right? Like they have. OK, the clips of James Tallarico that have been, you know, all over the Internet and right wing media are something something vegan. He's not a vegan, which clearly these people just actually don't know that he's not a vegan. And they think now he says he eats meat because he's like got caught or something. But he was never saying he was a vegan. That was not a clip. The clip of him saying that, you know, technically there's six, six is because of chromosome abnormalities with a small fraction of people, which like great and and like a couple other clips like that. And and he looks young. Right. And so they're like, yeah, he looks like they're their go to is he's a beta male. But they can't just say that because there is an element of that's exactly what they say. Well, they can't just say that and like leave it at that because there's an element of, oh, shit, we just nominated Ken Paxton and we can lose. So we've got to take everything to 100. Yeah. So I think a couple of things here. One, obviously, their strategy, their only way to win is to nuke. Tell Rick, this is the same strategy with Grand Platinum. It's the same strategy with whoever wins in Michigan, particularly as Abdul Saeed. Like this is this is their approach. It's really it's only it's the only thing they have. Right. They basically this is the weak, woke and too liberal attack that we talked about a few weeks ago. There are actually two separate things embedded in what they're doing here. There is James Tallarico is a low T, possibly gay beta male. He's not man enough for the Senate, which is really quite a thing to say. And then there is James Tallarico is a liberal elitist extremist who's out of touch with Texas values. That is the God is non-binary. That is the false attack. He's a vegan. Those are two separate things. Obviously, the second one pulls well, like like we don't even we know that that's that we know that that is an average. I'm not sure the he's a beta male is a particularly effective attack. I don't I don't know that there I guess I would say I don't know that they're entirely separate because the the out of touch, the typical out of touch liberal who is a male is obviously a low T beta male. Like we are. We are also low T beta males because we are libs on the coast and we're probably vegan and we probably have pronouns in our bio, you know, That's a pretty deep. It's a very online take. The other one is a, it's a deeply dishonest because it takes a lot of his quotes out of context and edits them, some of them quite unfairly. But I think that there is, I'm just not, in presidential politics, strength and toughness matters a lot, right? How you define strength and toughness is very important. You can define it in ways that are much better than sort of like brute force strength that, you know, Trump sort of has tried to swagger his way into the Oval Office. It matters much less in congressional and Senate races, right? You're not, no one sees you as being tasked with staring down the Iranians or taking out Al Qaeda or stopping crime in the streets or whatever else people associate probably incorrectly with toughness. And so I think that like Trump has sort of sent them on this path and it is red meat for the Fox base. And so it's one thing of like, Jesse Waters and the Yahoo's on the five do it. It was interesting to me that it was such a big part of Paxton's victory speech. I just, I just like took note of that. Well, I mean, he is a, he is a politician who, if not successful, will end up being a pundit on Fox pretty easily. So the line is pretty. His speech was interesting because he did like he very Trump ask him that he was very excited and enjoying doing the Tallarico attacks and responding to the crowd. And then he was reading with no emotion. Lines about lowering people's costs. Not what he's not where his passion lies. His passion lies, of course, in theft. He likes stealing from people. Sometimes quite literally, he stole someone's pen. So like a thousand dollar pen, someone, someone left lying around. There's like video of him just stealing it, which is very friends and neighbors. So Tallarico is out there responding to the beta male line of attack. Here he is at a rally on Wednesday in Houston. This is his first stop on a statewide tour. And his first appearance since Paxton won the runoff. In a time when there's so much debate about what it means to be a man, my dad showed me every Saturday morning, he would mow our lawn. And then without telling anyone, without anyone asking him, he would go next door and mow our neighbor's lawn. She was elderly. She was a widow. He never talked about it. He just. Did it because that's what a man does. He serves those around him. He takes responsibility and he does what's right, even when no one is watching. So in addition to that, he also did a sit down with CBS, with Ed O'Keefe. And, you know, he said that some of his past remarks were cringy and that he would say them differently as well. He's been you know, there's been plenty of photos at the camp. Campaign's been pushing around of him eating barbecue because he's said he's eating barbecue forever. So, you know, it's all of a piece. But if you were consulting on the campaign, how would you advise him to push back on this? And I think more importantly, like how much time and energy would you be spending on it if you were on the campaign? Before we do that, I just do want to stipulate that. Team Salarico is a very, very real chance of winning this race. Yeah, well, we should. Talk about that for sure. And because I get why everyone is skeptical of Texas. We have been burned so many times the you know, but this is our best chance in a generation to win statewide office in Texas. We have not won a Senate race in Texas is 1988. We've not won statewide office of consequence in this century. And obviously the closest that a Democrat has come was Beto O'Rourke losing by 2.6 percent to Ted Cruz in 2018. But this is a different world. 2018 was a good environment for Democrats. 2026. This is a great environment for Democrats, as we sit here today, at least. This is a hard thing for me to say, but Ted Cruz is much more likable and has higher, much higher, much more likely and more popular than Ken Paxton. This blew me away. In September of 2018, Ted Cruz had a had a favorability rating that was nine points above water. Yes. Ken Paxton, depending on your poll, is five, seven, 10. Ten points below water and will never be above water. That is just he's he will never see the surface. The what is the most important thing here is that there is a demographic pincer movement happening in Texas in this moment. So in 2016, Hillary Clinton did better in Texas than almost any other state. It's a state where she actually had the largest improvement over Barack Obama in 2012. It's one of the very few states and maybe the only state where she did better than Obama in 2012. And the reason that happened is she blew the doors off Latino voters and Trump won by a decent margin because white voters. Of all stripes, college educated and working class voted for her, voted for him and mess. What has changed since 2016 is those college educated white voters, of which there are a ton in Texas, particularly in the cities and suburbs around those big cities, have moved dramatically in Democratic direction. And then starting in 2020, Latino voters moved towards Trump and Trump won Latino voters by 10 points in Texas. What has changed since then is that those college educated white voters. Have stayed exactly where they were before and maybe even more fired up now than they were back in 2024. And Latino voters have moved dramatically away from Trump. Trump's approval rating among Latinos nationally is minus 50 in the generic. You need us. That's in the airtime. So in the United Unidos, U.S. poll of battleground districts around the country, they looked at the battleground districts. There's a poll of Latinos battleground districts in the southwest, which is mostly but not entirely Texas. Democrats are winning the generic ballot by 38 points. And so if James Tallarico, if he can get. Kamala Harris, Joe Biden style numbers with college educated white voters and something like Hillary Clinton's 2016 Latino numbers, he wins that race. He wins by a couple of points. Yeah, I saw that. I thought Nate Cohn said something similar and then also said that even if you take the latest Times poll, the national poll. And you match the different and you match the shifts with the different demographic groups in Texas, if you like, make it, then you then it would tilt blue Texas. Yeah, even before you knew the candidates. Right. He has to navigate what we all talked about to get there. But this like this is not the previous discussion of Texas. It's not like a lot of other red states where we talk about. We're like, we got this popular candidate. Maybe they can persuade a bunch of these voters and maybe we'll get there. But there's no path you can. The math tells you that this state. Is in play if Tallarico can achieve what what it should be achievable Democratic numbers. So that's that. OK, now I was going to say, yeah, now that's a good setup for what I think the challenge the Tallarico faces is I've been thinking about sort of Graham Platter in Maine and this, you know, I think there's been no bigger gap between what voters on the ground think of a candidate and what the Internet conversation about that candidate is than than Plattner. And I. The reason I feel more confident about Plattner is pretty much because the size of Maine and I think that like Graham Platter may meet most of the voters he needs to meet in Maine. And obviously, James Tallarico is not going to do that in Texas because no one can do that in Texas because big fucking state. And so he does need to make some decisions on like how to puncture the Internet caricature of him that a lot of voters are going to come in contact with and also through television ads and other ads from the PAC. And campaign from the Republicans and figure out, you know, like where to spend his time, what to say, what his ad strategy is and your thoughts on all that. So my thoughts are, I guess the way to think about this is the strategy they're running as Tallarico is the strategy they ran against Kamala Harris in twenty twenty four. The goal is to define him before he can divide himself like Tallarico, very well known among Democrats and very politically engaged people to the extent that other people even know who he is. It's they kind of vaguely have the sense that he is. Like a Democrat who talks about his faith a lot, maybe as much as they know. And, you know, the general vibes that he's not a typical Democrat. And so that's a vacuum that the right is trying to fill before Tallarico can fill himself. So what are the mistakes that Kamala Harris made that led her to be defined? The first is when the attacks came, like the infamous they them ad, you she never took them off, took them head on. Like we can debate the ad strategy around and we know all the discussion from all the people who work there about which ad says it's good and which has ads tested bad. But as thinking, siloing that conversation and ads is stupid. She wasn't like she was out talking to voters to try to disabuse them of that notion. Like she didn't never took that attack on. So you got to take these attack on. I find both even though I'm less concerned about the masculinity attack than perhaps you or others may be. The fact that he took it on the first day shows the right instincts. The fact that he sat down for the interview with Ed O'Keefe to take tough questions about the things he said shows the right instincts. You have to take them on, because if you don't, then voters are just going to assume that they're true because people are naturally. And the second thing is you cannot allow there to be a vacuum. You have to be everywhere all the time, all at once. You have to be omnipresent in the media, on social media. You have to be like, you know, it's always the worst comparison. You have to be like Mom Donnie. Like there should be no interview turned down, no podcast you should turn down. You should visit every county in Texas or whatever is logistically feasible. Remember, it took better like two years to do that. So maybe that's impossible. But do be everywhere so that people see you because when people see James Tallarico, they like him. He is like he has real appeal with this segment of people who would who would have voted for John Cornyn over a Democrat, but will might vote for a Democrat over Ken Paxton. And so you got, but you got to be in front of them and you got to do be, there is no, you cannot waste one minute, every single minute of every single day has to be out there communicating. And I think he, he ran his primary campaign like that. He's run his sort of career like that. So I think that that's what they're going to do. But like, if you think you're being aggressive, you're probably not being, you should be more aggressive than that and keep going. I have seen a lot of right wing folks who are quite religious online make the argument that, you know, James, the idea that James Tallarico's faith and penchant to talk openly about his faith and, you know, being, you know, being a seminarian is, is, is the idea that that's going to help him is like liberals idea of what a person's of a person of faith is. And like liberals have no idea. Because the fact that he is using passages from the Bible to sort of talk about his progressive values is like blasphemy to some on the right. And I think that they have that wrong because like, I don't think that James Tallarico's view of his faith and the way he talks about his faith is going to win over evangelical Christians that are going to vote for Ken Paxton and voted for Donald Trump three times anyway. I don't think that's the point. In fact, I don't even think it's, oh. This guy preaches and his Christian faith is what's going to do it for me. I think the fact that he speaks from he speaks in the language of morality is refreshing to people who don't necessarily vote all the time or sometimes switch between the parties. It's all like the people in the middle that when you hear someone and especially a Democrat talking about how their faith has moved them and how it sort of sort of animates their values and their decisions about politics. Like, I don't think it. At the very least, I don't think it hurts. It pushes people away. But I think for some people, they're like, OK, well, this guy has a moral grounding. And even people who aren't religious necessarily or don't share his Christian faith may be like, OK, this guy believes in what he's saying. It's like it gives him an authenticity that, again, when you meet him, you realize that it's that's that's what it is. He really genuinely believes this and it animates him and it drives him. And I think that that is worth a lot in politics today. These things, these right wing people. We're saying is so fucking stupid, because if the a literal meaning of the scripture was why these people voted the way they vote, these evangelical Christians voted the way they voted, they wouldn't vote for Donald Trump. What I'm going to take an even hackier view than you. Like, I agree with you, obviously, the way he talks about from this. He talks about things that are from a moral framework. So refreshing. The fact that he talks about his faith is a massive. It's authentic to him, which is incredibly important. But it's also a massive signifier that he is a. Is different than your typical Democrat. And if he wants to win in Texas, he has to be different than a typical Democrat. That's why it's important. It is not because he's going to get into a theological debate with a three time Trump voting evangelical minister and persuade them to his side. It's that he can communicate with people. He can relate to people whose faith is important to him or their their faith community is important to them, because that is a that is a touchstone to begin a larger conversation about where Texas goes, where the country goes. Like it is a way in with a group of voters. It is not the fact. Of his faith is not delivering votes among other people of faith. It's just one way in which he can connect to people. I also think there's a way in which Tallarico has already started framing the race. And he did this in a video right after Ken Paxton won, where he is trying to make this about him and everyone else as outsiders trying to upend a corrupt establishment. And it's it's about the system. Right. And so he he attacks Ken Paxton as corrupt. Right. And so he he he attacks Ken Paxton as corrupt. Right. And so he he he he attacks Ken Paxton as corrupt. And he calls him the most corrupt politician in America. But he said he's part of a corrupt system that James Tallarico wants to change because it is the. And, you know, this is also said the same says the same thing. This is the reason that you can't afford anything because these people are stealing your money and making it about voters and about why Ken Paxton would be bad for voters because they are feeling like they can't afford anything. And he's going to make it worse because he's a thief, just like Donald Trump, I think, is a very potent message. I have a. A greater worry that if it's about, you know, beta male low T Tallarico versus, you know, criminal adulterer Ken Paxton, and it's like a character versus character race, that's not one that he's going to have as much of a chance to win as if he makes it about, you know, outside versus, you know, outsiders versus the system change versus the status quo. He's just got to make it bigger than about him and Paxton. And I do think that and it's not just for Tallarico, but it's for all Democrats because Paxton. Gives you so many is a target rich environment because he gives you so much to talk about because he has such a bad record and he's corrupt stuff like that. It is very easy to turn this into a race about what a bad person Ken Paxton is. And I think it would be a mistake to just just talk about Ken Paxton as a bad person. You've got to talk about how Ken Paxton has fucked over the people of Texas when he was attorney general and how he would continue to do so in the Senate. Like that is where the that is where you win it, I think. Pod Save America is brought to you by Blinds.com. There's a version of your home you haven't lived in yet where the light behaves, where the rooms feel finished, where you sleep until you decide to wake up. Oh, man, isn't it nice to sleep so you decide to wake up? You wake up. You're like, did I just do that? Is this another life? Blinds.com has spent 30 years making it easy to find the perfect fit with over 25 million windows covered in 50,000 five star reviews. You can feel confident that you're in good hands. You can go full DIY. You can bring in a licensed vetted pro. I handle the measure and install or you can land somewhere in between. You're in control. Need help picking the right style. You can book a consultation. It's free with one of Blinds.com's award winning design experts. They'll even ship samples to your door fast and free. Choose from a huge variety of style options at prices that fit any budget. Everything is backed by the Blinds.com 100% satisfaction guarantee because at Blinds.com, the only thing they treat better than windows, it's you. Love Blinds.com. We have Blinds.com in our office. We've been, you know, we had no shades in our office for a long time. And we have, we like our office. It's nice. Gets a lot of light, but sometimes we get hot. Sometimes there'd be a lot of sun that would be in our eyes when we're at our computers reading about the news. And then Blinds.com came in. We stepped out of our office for like an hour. Come back. Boom. Incredible Blinds. Incredible Blinds. Right now, Blinds.com is giving our listeners an exclusive $50 off. When you spend $500 or more, just use code CROOKED at checkout. Limited time off. Rules and restrictions apply. See Blinds.com for details. Pod Save America is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. One of the big things we love about our team here at Cricket is the wide. We have a lot of people that love ZipRecruiter. We have a wide range of skills and disciplines that coalesce around our shared values and commitment to the work we do every day. That's one of the things we love the most. Also, Peter and I talk about nerdy stuff all the time. We have a great team here at Cricket. And you want people that have the skills and experience, but you also want people that care about what they do and are passionate about the job. You can't get that often from a resume unless you post your job on ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter's powerful matching technology finds quality candidates quickly. And ZipRecruiter has a new feature that shows you the most interested, qualified candidates first, so you can meet the right people faster. Candidates can tell you in their own words why they're interested in your job. No wonder ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site based on G2. We've used ZipRecruiter to hire here at Cricket. It's always been a great help. Hiring is one of the hardest things you have to do. It's so important. The whole thing depends on finding the right people. And with ZipRecruiter, it makes it easier. Find candidates who really want your job on ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Cricket. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash Cricket. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. All right, couple last things to cover. Thursday was Marco Rubio's birthday, and his best present came from Emerson, which has a new 2028 poll out showing he's effectively erased J.D. Vance's lead as a top contender for the 2028 Republican nomination. In August, he was at 9%, and Vance was at 52%. In this latest poll, Rubio's at 35%, and Vance is at 36%. 1%. poll emerson poll obviously grain of salt does seem like there's there's some marco mentum here our friend our friend sarah longwell sees it in the focus groups too you a couple different places what's what's going on here i think marco rubio's greatest asset right now is that he's not shady fans i mean that's that i think that's it i don't think he has done anything in particular that people love it's not like he's just been crushing the job of the state department it's not like his stewardship of the iran war is making people happy it's not like i think people are deeply dialed into his role as the overseer of the viceroy of venezuela i just think he is a republican who might seem slightly more competent and normal than your average trump cabinet member and is not as awkward and off-putting as jd vance you see that um that fun daily mail story it has sources say that um vance is considering abandoning his 2028 bid um and he feels more isolated than ever now that tulsi gabbard's leaving um and it even got his team to respond saying that it was all made up and everything of course but i'm sure he and tulsi were just plotting in the back on how to fail fail to stop trump to do bad things i choose to believe that story might be real i think that would be fun he has been very if he didn't run he has been very subdued lately yeah he's all he's he's offline remember he quit twitter for lent yes and then he just and then after line he just says he's kept it off his phone he says he gets more done now good for him good for him honestly offline listener jd vance i was gonna say if he wants to come on offline we can talk about it in a minute but i'm gonna say if he wants to come off line we can talk about it in a minute but i'm gonna say if he wants to come on offline we can talk about it in a minute but i'm gonna say if he wants to come on offline we can talk about it in a minute about it uh you see that uh gretchen whitmer ruled out running for president in 2028 she may have like partially walked it back just weird but it's see she sounded in the actual clip she was pretty clear yeah she was not running i this is does not surprise me. She has really done none of the things that the people who are obviously running for president are doing. She's not out trying to get a lot of national attention. She's not making herself a foil against Trump. She's not going to all these cattle call events like Al Sharpton's National Action Network and some of these other big events. I've not heard of her meeting with donors, hiring staff, talking to people. The people who are running, they're calling other people and they're making sure they know they might be running and trying to persuade those people. We hear from some of them. So it's not surprising. One thing that I think did occur to me when I read this is, presuming Gretchen Whitmer does not run, there are really only two other women who are thinking of running, and that's Kamala Harris and AOC. Oh, yeah. I was going to say AOC and who else? Oh, right, Kamala Harris. Yes. And neither of them, I think, most people would say the odds are against both of them running. So the point being is you could end up with an all-male field, which would be kind of gross in 2028. Yeah. I think, though, for Gretchen Whitmer, it's good for you. That is the, if you, no one should ever feel pushed into running for president because you are mentioned as someone who could be president. She is someone on paper who seems like absolutely she could run for president. She clearly doesn't feel the fire in the belly, doesn't want to go through. And it's like, good. That's that's the better decision to make than to be like, all right, I'm going to do it. I'm going to put everyone through it. We're going to go through the whole paces like it's a very big decision. It's a life changing decision. And I mean, also, you got to think about the party and the makeup of the field. And like, if she doesn't want to do it, then like good for her for bowing out early. All right. Finally, speaking of deciding not to run for president, I want to just quickly take you back to June 27th, twenty twenty four. The night of Joe Biden's debate with Donald Trump. We were there, not at the debate, but you remember you remember that we were together. We were together in Boston. You might remember that right afterward, Joe and Jill Biden dropped by a watch party to thank supporters. And here's what Jill Biden said then. Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question. Never gets old. Um, now, uh, Dr. Biden's out with a memoir. Which she promoted in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning this weekend. And here's how she recounted actually feeling watching the debate. I don't know what happened. I mean, when I as I watched it, I thought, oh, my God, he's having a stroke. And it scared me to death. That's the time of my life. I don't really want to go back to. I mean, I will say I maintain a deep well of anger at the Biden's people around Joe Biden. Joe Biden, who helped keep him in the race to be around Joe Biden, who attacked everyone as basically traitors to the cause who thought Joe Biden should run for president either before or after that debate. Like that still makes me very mad. I have come to the point this many years later that I just have to decide that I can no longer give a shit about the who knew what when like obviously she was lying then. She's probably lying now. In fact, um, uh, quite a few Biden advisors told Alex Thompson that they do believe she's lying because they pointed out if she thought he was having a stroke, why did she take him to an after party and then go to the Waffle House after that? I mean, yeah, there are obviously lots of questions here. Here's my thing, right? I just I have made a personal decision that I'm just going to try not to get that was basically a summer of pure. Unadulterated rage the whole time what was happening. I can remember my blood pressure. Yes, I'm trying not to revisit that period in my life. I so as I sit here today, I care less about what Joe Biden has to say about what happened that moment. I care less about what Mike Donnellan or all the other people who covered up for Biden have to say about what happened at that moment. What I care about is what what happens going forward. And what bothers me the most is not the the time of the timeline of events of twenty twenty four. But whether Democratic leaders now. Will ever reckon with the massive breach of trust that came because of how all of that was handled, the telling voters that what they saw with their eyes before the debate was that they shouldn't believe that and then telling voters what they saw at the debate they shouldn't believe. And that lack of trust hurts us with our own voters, hurts us with the other voters. And we have to be thinking about way at all times, about how to rebuild that trust, like we should optimize strategic decision making at the highest levels of this party for how do we rebuild trust, not just with our voters, but with all voters. And that is, I think, as I try to find a way not just to throw my phone against the wall every time I see stuff like that, that's where I'm trying to direct my positive energy. That was just remarkably disciplined and adult of you. And, you know, now I'm going to Austin's boot. Didn't you already do a YouTube about that? I was going to say and I'm going to. Yeah, I'm going to take that path as well, because if you want to hear me flip out about it and Tommy, we have we have it on YouTube from this morning when it was fresh. But I, I, I really, I completely agree. Was that today? You did that today? It was today. Yeah. It's been a long fucking day. I know. But I agree with you. And that's the only reason I care about it now, too, because I and I read that. I think I said it to you, too, that tweet from Zaid Jelani, who said, like, he's like, I think people are underestimating how much the lack of trust people have in the Democratic Party is due to what happened around them. And I do think that, like, you know, you can ask, do you think Biden and what happened with Biden is going to be an issue in twenty twenty eight? And narrowly, no. But I think that the people are going to remember that the Democratic Party, when I say Democratic Party, I mean, the people in the White House, the campaign, plenty of Democratic pundits, plenty of people online who are still fighting that fight lied to people. And didn't even lie to people in a way that was like like lied to people in a pretty obvious, obviously false, transparent way. And so that's like it's worse than a lie. It's treating people like they're fucking idiots, which is basically what they did. They told the whole country that that's the bigger thing. They told the whole country like, you know what? You know who the problem is. It's these these these fucking D.C. establishment bedwetters who think that Joe Biden did bad in the debate. Those they're the problem. All I'm we're with all you people. And, you know, we believe that everything was great. We know we think you believe that, too. And they like I think people are going to believe that. Like, come on. Yeah, there was a level of delusion and deception that was bigger than it or like dismissive. I think dismissive is the right way to put it. It was bigger than just the Biden's age stuff. It was inflation. Yep. It was Gaza, Gaza. And the combination of all of those things have put the Democratic Party in a bad place with its own voters, not to mention everyone else. And we have to be thinking about how it's in that that that's one of the reasons why. I got so mad about the D.S.C.C. and Chuck Schumer coming in and putting their hand in these races and in some cases now putting their thumb on the scale, but not saying they're putting their thumb on the scale by funneling money through Apex super PACs or these other super PACs in these other states like that. And I thought you were going to say this is why I got so mad at the Ken Martin thing, too, because that was the same idea. Yes, that's exactly right. That's that's it, too. And that's allowed me to experience. The same many of the same people, because I wrote that message box after the autopsy came out, clever Ken Martin to resign. I really put myself at the front of the line for the people on online to come out to say, like, where's the autopsy of your work in twenty twenty four pushing more good men out of jobs? But this is and this is in the context of going forward. I just want the people running in twenty twenty eight, the people who are going to be talking about the twenty twenty eight race, like when the Biden stuff comes up, when the DNC stuff comes up, whatever, like if people were willing to say. Totally fucked up. I was wrong. Bad move. Oh, I wish I was more honest, which has more transparent, like, great. That's fine. But you got to say that, you know, people like, yeah, where's the autopsy of your work? We're fine to say when we fucked up, this whole company was started because of a fuck up because we were so confident that Hillary Clinton was going to win. We were fucking wrong. I wish that we had gone harder. Joe Biden earlier than the debate said that before, too. You know, it's fine. You don't have to issue a you have to issue carefully worded statements that evade the question because you know what? People aren't going to trust you. So anyway, good luck on the book tour, Jill. All right. When we come back from the break, you'll hear my conversation with Mississippi Senate candidate Scott Cologne. Pod Save America is brought to you by Bilt. Whether you're renting or paying a mortgage, one of your biggest monthly expenses should be working harder for you. That's where Bilt comes in. Bilt is the membership that rewards you with points on every housing payment wherever you live. Bilt started out rewarding members on their rent as of 2026. Bilt members can also earn points on mortgage payments, too. Every housing payment earns you points that you can use with top travel partners like United and Hyatt or use your points toward Lyft rides, Amazon.com purchases, and so much more. Personally, I'd redeem my points for fitness classes, for Amazon, for Lyft rides. But here's the most underrated part. Bilt members also get access to neighborhood concierge. They can make reservations at restaurants, book fitness classes, and find new local spots, all while being rewarded at more than 45,000 merchant partners. It's like having a a personal assistant baked into where you live. It's simple. Being a renter and now owning a home is better with Built. Join the membership for where you live at joinbuilt.com slash crooked. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash crooked. Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you. Some of the smartest people in politics. We're going to try to answer some big questions. Stuff like if we won, how did we win? If we lost, how could we possibly have lost? And with 2028 around the corner, where do we go from here? If you believe in democracy, community, and fighting for the future, now's the time to grab your tickets to CrookedCon 2026. Head to crookedcon.com to get your tickets now. Discover a spectacular island destination. With crystal blue seas, endless sunshine, and the cool Bahamian breeze, Baja Mar, located in Nassau, Bahamas, offers your choice of three luxury hotels, over 45 fine dining and nightlife venues, John Batiste's all-new jazz club, the Caribbean's most luxurious casino, and one-of-a-kind experiences for the entire family, like our 15-acre tropical water park, wildlife sanctuary, world-class golf course, and so much more. Visit BajaMar.com today. Scott Colom, welcome to Pod Save America. Thank you so much for having me. You are a district attorney in Mississippi. You're seventh generation Mississippian. Your mom was the first black woman elected to her region's chancery court. Your dad worked for Ronald Reagan before becoming a Democrat. When a Mississippi voter asks why a guy with your resume is running for Senate as a Democrat in 2026, what do you tell them? I tell them that we've got to have a senator that fights for Mississippi. Somebody that understands that there's a lot of people out there. And I tell them that we've got to have a senator the tariffs have been terrible for the farmers, for the small businesses, that it's been terrible for the people going to the grocery store and that are struggling. And I'm not going to D.C. to be the Democratic senator. I'm not. We're not a state that can afford that, right? You know, Mississippi's got 3 million people. California's got close to 50 million. You guys got two senators. We got two senators. We have to use that to bring resources and jobs and opportunities to Mississippi. And our current junior senator, she's betrayed that. She's totally betrayed that. People in Mississippi know it, and that's why they're going to go in a new direction this November. You are running in a state that Trump just won in 2024 by 23 points. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people will hear Mississippi Senate race and maybe laugh. Yeah. Make the case to the skeptic. What do you see on the ground that suggests you could become the first Democrat, really the first Senate candidate, to win a state that the incumbent president just won by 23 points? So, you know, I get this question asked to me a lot, as you can see. And I used to answer it like I was David Axelrod. I would say, well, hold on, guys. You know, in non-presidential years, you know, we get much closer, right? Like our last Democratic candidate for governor got within three points of winning. You know, last year, we broke the supermajority in the state Senate. But what I realized is I needed to explain to people why I can win, right? And the reality is, when I ran for district attorney in 2015, I ran against a 30-year incumbent. I was in a district that people thought I had no chance of winning. But what I realized is that under the right circumstances, with the right opponent, and the right candidate, you can win a tough race in Mississippi. And those three things are totally at play now, right? I mean, I was with some, I got invited to, on the Gulf Coast, some Mississippians who previously voted Republicans. Notice I didn't call them Republicans. Mississippians who previously voted Republican. They reached out to my campaign and said, listen, we love what you're doing on social media. I was on a podcast, and they were like, we love what you said on the podcast. You're talking about Mississippi values. We want you to come meet with us. They said, maybe two or three people. We'll see how it goes. When I got there, it was 20 people, former Republican voters. And they talked to me about how, in this particular moment, they feel like they're getting betrayed by the Trump administration with $1.7 billion for people that assaulted cops that the president's cronies get to control. And then you look at Senator, our junior senator, right? I call her Cindy High Prices, because all we got is high prices. So, you know, you look at her, and she's a part of the corruption. I mean, she's gotten campaign contributions from fertilizer companies that are under investigation for price fixing. Wow, those same fertilizer companies are really hurting our farmers. The tariffs hurt them. Now we got fertilizer costs because of the war on our rent up, price fixing. She's taking money from them. She is, you know, I mean, one of the Republican, former Mississippi Republicans told me, he said, listen, when I heard that, I was like, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to do that. And I heard about her going to Las Vegas, $10,000 campaign contributions to stay at luxury hotel, to eat at luxury restaurants. That reminds me of the corruption we're seeing in D.C. And, you know, we got to go in a new direction. And just tell us what you're running on. And I'm running on making everybody's life in Mississippi better. You know, it's- How do you do that? I mean, you got to talk about the issues. And the other thing that I think is important, and this is for everybody listening, it's a mistake I think people are making. We're making it too much about the candidates. We're looking for the right people. We're looking for celebrities to do the profile. Oh, my God, they're great speakers. I mean, you know, I think I got a lot of charisma. I think I'm charming. I think I can give a good speech. I think you're charming so far. But I'll tell you this, going out there campaigning, listening to voters, I ask voters all the time, what matters to you? The number one answer, someone who does what they said they're going to do. It's not about us. It's about them. We have to make sure voters can trust us again. And that has to be not just running 30 second commercials. We can't advertise our way to touch voters. We got to get we got to gain their trust. And we get power again. We have to deliver. We have to make sure people understand that their vote matter, that we make their life better. And so that's a big part of my strategies. I really get out there. I can't pay anybody following me, John. I don't know anything in a campaign that campaigns more than me. I mean, it's three events on Saturday. And I love voters. I love voters. And I listen to them. You know, I don't just do town halls. I do town halls. But at some point, you're just talking to people that you know, are motivated to vote. Right. I go to the festivals. I go to the housing projects. I'm going to do a food truck where I pull up at the union halls, go to the plants. We got to go to the voters and we got to gain their trust. So the former comm staffer in me believes you are totally right that you should not give the answer like David Axelrod would give the answer. That's true. I mean, I think that's true. I think that's true. I think that's true. I think that's true. I'm I think that's true. I think that's true. I think that's true. I think that's true. I think that's true. 7.8 in 2018. Yeah. And I remember on that race, consultants on the SB campaign being like, Mississippi, it's going to happen. Talk to SB. And then Hood lost the governor's race by 5.5 in 2019. And then Brandon Presley lost by only 3.2 in 2023. So it's a narrowing margin. Absolutely. Still a margin. Yeah. Like, what's the theory of the case that you're the one who can actually close it as opposed to being like the next data point where and then and then Scott got even closer? Yeah. I mean, some of it's the environment. Right. I mean, you look at 2018. The economy was pretty good in Mississippi. You look at the economy now. The tariffs have been terrible. Nobody talks about how the tariffs have hurt Mississippi. You know, I was talking to a woman, Dollar General Manager. Right. And I was shooting a little commercial in there and I didn't ask her permission. So, you know, you try to, you know, what are you doing with those cameras? So if you do a 15 seconds real quick, get out of here, direct the camera real quick. And she noticed me and she said, what are you doing? I said, well, listen, I'm a I'm a Senate candidate. I'm running against Cindy Hathaway. She had no idea who that was. And I was like, well, listen, don't worry about her. I'm the guy. And and so I started talking to her. I said, listen, how are the customers doing? And she said, you know, they're struggling. I'm seeing them every month trying to figure out, can they pay for diapers? Can they pay for groceries? And prices keep going up. And she was like, I don't know what it is. I don't know what I can do. I feel helpless. So I asked her, I said, what do you think about the tariffs? It was almost like a bug went off. She was like, yeah, you know what? It is the tariffs. It is the tariffs. You're right. They're bad. And the people that you talk to connect that to the guy they voted for. Yeah. Twenty three points. Do they say like tariff bad Trump tariff? Like do they put it all together? You know, I think tariff is a bad word. You know, I don't know that they always do. I mean, there's a lot of voters that say they know it's bad because it's a popular term here recently. But we need to change the name of it. It's it really is a working class tax. Yeah, it's not a tariff. It's a working class tax sales tax. It's a sales tax. I mean, and it's unfair to working people. It's a it's a terrible way to to collect revenue because if you make, you know, fifteen thousand a month or you make two thousand a month, you're paying the same tax. Yeah. And so, you know, we're connecting the dots for them. But I'll tell you who's really feeling it and they understand it are the farmers. You know, I mean, I could tell you story after story about how farmers are struggling in Mississippi and now the fertilizer costs. And the problem is, you talk about the corruption and how she's allowing the corruption, how she's partaking in it. But then you have to add that she's totally absent in the state. I mean, she had done a town hall in six years. She does not campaign. I mean, she her only strategy is scare tactics. Thirty second commercial to scare the voters. She yeah. A recent Democratic internal poll had her, I think, at fifty five percent unfavorable. Yeah. It's like twelve points underwater from Trump. Right. Her own state. Why do you think she's so much weaker than the brand yeah um you've got a senior senator in that state i'm sure roger wicker that's that's more popular than her like what is the specific hyde smith problem as opposed to generic republican you have to think about it this way you know when i was a this is a great way to really bring the story home when i was a child my dad was republican uh before he supported obama in 08 uh he actually was a republican for obama obama switched them but uh anyways uh when i would go to like jackson state football games at halftime you would see thad cochran or halftime with a fifty thousand dollar check going to jackson state that's a hard guy to beat you know i'm saying it's hard to get motivated the guy's bringing fifty thousand dollars yeah you know and we actually have a tradition in mississippi of having senators that understand this position has to bring resources back to mississippi you know trent lott i don't agree with him on a lot of things but he did a lot to bring jobs back i mean he was majority leader at one point the majority leader was from mississippi so with her a big problem is the people even republicans are like excuse me voters who used to vote republican they are like she is totally mia we can't find anywhere she doesn't do anything you know i don't think we've ever had a senator that's this absent and um she thinks that all she has to do is be 100 percent magna and she's and she can win but the reality is i've been out there talking to voters and they want somebody that's 100 mississippi because they understand the stakes it's not like they're going well if you ask it i mean you can ask the most uh loyal trump supporter reporter right now are things going well they ain't saying yes right you know they ain't saying yes so if you become senator you uh you'd be the junior senator for mississippi uh seniority in the senate you'd rank towards the bottom like all new senators do so like what do you you're making the case that she's not bringing home resources to mississippi how do you make the case to voters that like if you go to the senate you'll be able even though you're one of a hundred and you're not going to be sort of you know a junior senator help bring home uh resources to mississippi yeah i mean one i'm going to use my vote in my voice to really to really represent mississippi i'm not going there i keep saying this i'm not going there to be a celebrity i'm going there to deliver for mississippi and so that gives me leverage because i'm not you know if a republican offers something that makes sense for mississippi i'll support it if a democrat offers something that makes sense for mississippi i'll support it now of course you're right you know as a junior senator you got to be and what i'm going to do is i'm going to find issues that republicans already support right like economic development is a big thing in mississippi how do we bring in industries to develop capital to get our state moving in the right direction i mean we're not like uh la where you got builders i mean you know every you know it's really we spend it wisely you know i'm gonna let y'all control that but you know but for mississippi we need capital we need economic development we've got to be even republicans you know leaders know that and so that's an area where you know i can be impactful that's really bipartisan in the other areas we got to find like for me i got to find smaller problems that i can help solve like i had a good friend of mine who mentioned to me that uh dental care is really bad in mississippi it's at the bottom and so like that's a problem that i can help solve as a senator for mississippi that's not a partisan thing so trying to find solutions and the other thing that i'm going to do and i've learned this from campaigning so much is you know we can't stop campaigning right i mean i know once you win you got to govern but you also better still campaign because a place like mississippi if they feel like you go to dc and you're just making money or you know just a celebrity it's not going to work so for me we got to have strong anti-corruption legislation that makes clear that we're not in there making money you know that's why i support a ban on stock trading that's why we can't have people become lobbyists right now and that's why i support a ban on stock trading that's why we can't have that they become senators we got to get the corruption and the perception of it because that helps the people that are openly corrupt yeah right because they can say the people are like well you know they're corrupt but so so everybody's corrupt we got to show them we're not corrupt we're public service we're not there to make money and uh it's beneficial to me that like you said my mom was a transfer court judge and i learned my ethics and values from my parents and and and and so i was you know i'm really trying to honor their honor their legacy that's why you know it's important to me to be transparent and i'm really trying to honor their legacy that's why you know it's important to me to be transparent and be somebody that people can trust because i want to honor my parents i also want to honor the ancestors that sacrificed so much for me to even have this opportunity to talk to you you uh i was just thinking like the last democratic senator uh from the state that voted by uh double digits this many double like in the 20s for trump yeah is uh it was joe mansion yeah and his model was like cut deals piss off your party constantly and then you know vote with the president when it suited the state yeah is that your model too well i think uh senator manchin tried to get a little bit more attention than i'll try to get you know i mean he does love it you know i mean so for me i'm more uh gonna be trying to use my leverage and voice to cut deals that make sense and benefit mississippi but not try to be just somebody making constantly complaining about things if if if i'm sure you'll hear this from voters if they're like okay you say you're not going to be a typical democratic senator gonna be a mississippi senator yeah um i don't like the democrats i don't like where do you think the democrats have gone wrong where do you break from the party where would you be different than a typical democrat yeah but we got to talk about economic issues that's the first thing i mean because the people like i i knew this because i had a friend of mine that was a barber he unfortunately passed away shout out to jasper pitman he was a great political head and uh and uh so in in 2020 when when president biden won there was a lot of enthusiasm there was high turnout and uh 2021 2022 he he was a democrat he started getting sour on the power upon the party because of inflation and then what he felt like was man we're talking about sending all this money to ukraine we're talking about foreign stuff like man my life's not gotten better prices are up like we gotta start talking about me we gotta start talking about the voters and you know i was able to convince him that it made sense that we made sure russia and soviet union and putin didn't take over ukraine but i was a trusted messenger and there's too many people that didn't trust the messenger to help them understand that democratic party did care about the fact that inflation was out of control that we did care about the fact that the border seemed like it was out of control and you know that a lot of people feel like that hurts workers yeah that hurts workers and so we got to talk about economic issues the other thing is that we have to like i feel like the last couple years we've been trying to figure out you know the answer to trump is the president wants to make everything about himself he loves that all the attention is on him and we've making every campaign about him are trying to find somebody that can be as much of a celebrity, right, as him. Somebody who can convince these voters. I think we gotta go back and we gotta make our campaigns about the voters again. We have to have candidates that not can only go on a podcast and make a case, but they actually should be able to be comfortable taking 75 selfies. Yeah. Right? Going to a festival where nobody knows them. You gotta like people. And that's great for me because I love people, and my opponent, she can't stay in Mississippi. I mean, she does not campaign at all. So the challenge for Democrats, as always, is like, okay, we want to talk about economic issues. We want to talk about making people's lives better. And the Republicans don't let you because they make all the attacks about their favorite wage issues. Hyde Smith's campaign manager called you the transgender defender. Said you were handpicked by Schumer, bankrolled by Soros, soft on crime. All the radical sex changes for children. I just unloaded the clip. All the favorites. Walk me through how you answer that. Like, not for our audience who knows it's garbage, but like for a voter in Mississippi that will hear those ads 15 times between now and November. So I knew that she was going to do that. I knew exactly all those attacks were coming. Like one play. Yeah. And so if you look at my campaign announcement ad, I tried to preempt it. Right? So, for example, I know in Mississippi, the way to counter a lot of that stuff is to show people that your life is like theirs. Right? So my announcement ad centered around my family. I've got two daughters. I coach their soccer team. Listen, I mean, come on. I mean, you think people are going to fall for that? Like, my dream. This is what I tell my daughters. I say, listen, you know, there's not many ways you can disappoint me. But if neither one of you become a basketball player, I am going to be disappointed. Does that work? I mean, one of the junior ones, my youngest ones is starting to work. Because I say, you know, when you get older, if you ever complain, I'm going to always remind you, I wanted one thing, and you didn't deliver for me. So, I mean, and then, another thing is, we got to lead with our values. You know, for me, you know, I do Soulful Sundays where I talk to church faith leaders. And I center them and talk about, you know, there's a lot of for whatever reason, we've allowed people like Cindy High Smith to trick voters into thinking that we Democrats don't believe in faith. Democrats don't believe in family. Like, I have much more in common than to the average Mississippi family than she does. You know, my wife, she makes me drop the kids off at school sometimes. Cindy High Smith is never doing that, right? I go to the soccer game, watching my kids play. She's not doing that. My wife makes me go grow up with them. She keeps telling me, my wife makes me do it. As a good partner, it's a good partner. My wife is training me well. As a good partner, sometimes I have to grocery shop, too. And so, I'm at the grocery store, talking to people, listening. You know, my life is like theirs. So, I'm going to cut through that mess by showing them how my life is like theirs, showing them my family, and centering the voters. Because, you know, every Monday, I drop a video called Mississippi Matters Monday. And I'm having voters, kind of man-on-the-street style, asking people to say, what matters to them all the stuff she's attacked me on no boulders ever said that's what matters to them it's not on their mind it's not so her you know for me if i can raise enough money to counter her lies with the truth and tell the truth about her we're gonna win i'm telling you we're gonna win the wind's at my back so what's the what's the message to a donor in california or new york deciding between writing a check to your race and to say north carolina maine ohio even texas yeah yeah um that's probably higher on the dscc list yeah but whoever's making those lists i mean what's the results right so i mean maybe we need to redo the list a little bit because mississippi is a cheaper state to compete in we're a cheaper state to compete in um but you know we have christian as you and i agree we have christian as pie say mississippi day yeah this is it 28th from now on now all we're going to talk about mississippi and the reality is you can't save america unless you save mississippi i mean we have to matter when the country has done well everybody's paid attention to what's going on in mississippi we focus on the voters in mississippi making sure that they have quality education quality health care we don't let these people that want to take our country back control everything and when we got you know what we've done poorly is we ignore mississippi and there's there's plenty of examples of mississippi being ignored and we've seen the results of that and to get ourselves out of this mess what we have to remember is rural america matters we have to have candidates that understand rural america that are not afraid to talk to former republican voters and uh people are not scared to talk to folks that don't even know who their senator is yeah you know there's man i'm telling i'm gonna win people are gonna be other people outside mississippi gonna be surprised i'm not gonna be surprised it's been trending that way as you pointed out it's been trending that way but also we're running a different type of campaign we're centering the voters not me you know if you look at my videos i have other people talking i mean can i tell you a quick story yeah i had a waitress at a restaurant you know it was kind of like he was starstruck in a moment right he's like oh is that scott cologne like oh my god i said listen i'm i'm listen i'm not i'm not a celebrity guys what's what's going on tell me uh tell me what's on your mind let me tell me what matters to you he said first i love that you do that and and i've been waiting to give you my answer if i ever saw you he said what what matters to me is like the the drug prices are up because i'm on medicaid and i had to get worse insurance now i'm paying more to get less i'm struggling but he told me listen i've never voted before i've never voted before i'm gonna vote for you because you sent a vote i'm gonna vote for you he didn't say center voters right he said i love that you have regular people on your videos you have the barber you know you have two kids just you know looking at the camera saying you know this is why voting matters i mean you know for me i can feel the momentum and the movement because i am out there listening and you can do this in mississippi you can't do this in every state but you can do this in mississippi and uh i'm excited and you know mississippi matters we're going to show the country mississippi matters well um it is not an easy thing to do run for office certainly not an easy thing to do yeah in a state like mississippi uh when you're a democrat and um you are i really appreciate that you're that you're doing it and doing it so joyfully yeah yeah um so uh good luck out there i appreciate it thanks for coming on pod save america on pod save mississippi day absolutely hey you know uh if you if you if you want to be a part of the movement go to scottcolomb.com we're building something special mississippi i'll come back may 28th next year we'll be talking about you know how i keep my promises yeah it will be how i keep my commitments we're delivering because the good thing about you is you understand this is not a i mean running for office is hard but running for office and being a leader is also hard so we can't stop that's gotta that's right we gotta be constantly keep it going so thank you so much for having me thanks scott i appreciate it that's our show for today thanks to scott colomb for coming by i'll be back on sunday with a conversation with our pal ben rhodes uh he's got a new book about speeches american speeches and american identity and so we'll be geeking out about speech writing and uh and talking about america's 250th so check it out bye everyone pod save america is a crooked media production our show is produced by austin fisher saul rubin mckenna roberts and ferris safari with reed churlin elijah cone and adrian hill our team includes matt de grote ben hefcote jordan canter charlotte landis carol palaviv david tolls mia kelman ryan young and naomi single our staff is proudly unionized with the writers guild of america east hey everyone my name is elijah cone and i've been a producer here at crooked media for a decade i love making our shows with the smart creative people who work here and hearing from all of you who listen every week but the thing that i'm proudest of is that video we made of yvette ramaswamy grunting while hitting baseballs no wait sorry the thing i'm proudest of is the work we do through vote save america see we don't want our shows to only leave you feeling anxious about the state of the world we want to give you something you can actually do about it just this year our listeners have raised millions of dollars and filled thousands of volunteer shifts to help people like me and to help candidates and causes in the 2026 midterms and we have no plans to slow down as we head into 2028 as far as i know there's no other media company that does what crooked does we make entertaining thoughtful content that brings people into politics and then we give them a direct way to get involved and if you believe in that mission one of the best ways to support us is by becoming a paid subscriber your subscription helps us keep making the shows you love and building a media company that doesn't just talk about politics but helps people change them and change the world we've got you covered subscribers get ad-free shows plus excellent exclusive podcasts newsletters and much much more so thank you for listening and supporting what we do head to crooked.com slash friends today to learn more and become a subscriber some people like working twice as hard just to stay right where they are and in ohio we really don't get it because to us owning a home in your 30s working in tech without the traffic and still being able to make it to your kid's soccer game sounds pretty good in fact ohio is the second most affordable state to buy a home your move learn more at your move ohio.com discover a spectacular island destination with crystal blue seas endless sunshine and the cool bahamian breeze bahamar located in nassau bahamas offers your choice of three luxury hotels over 45 fine dining and nightlife venues john batiste's all-new jazz club the caribbean's most luxurious casino and one-of-a-kind experiences for the entire family like our 15-acre tropical water park wildlife sanctuary world-class golf course and so much more visit bahamar.com today