Is Trump Trying to Lose the Midterms?

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SimpliSafe has been protecting your world for 20 years. Celebrate their anniversary with us and save 60% on your new SimpliSafe system at simplisafe.com. That's simplisafe.com/cricket. Plus, when you order, write in our show name in the "How did you hear about us?" survey to let them know we sent you. Don't forget, there's no safe like SimpliSafe. Subtitles by the Amara.org community Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lubbitt. Tommy Vitor. On today's show, the mission in Iran is so accomplished that we're back to bombing. We'll talk about Trump's response and how he and Pete Hegseth are losing support for their war from the most senior U.S. military officials, which may put a damper on Pete's potential presidential campaign. We'll talk about that, too. We'll also cover the Supreme Court allowing Trump to build his ballroom, Trump calling Americans opposed to building data centers, quote, "backwards and poor," and some of the other shit sandwiches Trump is forcing Republican candidates to eat before November. Speaking of pieces of shit, Trump advisor Laura Loomer said some disgustingly racist things about black women that no Republican has denounced as of yet, and she's also taking credit for the deportation of right-wing creep Milo Yiannopoulos. Tough to pick a side in that one. There is no side. Then, Tommy celebrates his birthday by sitting down with Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, the Dem nominee for governor in a critical state. Oh, yes, it's your birthday. Happy birthday, Tommy. Thank you, guys. I got us a contact for future Vegas trips. Oh, great. So, you know, like, if we get in trouble, we'll go where we can call. Oh, yeah. That is—speaking of things that are critical— You're welcome. If you can get arrested for losing money and then going to bed at 11. Yeah, getting thrown out of Cirque du Soleil. Yeah. Okay. Well, quick announcement, speaking of trips, we're heading to Austin later this month for a live show at the Texas Tribune Festival on Friday, September 25th. It says here in the script, "It's going to be a great time." Oh, I think that's right. Great. Well, that's one less thing to worry about. Thanks for writing that out. All four of us, plus special guest, Bobby Polito, the Democratic nominee in Texas 15, one of our most important pick-up opportunities in the House. We might even get him to sing, which would be really cool. Grab your tickets to the festival and join us. We posted the link on our site at cricut.com/events. Can't wait to see you in Austin. That's cricut.com/events. All right, let's get to the news. It was just five days ago that the president declared mission accomplished in Iran by posting what appeared to be an AI-generated image of himself, George W. Bush, and the Ayatollah. But by Sunday night, the missiles were flying once again. The IRGC were about to fire mine-laying rockets over the Strait of Hormuz from nearby Larrak Island. The U.S. military launched airstrikes to stop them, and then Iran retaliated by launching ballistic missiles at U.S. bases in Jordan, all of which were intercepted. Our commander-in-chief responded in between rounds of golf over the weekend by deploying a full arsenal of AI slop about his trade war with Canada. And his hot war with Iran. What the fuck? Okay, so. The ducks were Canadian. They're not on our team. For those of you just listening. Just a carrized geese. Oh, yeah. Sorry, Canadian geese. We like to be accurate. You're right, you're right. Canadian geese. Get the facts right. Yeah, so for those of you just listening, those were videos of Trump replacing a Lake Ontario sign with a Lake America sign while dancing to YMCA, an army of Canada geese with M-16s wearing Trump wigs patrolling Lake Ontario, and a series of imaginary airstrikes destroying an imaginary Karg Island, which Trump said was, quote, blown to smithereens in the caption despite no airstrikes occurring there back here in the real world. So, according to Axios, there's apparently a real plan in the works to potentially launch limited strikes in the Strait of Hormuz to stop Iranian attacks on oil tankers, Navy ships, and U.S. fighter jets. But that can't be true because Trump and the extended MAGAverse has assured us time and time again that the Strait is open. So, what do you think's going on? That's not true. Yeah, maybe it's not true. That's not true. You know what I hadn't realized? What? That the, and I only realized after Trump posted that image of him saying he was better at accomplishing missions than George W. Bush, which is that mission accomplished took place on the Abraham Lincoln, which is the ship that has been out for, was out for 250 days for what was supposed to be a four-hour tour. Oh, no, that's the, that's the Gilded Island. Four to six weeks. But so, I just thought. It's a three-hour tour. Three-hour tour. Really? Three-hour tour. Oh, yeah. Well, I guess that's right. You'll extend it if you want. Anyway, I just thought that was interesting. The Axios story said that Trump and his team are considering periodic airstrikes against Iran to keep their military capabilities in check and ensure the flow of commerce through the Strait of Hormuz in perpetuity, which sounds like a war that would need to go on forever. They called it. Just mowing the grass. Yeah, they called it mowing the grass. Mowing the lawn. It's something that you. Famously, always have to do forever. Right. It never stops being needed. It's also what the Israelis called their strategy to keep Hamas in check in Gaza, and look how well that went. That Axios story also came like, I don't know, 24, 48 hours after an Axios story by Barak Ravid that basically has U.S. officials and Axios saying that we have made all this progress on keeping the Strait open or reopening the Strait. Did you see that? It was like. So Trump actually got on the phone with him. He got Trump on the phone. Wow. And said to him, that sucker is open. And then Axios story says over the past two months, U.S. officials say the American military has steadily eroded Iran's leverage over the crucial waterway. Although then it says the ultimate goal is to reach 60 to 70 percent of pre-war oil exports. Well, that's. That's a soft bigotry of expectations, but it's also like. Like, yeah, it's open and there's gonna be periodic bombing over the Strait and going through it will be like squid game for oil tankers forever in perpetuity. I mean, like, not exactly like the best assignment. You're not like thrilled to be taking a trip through the Strait of Hormuz. And it requires a giant deployment of U.S. troops forever. I mean, they've definitely like it's not at zero like it was before, but it's not a pre-war levels. They've improved the flow of commerce or oil exports out of the Strait. But like, it's not better. I mean, I think it's been about a month since the last exchange. The fire between the two sides. But this what happened over the weekend is just part of this typical pattern of tit for tat exchanges. And I think it's going to get worse, not better, because, you know, last week we covered Besson saying it was economic D-Day. And that announcement was obviously like wildly overstated. But between the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and like the jawboning of countries to stop doing business with the Iranians, like what they did to the Emiratis, that's going to increase the economic pain for the Iranians. And the way the Iranians respond to economic pain is with military strikes. And so. As the U.S. ratchets up the sanctions, as they continue the blockade, the more likely outcome is escalation and not capitulation by Iran and the war ramping back up. So it just feels like we're still trapped in the same cycle. Yeah. And again, we've also sort of completely stopped talking about the reason that we apparently went to a war with Iran in the first place, which is their nuclear program. The dust. The dust. His line on that is like, that's handled. We're watching it. It's under the ground now. Yeah. Which is what it was. It was after the first 12-day war, but whatever. So really, it's just now a war to get the Strait of Hormuz from, you know, 0% open to, I guess, 60% to 70% is the goal. Going for a C. Gentlemen, C. Things are going so badly in Iran that Trump and Hegseth are now losing support among our own most senior military leaders. There was a huge scoop from the Washington Post that these leaders have advised Hegseth that, quote, to confront threats elsewhere, including the U.S. homeland. These warnings showed up as part of a classified assessment that included. orders for some of the 50,000 troops currently deployed to the Middle East to remain there until 2027, which led some of the senior military leaders to respond with a quote, non-concur, meaning they disagree with Hegseth's order, but will still carry it out. Hegseth's spokesman responded to the story by accusing the Post of committing a crime, and they're probably also a bit peeved that the Post published another story that details how Hegseth has apparently given government jobs to right-wing military influencers without telling anyone so they could go around spreading his propaganda. Seems like Pete is really crushing it as SecDef. You think that's why NBC News is reporting that Hegseth's telling close friends he's thinking about running for president in 2028? You buy in stock, love it, in Hegseth's president? Sort of give all of us the USS Lincoln experience. I'm feeling trapped and no way out. Yeah, I don't like Hegseth. Look, let's do the case for and against. The case against buying stock in Hegseth right now is his polling is terrible at the moment. He's 22 points underwater in a recent Marquette poll. I would argue he's probably more responsible for the war in Iran than anyone else who might run in 2028. It's like Trump, Netanyahu, Hegseth. He's obsessed with culture war stuff in a way that I think will turn off some normies. He was also accused of doing some really bad shit before. When he was nominated for Secretary of Defense, unfortunately, that didn't prevent it, and he's written some crazy stuff. I think the case for him being successful in a Republican primary is he kind of merges together things Republicans liked before Trump with the MAGA stamp of approval. He's a neocon. He's super hawkish. He's part of this right-wing, white Christian nationalist evangelical world that makes up a huge chunk of their base. He has high name ID from the Trump days. Fox News. He's kind of slick and camera ready. Then the resume is like SecDef, Fox News, Veteran, Princeton. It's not bad on paper. I think the big long-term question is how bad does the Iran war get? How much do Republicans actually punish them for supporting it and lying about it? We don't know yet. Yeah. Boy, I hope Pete Hegseth runs for president. I think that would be awesome to watch. I hope he doesn't. He's unstoppable. The guy who has mired the United States. He's unstoppable. In another war in the Middle East. The guy is going to be really hard to beat. We're worried about that Pete Hegseth getting in. I mean, the reports in the Post alone saying that some of these troops are going to be deployed through 2027 when the primary is going to be going on. Okay. I just don't think, do you guys really think that that's going to be a big impediment in a Republican primary? What you're running is Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance were also part of the administration. I don't think we know that yet. J.D. Vance is going to be, and he has already telegraphed. And so have his advisors that he is going to run and say, it's not, I did everything I could to end the war and create a peace agreement, all that kind of stuff. Because to the extent that the Republicans and Trump has lost any support from Republican voters, it's around the war in Iran and the increased prices that it's caused. And so it's like the one thing that has caused voters to defect from Trump is what Pete Hegseth is in charge of. Yeah. I wonder though, which I agree with that, but are those Republican primary? Or the kind of soft, like kind of less partisan people who believed America first. I think that's a bad thing. I mean, maybe, but like. The mega cult is still there. And I think, look, if I was Hegseth, I frame criticism of the Iran war as like a lack of loyalty to Trump and try to make it about that. Look, I don't know. I just think it's an open, I think it could go either way. I just think he's a little more dangerous than some people give him credit for. What do you guys think about those post stories? So I went and read the, the, so these are, these people were all posting about the story. So the post reaches out to them and they all, they don't respond. And then they respond publicly. I'm talking about the influencer one. The influencer one. What are you talking about? I said the stories. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Pick a friend you want to start with. So the, on the influencer story, the post reaches out for comment. Apparently they don't comment. And then they post angrily that the story doesn't reflect what's actually going on based on their views, which they did not share. Fine. According to the like, uh, Kurt Schlichter, and one of the other people that they were brought on not to be paid influencers on social media, in part because they don't need to be paid to do that. They do that for the love of the game. Right. Uh, but to help them shape the few, help them shape a plan to make the war, the war colleges, you know, less woke and more lethal in line with Pete Hegseth's, uh, agenda. And even it's like, okay, there's like, these are the people you chose. And then they, some of them, I think all of them had served in the military and have some kind of expertise, but they're also just like right-wing trolls on social media. And Kurt Schlichter is just somebody that I don't like. He just pops into my algorithm once in a while and then pops back out because he's the kind of classic, uh, conservative in a liberal place. Who's losing his mind. Cause I think he's from California. He's still here, but he was living here for a while. And he wrote this series of books about this sort of like fever dream fantasy of what would have happened if Hillary had won. And then the country has a civil war and we divide up into the United States of America, which is run by Republicans and the people's Republic, which is run by Democrats. And it is, so this is who they brought on. And so this is the, I just want to give you some facts from these books, which is, uh, one of those is about a Texas billionaire's daughter who defects to LA to experience equality and then has to be rescued by special ops. Uh, the secret police is called the people's bureau of investigation. You have a government assigned privilege level, the airline, the state airline is called justice air. Uh, uh, there's, propaganda posters that read intolerance will not be tolerated. And deodorant is restricted to simply one kind to not offend gender fluid individuals. The world's like instructs to like be aggrieved. It's like, meanwhile, in reality, like the United half, the country is covered by flock cameras and Donald Trump has deployed his own like ice secret force to arrest, to harass, shoot American citizens in the head and deport people. Dallas is a gleaming super city though. Yeah. That's the new Capitol. I mean like the influencer thing, like to me, that was just like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It's like another piece of the puzzle of Hegseth trying to crush or go around the Pentagon press core. They have, uh, they try to make reporters basically sign a pledge and commit to running their stories by the Pentagon brass for publication. They kicked the real reporters out of their workstations. They replaced them with like one America news and much of right wing crap. Um, remember when they kicked a bunch of photographers out of briefings because Hegseth didn't like how he looked in a photo. They're destroying stars and stripes, which is this, uh, military publication that's really important to active duty members of military. So now they're hiring these MAGA chuds. Um, it does seem like it's mostly about cranking out pro Hegseth talking points, but there is that weird like anecdote about them, like, uh, quizzing war college students about how Pete Hegseth is doing without disclosing that they work for Pete Hegseth. Like that part was all just quite weird. Well, so they, they like one of the people that is part of this group wrote for one of the MAGA, one of the MAGA journals, America greatness, one of those, like a diagnosis. What's wrong with the war colleges woke stuff like climate being part of it. Anything about diversity as part of it, but also just this idea that like the war colleges have not focused on lethality and military force. And they're all supposed to wear suits where really they should be back in their uniforms. It's sort of like, it's like there is a, there is an actual kind of whatever MAGA goal in trying to kind of de liberal de de leftify the war colleges. But it's of course being run by people who have, you know, they're not going to be able to do that. So, you know, they have like, they're just sort of, you know, online super, super engaged right wing people whose brain has been kind of stewing on Twitter forever. That's who's going to kind of talk to all these people and figure out how to make the war colleges get rid of the liberals. By the way, the head of the, uh, the commander of, uh, uh, the liberal forces in the book is a UCLA professor, a UCLA professor who, uh, takes a, takes a woman as a kind of a, a bride and have to rescue her from this commander, UCLA professor, this evil professor at the top of the top of the, of the system, which I think is kind of explained some of the world you going into this. Did I go too deep on this? Uh, no, no, very normal. Uh, well, I will say that, um, Pete Higgs has planned to, uh, limit press access and, uh, churn out propaganda and higher influencers. Really. It's just working very well because, uh, Pentagon's image has never been better. Yeah. I mean, that's sort of the irony of the second story, which is like the Washington post got a leak of the secretary of defense's orders book, which is this, it's this process where the combatant commanders get to advocate on behalf of themselves and like fight for scarce resources. And then the sec def makes decisions about like resource allocation. Like there's 11 aircraft carriers, a handful are in service at any time. They go to different parts of the world. Like where should they go? Um, and so, uh, it's not surprising given that context that like Pacific command would be pissed off that they have to send their carrier strike group to the middle East and like that a bunch of military units have been deployed forever. And in parts of the country, um, because it means that the Pacific command is unprepared to do something. If China invades Taiwan or the North Koreans do some shit, what's remarkable though, like, so that part's like unsurprising that there would be, um, non-concurrence and that they would disagree about stuff. But the takeaway is clearly the military brass is so worried about the way the war with Iran is overextending them and taxing the force that this leaked. Um, and there were so many of them in, in union unanimity. Yeah. They're all just like, like, what are we doing here? This is crazy. Yeah. I thought that was incredible. alarming. And of course the story was, you know, or the, the fallout from the story was they're mad at leaked and then they're yelling with the leakers and all this kind of shit. But the idea that our senior, most military commanders are like terrified that we're not prepared to deal with other threats, including threats against the homeland because of this war and, and Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump don't seem to care seems, seems alarming. Well, the thing that is remarkable to me is if you were during the campaign, during 2024, it seemed like the one place that kind of foreign policy establishment on the left and the right agreed was that the big threat we faced was from China. And now we have once again bogged ourselves down in another forever war, endless conflict in the Middle East, this time against Iran. And in practice, what that has mean is we literally just took the carrier strike group out of the Indo-Pacific and sent it to the Middle East to replace the Lincoln that was, you know, overextended for however long. And so we're just kind of sitting there. They're naked. And it's like, well, you guys ran on telling us that China was the threat, that we're going to get tough on China, that blah, yada, yada, yada. But in practice, you are, the resource allocation is telling a very different story. And all the kind of uniform military leadership is quite worried about that. And to mention, Russia is still, you know, threatening Eastern Europe. Well, Trump just invited the Russian finance minister to the G20. Right. But no press. But not the press. But no press, right? 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dc and often walks by the white house she said she would quote suffer both professional and personal injuries including to my aesthetic cultural and historical interests if a ballroom of the proposed form and scale were constructed end quote it's funny because it's it like pits the anti-democratic building of this ridiculous ballroom up against my gut uh hatred for the nimbys being like oh your walk is spoiled by new construction we got to build things in this fucking country yeah it's uh yeah uh john roberts joined the liberals in agreeing uh and wrote that ballroom construction thus far quote is likely unlawful um what do you guys think game over here like i know uh does seem like there's got to be some more solid base somewhere for uh someone to challenge the uh the ballroom construction which john roberts at least and others think it's probably unlawful but you know these people just didn't have standing to sue right well just be nice conservative majority hey no need to be so coy mr justice roberts who does have standing tell us tell us who has the standing who can sue to stop this thing from being built if it's not this historical society because if there's a loophole where you can knock down any building you want when you're president so long as you claim to be doing it with private dollars then grab the taxpayer money later uh that's a pretty big loophole uh in the constitution that has till this point never been contemplated well apparently at the dc circuit argument uh trump's lawyer suggested that people affected by construction noise could have standing uh even if they didn't have standing they could have standing uh even if even if he calls our lawyer even if someone offended by the ballroom's appearance did not which is interesting because i was gonna say you know need some ballroom as a mike lawler and that new campaign ad you guys know what i'm talking about yeah that's right that's right yeah i covered this oh with you i was like i was like who am i making jokes on my oh yeah that's right that's right um i got a text from a reporter over the weekend who was asking if democrats should prioritize ripping down the ballroom and like my knee-jerk reaction is like we have so many other fish to fry before like we do take down this building but then i assumed that as i thought about this 2028 primary that we would probably have um entire debates on demolition hands show a hand i will fire bomb it no no no i will you know yeah i think i think it's like you know when you you move into a house and you're like i could do a lot of renovation in this house or i could do just just touch-ups here and there well you don't want to make classic easy ones you gotta live in a house you gotta live in a house you gotta live in a for a bit before you decide what you want to change well i was gonna say that you know the easy ones are like you know let's uh let's turn the courtyard uh back from mar-a-lago with umbrellas and dc back to grass let's take all the gold shit off the stupid fucking colonnades like yes there's a whole bunch of easy stuff i like to do before you get to the auto pen that's up as a photo of biden that's coming down pretty quick i like that we've instinctively landed on uh uh unsatisfying center-left compromise on what to do with the various things it's just a very you can you can always hide at the obama administration but what was the expensive like nightmare to do like ripping down a ballroom can you imagine here's it'll be so funny we're gonna have medicare for all we're gonna have humane immigration we're gonna treat people with respect in this country and we're tearing that ballroom down it's coming applause yeah applause yeah it's coming they're all gonna applause and then the person's gonna win the presidency and just then it won't happen right and then it'll be mad and they'll be like why did we lose because we didn't we didn't deliver the crazy promises that we made in the campaign worse they worse they try to tear the ballroom down heritage sues because of the noise they have standing to keep the thing supreme court's like well we told you yeah actually we think so it turns out heritage does have his standing that's sort of they always do sort of that went on yeah um but it's interesting like uh during the trump trump's own lawyer again like had previously conceded sort of the um the weird implication of the government standing theory in this case which is you know he was saying that if a president uh suddenly demolished the white house itself or even the statue of liberty and nobody could show like the requisite individualized harm of that and and then the judge in that case said so nothing can be done and the trump lawyer said i think that's right but see i see this is so crazy but i don't think it is that crazy we talked about this a little bit i don't think it's that crazy right because really what we're all the issue here is that congress should be intervening and by law either uh i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know stopping this or adjusting it or changing it or the president if the president knocked down the statue of liberty because he found it offensive for some reason that person should be impeached immediately and removed like because that's so they and and one of the legal theories is that like congress could sue of course of course congress won't sue because it's run by republicans but then you're like well why would congress sue when when a normal congress would just pass a law of course or or defund the ball or do whatever right you could sue you you would sue saying we passed a law you don't need to pro because it's unconstitutional you don't need to proactively pass a law to stop something awful. You just sue and say you're violating the law. That was true, by the way. Remember when there was those reforms and Trump was, those electoral reforms, and then Trump was saying, see, I told you there was, it wasn't illegal because you had to pass this law to fix it, but yeah, I hear you. All right, let's talk midterms. The first mail-in ballots are scheduled to be sent out in just a few days on September 4th, but will the newly Trumpified U.S. Postal Service actually deliver those ballots? That is the question we somehow have to ask ever since the president issued an executive order that threatens to withhold the delivery of mail-in ballots to states that don't comply with the federal government's demand for lists of eligible voters. When has that ever gone wrong, demanding lists of people in your federal government? The order has once again been blocked by a federal court, and the administration has again appealed, so this one could end up back at the Supreme Court, which initially let the order move forward, but made clear it wasn't yet ruling on the constitutionality of the executive order, so stay tuned. And that's not the only voting story out there that's kind of alarming. There's a disturbing report about election monitors from the Department of Justice attempting to interview voters and inspect voting machines in Wyoming during the primaries last week. The state's Republican governor, Mark Gordon, said the election monitor's behavior was, quote, very odd. And called the move, quote, aggressive, unexpected, and disruptive. That is the Republican governor of Wyoming saying that. What did you guys make of that story? It's really weird. It's hard to see it as anything other than some kind of a trial run. It is a bastardization, obviously, of what DOJ election monitoring is meant to be, which is to make sure that people are able to vote and that there aren't racist Southern, election officials stopping black people from voting. That is the original function here that they're abusing. Even the Republican governor is saying this was unprofessional and strange. And by the way, they're not just interviewing voters. They were trying to gain access to the voting machines, right? Which just has absolutely nothing to do with election monitoring because they're not talking about the access to vote or protecting the right to vote. They're talking about the tabulating of voting. This conspiracy theory just revolves around, these people trying to get their hands on the voting machines. They're desperate to get their hands on the machines. The truth is in the machines. But it seemed like part of what made this so, like why even this Republican governor spoke out against it. It was all just so boorish and silly and ham-fisted and incompetent that it was just a kind of sowing chaos in a primary in Wyoming. Yeah, I'm confused why they chose Wyoming and also, I guess, Miami-Dade. Well, some they had announced. Some they had pointed to. This one they hadn't. I think, yeah, well, DOJ. So, my reaction when I read the story was why? Why Wyoming? Why a Wyoming primary? Why are you trying to interview voters? Why not give the Republican governor of the state a heads up? Like, was this overzealous people at DOJ or was this part of a broad-based effort? And especially because the Wyoming Secretary of State is a Republican who ran on the big lie and like 2020 fraud. He ran in 2022, but he ran on the 2020 election. And so, I was looking around at the DOJ website and they put out a press release on August 18th saying that they were monitoring, you know, polling places in Florida and Wyoming. So, they were public about it, but I guess they didn't really effectively communicate it to the elected officials in the state. It's crazy. None of it makes sense. None of it adds up. I mean, they're going to, you know, Trump has talked before about a plan to send election monitors all over the country and polling places in the midterms. And so, and again, like the DOJ has done that before. So, like they have that authority to do so. But, you know. So, they announced it. This is so strange, right? Because in July, the same office run by a sort of Trumpy kind of online weirdo announced their list of states and it didn't include Wyoming. So, they added Wyoming late, like in the last like week or it's very strange. It's very strange. I don't know. I found a press release. It was really weird. Hopefully, the midterms are fine. I'm sure. I'm sure. I'm sure this is the last one. Nothing to worry about. Yeah, nothing to worry about this. What do you think about the latest with the Postal Service? We're now again in legal limbo. Though we are even closer to the day that ballots are supposed to be delivered. Yeah. So, there was a ruling last week and people were freaking out about it. And then Norm Eisen was like, don't freak out yet because it's going to be another step. And then there was and now it's on hold. Like, look, anything is possible. This order is so fucking crazy. It is so crazy to imagine that there is a secret power bestowed upon the Postal Service to decide which ballots are allowed and which ballots are not allowed. It doesn't apply to any other. There's no, you can't come up with a law that doesn't apply to any other. You can't come up with a law that doesn't apply to any other comparison to any other kind of mail or rule. It doesn't even make sense, right? The only reason this is even possible is because we've never had ballots as anything other than open in terms of being able to tell it's a ballot, right? So, what would happen if somebody just took their ballot and put it in a white envelope, right? That's not protected by the Fourth Amendment because you as a voter are protected. You as a person, a citizen are protected. Your mail is protected. They're not allowed to go in there without a warrant. So, because ballots are not allowed to go in there, they're not allowed to go in there without a warrant. So, because ballots look like ballots, they've created a rule in which the Postal Service can, on behalf of the federal government, decide which state is upholding the rules they want or not. It's just so absurd on its face that you can't imagine even the Supreme Court allowing it to go through. Well, one of the DOJ's arguments to the Supreme Court, or in one of the cases, it might not have been the Supreme Court one, was, well, I mean, this isn't the federal government getting involved in state elections because obviously the states are, you know, and the Constitution says the states can run elections themselves. And if the states just wanted to deliver the ballots themselves to people, nothing is stopping them from doing that. We're just saying that if you use the Postal Service, this is what you have to do, which is funny because it's like, they're even, like, Trump's out there being like, I hate mail-in ballots. We want to cancel them. And like, but I use them all the time. But I use them all the time, right? But in court, they're like, no, no, no, this isn't about anything about mail-in ballots not being great. This is just about the Postal Service requiring a certain kind of envelope. And based on if you've, you get a barcode and you get the barcode, if you've given us the list of voters. But this is where, like, it just, none of it really makes sense, right? Because I am just a person using the mail. I am a person mailing my ballot that I am legally allowed to mail, that they're grabbing because of a dispute with the state, right? But, like, if they have evidence that there is a specific person who they believe is a non-citizen using the mail, they can, you know, they get a, go get a warrant and open the fucking, you know, prove that this guy or this person isn't, isn't, isn't eligible to vote, right? But they can't just dismiss a whole group of people from voting because they're in some kind of other dispute. It's just, it's so, it's, it's, it's so ham-fisted. To me, it seems now at this point, at least through this election, it is only meant to sow mistrust and uncertainty around mail-in voting. And, like, you know, there, I think it's Katanja Brown-Jackson, like, sort of warns about sort of this court's habit of deciding cases are either too early or too late, right? And the possibility that they will do that once again, they're doing it with the ballroom. But to me, it's like, it's now getting to the point where it is inconceivable, inconceivable that any court could allow this to be in place for this election. And so to me, it's a, I hope, a future threat at best. Yeah, that's sort of where I landed too, because you, even with, even the Supreme Court, the way they described the first ruling, it was like, well, they haven't issued the final rule yet, so no one has actually been harmed yet. Now that the, now that the rule has been issued, when it comes back to them and they have to actually constitutionality of the rule itself, it feels like it could be a very different situation. Yeah. So assuming people get their ballots delivered and can vote without federal agents interfering, Republican candidates will have to contend with their most formidable midterm opponent, Donald Trump. Over the weekend, Jonathan Martin published a piece with the headline, the Republican Party's Midterm Nightmare is Taking Shape. The standout quote came from North Dakota Republican Senator Kevin Cramer. He's not usually a quote machine, you don't hear much from Kevin Cramer. But he cited the price of diesel, the price of fertilizer, and Trump's tariffs, telling J-Mart, quote, he's in serious trouble in farm country, he being Trump, and Trump is us. I'm not very optimistic. Rough. What'd you guys think of J-Mart's piece? I think that could have been a cleaner sentence from Cramer. I see why he's not quoted very much. I think they were, I think they were like, eating together or something. I don't know. I assume they were eating together because it's J-Mart. Yeah, Jonathan, that's all he does. He's constructed a show around going to lunches in various places. I read the piece and my reaction was, you know, close my eyes, say a little prayer that it comes to be. I do suspect that the kind of economic sentiment and frustration is locked in. There's no fixing that between now and election day. In fact, there's reasons to believe it could get worse because of all the Iran stuff we talked about at the top. It does feel like Trump is doing everything in his power to lose the midterms. The farmer piece of it is real. Like, I've talked to people in Iowa about how he screwed over Iowa farmers. The China trade war crushed soybean farmers. The Iran war jacked up the price of gasoline and diesel and fertilizer. The fight with Canada is just the latest piece of this. And Canada, by the way, is being very strategic in where it is targeting those tariffs. They're hitting Michigan. They're hitting Maine. But a lot of those farmers are still just like red-pilled, Fox News loving, Rush Limbaugh listening Republicans. And like, I don't know where they're going to go. The hope is they don't vote. The hope is that Rob Sand and Josh Turek can convince enough of them to stay home or maybe go crazy and vote for a Democrat. So we'll see. I mean, it's like. Like, it's challenging fundamentals in some of those states. Reading through the list of states, like, I feel really good about North Carolina. The fundamentals in Maine should be leaning pretty hard towards Democrats, but we've had challenges in that state before. After there, it gets complicated. You know, when Ohio's at the top of your flip list, you know, you start crossing your fingers and saying some prayers. Speaking of Iowa, a paragraph on the piece that I really liked was, flipping pork burgers at the Iowa State Fair earlier this month, Ashley Hinson, who's running against Josh Turek, was glad to discuss her technique with the spatula, the importance of her race to the Senate map, and her opponent missing votes on the legislature. But she went silent at repeated questions about whether it was time to end the war. I mean, you just can't, you can't get away with that until November. I mean, like, maybe you still pull it out, but like, that's not. There will be a debate, there will be editorial board meetings, there will be a bunch of opportunities where she is going to have to answer questions about this. Yeah. And John Husted, who's running against Sherrod, I think, at the outset, he said, like, he wanted the war to be, like, quick and efficient and successful, or clean and successful, quick and successful. How's that going? It's like, yeah, it's not, that's not going well either. Yeah. Wishes were kisses. You know? Wishes were kisses. That's what I'm always saying. Yeah. No, you're always saying that. I also think, like, the, it's not, things with Canada could get worse in a meaningful way between now and then, too. I mean, I talked to the. A sentence that is crazy that you had to say. I know. I talked to the premier of. British Columbia today for Pod Save the World coming out Wednesday. Subscribe wherever you get your pods. He's not in Carney's political party. He's in the party to the left of Carney. He's putting pressure on Carney to do more to retaliate. Not, like, Carney has been, like, perfectly proportionate in his response. It's like dollar for dollar responses. He wants him to do more, consider, like, not buying F-35s, for example. And so, Carney has support from his left. He also has support from his right, right? We've seen Doug Ford in Ontario literally telling Trump to kiss his ass. And 76% of Canadian voters support walking away from the talks. So, like, that is not, they're not capitulating anytime soon. Certainly not before the midterms. It's interesting that Trump is successfully producing a nationalist fervor, but it's just in Canada. Yeah, yeah. Did you, did you hear that dipshit congressman Andy Harris was on Fox today? And they were talking about the Canadian trade war. And he's like, yeah, you know, Alberta might want to, as talked about before, like, seceding from Canada. They're like, we should annex that state. We should just go in there and take it. Because a lot of oil there, a lot of good oil reserves. We, like, we are now just, we have Republican congressmen. We're taking Venezuela's oil. Canada looks good. We'll take some oil there. We'll annex, like, what the, what has happened? Pretty sure he's Hannah's parents' congressman. Oh, he's, oh, he's the, like, the one Republican from Maryland. Gerrymandered. Well, you see, John. Real idiot. Yeah, well, so, fascism. Is a little bit, is a permission. Well, this is like what you hear when, like, you watch, you know, the clips from Russia. Like, Russian state TV, the way they talk about the rest of these pundits. It's like, these are now our Republican congressmen. Well, just like, they're, it's like, oh, you know, oh, you can't call Trump a fascist. Oh, it's too late. It's too soon. Whatever. It's like, it's an instinct. It's an instinct. And for, it's, there can be no ego wound. There can be no loss. There can be nothing that shows weakness. And inevitably, it does lead to one place, which it just requires to be, to be, to, toward expansion. Because it is the only way to truly prove you're strong and tough and can't be defeated. So, we're going to go after Greenland and get the Venezuelan oil. And we're going to bomb Karg Island. And then we're going to take Alberta. And it's, you know, quite cold up there. Also, Alberta's having a vote on whether to have a Brexit-style referendum. Most people think there's, like, 30% support for that. So, it's like, okay, we're just going to invade because they're having a vote? Yeah, I was going to say. Sure. It's beside the point since we're just going to invade anyway. So, you guys alluded to this. But, of course. Of all the vulnerable Republicans running in the midterms, Trump's trade war with Canada is making it especially difficult for Mike Rogers and Susan Collins, who are trailing their Democratic opponents in two border states that are really going to get screwed by the tariffs. Rogers put out a very long statement over the weekend where he tried to blame Democrats for the trade war, specifically Alyssa Slotkin and Gary Peters, the other two senators from Michigan, and said Trump is, quote, right to put America first. And tariffs are necessary, but are not a one-size-fits-all solution. What does that mean? In Maine, Susan Collins showed that she's not afraid to stand up to Trump by writing a letter to Howard Lutnick, where she politely urged the administration to restart trade negotiations. Hey, hey, Senator Collins, here's the thing. If you just ask for agent enough times, you can get that letter to Lutnick's manager. To a person. You can get that thing up the chain of command. You do have, you don't know where to, how to send. Letters to the president. You're sending a, a, a, a, a warmly worded letter to the commerce secretary, who you know is a powerless schlub. She also like, uh, she, she listed off some of the impacts on, on people in Maine from the trade war. And at the end was like, please feel free to reach out and follow up. If there are any other impacts, uh, on Maine that you would like to know about. It's like, I mean, like, obviously they're trying to have it both ways, right? They want to seem like they are against. The tariffs and the trade war, these two without, I guess, like doing too much to piss off Trump. But like, it doesn't seem like the best strategy. I don't know. In normal times, you would like distance yourself from the dumb, unpopular thing that's harming your state and show that you care about your state and you're fighting for your state. And also that you have some independence. Um, but Trump doesn't think much of independent thinking. So they're all kind of stuck. I just, I don't think you really have it both ways. I mean, nationally, uh, Nate Silver has Trump. At like 58% disapproval in terms of trade policy and tariff policy nationwide. I would like to see some data from states like Michigan or Maine, um, that are affected by the tariffs, but I would imagine it would be more acutely felt there. I like, I can't think of a better statement for Abdul than Mike Rogers putting out a statement on tariffs. And then the first line is once again, Michiganders are forced to bear the consequences of the fair leadership from our democratic officials. In Washington, because Abdul's point is this guy's going to be a sock puppet for Donald Trump. You were asked a question specifically about Donald Trump's policies and you can't criticize him. You cannot offer a single word of criticism. It's unbelievable. No one's going to buy it. Once again, they're not in charge. No one, but no, everyone knows they're not in charge. So who is this statement for? You've got democratic candidates out there. A lot of them saying they wouldn't vote for Schumer for leader, like unafraid to break with the national party on things. And. On the most unpopular economic policy from Donald Trump that is specifically hurting two states, Susan Collins, a state and Mike Rogers state that are more, they're like running for election and reelection. They can't even say like, I disagree. Not only do I disagree with Donald Trump, but like, I'm going to try to do something like, you know, send me back there and I'm going to keep fighting. I like to just do something to show that you're fighting besides a fucking like a letter is a joke, a caricature like this. The joke is a strongly worded letter. And like, that's what she. She did. She just did the caricature. It's not even that strongly worded. It's not a caricature. It's a very, it's a very mild letter. It's a tepid letter. It's a tepidly worded letter. That's what she said. And then, and Rogers is like, but tariffs are not a one size fits all solution. Like, what are we, are we supposed to read into what that possibly means? Yeah, but hey, tell your boss that. So you support. He seems to think they are. He's, well, like, it's interesting what's happened with the politics of tariffs specifically, because at this moment, free trade is just, it's, it's, it's, it's very in right now. Very popular free trade. Right. But like. Even the lefties. Right. But if you would have said, right, if you would have said, like, the politics on tariffs before Donald Trump did this, did tariffs in the way that he's done, would have been like, and we're going to put tariffs on Canadian goods because we're going to stop them from taking our jobs. Like, that could have been an applause line at a Democrat, kind of at a, at a Michigan rally like a decade ago. Yeah. Even less. And so it is a strange thing of, like, are people, is he sort of not wanting to give up the good politics of tariffs while criticizing these? I don't know. It's, he's, he's afraid of Trump. Yeah, of course. Of course. He's afraid of Trump. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. While we're big fans of BetterHelp, the real story is the feedback from people using it every single day. That is the real story. That's the real story. The media won't tell you about it. BetterHelp has an average live therapy session rating of 4.9 out of 5 based on over 1.7 million client session reviews. The feedback from real people who have actually used the service speaks for itself. More than 6 million people have used BetterHelp globally. BetterHelp therapists have at least three years and 1,000 hours of hands-on experience. They all hold all required education, training, and certifications across a range of mental health specialties. Meaning the perfect therapist for you could be a few clicks away. BetterHelp makes it easy to get started, answer a few questions, get matched with a therapist based on your needs, and switch therapists at any time if it's not the right fit. Therapy. It's so important. So important. I gotta get back into therapy. Oh, wow. Yeah. What are you doing? I'm doing Love It or Leave It. I was talking about. I guess that's a form of therapy. At Love It or Leave It, I was talking about the intrusive thoughts I have just from the walk from backstage onto the stage. And it horrified the crowd. Yeah, see, that's a perfect reason to go to therapy because that's the better place for that. John, do you ever. Maybe you can get BetterHelp. If I'm on the street, all right, and like I will see like, let's say there'll be a commotion or people arguing about a traffic spot or something, you know, just see something. I not only imagine them fighting and then a crime and then a death and then a trial, I am standing on the street. I am testifying at that trial. Like that's a fully the full story unfolds in a second. second of two people just being mad in a parking lot. Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's a mental, that's, that's something I should get talked to somebody about. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just thinking about the news. Yeah. For you, it's the news. Visit betterhelp.com slash PSA. That's betterhelp.com slash PSA. 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If you're a Friends of the Pod subscriber, a limited number of discounted tickets are still available. Get them before they run out. See you at CricketCon. Speaking of the Michigan race, Abdul is working to repair his image among some in the state's Jewish community, specifically about comments he made back in March after the attack on a synagogue in the Detroit suburbs. At the time, Abdul firmly condemned the attack, but then tried to offer some context by saying that, quote, hurt people hurt people, meaning that violence in the Middle East can lead to violence here. Here's part of what he said at an event with Jewish Democrats on Saturday. I did not appreciate that in the attempt to offer broader context, I was trampling the dignity that that fear and that pain should have been afforded. And I could imagine that for a lot of folks, that would have read like, he does not see our pain or weigh it equally. Correct. And that was not my intention with the statement. And if my statement caused pain, I'm sorry. That was not what I meant. And sometimes you can offer context or something, but not in the moment when people are feeling it. And, you know, I made a mistake. And in the fullness of time, I hope that we can have conversations that are about context. But sometimes you can't really see context in the moment of acuity or pain. And I want folks to know that, you know, when the Jewish community is attacked, I'm going to be right there to defend. What do you guys make of the apology and the way he framed it? I watched the original message back. It was like a four-page message. I think he just tried to do too much in it. If you think back to that moment, it was like the guy who attacked the synagogue, he was born in Lebanon. He had just lost family, I think, including kids and Israeli airstrikes. So then he decided to attack the synagogue in retaliation, which obviously is like unjustifiable, evil, and just an act of terrorism. And Abdul, you know, condemned what he did. He called it unacceptable. And then he just tried to explain the context, which was like, what I just talked about, and then why it's wrong to blame Jewish people for actions of the Israeli government. And then get into like the hurt people, hurt people thing. And then do this broader point of like, imagine if there was no war and like no one was incentivized to do this kind of stuff. And it just, it was too much. And I think listeners just felt like it was close to maybe a justification or blaming the war for what this individual did rather than just saying like, this is evil and unjustifiable, full stop. So it sounds like the message was well-received in the room. I think there's value in politics actually to saying, I was wrong. I screwed up. I'm sorry. If I hurt you, I'm really sorry. I think, you know, that that's meaningful to people. So hopefully it helps, you know, staunchly bleeding here. And I think restore some trust and open a dialogue between Abdul and the Jewish community, which is a lot of people are trying to exacerbate that split with, you know, conversation about Hassan Piker or whatever else. The, uh, so, uh, I think it's, uh, I'm glad he did this. I think it is good. Uh, I do. And I, and I like hesitant to even sort of, I don't know, like nitpick because, you know, he is apologizing for this statement. It is clear what he means and what he meant and what he is trying to do. And he is under a nonstop barrage of false Islamophobic, uh, bigoted attacks, fast and furious constantly, or attacks that assume some Islamophobia on the part of the listener by making all kinds of, uh, assumptions about him, about him being evil. That was just today with Vance, uh, or how that he believes evil things, whatever it would be. Uh, but at the same time, like I, I, you see this right, right. Like, like, Oh, it's about the context. Okay. Uh, like the, and he does say in, in both the original statement and he says here, right. That like, there was no justification, right. Because whatever pain this person may have experienced, however real and terrible it may be collective punishment is always wrong. It is wrong. When someone commits a terrorist attack against Jews in Michigan, it is wrong. When Israel kills, uh, civilians in Gaza. And, and to me, it can stop there. The cause of the hurt is immaterial. And part of, I think why the statement brought people the wrong way is not because there was something fundamentally untrue about what he was saying. It was about, uh, the, that like the source of the pain matters, right? Like we care about certain kinds of pain more than we care about other kinds of pain. And so I'm glad he is saying this in the statement, but the idea that there was like, Oh, the time for context was later, maybe, so, but I don't, I think at any point in which you're discussing this, it has to begin and end with the fact that any form of collective and our own feelings are never a justification, uh, for any kind of violence against people, uh, who simply are part of a group that you are antagonistic towards. I thought it was a really genuine apology. Like in terms of like, there's a range of politician apologies and some are more half-assed than others. And, you know, he was just sort of doing that off the cuff. He was asked a question, he didn't hold back. Um, and he didn't try to say like, well, I didn't intend this and that. It was like, no, I made a mistake. And there's the time for context. This wasn't it. Like he, I just thought it was great. And, um, you know, Jessica Alexander is the chair of the mission, Michigan democratic Jewish caucus. Um, she said, you know, she obviously the campaign knows there's work to do with the Jewish community, but, um, she doesn't have concerns about Abdul and, um, Jeremy Moss, who's the democratic nominee for a house seat in Michigan, uh, and Jewish and has been, has declined to endorse, um, Abdul since the primary. Um, he said, he's still concerned about Abdul's position on Israel, but that, um, the apology was genuine, credible, appreciated by the caucus. And then said, we've had a lot of meaningful and thoughtful conversations since the primary. And this was something that got brought up. So like, I think it's sort of also, I mean, you can look at the, you can dissect the national implications and the Hassan Piker of it all and all, but I think it was like Abdul, reaching out and talking to the Jewish community in Michigan. And this was, this was the thing that really bothered people. And so he said, okay, I'm going to address it. I was like, just the use of such a kind of cliched phrases, hurt people, hurt people probably was like a big part of it, even if it makes sense inside the context. I also, by the way, like, this is not, I don't even, not even saying that what I, like my, the feeling I have is less directed specifically at this, this comment by Abdul than like, there is this, you see it all the time. And it's just part of, I think it's like a social media thing. And I think it's part of, I think it's part of, I think it's part of, I think it's a social media thing that like the, so like Brad Lander is yelled at on the streets of New York, right? And Brad Lander has, is against AIPAC. He won his race in part because he came out against military for aid for Israel. He's called what Israel did in Gaza, a genocide, right? He called Israel an apartheid state. Like he has yet while still defending the idea of a two-state solution in which Israel and Palestine live side by side in peace, fine. And he gets harassed on the street. And I, and I saw people coming to his defense by saying something about how like, oh, this is unhelpful, right? This to attack someone like that is it, it, it makes it look as though this movement is antisemitic. It makes it look, look as though the argument against the argument by the Zionist is true that there's people who don't accept any Jew that is part of this movement, right? It was like, hold on a second. It's not really just about how it looks, right? Like there is antisemitism in this movement. That is a problem. It is a problem on your terms because it makes your movement less successful. It is also a problem for a society to infused inside of a growing and increasingly popular movement that needs to be addressed on the merit. It's not simply because it's bad strategy, right? And like, but part of it is there's this effort to like the, the generosity for people on our own side versus the kind of the assumption of bad faith on the part of the other. It's like, let's just apply the same standard across the board, right? This is, we would call a right-winger doing this an antisemite, not someone who is giving into the Zionist by seeming like an antisemite. Yeah. And we have to, and we have to do that even when it's on our own That's the point I'm making. - JD Vance. was scheduled to speak to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Vegas on Monday evening. But before that, he was in Michigan, where he hit Abdul on the synagogue comments, lots of other things. He stood up for his wife in like a sort of fake-seeming way that did not really come off as a human, which is typical of J.D. Vance. Abdul tried to counter with some Ohio State trash talk, J.D. Vance couch joke. What do you guys think? Who do you think got the better of that exchange in Michigan? And any thoughts on how this campaign's going? It's hard to say. I mean, J.D. is as cynical as they come, right? This is the guy who famously said that the country was being run by a bunch of childless cat ladies, and he was such a prick about it. So I rolled my eyes at the whole wounded, like, how dare you talk about my family thing, because he was the one who invoked his peepaw in the first place when he attacked Abdul and was like, imagine. Imagine telling my peepaw, Democrats support Sharia law, wherever it was. I did a joke about that in Love It or Leave It, which is like, oh, Papa, he's going to bring Sharia law. He's like, I don't know what that is yet. I haven't been made to be afraid of that yet. The fuck doesn't exist yet. Yeah, so like all that said, like, I do think you're on firm political ground politically. If you just focus on the person running for office, the elected official, and not their family, and not kind of like constantly make this point about J.D. Vance's family and kids. I also think that the couch fucker thing has been dead for a while. And no one really knows what you're talking about. And probably is worth steering away from. I mean, if I'm talking about J.D. Vance, I'm just talking about how this is a guy who's willing to say or do anything for power. He is willing to flip-flop on any policy issue, support any war, like do what it takes to make sure Donald Trump is president and go with that. What are they doing? What are they doing to hurt people? That is the, that is which I would keep that in mind for every candidate in every race. And when you're going after the Republicans, whether the ones you're running against or Donald Trump, it is what have they done to hurt people and piss people off? And I'm going to talk about that and fight for people. And you're not running against J.D. Vance. And you have a limited amount of time to define Mike Rogers, right? He's the, he is, this is the Republican that has, he ultimately has embraced the 2020 conspiracy theories. But I think there is still a must, there's like a memory of him as being kind of an old school, reasonable Republican. You have a limited amount of time to define Mike Rogers. J.D. Vance is a representation. Of a failed, destructive administration that is, that is damaging Michigan's economy that will be backed up 100% by Mike Rogers. And so any tit for tat you're in, that's about J.D. Vance as a person, about his family, about couch fucker, whatever it is, is not about the core. It's not, it's not the, it's the sound bite people are pulling and it has nothing to do with Mike Rogers whatsoever. That's, that to me is the problem. So Trump apparently isn't satisfied with just making Republicans defend his stupid trade. War. He's also going to make them defend his stupid support for data centers. Um, out of nowhere, he took to truth social on Monday morning to write the following. The only reason that communities throughout the USA should not want data centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor, if they want to be successful and rich with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let data rain. Uh, the good news is that there are plenty of other places that want them. If we kill the golden goose, only have yourselves to blame. Uh, the post got flooded with replies from truth, social users saying things like, I regret ever supporting you. You have lost your mind. And this statement is insane. Like why do you guys think Trump is, uh, intent on dying on this Hill? This, this is just another example of him doing everything possible to lose the midterms. It feels like, I mean, for just so folks know elected officials on both sides of the aisle are furiously backpedaling from data centers. Like Josh Shapiro was all in on all these big investments coming to Pennsylvania. He's not pumping the brakes and putting executive orders out. The NRSC just put out a memo where they described data centers as the anchor around the neck of the Republican Senate candidate in Ohio. And Trump was like, you guys are a bunch of idiots. Quit your bitching, quit your bitching about wanting water and power. It's just so like, like JD Vance, like tries to clean up after Trump when he's on the tarmac in Michigan and is asked about this. And he's like, well, I don't think data centers are controversial as long as, you know, you make sure that the companies, the hyperscalers that are building them are not, uh, or, you know, creating or building their own power plants, you know, uh, I don't know if that's going to help either. Um, building their own power plants and that the electricity rates aren't going up and that people like, so he's trying to add all these caveats and then Trump's out there just like, no, they're awesome. And if you don't like them, you're backwards and poor. Or you will be soon enough that it's like the, the mishandling of the data centers, like Trump's comments to me are like, oh, you don't want to kill the golden goose. And it's like, okay, these companies are on television on a daily basis saying basically we're building it. Whether you like, we're, we're inventing this technology. Uh, it'll help you cheat on your, it'll help your kids cheat at school. Uh, it may destroy the planet. It may cure cancer. It will eliminate all the jobs in order to get to that desired outcome. In order to get to that desired outcome, it will eliminate all the jobs in order to get to that desired outcome. We are going to have to have massive construction that requires a great deal of water and power. And after that is done, it will be monitored by basically one security guard in perpetuity. Uh, and, and also just don't forget over the course of three Republican administrations, we've slowly but surely, uh, reduced any public good in terms of taxes that could come from this. We have, we have showed you that we are going to have a tax code in which all that wealth accrues, the jobs are eliminated. And there's no public benefit, right? Or there's much less of a public benefit. Uh, and then we don't, and then they're shocked that there's some kind of a backlash, right? Like these people are all so greedy. And I think like the tax part of it is not part of this debate. And it's not really, it's, it's, it's tangential, I guess. Uh, but they have spent years training people to expect that corporations are going to, uh, build a tax code in which the public will not benefit from their profits. And people, I think now instinctively do not believe like there was a time when I think, you know, look, it was a famous sentence, right? What's good for GM is good for the country. It was using the pejorative, but like there was a sense in which we kind of believed that the success of an American of American company was a kind of shared kind of success for the country. And I just don't think people buy that anymore. And so then you're just going to build this thing in my house and take all the money. And what do I get out of it? Maybe you're claiming lower electricity rates, which may be actually technically true, but actually doesn't intuitively make sense. So I'm not going to believe you. You get AI photos of Donald Trump's Canada geese with machine guns is what you get. I think, to answer your question, I think the reason Trump puts out stuff like that is because the only people around him are rich guys who probably have a vested financial interest in these companies who bought access to Trump. So he's probably reflecting their views in the cynical ways they talk about the stuff behind closed doors. I mean, you see this stuff from like the all-in podcast guys, like Chamath, what's his name, was attacking someone who simply wrote up a sub stack piece about the very scary open AI hugging face cyber attack incident. And he was attacking him as some sort of, you know, Luddite shill for, I don't know, big humanity or something. It's funny that those are the people who actually are like probably speaking to Trump directly. Yeah. Trump needs these data centers so he can fight the war with Iran and Canada online with all of his AI slot. I think that's why he needs them. I mean, there's like a, the problem with this is there is a, okay, the first one big problem people have with data centers is the technology that's actually running the shit out of everyone. Mainly because the people who've invented this technology and are developing it have told us so. But let's pretend that the data centers were for technology that was going to be universally beneficial and had, didn't have a lot of problems. There's like a way to build them where as opposed to giving tax breaks to these big data centers, you make them pay a tax to the community, which they do in Loudoun County, where it has most of the data centers. And like, sure enough, they're like building new schools and have all kinds of fancy public projects and all the roads are repaved and everything and people's property taxes are going down. So you can do that. If they, if they are going to add to the power grid, you can make these companies then modernize the power grid, make it bigger, make it work better, right? Which we've needed to do for a while. Like there's ways to put all the responsibility and burden on the companies building the data centers so that it works well. And then make sure that the public has input in each community, all this kind of shit, all of that's going to go because we have fucking Donald Trump. Who's like, just build them or fucking shut up or you're backwards and poor. Like, like there's going to be no getting past sort of like the populist antipathy towards these data centers with the way things are going. And that's going to be blamed that the people responsible for that will be Donald Trump and the AI companies themselves. Oh yeah. Like this backlash, like the fact that there's now a poll that people would rather have a nuclear, a nuclear power plant close to them than a data center. I can't make it both because the data centers might need to build their own nuclear power plant just to, uh, just to run the data. Sure. I personally would choose data center in that bargain, right? Like you just like, there is a lot of like, I think in part because like there, the, the, the first round of this was done without a lot of input from people are scared about the implications of this. And like, there, there's such hubris on the part of these people like, Oh, you're just stupid for not wanting this. Or you're just, you're just like, you don't, you, you, you, you don't want, I guess you don't want to defeat China. That's the dumb shit. Look, just to be honest, you're stopping the construction of these data centers is going to have very little impact on the deployment of AI or the ability of these companies to build the next big model. Almost none. It's completely negligible. I think what this is, is a proxy for the anger people feel at having absolutely no control over the deployment of this technology. Congress isn't doing anything. States aren't doing anything. The Trump administration was trying to block states from doing anything on their own. So this data center issue and the construction of them has become the focus of the fight. And so Trump is both getting paid off by the executives, but also knows that the entire stock market is propped up by a couple AI stocks and this circular investment they have with a handful of other companies. And once that balloon is popped, the whole thing is crashing down and his singular accomplishment, which is a high stock market, which he doesn't really have anything to do with, is coming down with it. I just, again, all of the candidates in these marquee Senate races can't, who've tried to backpedal along with everyone else who was pro data center, can't wait for them to be asked about this Trump comment. Mike Rogers, do you think that Michigan communities that don't want data centers are going to end up backwards and poor? What about you, Susan Collins, John Husted, all the right Ken Paxton? Um, so one other storyline from the Senate field, uh, Laura Loomer is back in the news, uh, going after Florida democratic nominee, Angie Nixon and other prominent women of color, uh, in terms that are so disgusting. I'm not even going to try to characterize them. We're just going to play the clip. Call out the entitlement of these, as I like to call them ghetto black bitches, Angie Nixon, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Horry Bush, Katonji Brown Jackson. It goes both. Um, you know, you don't get to go demonize white people and demonize, demonize white politicians and white men and say that, you know, there's a white male problem or a white domestic terror problem in America when you behave like an absolute animal. So we contemplated not playing that clip, but thought it was important to do so because that is someone who has regularly flown with Donald Trump on air force. One has walk-in access to the oval, um, and gets people hired and fired. She got the head of the NSA fired. She got like a bunch of top national security officials fired. And I have not heard one Republican candidate politician been asked to answer for this. No, I mean, it's shockingly racist. She said stuff like this before. She's also said things about, uh, Islam and Muslims that are just as bad. She called herself a proud Islamophobe. She said that Islam is a cancer that Muslims are savages. Um, I think these comments like Laura Loomer's existence is one of the best examples of where Democrats and Republicans are just as bad. Um, I think these comments like Laura are hurt by not having a massive right-wing media apparatus like Fox news, because we have Fox on in our office a lot. There's been a story about Hassan Piker every hour on the hour on Fox news for probably a couple of weeks now. This is no exaggeration. No, no, literally you have it on mute. You just look up and it's just like, it's Hassan Abdul, occasionally the parent of us, of a, of a volleyball player, you know? Yeah. Mom, Donnie, she'll pop up. Yeah. The other challenge though, is that, um, you know, opposite stuff that's like just as bad, if not worse. And so it's hard to know where the shame comes from, but it's like, it's been normalized on the right and on the left. Um, there are things that are still surprising to people, to members of Congress, to elected. So it's, it's terrible. Loomer also took credit over the weekend for ICE arresting and deporting Milo Yiannopoulos, the British born former Breitbart editor, former Kanye West aide, and just a generally vile troll. Uh, he's been out of sight for a few years, but he's seen a, a minor resurgence of late as an ally of Tucker Carlson, who plans to publish Yiannopoulos' book called Ex-Gay. Um, Yiannopoulos appears to be a player in the larger Laura Loomer, Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor Greene war. Anyone want to attempt to untangle this one or talk about, or, or thoughts on Milo's deportation? It's, uh, there's a, you know, uh, you are what you pretend to be, so you should be careful what you pretend to be. And that picture that, that, that. Who's pretending to be what in this? I think like kind of taking on, taking on this idea. Like what, I don't know if what his true beliefs are is they moved around. Milo or Tucker? Milo. Okay. He's been gay. He's not gay. He's been, you guys, now he's a national, whatever his positions has sort of like to kind of be a kind of publicity seeking troll and kind of heterodox in some way that is interesting and, and also like at times sort of just clearly like making it seem as though his beliefs are not real and that he doesn't have real beliefs. He's all a big show. Like it ends with the department. You, you help, you know, you become a, a, a fascistic right wing kind of troll online. And then the Homeland Security is putting a kind of an unflattering picture of you on the internet while they deport you. Uh, and, uh, I feel like it's like the, whatever it looked, every edgelord train kind of ends in their version of that. Whatever, you know, there's no, there's no, in the same way, there's no like 40 year old ballerinas. It's like, this is the end. There's some terrible end to the edgelord path. Yeah. I've not dug into this one. He sucks. This guy, go away. Have fun in the UK. Go back to Breitbart. Yeah. There's some of his tweets about immigration. Just a few, like zero immigration for the next 20 years. No ifs, no buts. That's what he said last year on X. He also had a horrible post about like a couple of years before that. Like, um, what's the adequate when you see an ice, uh, raid, uh, can you masturbate right there? Or do you have to take cover for, I mean, it was just like, like he's gone so far in the direction of like, I can't wait to see him again. I can't wait to see him again. I can't wait to see people deported and all that kind of stuff. Now, all that said, um, the idea that if, if Milo was, uh, still in Trump's good graces, said nice things about the Trump administration, do we think he would have been deported? Probably not. First, they came for Milo Yiannopoulos. I mean, it is, it is because of the personalities involved. You don't think about this, but it is fucking crazy that a random citizen or advisor, political advisor, you know, media star can like, not like someone think that that person's been critical of the Trump administration, call up ice and be like, go find them and deport them. And then it works. Let's also look, look, it's the, the, what draws the evil eye. And sometimes what draws the evil eye is Jimmy Kimmel because he's on the left or, uh, some figure that annoys Trump, uh, uh, because they're not on side, but it's just as like, it's a classic story. You draw, if you're inside the of course, sometimes the people that have been closest to the, the leader are the ones that are end up in the Gulag or deported or, you know, in other regimes killed. Yeah. All right. When we come back, Nevada gubernatorial candidate, Aaron Ford. My guest today is the attorney general for Nevada and is running as the democratic nominee in Nevada's gubernatorial race. Aaron Ford, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you so much for having me. Great to see you. Thank you for being in studio. Um, I want to start by asking you about your opponent, governor Lombardo. At a recent event, he said that he can't control affordability issues. He can't control inflation rates. He said claims otherwise were quote bullshit. He also said, quote, when you talk about kitchen table issues, such as affordability, groceries, and all that, that is a driver of the federal government. Do you agree with that? And if not, what can the governor of a state like Nevada do to drive down prices or just make the life more affordable for people? Yeah, well, absolutely. I disagree with him on this and I've made that point known. Um, again, thanks for having me on. Sure. This is an important part of the conversation that we had with Nevadans and people across the nation who have people who don't think they can do anything about affordability. He called it bullshit to use your phraseology. And, uh, what I've said is that what, uh, what I think is BS is that he vetoed a bill, uh, that would have put a thousand dollars back in parents' pockets per child per year when he vetoed a bill for guaranteed school lunch for our children. What's BS is when he vetoed a bill that would have limited the amount you could pay for prescription drugs to the Medicare negotiation system. And he vetoed a bill that would have a price for everybody putting money back in people's pockets. You see, these are the types of things that he could have done that we could be experiencing relief from right now. This affordability crisis wouldn't be as dire as it is right now. If he'd had aligned himself with the people of the state, as opposed to the corporations that are bankrolling his campaign. I was talking to a young lady in Minden, Nevada, it's a rural part of town and, uh, um, part of our state. And she was telling me she was grocery shopping. Um, and she had a basket full of groceries, went over to the pharmacy to pick up her prescription, looked at the price on that and left her groceries in the aisle because she couldn't afford both. You see that bill he vetoed that would have limited prescription drug costs could have helped her. Uh, and that's an affordability crisis that he is causing himself. Um, and so anyone who throws their hands up in the air like that doesn't deserve to be the governor of our state. It's a crazy thing to say when you're running for office. Yeah. Bullshit. I mean, what's the point of you being in office then? I saw some data over the last week that immigration arrests surged over the summer and that ICE had a record number of arrests in June and October. July. If you're elected governor, how would you direct the state to work with ICE or not work with ICE? Well, look, to be clear, our governor is already helping ICE. Um, you know, most Republican governors are doing that, right? Down in Texas, you see the governor offering land so they can build warehouses, right? To house folks. And our governor has committed our human resource of our National Guard members to help ICE do their job. And what I have heard and what I have said, um, is that people want our state resources, whether they are human, financial or otherwise, to be spent on state stuff, period. They want us spending our money and our time and our resources on education, on mental health issues, on infrastructure, uh, on things that are helping Nevadans, um, and not doing the job of someone else. And so, uh, that's my position as well. Uh, and, you know, I support that. I stand for that and, and unequivocally say that when I'm governor, we're going to spend our state resources on state stuff, not doing someone else's job. Last week, I saw that Metta settled a lawsuit with 48 states over claims that, uh, it's products, it's apps, you know, Instagram and other things, harmed kids by offering addictive social media platforms. You joined this suit. I'm wondering why. And what do you think the impact is going to be for kids and parents who are trying to figure out the appropriate use of social media for kids? Yeah, I'm smiling right now because I was asked the question, I think it was last Thursday, I was interviewing with one of our local reporters, and he asked me what the proudest moment was of my career as Attorney General. There are a lot of proud moments. This was one of them, if not the most prideful I've been in a while. The night before we announced the settlement, I told my wife how excited I was because, you know, to be sure, we're getting up to $255 million into our state from this settlement to help kids in the mental health issues that arose out of these addictive algorithms that are harming our kids. But what I'm most proud of is the fact that we are now instituting safety features that are going to help our kids and our mental health. You don't know this story, but last session, last set of session, I actually ran a bill. It was called the Youth Online Safety Act that would have done exactly what I'm trying to do here. Limited screen time. It would have put parental controls in. It would have put in age verification technologies. And I couldn't get the bill passed. And I got a lot of pushback from the community. But sitting next to me during one of those pieces of testimony, Tommy was a young lady. Her name was Bethany. She sat next to me with a picture of her daughter. Her daughter had committed suicide. She hung herself. And she used TikTok to do it. And when they found, she looked up ways to tie a knot on TikTok. And when they found her, TikTok was still scrolling examples of how to tie knots. Oh, my God. Right? And so what I'm most proud of right now is that this settlement, by the way, I had already sued these entities myself. I wasn't part of the multi-state lawsuit. I had sued Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook directly January of 2024. And we have beat them back from trying to escape our jurisdiction. But we've settled those cases. Now we're going to get opportunities for children. We're going to get opportunities for children to have better mental health outcomes, parents more control. You know, they won't, for example, they won't be able to get notifications during school hours anymore. They're going to limit their ability to be on these apps from midnight to six. Right? They got rid of the filters that was causing so much self-image issues. The likes and features of the default is going to have them turned off. Right? And so parents have a lot more control. We get to protect our children. And I'm very proud of that. It's just infuriating that we've been dealing with these social media apps for well over a decade. All of us feel the harms as adults or feel the impact that social media can have on you personally, emotionally, and whatnot. And yet it took a bunch of, you know, states getting together to sue to get changes. And Congress did nothing for all that time. It just feels impossible that Congress just sat on its hand for the last decade and watched all this happen. Yeah. And look, I'm not one to sit back and wait for somebody else to do something. If I have to protect my family, and I consider the state of Nevada my family, that I'm going to have to do something. I'm not going to do it. I'm not waiting for others. But also, that's the import of attorneys general working together across state lines on issues that affect residents in all of our states. Crime doesn't stop at the border, nor do social harms that arise out of these apps that you just talked about. And so this was an opportunity for, I think it ended up being 48 attorneys general and a few from our states and from our territories as well, working together over the course of years. Our investigation started back in 2021, maybe 2022. Could be off a little bit in that regard. But we've been working together, talking together, figuring out strategy, figuring out what the right algorithm or other algorithmic approach is to addressing children and mental health issues. And it's facilitated this settlement. We wait on nobody to protect our children in Nevada, and I'm proud of this work. Yeah. I want to ask you about data centers as well. So in the state legislature back in 2015, I know you sponsored legislation to create tax incentives to bring some of these data centers to Nevada. Now you're pledging that if elected, Nevada will have the strictest rules in the country governing them. What changed? And what's your response to Democrats who are calling for a full moratorium on building AI data centers? Well, a few things. First off, the data center of 2015, 11 years ago, was not the data center of 2026. I think it was seven years before the advent of chat GPT, when we were in the middle of a recession, trying to bring jobs to Nevada and looking for ways to diversify our economy beyond relying on government. And so we did incent data centers to operate there and did not contemplate what we are experiencing now. Again, the advent of chat GPT and the advent of AI and the usage and the draws on power, the electricity that is being consumed by these entities, the water that it has taken up. We live in a desert in Nevada. Right. And what I have found, having spoken to Nevadans across two statewide tours in the last, I'd say, 10 months or so. Is that it doesn't matter who I'm talking to. Democrats, Republicans or independents, everybody has a problem with these data centers coming in, taking up our energy, driving up our energy prices and draining our water. And they want us to do something. And so what I am doing is responsible and responsive, responsive to the constituents who sent me to office this time and who I'm asking to send me to office for the governor's race by developing a plan now that's going to address these data centers. I am going to halt every single future abatement on data centers. Until we can actually go back and do something that this current governor has not done. And that's audit the compliance with the terms and agreements in the first place that the folks that he's given incentives to $220 million, I think, maybe $240 million over the course of the current governor's tenure. He has an audit to him to ensure, for example, that they have hired local like they were supposed to, or they've otherwise complied with the terms of the abatement agreements. And so I'm going to stop those abatements going forward. Those tax breaks are inappropriate until we. We can audit those, but we're also going to require them to bring their own water. I've said they're not going to be able to raise consumer rates by one penny. They're going to have to use clean energy, their own clean energy to power their facilities and build out the grid to accommodate that. And these are some of the and not only that, listen to the local input before things are done. If local community doesn't want these data centers, it shouldn't be forced on them. And it seems to me that we currently have a governor who doesn't really care about local input and he, in fact, has described this data center issue as a gold rush for Nevada. And what I noticed, Tommy, is the only gold rushing right now is from the big data center folks and their gold to his pockets. Yeah, to the Trump ballroom. I did notice one Las Vegas resident or maybe not resident, but property owner who seems to support the data centers. President Trump said, if you oppose data centers, you want to be backwards and poor. He said that earlier today. Yeah. Any thoughts on that? Well. I'm beyond being surprised with commentary from our president, right? And he's certainly not on the ground here in Nevada, but his acolyte in Joe Lombardo is. And Joe Lombardo has capitulated, kowtowed, kissed up to Donald Trump at every single turn, every single turn. And it doesn't surprise me then that we haven't heard a single word from Joe Lombardo, at least not to my knowledge, refuting that form of characterization. We've seen, again, Lombardo align himself with Trump and advocating for data centers. Calling them, saying that he's wholeheartedly in support of them. See, I'm wholeheartedly in support of Nevadans, and that's why I'm being responsive to what I've heard across every demographic, that we need to address these. Joe Lombardo has written an op-ed saying we need to embrace these, and again, the gold rush. Again, he's only talking about the gold rush into his pockets, but at the end of the day, Trump is wrong for ignoring the will of the people. Lombardo is wrong for doing the same, and I'm going to be a governor who actually listens and is responsive. I want to ask you about the Las Vegas economy. I know it's been struggling. I know it's been struggling with a dip in tourism. I saw the number of visitors was down, but almost 8% in 2025 as compared to 2024. I think 2026 started kind of soft. One of the reasons I've seen cited for that tourism dip is the trade war with Canada. A ton of Canadian tourists normally go to Las Vegas, but Business Insider reported that 18% fewer Canadians visited Vegas in 2025 than 2024, they're kind of voting with their feet about Trump's comments. That's about the annex in Canada or the 51st state and now this big trade tariff fight. How much of this tourism decrease do you blame on the Trump administration's policies scaring off foreign tourists from Canada or anywhere else? Look, if I had to quantify it, I'd say that it's upwards of 100%. Really? The fact of the matter is we are living in the Lombardo-Trump economy. Joe Lombardo has advocated for these tariffs, essentially saying that we need to feel a little pain from them. I say we don't need to feel pain, we need some leadership, someone who's willing to stand up, push back against Donald Trump and say that these tariffs will harm our state. We do rely upon tourism, Canadian, Mexican, Chinese. Those tourists have stopped coming, right? At the end of the day, it has negatively impacted businesses and employment all across our state. So I sued. I sued over those tariffs and I won. Our governor said that my lawsuit was unfortunate, right? In all my lawsuits against Trump. Trump administration, the ones that I keep winning by upwards of 85% or 90%, by the way, he calls unfortunate. Again, it's because he's kowtow, kissed up and capitulated to Donald Trump at every turn, lies down. Lying Lombardo is what they call him. I mean, he lies down, but he also lies, just to be clear about that. Got it. Both. Yeah, exactly. But look, I think about this from a personal perspective, though, Tommy. You don't know my story, but I grew up eating stale candy bars for dinner. My daddy used to work at a grocery store and he found some stale candy bars at the dumpster behind the grocery store. That's the way it works. Safeway was throwing these candies away because they were stale and they couldn't sell them, but the Fords got to eat. So my daddy bought all these stale candy bars. And I keep a candy bar from that era on my desk at home, on my nightstand, on my desk at work as a visual reminder every single day of what struggle looks like. I can empathize with people who are saying that they're having a tough time surviving, let alone trying to thrive right now. You know, I went from eating stale candy bars time into becoming a single dad when I was in college, living on Section 8 housing, living on food stamps. They call it SNAP now. They got a fancy car and I had to fake money. I had to tear out the little book. I was on food stamps. I was on Medicaid. That's what kept my son and me healthy. And so I have a very real understanding of what poverty and struggle looks like. And that's why I fight every single day to ensure that everyone has the ability to survive in our state. Another lawsuit I saw you put forward is, well, the New York Times reported that Donald Trump Jr. basically, at an event, warned state AGs not to police or regulate these prediction market sites like CalShe or PolyMarket. And then I think 20 states, including yours, are part of lawsuits over whether states should govern sports gambling or whether that's a federal issue. I know you also signed a letter from 44 states criticizing the platforms. I realize that your state, and Las Vegas in particular, has a different relationship with gambling and gaming and sports betting than most states. But do you think we should be regulating these sites? I mean, do you think that the federal government or state governments should do more to regulate these kind of prediction market sites? Yeah, well, first off, Donald Trump Jr. doesn't scare me. No one scares me when it comes to protecting Nevadans, which is the reason why I've actually led the fight against these prediction markets, because we are the gold standard in Nevada when it comes to sports betting. And indeed, these prediction markets are nothing but a new fancy way of betting on sports. And they need to be regulated pursuant to our laws or any other law of the state, in my estimation, in which they are operating. That's how you protect consumers. That's how you ensure that they're playing by fair rules. These are things that we are the gold standard of, and we deserve to be able to continue fighting that. And at the end of the day, we sued CalShe, we've sued PolyMarket, we've sued Robinhood, and maybe a few others to ensure that they have to comply with our rules. And just last week, I think it was on Friday, the Ninth Circuit affirmed a ruling we got at the district court level saying that we indeed have the right to regulate these markets because they are nothing more than sports markets. They're not these commodities that they allege are controlled by swap regulations on the commodities. COTC. Exactly, right? It was a crafty way of trying to find a hole through which they could walk and operate, but they're not that savvy. And they don't frighten us. We won, and we'll continue to fight for these types of protections. I mean, look, I imagine you've been in a casino once or twice in your life, like, have enjoyed betting on sports or gambling. What do you think the impact is, in particular on young men, of, like, having a casino on your phone in your pocket with all the addictive qualities of social media and all the ways they keep you hooked with notifications and real-time monitoring and graphs and stuff, but with, like, the real financial consequences of being able to get on a real bet? Look, man, you've hit the nail on the head on one of the most important points there. And I know personally of young boys who are under the age of 21 who have engaged in, essentially, gambling and sports betting using these apps. And they have spent up their college loans. You understand? Yeah. And so they, in fact, are some of the victims that we're trying to protect. And they, in fact, would be protected if they were operating in our state in a brick and mortar or under a regulated type of activity. Because they would be, like, cut off in some way before they could get to that point? Well, I mean, whatever restrictions they have in place, they could be cut off. They're being at least monitored. You know, people can see what's going on. If they see someone's getting out of control, you know, there are interventions, so to speak. At least there's some friction, too. Like, you have to get up, get in the car, go to a casino, sit in a sports book. You know what I mean? Like, can someone your money? But the fact that you're just laying dead and, like, it just seems like a real problem. Switching gears. So, back in May, your opponent was pulled over for a suspected traffic violation. A cop tried to explain to him why he had been pulled over. Governor Lombardo dropped his name. The cop was like, "I know who you are," and proceeded to tell him about the violation. And Lombardo said, "Come on, man." And then the cop let him go. The president of the Las Vegas Police Union said Lombardo did not demand special treatment, per se, but just identified himself. Do you buy that? And did you see that, that there was a theater, a movie theater that had a special where you could get out of paying for a movie ticket by saying, "I'm Joe Lombardo"? That was a solid special there. Yes, yes, yes. A couple of questions there. The first of which is, no, I don't buy the president of the union's statement there. Joe Lombardo was absolute. And people can watch this for themselves, right? They can make their own judgment. And I think most folks I speak to, 99.9% of these folks recognize that Joe Lombardo dropped his name in order to try to avoid a consequence, right? The guy couldn't finish his sentence. The cop couldn't finish his sentence telling him why he was being pulled over before he said, "I'm Joe Lombardo." And then was told, "You ran a red light." We have very bad accidents in Nevada right now. Our insurance rates continue to rise because of these types of things. He ran a red light. That's why he was being stopped. And he says, "Come on, man." And the cop let him go. It was in the cop's discretion. I'm not suggesting the cop did something bad. But what I do know is that Lombardo intimidated the young man. Of course. And utilized his name to do that. And look, that's what we saw on camera. Imagine how this man acts when no one's actually being able to gauge how he's interacting with other folks, right? We can't trust him. He already thinks that he's above everybody, as you can tell by the way he interacts with him. We also know how he feels about Nevadans, generally speaking. We have one of the highest—you didn't ask me about this. I'm sorry. I got to say it real quick, though, because we have one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation. Under his entire three-year, eight-month tenure, we've had the highest or one of the highest unemployment rates his entire tenure. It's higher now than it was when he took office. But he has a theory for that. He says it's because people are lazy. Oh. And they don't want to work. Okay. And they'd rather depend upon the government instead of taking a job that's available to them. That's what he says. That's how he thinks about the people who he supposedly represents, right? And he also says that if you have a problem with the government and you decide to protest, you must be getting paid. Because really, truly, you can't have— Sounds familiar. Mr. Trump. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, the last thing I'll say, and I'm going to give you the mic back, is, you know—and by the way, if you are protesting because you disagree with something I said, I got two words for you: F you. Those are his words, out of his mouth, about the people he represents, right? And so him abusing his authority is yet another example of him just thinking he's better, different, set apart, and not representing the working-class members of our state, instead of aligning himself with, you know, his billionaire friends, his corporations, and looking out for himself. That guy's got a lot of bad quotes out there. Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, we're not going to let folks forget. Yeah. So, look, I mean, you've talked about a lot of the ways that he's doing the bidding for corporate America. No surprise, then, that he is sitting on a ton of cash, his campaign. His campaign account, his super PAC, they've got tens of millions of dollars on hand. How do you combat that? Yeah, look, this race is always going to be about the money versus the many. 100%. There's no way we can compete with his billionaires. Yeah, and his billionaires are his friends who give him literally a million dollars a pop into a pack. Last quarter, my PAC raised, you know, a little over a million dollars. His PAC raised $13 million. In a quarter? From like six different donors. Oh, okay. You understand? Yeah, rich people. Rich people. Dropping in, you know, people who own data centers, right? People who donated flock cameras. Now, these are people who are supporting him as he, you know, unhurls, you know, $17 million of negative ads against me, which, by the way, haven't really moved the needle. We are in a tie ballgame right now. Within a margin of error from every objective polling out there. You take away the Democratic polls and the Republican polls and look at the objective polling. It's either a margin of error race or a tie ballgame. And that's notwithstanding him spending $17 million of negative money against me. So we're going to win because we have many on our side. We have to continue to get the word out to be sure we need money. And I would encourage your people to go to forward4nevada.com and check us out because that is going to be important. We're on TV, but we need people to be able to spread the word. We need people to be able to spread the word. We need people to be able to spread the word, get folks out to register and to actually show up to vote. These flaw cameras, man. These are, these things are disconcerting. I'm glad there's getting a lot of attention these days. Yeah, it's a problem. It feels like we're building our own little Chinese style police state. It's scary. It's scary. And again, being responsive means being, you know, having your ear to the ground. And I have learned now that, that folks have concerns with these things. And, you know, I suggest in my state that we stop using them until the legislature can chime in on some privacy issues. Yeah, that would be good. Final question for you. You got an undergraduate degree in the United States. Do you have a degree in the United States? Do you have a degree in the Texas A&M? Then some postgraduate degrees at Ohio State. Aggies play the Buckeyes. Who are you rooting for? It's a win-win for me, man. It's a win-win. Come on. It's a win-win. Come on. Here's what happened. Here's, I didn't know. So one time they did play each other. It was in a, I want to say it was a sugar bowl. 1999 or so. Okay. I was at Ohio State. My brother-in-law played football for Texas A&M. And so, so they kind of had the edge because he was my brother-in-law. Yeah. But I didn't know. But I sat there and I watched the game and I just wanted to see how, which way my body went as good things happened. And I found myself saying, yes. And it was an Aggie play. Okay. So I'm going to support my Aggies over my Buckeyes. Also the Buckeyes win all the time. Come on, man. Ain't nothing wrong with winning. All I do is win, win, win. no matter. Come on, baby. How are you feeling about college football in the NIL era? Have we gotten it right so far? I don't know if we've gotten it right, but I think, honestly, I've always had the opinion that we should be paying our student athletes. Absolutely. I actually represented a basketball player who, in my estimation, got the short end of the stick back in the day. This was early 2000s. I just have a hard time accepting that we have these old, grown men who are utilizing their influence on these young, impressionable teenagers, getting their careers ruined early on because they're giving them extra benefits while they get to go in and coach and make million-dollar contracts, go to another institution. Half the time, the coach is the highest-paid state employee. Yeah, exactly. Tens of millions of dollars a year, and they couldn't pay players. Yeah, look, I'm totally in favor of players getting paid. I do wonder if there's going to be a course correction. I mean, I know Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell are trying to work on something in the U.S. Senate right now to try to reform the whole process. I don't know if it's—it seems like it's stuck at the moment. Maybe that would just reduce the number of times you could hit the transfer portal, maybe find some way to kind of even out some of the funding, but who knows? Yeah, yeah, to your point. I don't know. I don't think we have it right yet, but I think, you know, we should be paying our players. Let's figure out a way to get it done right. Okay. Well, Attorney General Ford, thank you so much for doing the show. Thanks for being here. I give you an offer, though. What? I have to offer you something. Please. You see, I saw you had my friend Rob Sand on recently. Yes. He offered you to be, you know, to look at the Constitution, see if you could be governor for a day. Yeah, I want to do like a Dave thing. Well, here's the deal. So, he offered you governor for the day for a day if you could pass as his body double, right? Okay, yeah. If you can pass as my body double, you can have it, man. Listen, I really appreciate that offer. I would love like one, you know, get out of jail free card for a trip to Vegas coming up. So, if we can make that happen. I always tell my friends, come to Vegas, but don't make me your first call. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you must have a lot of people being like, hey, I'm making a trip. No, no, you cannot. Well, look, thank you again for doing the show. Good luck in the selection. We need you to win this thing. Thanks, man. Appreciate you. That's our show for today. Thanks to Aaron Ford for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Farrah Safari with Reed Cherlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, David Tolles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Sengel. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. Hey, it's John. Last year, 2,500 people joined us at CrookedCon for conversations with some of the smartest organizers, least annoying politicians, and most interesting voices in politics about how to fix this mess. with even more podcast panels and workshops. 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