Is Trump Trying to Lose the Midterms?

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Simply Safe has been protecting your world for 20 years. Celebrate their anniversary with us and save 60% on your new Simply Safe system at SimplySafe.com/Cricket. That's SimplySafe.com/Cricket. Plus, when you order, write in our show name in the "How did you hear about a survey" to let them know we sent you. Don't forget, there's no Safe, like Simply Safe. (music) Welcome to Platt State of America. I'm John Favre. I'm John Loveitt, Tommy Vittor. 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 Higgseth 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. 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 Lumer said some disgustingly racist things about black women that no Republican has denounced as of yet. And she's also taken credit for the deportation of right-wing creep Milo Yanopoulos. 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. Yeah. If we get in trouble, we've got a guy we can call. Oh, that's cool. That is speaking of things that are critical. If you can get arrested for losing money and then going to bed at 11. Getting thrown out of Cirque du Soleil. 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. That's right. That's one less thing to worry about. Thanks for things to write in that out. All four of us, plus special guest, Bobby Polito, the Democratic nominee in Texas 15, one of our most important pickup 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 Cricket.com/events. Can't wait to see you in Austin. That's Cricket.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 mind-laying rockets over the Strait of Hormuz from nearby Leric Island. The US 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. (upbeat music) (fire crackling) - What the fuck? - Okay, so-- - The ducks were Canadian for not on our team. - For those of you just listening. - Just to karate the geese. - Oh yeah, sorry. - I was like, we like to be accurate. - You're right, you're right, Canadian geese. - It's a fact, right? - Yeah, so for those of you just listening, those were videos of Trump replacing the Lake Ontario sign with a Lake America sign while dancing to YMCA, an army of Canada geese with M16s wearing Trumpwigs, but only on Ontario, and a series of imaginary airstrikes destroying an imaginary Carg 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 on 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 straight 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 had it 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 still, that's killing dialogue. 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 actual story said the Trump of 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 Promoos and perpetuity, which sounds like a war that would need to go on forever. - They called it, did they call it the grass? - Yeah, they call it the grass. It's something that you famously always have to do forever. It's whatever 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 AXIA story also came like, I don't know, 24, 48 hours after an AXIA story by Barack Reveed that basically has US officials and AXIAs saying that we have made all this progress on keeping the Strait open or reopening the Strait. Did you see that? So Trump actually got on the phone with him. He got Trump on the phone while and said to him, "That sucker is open." And then AXIA stories has over the past two months, US 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% of pre-war oil exports. - Well, that's a soft bigotry of low expectations. But it's also 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 assigned men to not like thrilled to be taking a trip through the Strait of Hormuz. - And it requires a giant deployment of US troops forever. I mean, they've definitely like, it's not at zero like it was before, but it's not at 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 of fire between the two sides. But this, what happened over the weekend is just part of this typical pattern of Tifertat. Exchanges and I think it's gonna get worse not better because last week we covered best in saying it was economic D-Day and that announcement was obviously like wildly overstated. But between the US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and like the job owning of countries stopped doing business with the Iranians, like what they did with the Emirates, that's gonna increase the economic pain for the Iranians and the way the Iranians respond to economic pain is with military strikes. And so as the US ratchets up the sanctions as they continue the blockade, 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. His line on that is like, "Oh, Tandals, we're watching and it's under the ground now." Yeah, which is what it was after the first 12-day war about whatever. So really, it's just now a war to get the Strait of Hormuz from, you know, a zero percent open to, I guess, 60 to 70 percent is the goal. Going for a C. (laughing) Things are going so badly in Iran that Trump and Hexeth 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 Hexeth that quote, "Prolonging large-scale operations against Iran is unsustainable in risks weakening the military's ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the U.S. homeland." These warnings showed up as part of a classified assessment that included a lot of it. 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 "non-concur" meaning they disagree with Hegseth's order, but will still carry it out. Hegseth spokesman responded to the story by accusing the post of committing a crime, and they're probably also a bit pieved 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 Sekteph. 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, you buy in stock? Love it in Sekteph and Hegseth president? Sort of. Give all of us the USS Lincoln experience. I'm feeling trapped in no way out. Yeah, I don't like Hegseth. Look, let's do the case warning. 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 Warren 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. He's written some crazy stuff. I think the case for him being successful in Republican primary is he kind of merges together like things Republicans like before Trump with the MAGA stamp of approval. It's like he's a Neocon. He's super hawkish. He's like part of this right-wing white Christian nationalist evangelical world. That makes a huge chunk of their base. He has high NMID from the Trump days and Fox News, and he's kind of like slick and camera ready. And then just the resume is like, "Sectaf, Fox News, veteran, Princeton." It's like not bad on paper. I think the big long-term question is how bad does the Iran War get? How much Republicans actually punish them for supporting it and lying about it? And I just, you know, we don't know yet. Yeah. I think I, boy, I hope Pete Hexath 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 like, what another war in the Philippines. The guy is also like going to be really hard to be worried about that Pete Hexath 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 you guys really think that that's going to be a big impediment in a Republican primary when you're running as Marco Rubio and JD Vance who are also part of the administration. Like, I don't think we know that yet. JD Vance is going to be, and he has already telegraphed in some of 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's settled. Because to the extent that the Republicans and Trump has lost any support from Republican voters, it's around the war and around 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 Hexath is in charge of. Yeah, I wonder though, which, I agree with that. But are those Republican primary voters or the kind of soft, like kind of less partisan people who believed America first? I think that's a bad thing maybe, but like the mega cult is still there. And I think, like, if I was Hexath, 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. Some of the influencer one, the influencer one. What are you talking about? I said the stories. I can pick a brand new one and start with. So the, on the influencer story, post reaches out for comment apparently. They don't comment. And then they post angrily that the story doesn't reflect what it's actually going on based on their views, which they did not share. Fine. According to the, like, uh, uh, Kurt Schlichter and one of the other people, but they were brought on not to be paid influencers on social media, bar 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 Hegsets, uh, agenda. And even it's like, okay, there's a, these are the people each other. 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 pops back out because he's at the kind of classic, uh, conservative in a liberal place who's losing his mind because 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 don't want to give you some facts from these books, which is, uh, one of this 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. Okay, I do want to keep on this. The world's like constructs who like be aggrieved. It's like, meanwhile, in reality, like the, the United half of the country is covered by flock cameras and Donald Trump has deployed his own like, I secret force to harass, harass shoot American citizens in the head and deport people. Dallas is a gleaming super city, though. Yeah. That's the new capital. I mean, like the influencer thing, like to me, that was just 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 kick the real reporters out of their workstations. They replace them with like one America news and much a right wing crap. Remember when they kicked a bunch of, uh, photographers out of briefing is 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, the military. So now they're hiring these maggot shudds. Um, it does seem like it's mostly about cranking out pro Hegseth talking points, but there is that weird heck, like anecdot 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 of 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-leftify the war colleges, but it's of course being run by people who have, like, they're just sort of, you know, online, it's super, I was 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, uh, 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 system, which I think is kind of explained some of the world you're going into this. Did I go too deep on this? Uh, no, no, very normal. Time will tell. Well, I will say that, um, Pete Higgs, that's planned to, uh, limit press access and uh, turn 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, the second story, which is like the Washington Post got a leak of the Secretary of Defense's Order's 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 SECDAF makes decisions about like resource allocation. Like there's 11 aircraft carriers, a handful or in service at any time that 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 will 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 in parts of the country. Um, these, 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 parts like unsurprising that there would be non-concurs 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, you know, unanimity in the, in the, yeah, they're all just like, like, what are we doing here? This is crazy. Yeah, I thought that was incredible. a blue alarming. And of course, the story was, you know, or the the fallout from the story was they're mad at leaked and 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, like on a foreign policy establishment on the left in the right degree, it was that the big threat we faced was from China. And now we have once again bogged ourselves down in another forever war and less conflict in the Middle East this time against Iran. And in practice, what that is mean is we literally just took the carrier strike group out of the Indo-Pacific and sent it to the Middle East for a place to link in that was, you know, overextended for however long. And so we're just kind of sitting there naked. And it's like, well, you guys ran on telling us the China was the threat that we're going to get tough on China that like Yadda Yadda, 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. As I mentioned, Russia is still, you know, threatening Eastern Europe. Well, Trump just invited the Russian finance minister to the G20, so right. But no press. But not the press right now press. Policy of America is brought to you by article article makes it effortless to build a home that lasts without the boutique markup. They're curated collections of mid-century coastal and Scandi furniture are designed to mix and match perfectly. So you can create a cohesive designer look that will stand the test of time. Article makes great furniture. It's really well made and it looks great. It's and it just lasts. I mean, you know, especially some of the items we have around the office. 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On Monday a five to four Supreme Court majority ruled that construction on his ballroom can continue. They did not decide the matter for good, but the majority wrote that the government was likely to prevail in its argument that the National Trust for Historic Preservation didn't have standing to sue. The Trust's claim to have standing appeared to rest on a statement from one of the organization's trustees who lives in DC enough and 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. It's funny because it like pits the anti-democratic building of this ridiculous ballroom up against my gut hatred for the nimbus being like, oh, your walk is spoiled by new construction. We got to build things in this fucking country. >> Yeah, it's a yeah. John Roberts joined the Liberals in agreeing and wrote that ballroom construction thus far, quote, is likely unlawful. What do you guys think game over here? Like I know, it does seem like there's got to be some more solid base somewhere for someone to challenge the ballroom construction, which John Roberts at least another think probably unlawful, but you know, these people just didn't have standing to sue. >> Right, let's just be nice and serve a majority. >> Hey, no need to be so quiet, 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, that's a pretty big loophole in the constitution that has till this point never been contemplated. >> Well, apparently at the DC circuit argument, Trump's lawyer suggested that people affected by construction noise could have standing, even if- >> Moana. >> Even if somebody calls her lawyer. >> Even if someone offended by the ballroom's appearance did not, which is interesting. >> I was going to say, you know, need some ballroom is a Mike Loller and then you can't pay that. You guys don't want to talk about it. >> Yeah, that's right. >> That's right. >> Yeah. >> Covered the cell with you. >> You were doing that. >> I was like, who would I make a joke son, oh, yeah, that's right, that's right. >> 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 entire debates on demolition. >> On stand. >> Show a hand. >> I will fire bomb it. No, no, no. I will, you know. >> Yeah. >> I think it's like, you know, when you move into a house and you're like, I could do a lot of renovation in this house or I could just touch up here in there. >> I think the easy ones, you gotta live in it for a bit before you decide what you want to change. >> Well, I was going to say that, you know, the easy ones are like, you know, let's turn the courtyard back from Marlago with umbrellas and DC, back to grass. Let's take all the gold to get off the stupid fucking colonized, like, yes, there's a whole bunch of easy stuff to do before you get to the auto pen that's up as a photo of Biden. >> I like that. >> That's coming down pretty quick. >> And instinctively landed on unsatisfying center left compromise on what to do with the various things. >> You can just take the boys out of the Obama administration. >> But what was the expensive, like, nightmare to do, like ripping down a ballroom? >> Can you imagine? >> It would be so funny for sure. >> We're going to have Medicare for all. We're going to have humane immigration. We're going to treat people with respect in this country and we're tearing that ballroom down. >> It's coming in. >> A clause. >> Yeah. >> A clause. >> When the presidency and just then it won't happen. >> Right. >> And then it'll be mad. And they'll be like, why do we lose? Because we didn't deliver the crazy promises that we made in the campaign. >> Worse. They try to tear the ballroom down. Heritage sues. >> Because of the noise. >> They have standing. >> They have a pretty big deal. >> It's like, well, we told you. >> Yeah. >> Actually, we think here. So it turns out, Heritage does have his standing. That's sort of, they always do. >> Sort of that one on. >> Yeah. >> But it's interesting, during the Trump's own lawyer again, had previously conceded sort of the weird implication of the government's standing theory in this case, which is, he was asked what would happen if a president suddenly demolished the White House itself, or even the Statue of Liberty, and nobody could show like the requisite individualized harm of that, and the judge in that case said, nothing can be done, and the Trump lawyer said, I think that's right. >> But see, this is where it's so crazy. >> But I don't think it is that crazy. We've talked about this a little before. 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 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, the person should be impeached immediately and removed. So that's, so they, 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 a normal Congress would just pass a law? >> Of course. >> Or defund the ball, or whatever, or you could sue. You would sue saying, we don't need to pass a law, because it's unconstitutional, you don't need to proactively pass a law to stop something on law. You just sue and say you're violating the law like there that was true by the way when remember when there was those reforms And Trump is there's electoral reforms and then Trump was saying see I told you there was there was there was there It wasn't illegal because you had to pass this law to fix it, right? 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 Trumpify the US 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 One has that ever gone wrong demanding lists of people 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'd you guys make of that story? It's really weird It 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 Like you know racist southern election officials stopping black people from voting That is that is like 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 entering voters They were trying to gain access to the voting machines right which is just has absolutely nothing to do with election monitoring because They're talking they're not talking about the access to vote or protecting the right to vote They're talking about the tabulating of voting the the you know There's 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 like spoke out against it It was all just so Boris and silly and ham fisted an incompetence that 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, somebody had announced I think it was like pointed to this when they hadn't I think yeah Well DOJ so my reaction when I read the story was why what like 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 He ran on the big lie and like 2020 fraud when 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. It's not if it makes sense. It's not if it adds up I mean, they're gonna you know Trump has talked before about a plan to send election monitors all over the country and a polling places in the midterms And so and again like the DOJ has done that before so like they they have that authority to do so, but Yeah, so they announced it's this is so strange right because in July The same office run by a sort of Trumpy kind of online weirdo Announce their list of states and it didn't include Wyoming. So they added Wyoming late like in the last like weekort It's very strange. Yeah, 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 The latest with the Postal Service where 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 are freaking out about it and the norm Eisen was like this is don't forget yet Because it's going to be another step and then there was and now it's unhold 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 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 now 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 let it 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 but 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 In the constitutions as 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 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 but this is right 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 you know they get a go get a warrant and open the fucking you know prove let this guy or this person isn't Is it is an 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 hampisted it to me It seems now at this point at least do this election. It is only meant to so mistrust and uncertainty around mail-in voting and like you know They're I think it's Katana Ran Jackson like a sort of warrants about sort of this courts habit of deciding cases Either too earlier too late right and the possibility that they will do that once again. They're doing with the ballroom But to me it's like it's now getting to the point where it is a conceivable 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 issue now that the rule has been issued when it comes back to them and they have to actually decide the Constitutionality of the rule itself. It feels like it could be a very different situation 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 stand-out quote came from North Dakota Republican Senator Kevin Kramer He's not usually a quote machine. You don't hear much from Kevin Kramer But he cited the price of diesel the price of fertilizer and Trump's tariffs Telling J. Mark 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. Mark's piece? I think I've been a cleaner sentence from Kramer. I see why he's not quoted very much I think they were I think they were had like a enough care eating together something. I don't know I assume they were eating together because it's J. Mark. Yeah, Jonathan. I thought he does He's constructed a show around going to lunches in various places I like I read a piece in my my reaction was you know close my eyes 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 reason 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 it is power to lose the midterms the farmer piece of it is real like I've talked to people in Iowa About how we screwed over Iowa farmers That 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 of Being very strategic and where it is targeting their cars. 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 How where they're gonna 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 they're, it gets complicated, you know, when Ohio is at the top of your flip list, you know, you're crossing your fingers and saying some prayers. Speaking of Iowa paragraph on the piece that I really liked was, flipping porkburgers at the Iowa State fair earlier this month, Ashley Henson, who's running against Josh Turrick, 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. It was held November. I mean, like maybe you still pull it out, but like that's not, there'll be a debate, there will be editorial board meetings, there'll be a bunch of opportunities where she is going to have to answer questions about this. Yeah. And John Houston, who's running against Sherry, 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. 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. Absolutely. 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 that instead of crazy that you had to say. I talked to the premier of British Columbia today for Potsay, 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 retaliated, 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-35, for example. And so Carney has support from his left. He also has support from his right, right? He's seen Doug Ford in Ontario, literally telling Trump to kiss his ass, and 76% of Canadian voters support walking away from the talk. So like, that is not, they're not capitulating anytime soon. Certainly not for the midterm. It's interesting that Trump is successfully producing a nationalist fervor, but it's just in Canada. Yeah. Yeah. Around. Did you, uh, did you hear that dipshit Congressman Andy Harris was on Fox today and we're talking about the Canadian trade war and he's like, yeah, you know, Alberta might want to, has talked about before, like, seceding from, from Canada, like, we should annex that state. Just, 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 Congressman, we've taken Venezuela's oil. Canada looks good. We'll take some oil there. We'll annex. Like, what the, what has happened? I'm pretty sure he's, uh, Hannah's parents' Congressman. Oh, he's, oh, he's like the one Republican, uh, for Mary, Jerry Mandert. Huh. Well, you see John. Yeah. Well, so fascism is, but is, 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 their sore, these pundits, like, is there now our, our Republican Congressman? Well, just like there, it's like, oh, you know, oh, you can't call Trump a fascist. No, it's too late. It's too soon, whatever. It's like, it's an instinct. It's an instinct. There can be no ego and there can be no loss. There can be nothing that shows weakness and it never, it does lead to one place, which it just requires to be, to be, to, to toward expansion because it is the only way to truly prove you're strong and tough and, uh, can't be defeated. So we're going to go after Greenland and get the Venezuelan oil and we're going to bomb Carg Island and then we're going to take Alberta. Uh, it's, you know, quite cold up there. Also, Alberta is having a vote on whether to have a Brexit style referendum. Some 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, that's going to say. Sure. Besides the points that we're just going to invade anyway. Um, so, uh, you guys alluded to this, but, uh, of all the vulnerable Republicans, uh, running in the midterms, uh, Trump's trade war with Canada is making it especially difficult for mic Rogers and Susan Collins, uh, who are trailing their democratic opponents in two border states, uh, that are really going to get screwed by the tariffs. Um, 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, uh, Susan Collins showed that she's not afraid to stand up to Trump by writing the letter to Howard Lutnik, where she politely urged the administration to restart trade negotiations. Hey, hey, Senator Collins, here's the thing, if you just asked for agent enough times, you can get that letter to let this matter to a person. You can get that thing up. The chain of command. You have, you don't know where to how to send letters to the president. You're sending a, uh, uh, uh, uh, a warmly worded letter to the Commerce Secretary who you know is a powerless Shlub. She also like, uh, she, she listed off some of the impacts on, 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 in the trade war of these two without, I guess like doing too much to piss off Trump, but like, doesn't seem like the best strategy. I don't know. Yeah. And normal times you would like distance yourself from the dumb unpopular thing, the tarming 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, uh, acutely felt there. It, I, like, I can't think of a better statement for a dual than mic 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 are 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. And it's like, no one's going to buy who, 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 of state and mic Rogers state, that are, uh, more than like running for election and re-election. They can't even say like, I disagree, I 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, just do something to show that you're fighting besides the fucking, like, a letter is a joke. Like, the joke is a strongly word of letter and like, that's what she did. She just did the caricature. That's not a caricature. It's a very, it's a very mild letter. It's a tab. It's a tab. We were, we were in a letter. That's what she said. And then in Rogers, 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? Tell your boss that. So you support. 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 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 a clause line at a, at a, 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, it's, it's, I think it's afraid of Trump. Yeah. Of course. Of course. It's afraid of Trump. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Well, 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 five basin over 1.7 million client session reviews, the feedback from real people who have actually used the service speaks for itself. More than six million people have used BetterHelp globally, BetterHelp therapists have at least three years and 1,000 hours of hands-on experience. They'll hold all required education training and certifications across a range of mental health casualties, 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. Oh, wow. What do you want? I'm doing love to leave it. I was talking about, I love to 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 horrified the crowd. You 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 better help? 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. Wow. Like that's fully the full story unfolds in a scene. second of two people just being mad at a parking lot. - Oh my God. - Yeah, that's a mental, that's how much you get to talk to somebody about. - Yeah, yeah. I'm just thinking about the news. - Yeah. For you, it's the news. (laughing) Visit betterhealth.com/psa that's betterhtlp.com/psa. - Today's show is sponsored by strawberry.me. You're probably no stranger to seeing self-professed career coaches advertise their services on social media. 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(upbeat music) - 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 in an event with Jewish Democrats on Saturday in Lansing. - 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 to do. 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 intended to do. And sometimes you can offer context or something, but not in the moment when people are feeling okay, 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 a Q&A or pain. And I want folks to know that, you know, when the Jewish community is attacked, I'm gonna be right there to defend it. - What do you guys make the apology and the way he framed it? - I watched the original message back. It was like a four and a half minute statement. 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, who was born in Lebanon, he had just lost family, I think including kids in Israeli air strikes. 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, 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's meaningful to people. So hopefully it helps, you know, it's not just the bleeding here, and I think restore some trust and open a dialogue between up to all in the Jewish community, which is a lot of people are trying to exacerbate that split with, you know, conversation about Hassan Pecker or whatever else. - So I think it's, I'm glad he did this, I think it is good. I do, and I like, has it into even sort of, I don't know, like nitpick, 'cause 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 non-stop barrage of false islamophobic, bigoted attacks, vast and furious constantly, or attacks that assume some islamophobic on the part of the listener by making all kinds of assumptions about him, about him being evil. That was just today, with Vance, or how that he believes evil things, whatever it would be. But at the same time, like, you see this, right, like, oh, it's about the context. Okay, and he does say in both the original statement, and he says here, right, that like there is no justification, 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 civilians in Gaza. 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 the source of the pain matters, right? 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 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 for any kind of violence against people who simply are part of a group that you are antagonistic towards. - I think it was a really genuine apology. Like, there's a range of politician apologies and some are more half-assignate than others. And, you know, he was just sort of doing that off the cuff, he was asking a question. He didn't hold back. And he didn't try to say, well, I didn't intend this on that. It was like, no, I made a mistake. And there's the time for context. This wasn't it. Like, I just thought it was great. And, you know, Jessica Alexander is the chair of the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus. She said, you know, she obviously the campaign knows there's work to do with the Jewish community, but she doesn't have concerns about Abdul and Jeremy Moss, who's the Democratic nominee for a house seat in Michigan in Jewish and has declined to endorse Abdul since the primary. He said he's still concerned about Abdul's position on Israel, but that 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, but I think it was like Abdul reaching out and talking to the Jewish community in Michigan. And 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, then 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 that like the, so like, Bradlander is yelled at on the streets of New York, right? And Bradlander has against APAC. He won his race, in part, because he came out against military for Israel. He's called what Israel did in Gaza. A genocide, right? He called Israel, but in part, I'd say, like he has, yet, while still defending the idea of a two-state solution in which Israel and Palestine lives side by side in peace, fine. And he gets harassed on the street. 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 makes it look as though this movement is anti-Semitic. 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 anti-Semitism 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 have anti-Semitism infused inside of a growing and increasingly popular movement. That needs to be addressed on the merits, not simply because it's bad strategy, right? And like, but part of it is there's this effort to, like, 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? If this is, we would call a right wing or doing this in anti-Semitic. Not someone who is giving into the Zionist by seeming like an anti-Semitic. - Yeah. And we have to do that even when it's on our own side. That's the point I'm making. - J.D. 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 he thoughts on how this campaign's going? - It's hard to say. I mean, J.D.'s as cynical as they come, right? This is the guy famously said that the country was being run by a bunch of childless cat ladies and it was such a prick about it. So I rolled my eyes at the whole wound did like how dare you talk about my family thing because he was the one who invoked his pee-paw in the first place when he attacked Abdul. It was like, imagine telling my pee-paw the Democrat support Sharia law wherever it was. That, I didn't joke about that in love or leave it. Which is like, oh, Papa, he's gonna 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. - I haven't, I don't think that's it. 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 obviously elected official and not their family and not constantly make this point about JD 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 JD Vance, I'm just talking about how this guy is 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 and every race. And when you're going after the Republicans, whether the ones you're running against are Donald Trump, it is what are they done to hurt people and piss people off? And I'm gonna talk about that and fight for people. - And you're not running against JD Vance and you have a limited amount of time to define Mike Rogers, right? He is 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. JD 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 JD 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 by 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 gonna make them defend his stupid support for data centers. 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 wanna end up being backwards and poor. If they wanna be successful and rich with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let data rain. The good news is that there are plenty of other places that want them. If we kill the golden goose, you will only have yourselves to blame. 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 intent on dying on this hill? - This is just another example of him doing everything possible to lose the midterms. He feels like, I mean, 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 the data centers as the anchor around the neck of the Republican Senate candidate in Ohio. And Trump was like, you guys are bunch of idiots. Quit your bitching about wanting water and power. - It's just so like, JD Vance 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 make sure that the companies, the hyperscalers that are building them, are building their own power plants." I don't know if that's gonna help either. 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. It's like the, the misunderstanding of the data centers, like Trump's comments me are like, "Oh, you don't want to kill the golden goose." And he's like, "Okay, these companies are on television and daily basis saying basically, we're building it, whether you like, we're endudging this technology. It'll help you cheat on your, it'll help your kids cheat at school. It may destroy the planet. It may cure cancer. It will eliminate all the jobs. In order to get to that desire to outcome, - Best case scenario. - 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 and perpetuity. And also just, don't forget, over the course of three Republican administrations, we've slowly but surely reduced any public good in terms of taxes that could come from this. We have showed you that we are going to have a tax code in which all that wealth accrues the jobs or eliminated, and there's no public benefit, right? Or there's much less of a public benefit. And then there's shock that there's some kind of a backlash, right? These people are also greedy. And I think like the tax part of it is not part of this debate, and it's not really, it's tangential, I guess. But they have spent years training people to expect that corporations are going to 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, look, it was a famous sentence, right? What's good for GM is good for the country. It was using the majority. But like there was a sense in which we kind of believe that the success of an American, of an 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 maybe 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 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, Chamoth, what's his name was attacking someone who'd simply wrote up a sub-stack piece about the very scary open AI hugging phase cyber attack incident. And he was like attacking him as some sort of, let it chill 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. - No, I mean, there's okay. The problem with this is there is a, okay. The first one big problem people have with data centers is the technology they are for is scaring 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 to 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 repaid and everything and people's property taxes are going down. So you can do that 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 company's building the data centers so that it works well. And then make sure that the public has input in each community and all this kind of shit. All of that's gonna go out the window because we have fucking Donald Trump who's like, just build them or fucking shut up or your backwards and poor. Like there's gonna be no getting passed sort of like the populist antipathy towards these data centers with the way things are going and that's gonna be blamed. People responsible for that will be Donald Trump and the AI companies themselves. >> Oh, like this backlash. Like the fact that there's now a poll that some people would rather have a nuclear power plant close to them in a data center. >> I can make it both because the data centers might need to build their own nuclear power plant just to run the data centers. >> Sure, I personally would choose data center in that bargain, right? Like there is a lot of like, I think in part because the first round of this was done without a lot of input from people are scared about the implication of this. And like there's such hubris on the part of these people. Like, oh, you're just stupid for not wanting this or you're just like, you don't, you don't want, I guess you don't want to defeat China. >> That's the dumbest shit. Like just to be honest, you're stopping the construction of these data centers is gonna have very little impact on the deployment of AI or the ability these companies to build the next business. big model, almost none. So 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. Congress, the Trump administration was trying to block states from doing anything on their own. So this data center issue in the construction of them is 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 both 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 Houston, all the right Ken Paxton. So one other storyline from the Senate fields, Laura Lumer is back in the news going after Florida Democratic nominee Angie Nixon and other prominent women of color in terms that are so disgusting. I'm not even going to try to characterize them. We're just going to play the clip. Paul out the entitlement of these, as I like to call them ghetto black bitches. Angie Nixon, Ilhan Omar, I honor Presley, Cory Bush, Katanji Brown Jackson. It goes both ways. You don't get to go demonize white people and 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 and gets people hired and fired. She got the head of the NSA fire. Yeah. 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 Islam and Muslims that are just as bad. She called herself a proud Islamafob. She said that Islam is a cancer, that Muslims are savages. I think these comments like Laura Lumer's existence is one of the best examples of where Democrats 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. Yeah. No, literally. You just look up and it's just like it sounded a duel. Hassan, a duel occasionally the parent of us of a volleyball player. Yeah. Yeah. I'm Donnie. I'm Donnie. I'll show pop up. Yeah. The other challenge though is that you know, Trump has said stuff that's like just as bad if not worse. And so it's hard to know where the shame comes from. It's like it's been normalized on the right and on the left. There are things that are still surprising to people to numbers of Congress to elected. So it's terrible. Lumer also took credit over the weekend for ICE arresting and deporting Milo Yanopolis, the British-born former Breitbart editor, former Kanye West aid and just a generally a vile troll. He's been out of sight for a few years, but he's seen a minor resurgence of late as an ally of Tucker Carlson who plans to publish Yanopolis' book called X Gay. Yanopolis appears to be a player in the larger Laura Lumer, Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor Greene, war. Anyone want to attempt to untangle this one or talk or or or or thoughts on Milo's deportation? It's there's a you know, you are what you pretend to be so you should be careful what you pretend to be. And that picture that that pretending to be what in this? I think like kind of taking on taking on this idea like what I don't know if he what his true beliefs are is they moved around Milo. He's been gays not gays been create guys like now is a Nash whatever his positions as it's sort of like to kind of be a kind of publicity seeking troll and kind of heterodox in some way that is interesting kind of and also like at times sort of just clearly like making it seem as though his beliefs are not real and then 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 fascistic right wing kind of troll online and then the home and securities putting a kind of an unflattering picture of you on the internet while they deport you and feel like it's like the whatever look every edge lord train kind of ends in their version of that whatever you know there's no there's no like the same way there's no like 40-year-old ballerinas. It's like this is the end that there's some terrible end to the edge lord path. Yeah I've not dug into this one. He sucks. This guy's just go away. Have fun in the UK. Go back to Breitbartons. Yeah there's some of his tweets about immigration just a few like zero immigration for the next 20 years. No if snow butts that's what he said last year on X. He also had a horrible post about like a couple years before that like what's the etiquette when you see an ice raid 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 people purported and all that kind of stuff. Now all that said the idea that if Milo was 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 from Milo yeah you monopolist. 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 right wing media star can like not like someone think that that person's been critical to 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 what draws the evil eye and sometimes what draws the evil eye is Jimmy Kimmel because he's on the left or some figure that annoys Trump because they're not on side but it's just like it's a classic story you draw if you're inside the movement and become critical of it that's just that of course sometimes the people that have been closest to 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 guess 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. 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. Again thanks for having me on you. Sure this is an important part of the conversation you have had with Nevada 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 phrase geology and what I have said is that what what I think is BS is that he be told a bill 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 BS is when he vetoed a bill that would have limited the amount you could pay for prescription drugs to the America and he goes headed price to everybody. Couldn't 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. There's 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 with the corporations that are bankrolling his campaign. I was talking to a young lady and mending about it's a rural part of town in a part of our state and she was telling me she was grocery shopping and she had a basket of groceries went over to the pharmacy to pick up her prescription. Look at the price in that prescription 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 and that's an affordability crisis that he is causing himself 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? Exactly right. 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 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. You know most Republican governors are doing that 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 about national guard members to help ICE do their job and what I have heard and what I have said is that people want our state resources whether they are human financial or otherwise to be spent on state stuff period. They want to spending our money and our time and our resources on education on mental health issues on infrastructure, on things that are helping the badans and not doing the job of someone else and so that's my position as well 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. Not doing the federal government's job. Last week I saw the meta-settled velocity with 48 states over claims that it's products, it's apps, you know, Instagram, other things. Harmed kids by offering addictive social media platforms. You joined this suit, wondering why, and what do you think the impact is going to be for kids and parents who are trying to figure out, you know, the appropriate use of social media for kids? Yeah. I'm smiling right now because it's, I was asked the question, I think it was last Thursday, I was in a room with one of our local reporters and he asked me what the proudest moment was of my career as a trainee general, there are a lot of proud moments, this was one of them. If not, you know, the most prideful I've been in a while and the night before we announced a settlement, I'll tell my wife how excited I was because, you know, to be sure, we're getting $255 up to $255 million into our state from this settlement to help kids in the mental health issues that are arose out of these addictive add algorithms that are harming our kids. But what our 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 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 push back from the community, but sitting next to me during one of those pieces of testimony, Tommy was a young lady and then was Bethany. She said 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. And so what I'm 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 sort of 2024 and we have beat them back from trying to escape our jurisdiction. But we've set all those cases. Now 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 there was causing so much self-image issues, the likes and features of the defaults are going to have them turn it 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 a well over 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, the states getting together to sue to get changes and Congress did nothing for all that time. It just feels impossible that Congress has sat on its hand for the last decade and watched all this happen. Yeah. And look, I'm not going to sit back and wait for somebody else to do something. If I have to protect my family and I consider that they say it in about my family that I'm 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. I investigated and started back in 2021, maybe 2020, so I could be off a little bit in that regard. But we've been working together, talking together, figuring out strategy, figuring out, you know, what the, the right algorithm or other algorithmic approaches to addressing children and the 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 see 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 there 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 gaming because when the country gets the coal, we get the coal. And so we did instant 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 of the draws on power, the electricity that is being consumed by these entities, the water that it has taken. We live in a desert in Nevada. And what I have found having spoken to Nevada is across two statewide tours. And 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 of baby and 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 higher local act that was supposed to. They've come 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 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. In fact, has described this data center issue as a gold rush for Nevada. And what I noticed, Tommy, the only gold rushing right now is from the big data center folks and their gold to his pockets 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. And he thoughts on that? Well, I'm beyond being surprised with comments area from our president, right? And he's certainly not on the ground here in Nevada. But his, his, his, his acolyte in Jolombado is. And Jolombado has capitulated, curtailed, kissed up the Donald Trump at every single term, every single turn. And it doesn't surprise me, then, that we haven't heard a single word from Jolombado. At least not to my knowledge, refuting that form of characterization. We've seen, again, Lombado aligned 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 the vatins. And that's why I'm being responsive to what I've heard across every demographic that we need to address these. You know, Jolombado has written an op-ed saying we need to embrace these. You know, and again, the gold rush. Again, he's going to talk about the gold rushing to his pockets. But at the end of the day, you know, Trump is wrong for ignoring the will of the people. Lombado 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 with a dip in tourism. I saw the number of visitors was down, but almost 8 percent in 2025 as compared to 2024, I think 2026 started to 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 percent fewer Canadians visited Vegas in 2025 than 2024. They're kind of voting with their feet about, you know, Trump's comments about annex and Canada or the 51st state. Now, this big trade terrified. How much of this tourism decreased? 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 percent. I mean, the fact of the matter is, we are living in the Lombardo Trump economy. Jolombardo has advocated for these tariffs, essentially saying that we need to feel a little pain from them. And 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. Tourists have stopped coming. And 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. You know, our governor said that my lawsuit was unfortunate, right? And all my lawsuits against the Trump administration. The ones that I keep winning by upwards of 85 to 90 percent, by the way, he calls unfortunate. Again, it's because he's co-taught, kissed up and capitulated to Donald Trump, and they return lies now. Lion Lombardo is what they call him. I mean, he lies down, but he also lies, just to be clear about that. 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 them. My daddy He's the worker in a grocery store, and he found it. some still candy bars at the dumpster behind the grocery store. Safeway was, as we work, safeway was throwing these candies away because they were still and they couldn't sell them. But the forwards got to eat. So my daddy bought them these still 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. I went for eating still candy bars, talking to becoming a single dad when I was in college, living on section 8 housing, living on food stamps. They called 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. And another lawsuit I saw you put forward is, well the New York Times reported that Donald Trump, Jr. basically at an event warned state AG's not to police or regulate these prediction market sites like CalChi or Polymarket and 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 don't know, you also signed a letter from 44 states criticizing the platforms. I realized that your state and Las Vegas in particular, it's a different relationship with gambling and gaming and sports betting than most states, but how 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 the badans, which is the reason why I've actually laid the fight against these prediction markets because we are the goal centered in about it 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 that's in my estimation that they are operating. That's how you protect consumers. That's how you ensure that they're planned by fair rules. These are things that we are the goal standard of and we deserve to be able to continue fighting that. At the end of the day, we sued Kauchi, we sued polymarkets, we 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. It was a crafty way of trying to find a hole through which they got a walk and operate, but they're not that savvy. And they don't frighten us. We want and we'll continue to advocate for these types of protections. I mean, look, I imagine you have been in a casino once or twice in your life, like if 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 crafts and stuff, but with like the real financial consequences of being able to lay down 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 and essentially gambling and sports betting using these apps. And they have spent up their college loans, you understand. And so they, in fact, are some of the victims that we're trying to protect. And they, in fact, would be protected. 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 get to that point? Well, I mean, whatever strictures they have in place that could be cut off, they're being a 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. These are some friction, too. Like you have to get up, get in the car, go to Casino, sit in a sports book, you know, to be like, can someone your money, but the fact you just lean dead and 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 there was a theater, a movie theater, that a special where you could get out of paying for a movie ticket by saying, I'm Joe Lombardo, that's all it's 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 absolutely, 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 been pulled over before he said, I'm Joe Lombardo. And then was told, you ran a red light, people are getting, we have, you know, very bad accidents in the battle 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, right? 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 at 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 is 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 Nevada's generally speaking. We have one of the highest, you didn't ask him about this. I'm sorry, I got to say, we're quite quick though, because we have one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation. Under the entire three year, eight month tenure, we've had the highest or one of the highest unemployment rates is entire tenure. It's higher now than it was when it took office, but he has a theory for that. He says just because people are lazy, and they don't want to work, 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's supposed to represent, right? And he also says that if you have a problem with the government and you decide to protest, you must be getting paid, right? Because truly you can't have-- Exactly, exactly, yeah. The last thing I said, 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 say it, I got two words for you, FU, 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 and set a lie to himself with, you know, his being our friends with corporations and looking out for himself. That's got a lot of back quotes out there. Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, we're not going to let folks forget. 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 that got tens of millions of dollars on hand. How do you combat that? Yeah, look, this race was always going to be about the money versus the money, 100%, there's no way we can compete with his being their friends who give him literally a million dollars of pop into a pack. Last quarter, my pack raised, you know, lower million dollars, his pack raised 13 million dollars. In a quarter? From like six different donors. Okay. You understand? Yeah. Rich people. Rich people dropping in, you know, people who own data centers, right? People who own, who donated flock cameras, you know, these are people who are supporting him as he, you know, unherals, you know, 17 man dollars of negative ads against me, which by the way, I haven't really moved the needle. We are in a tie ball game right now within a margin of error from every objective polling not that you take away the democratic pose and the Republican pose and look at the objective polling. Is either having, it's either a margin of error race or a tie ball game. And that's notwithstanding him spending 17 million dollars 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 Ford for Nevada dot 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, get folks out to register and to actually show up to vote. These flock cameras, man, these are, these things are disconcerting. I'm glad there's gotten 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, 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 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 at Texas A&M, then some postgraduate degrees at a high of state. Aggies play the buck ice for you written for. It's a win-win for me, man. It's a win-win. Come on. Come on. Here's what happened. Here's, I did know. So one time they did play each other. It was, I want to say it was a sugar bowl, 1999 or so. Okay. I was at a house state. My brother-in-law played football for Texas A&M, and so they kind of had the ears because it 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, it was an Aggie play. >> Okay, so I'm going to support my Aggies over my butt guys. >> Also, the butt guys win all the time. >> Man, man, come on man, end up the wrong one winning. All I do is win, win, win, on that one, come on baby. >> How are you feeling about college football and like the NIL era? Have we gotten it right? >> You know, I don't know if we got it right, but I think, honestly, I've always had the opinion that we should be paying our students. >> Absolutely. >> I actually represented a basketball player who, in my estimation, got to 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 going in coach and making a million dollar contracts. >> Just played the half the time the coach is like the highest paid state employee, right? >> Yeah, exactly. >> They made tens of millions a dollar a year and they couldn't pay push. 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 US Senate right now to try to reform the whole process. I don't know if 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 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? >> Yeah. >> Well, Attorney General Ford, thank you so much for doing the show. Thank you 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 San on recently and he offered you to be, you know, to look at the constitutions if you could be governor for a day. >> Yeah, I wanted you to be like a Dave thing. >> Well, here's a deal. So he offered you governor for the day for a day if you could pass this body double, right? >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> If you could pass this my body double, you can have it, man. >> I really appreciate that offer. I would love like one, you know, get out of jail free car 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, thanks yourself. >> Yeah. >> 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. Positive America is a cricket media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Ferris Safari, with Reed Cherlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Heffco, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, David Tolls, Mia Kelman, Brian Young, and Naomi Sengel. Our staff is probably unionized with the writer's guild of America East. [MUSIC] >> Longplay, our docu-series exploring the people and forces shaping the South is back. New slash, the South is the new political epicenter of the country. We're in the final stretch of the midterms, and the political map has only gotten more competitive with new states and districts emerging as potential flips. I'm Aaron Haines, journalist and expert on all things Southern politics. tune in on Mondays to Longplay Series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. [MUSIC]