Political Violence Shocks Washington

Hey everyone, my name is Elijah Cone and I've been a producer here at Cricket Media for a decade I love making our shows with the smart creative people who work here and hearing from all of you who was in every week But the thing that I'm proudest of is that video we made of you vegramas while me grunting while hitting baseball No, wait, sorry. The thing I'm proudest of is the work we do through votes of America See, we don't want our shows to only leave you feeling anxious about the state of the world We want to give you something you can actually do about it Just this year our listeners have raised millions of dollars and filled thousands of volunteers shifts to help candidates and causes into 2026 midterms and we have no plans to slow down as we head into 2028 As far as I know, there's no other media company that does what Cricket does We make entertaining thoughtful content that brings people into politics and then we give them a direct way to get involved And if you believe in that mission one of the best ways to support us is by becoming a paid subscriber Your subscription helps us keep making the shows you love and building a media company that doesn't just talk about politics But hell's people change them and if the mission sounds great But you feel like you need some sweet subscriber benefits to get you over the finish line. We've got you covered Subscribers get ad free shows plus excellent exclusive podcasts newsletters and much much more So thank you for listening and supporting what we do had to crooked comm slash friends today to learn more and become a subscriber [Music] Welcome to Paz de America. I'm John Favreau. I'm John love it on the tour on today's show We're gonna talk about the awful shooting at the White House correspondent center and the predictably idiotic discourse that's ensued Republicans blaming Democrats Trump trying to get Jimmy Kimmel fired conspiracies about the whole thing being a setup We'll also check in on the stalemate in Iran Why talks have fallen apart and what the options are from here? Then love it talks to Katie Porter who stopped by the studio former member of Congress and one of the leading Democrats in the race for governor of California Before we get to the news two big announcements love it love to leave it is going to two days a week There's too much news and we have to cover too quickly. So we're gonna get more episodes out more quickly and we're gonna be shooting it in a studio with a live studio audience for the first time We have a bunch of amazing guest lined up including Lisa Etheridge Ron Function's Beck Bennett Kyle Mooney ginger midge and more We're doing a show as part of the Netflix is a joke festival too if you're in LA come see our new studio at crooked comm slash events awesome and Also, as you may have heard on the Friday show or on love or leave it crooked con is coming back we got three days of events right after the midterms November 5th through the 7th in Washington DC. There's gonna be live shows tons of panels new ways to connect with other political sickos like us Head to crooked con dot com and sign up for updates including ticket release dates lineup announcements and a lot more all right So as you all know by now on Saturday night a gunman charged the entrance to the White House Correspondence Center and shot an officer before being subdued and taken into custody He's now been charged with attempting to assassinate the president Trump and other senior officials were rushed out of the dinner by the secret service while other attendees hit under the tables The rest of the dinner was canceled and then the president held a briefing at the White House right after where he talked about Unity and was somewhat complimentary toward the media By the time he sat down for an interview with Nora O'Donnell of 60 minutes the next day however That changed I was looking forward to making a speech And would have been a lot different. I said I can't make that speech. I was gonna do a pretty Rip Roar and spell I won't go into the total details, but no I was gonna hit people really hard with humor So much suppress it suppress plus the Democrats because they're almost one and the same. It's like the craziest thing I do think that the hate speech of the Democrats much more so is is very dangerous I really think it's very dangerous for the country the reason you have people like that is you have people doing no Kings I'm not a king what I am if I was a king. I wouldn't be dealing with you He also wrote this. I'm no longer willing to permit a pedophile rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes What's your reaction? Well, I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would because you're you're how you're horrible people I'm not a rapist. I didn't rape anybody Excuse me. I'm not a pedophile. You read that crap from some sick person Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were Involved with let's say Epstein or other things. I'm not any of those things Excuse me You shouldn't be reading that on 60 minutes. You're a disgrace, but go ahead. Let's finish the interview. Okay It's fun friends on the other side of the plate first off anyone a general reactions to what happened and how Trump is talking about it I mean for the billionth time political violence is bad. It is bad and not the way to solve problems in this country And it's a crass political matter. It does seem like it's always backfiring. It does seem like The most likely outcome from this incident is Donald Trump gets a little rally around the flag effect and I think he would probably agree that that's probably what's gonna happen because you don't scramble to pull together 60 minutes interview last minute unless you think it's beneficial for you to talk about this stuff So thank God no one was killed. Thank God that You know our political debates are frayed, but they're holding that won't always be the case It sucks that Donald Trump is now blaming Democrats for this. It sucks that they're Once again, you know making this about political rhetoric or jokes or criticism And we're not talking about you know the combination of mental health problems and guns or access to guns feels like that would be a more worthwhile conversation if we want to curtail violence in this country, but here we are now are in this stupid defensive crouch for a while because of this bad faith attack about political rhetoric always gains currency and becomes the conversation yeah, yeah The but I was in the air flying back to LA and the wife I was down and so by the time I landed This was already about building the ballroom and it was already about like funding DHS It moved beyond just condemning political violence and having that be a unifying Thing to be honest like I really like noro Donald and I understand why she read that and I obviously don't think Trump's response is correct but I do think when you're reading the text from someone who tried to kill the president to the president you are Sharing something that you are only sharing because I want attempted to do terrible political Violence and there's a delicate balance to me between Understanding the motivations of people that would do this and trying to understand what the underlying conditions are in our politics in our society in our rhetoric that might be contributing to it without Elevating the specific motivations of any one person unless it was directly incited by someone in our political system because The reality is what unites mass shooters people trying to do political violence Sometimes they have ordinary beliefs sometimes they have unhinged crazy beliefs But what unites them is this desire to take control go out in a blaze of glory. It is a contagious idea online That is what we are grappling with and the the less we make it about the specific political fights We were already having I think the better Yeah, one thing that has changed I think in assassination attempts and Even violence like this that we've seen is it And since the advent of the internet and especially social media like you have seen a lot more of these people be radicalized online and you know someone ended up finding the shooters Twitter account and then he moved over to blue sky and so they found this blue sky account and It is just a bunch of crazy shit and in the difference between You know that shooter and anyone else is like Tommy said He's probably had a he had a mental break and there's easy access to guns But yeah political violence is always wrong and you the idea that you are somehow a hero You can solve any fucking problem with violence is crazy and and it's counterproductive and it never works and It only makes more problems and anyone who thinks that political violence is somehow Okay, or justified if you know the the person that you're committing it against is more powerful or more evil or whatever It's just it's just wrong and it's stupid. Um, I think I was thinking about the What it happened to the people I think this is one of those situations where the people outside of the Hilton the Washington Hilton Probably knew that everything was okay more quickly than a lot of the people inside the Hilton Part of that's because and we've been there before There's fucking no service in that ballroom. Uh, the wifi is always bad and I think if you know I think if you were the president or one of the people who was rushed out You probably knew that the the shooter had been taken down was okay But if you were one of the like 2500 attendees there and you were under the table That had to be pretty fucking scary before like for a little while at least before you knew that the shooter was subdued And so that was like one of my first my first thoughts plus by the time the chicken came out had to be just absolutely just Boom just room temperature starting. Yeah, it's cold chicken salad. That's true. I do. I I think what Trump said to Nora O'Donnell response was weird But if someone tried to shoot me and then their words are read to me that I was a pedophile rapist in a traitor I'd be pretty pissed off too Yeah, it's like it's an interesting journalist a question of when you read a manifesto like that and why and to his face like that If it's antagonistic on perfect. I'm not trying to like nitpicker, but yeah, I'd be pissed too We again because it gets sort of put through the lens of politics and it is a different thing than a mass shooting There's all these different motivations, but I do think the more we See people that are being radicalized online. They have access to guns. They may have a mental break They do see a lot of crazy shit. I have on their phones and on their screens like the more we think of this as kind of one big contagion that we're dealing with and there's a lot of ways to deal with it. One of them is mental health, one of them is addressing like where and how people are radicalizing and other one of them is the guns but one lesson we've learned whether it's in mass shootings or in suicide being contagious it is that you have to be really careful how you share and talk about the motivations and the methods that these people use and that is delicate right because it is of journalistic value and that getting his responses of journalistic value is not an easy call but I think you take it outside of this I think you start to see it more as part of a broader pattern. Yeah I wonder if he had if the shooter had named Trump in the manifesto if she would have asked that same question because then she would have gotten the name I don't know. Who else could he have like that was her being like oh you think that was you? Of course he's not the same person. Oh that part yeah for sure but it was funny because she did ask a question before that that was like why do you think people are trying to hurt, this is the third time I'm glad you're okay but like why do you think people are trying to hurt you? You probably could have just asked that I guess and not done that but anyway. There's been a lot of reporting already about the security protocols at the event and how they seem to have been lower than at other comparable events. What did you guys make of those stories and the security in general? How it went both this time and in general the security of those events? In general I think the secret services far more of a mess on the disaster than its public image would suggest and that's been the case for a long time but I think in this instance like the secret service protection is about protecting the president and other designated protectees and from that perspective I would argue that the system worked basically. I mean they will review their protocols they will maybe decide to create like a bigger perimeter put the metal detectors further out in the future but Trump was never really in danger. Some criticisms that are worth considering are like this guy certainly found and exploited a flaw in their planning by staying at the hotel. Maybe secret service needs to think harder about like the totality of senior officials in a room and then adjust but like the dude sprinted at a security checkpoint got off one shot maybe got what a couple dozen feet within it and then was taken out and he never got close to Trump and he never really got close to more officials. So you can always have more security. The uncomfortable reality I think is that someone who is willing to die is always going to be able to do some really bad stuff. If this guy had done what he did 30 minutes earlier yeah I probably would have been a lot worse but like you know ultimately I think the process worked the way it was supposed to largely. Yeah so people know what it's like there it's where they got him. He was running towards probably the escalators that would have gone down one flight and then you would have had the doors into the ballroom because the dinner had started once it started those doors to the ballroom were closed and they were guarded. So even if the shooter had gotten past that security checkpoint and hadn't been shot there would have gone downstairs would have faced another several secret service agents would have had to get through the doors at that point there would have been others at surface like you know. So Trump's up on a raised stage they can come back stage. But in general I do think I think the Hilton is a is a bad location for this and I think part of it is because the guests in the hotel should never have been able to get close to the ballroom if you're not part of the event or the pre dinner receptions right like a lot of other people could have been hurt for beside from the president who was I think well protected and it's like like you said to me about the senior all the senior officials in one place like what if someone had brought explosives right like this I mean this there's I don't really go into all the different things that could have gone wrong but if you were a guest at the hotel even if you weren't that guy with those weapons if you had like worse weapons or something but you were still a guest you could have probably done a lot more damage I don't agree with that I like there's a lot that's suddenly because this one crazy person ran at the door there we should be things to learn but like maybe they have to do something different with gas change the protocols in a certain way but then all of a sudden this this location is no longer possible for a dinner that's been happening there for four decades like the well service service said that I mean service was saying to people in the record that like or on background at least that you know we now have a convention center in DC there's much easier to protect there they can still hold the same number of people they've they've never liked the hilton they said it's always an uphill challenge you're always working against stuff the person was also shot outside that building right and they've still been doing the dinner there I'm sure that maybe there's better places to do but the point I'm making is only in the we have been taking our fucking shoes off at the airport because of one crazy guy for for 10 years we can have liquids in our suitcase because of one crazy guy in the wake of things like this there's this always effort like there must be like me I hope they fix their protocols and learn things from this but the answer to some security breach by one random person can't constantly be the perimeter gets bigger the security gets more the our government becomes more militarized fewer of our officials can be I know I know you're not saying that but I do think that is the that is the reaction the second something like this happens there's an effort to like there's got to be something we can do to make the whole system safer and and and maybe there is maybe there's not but we live in a democracy and once if somebody is going to try something like this they got it they can be stopped this person was stopped the system hopefully worked but like I think what's been revealed over the last year or two is that secret service is pretty bad at its shop like butler there was a guy in a raised position with a rifle with a scope aimed at the president and shot him in like it's insane yeah there wasn't like more changes in turnover and I think it's the totality of the events that lead me to question secret service even if I think this incident was like not right really an issue there's a there's a lot of space between like we must live in a militarized society and there's you know what are we we're just going to keep adding more you know protection and people it's like with then just maybe expand the perimeter a little bit get a better place have make make sure that's the services and fucking out more you know like there's a little things you can do to them for sure agree agree you can't you can't solve it but you can improve a little stuff fair fair enough hey everyone my name is Elijah Cone and I've been a producer here at Cricket Media for a decade I love making our shows with the smart creative people who work here and hearing from all of you who was in every week but the thing that I'm proudest of is that video we made of you vegramas while me grunting while hitting baseballs no wait sorry the thing I'm proudest of is the work we do through votes of America see we don't want our shows to only leave you feeling anxious about the state of the world we want to give you something you can actually do about it just this year our listeners have raised millions of dollars and filled thousands of volunteer shifts to help candidates and causes into 2026 midterms and we have no plans to slow down as we head into 2028 as far as I know there's no other media company that does what Cricket does we make entertaining thoughtful content that brings people into politics and then we give them a direct way to get involved and if you believe in that mission one of the best ways to support us is by becoming a paid subscriber your subscription helps us keep making the shows you love in building a media company that doesn't just talk about politics but helps people change them and if the mission sounds great but you feel like you need some sweet subscriber benefits to get you over the finish line we've got you covered subscribers get ad free shows plus excellent exclusive podcasts newsletters and much much more so thank you for listening and supporting what we do had to crooked dot com slash friends today to learn more and become a subscriber let's go through some of the reactions to the shooting starting with what I think might be the strangest just hours after it happened trump the acting attorney general and dozens of pro-trump influencers essentially made the argument that the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a rich guy with a ballroom uh. the government is now asking the court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by preservationist to block the president's four hundred million dollar ballroom because they say it's essential to quote insured the safety and security of the president for decades to come and prevent future assassination attempts on the president at the washington hilton uh. who would like to point out some of the issues with this line of reasoning i just like this is so dumb that i kind of can't believe that this is how they're harnessing an assassination attempt for political gain like i know so it was hard to believe why why did the mindless maggot influencer jump up like is the argument that the president will never leave the white house again ready just to events at this one ballroom what about let's every event in the future going to be de facto government hosted or government sponsored what about one of those states to do campaign events and rallies and fundraisers it's ridiculous foreign trips there's overseas speeches like even on like the narrow point of like the the hilton and the white us corresponded association they would absolutely refuse to host a a press association speech at the white house on government property so it's not even solving that so donald trump gets to control the invites it's not his fucking event it's crazy and then now exact so it's like basically every yeah i was taking it from the other point which is that like yeah so now every time the president doesn't event in d_c_ the president's like no i just don't leave my house you have to come to me because i have this net this also the white house has been breached plenty of times either by intruders who jump over the fence or by the shahis in 2009 also we live in a free society that even when the secret service is talking about the the hilton ballroom like there's always in here the safest place the president could be is to never leave the white house again but you do when you figure out you do the best you can you try to secure places you figure out compromises so that the president can go where he or she needs to go host campaign events do ot r's where they stop at random places because they don't think anybody knows there's all kinds of steps and and and layers of security that are about the balance between the the president being in a fortress and us being in a democracy no the answer to the hilton ballroom being kind of stocked by one fucking asshole is not that the president only hosts from this party this party point on Game Night only at his house. - It should bug her. - Ridiculous. - Also, build your fucking ballroom if you want, man. Just do it legally. That's all we're saying. - Lindsey Graham is putting forward a bill to fund it with taxpayer dollars. - Then none. - Unbelievable. - Right, like, if you want to build-- - Did see him at the Grindr Party. (laughing) - We're not a Valca Hall, but it's another problem. But here's the thing, the ballroom problem is that he decided to bulldoze the East Wing without going through any kind of process. If you want to build your ballroom, do it legally. - Go through the prives. - Go through the proper channels. David Ferenholdt, the Times, just had a piece today or a couple days ago that they gave a Trump administration basically is building this thing with a secret no-bid contract after inflating its value by three times. And the government is paying also not just fucking private donors. So there's a lot of problems that's not just like, oh, no one will let him build anything. It's like, you want to just want you to build it illegally. - Yeah, I don't want to build it at all, but yeah, no, legally would be best. - Right, legally would be best. - If he has the power to do and it's legal, then he can do it and we can all complain about it. - Right, but the ballroom doesn't become less illegal because this horrible thing happened at the hill to him. - Exactly, exactly. - Right. - Republicans are also using the shooting to blame Democrats for not funding DHS, which oversees the Secret Service, whose employees won't be able to get paid after this week 'cause they've been getting paid through Trump's executive order, then only has so much money attached to it. Only issue there is that Democrats and Republicans in the Senate did already unanimously pass a bill to fund DHS a few weeks ago. It's the house that hasn't done anything with it because they're mad about ice funding. You guys think that attack will fly? They're all doing this today. - They're blaming Senate Republicans. Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats have a bill they sent it over. And by the way, we're in the midst of what's supposed to be a process by which they pass that specific bill because they have another vehicle for the ice funding. I think they just don't trust each other enough or they can't seem to get their shit together. - They can be funded right now. People are getting paid right now. - And by the way, on our path too, as much as we tried to stop it, Republicans in the House and Senate with 50 votes in the Senate, funding ice anyway. So there's no real excuse for this other than House Republicans can't get their shit together. - Again, in moments of scaringness and tragedy, you gotta pick your one cynical way you're trying to exploit the thing. You can't start with the ballroom and then go to Jimmy Kimmel and now you swear back to DHS funding. I would have started at DHS funding and just hit that and try to get a vote on it and got some funding whether it's on the merits or not. But no, the entire conversation is about political rhetoric, not DHS funding. - But this is the problem, they do have the votes. They're the reason. Like there's no other, the only path to funding DHS is through a vote in the House. That is the next thing. There's nothing on the table in the Senate. That's it. - It's absurd. - Doesn't make any sense. I get blaming Jimmy Kimmel. - Yeah, that's what we should have started with. - Let's start with that. - That guy's one enough. Once it became clear from the shooters manifesto and social media presence that he was motivated by opposition to Trump, the focus of the right-wing reaction moved from the ballroom to the rhetoric on the left. Ballroom actually, it's kind of died down now, right? We've moved past the ballroom now. Now we're big into the rhetoric on the left. The ballroom blitz is over. - Yeah, just to give you a flavor of how understated the criticism has been. Senator Rick Scott of Florida said, quote, "Democrats want President Trump and Republicans murdered all across this country." Just normal. The latest round of this discourse reached its inevitable climax on Monday morning when Melania Trump tweeted out a condemnation of quote, "hateful and violent rhetoric" from Jimmy Kimmel. Apparently, a reference to a joke made last Thursday night, days before the dinner where Kimmel delivered a mock address to an imagined correspondence dinner. Here's what the joke, which no one had been talking about until after the dinner, sounded like in context. - I do have to ask though, why do you hate win-mills so much? Is it because they can still get turned on by being blown? (audience laughing) Marco knows what I'm talking about. He's been there, but I do want to praise the potas. Look how far you've come. 30 years ago, you were just some rich guy on Jeffrey Epstein's private jet out of Teeter Burrow, but you worked hard. You stayed friends, you shared some wonderful secrets, and because of that, you were able to fly on that plane seven more times. Dreams really do come true. (audience laughing) Our first lady, Melania, is here. Look at me, oh, it's so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow. (audience laughing) You know, Melania's birthday is on Sunday. That's right, she's planning to celebrate at home, same way she always does, looking out a window and whispering, "What have I done?" (audience laughing) - So shortly after Melania posted, her husband jumped in, referring to the sketches, a quote, "Call to Violence." That was pretty clear. That's, quote, "Beyond the pale" and demanding that Kimmel be fired. You guys think the Trump's latest attempt to fire Kimmel for a joke is gonna work? - So, the joke is that Melania doesn't like her husband and that he's quite old. - I was good, yeah, Andrew Edgar at the bulwark, he was like, "So the trophy wife who won't be crushed when her rich old husband kicks the bucket trope is older than a dirt." And I was like, "Yeah, that's sort of what it was." - But I also think there's another line in there that is what really bothered her, because there's a joke in there about Epstein introducing Melania to Trump. And it's like, "Man, you're taking another run at Canceling Jimmy Kimmel." Like, dude, open the fucking straight ormos. You know what I mean? Like, what are you doing here? - Cancel hominate, yeah. So, Kimmel, just for more context, Kimmel did the fake speech because there's no comedian this year, 'cause Trump is scared of comedy or jokes about himself. So they had, "O's the Nentalist." - Yeah, the Nentalist is doing. - Big whiff on the, didn't call this the shot on this one. - Well, he doesn't predict the future. He can read your mind in real time. That's not really on him. - Yeah. - He's not a future speaker. - He could have been like, "Mm, there's a guest in room." - Right, that's true. I guess he could have read that guy's mind. - But just like, again, it's all just so bad faith. It's like self-evidently bad. A few weeks ago, Trump tweeted that he was glad that Bob Mueller was dead because, quote, "He can no longer hurt innocent people." That feels tonally off. And Trump has made a similar joke to what Kimmel just said there a glass December. He did an event for members of Congress. Steve Scalice was there. Trump talked about going to visit Steve Scalice in the hospital after Scalice was shot. He said, "Steve, I want you to know your wife "was crying her eyes out, which means she really loves you." And then he goes, "I know many wives "that wouldn't be crying." Literally the same joke. - Oh, no. - Same Borscht belt. - He got him. - He got him. - He already got him. - Secretly hates the husband. And so like, okay, you're really offended by this. But again, like, if I'm Kimmel, I'm a little worried because your fate is determined by some executive then maybe he's working on a merger and Disney or some shit. And like, decides at some point that you're not worth it. - You knew who gets to complain about that joke? Is anyone who is complaining about it after he made it before the dinner? Like, if you think about it. No one raised any objections afterwards. And remember, Donald Trump was still, there was still two attempted assassinations when he made the joke. So it's not like anyone drew a connection because probably because the two assassination attempts were like 600 days before he made the joke. But like, no one said anything when he made it. And someone just, you know, someone found the clip after the thing picked up and were like, all right, a thing to be angry about. Let's do it. Let's go. - Yeah, there's a real, in the wake of these things, there's this like, nobody, the internet, we were such a like kind of naval gazing and kind of like, we have such like an immaturity about us that like we're not allowed to have any kind of uncomfortable feeling. Like, this is just bad. Or that like, it's more pleasant to be mad than to be scared or to be upset, whatever it is. And so people just go casting about for like the, the thing to kind of make them feel, the normal feeling they feel in politics, which is just antipathy towards their political opponents. - I just like, you know, we went through this, of course, when Charlie Kirk was assassinated and they all did the like, we have to take the temperature down and the less violent rhetoric, stuff like that. And let's say at that point, you wanted to give them, because okay, maybe they've all, maybe they want to bring the rhetoric down to, right? And maybe this is a good faith that just bear with me. Maybe this is like a good faith objection here and they're gonna really try. After that, president called for members of Congress to be tried for treason, put to death, amplified calls for their execution, literally said they should be hung. This was over the video of the illegal orders video where George Washington would have hung them. Celebrates the deaths of Rob Reiner and Bob Mueller. Stephen Miller told ICE agents, they have full immunity to do whatever they want. Two of them, a couple of them killed two Americans. Then the administration, multiple people in the administration smeared them, knowingly false charge that they were domestic terrorists. And then Donald Trump said, threaten to annihilate an entire civilization. And also even at Charlie Kirk's own funeral, Erica Kirk forgave the shooter. And Trump was like, I don't, I hate my opponents. I hate my enemies. It's like, you know what? I've heard to take their tone, it rhetoric down. And it's just just rhetoric either. Pardon's violent criminals, he posts enough videos of blowing up boats of fishermen. If I can blew up a school and around, has not even apologized or anything about that. I mean, it's just like the president and his party and the administration have done and continue to do awful, evil, monstrous things and that has led to like countless death and sufferings. And we get to say that. We also get to say that they should be removed from power through purely peaceful, illegal means. Like you can say both those things. We have the right to say the first thing. We have an obligation to say the second thing. Both those things can live together. Yeah, fundamentally, political violence is wrong. And it's wrong because it doesn't just silence the person that they're trying to kill. It silences the entire society. It silences democracy. It is an authoritarian act. Even for, even when people claim they're doing it for whatever their justifications. Maybe it's an authoritarian act. And by the same token, the motivations one shooter cannot be a way to silence the people who may share those views because it's not their fault that some random asshole on the internet decided to take a shot at the president is especially going to have them claiming that the left is responsible for all of this rhetoric when they I remember when this time around I was like I can't even take it seriously for a second because you people are so fucking phony after the Charlie Clark thing after everything you did since then like it's so phony I remember when Donald Trump was first running in 2016 I remember seeing this speech live and he said Hillary wants to essentially abolish the second amendment and if she gets to pick her judges nothing you can do folks although the second amendment people maybe there is I don't know and because this was new and we were young and naive I remember being so fucking like gutted to see this person say that and see how many people apologized for it said it wasn't what he meant made all kinds of excuses for him you can draw a straight line to him from that all the way to the insurrection and I feel like we have been this we have been consistent political violence is abhorrent and wrong is wrong on the right it is wrong on the left it is stupid when people think it is justified it is embarrassing and wrong when people apologize for it or try to justify it or become anthropologists for it and it is wrong on when the president of the United States especially is someone who has encouraged political violence for years and the fact that there are a lot of Republicans who would like to point the finger a fucking chris murphy or whoever else for telling the truth about Donald Trump I can't can't look in their own house is part of why we got here I just like just one person on the right I would take seriously if they said you know what like there's some pretty bad rhetoric coming out of Donald Trump's mouth in this administration and Donald Trump has been pretty bad on some of this and also there's some incentive our rhetoric on the left as well and I think we should you know even if one person said that I would maybe take them seriously but none of them even try none of them even even address the fact that Donald Trump says any of that shit so whatever Mike Johnson sort of just gave up the game today I don't know if you saw that quote in his interview today on Fox when he was talking about this and then he said I hope voters remember this in the fall you've got to keep the grown ups and charge and that's the Republicans basically I don't want to we're doing this because we think maybe this can help us win the midterm so I just want you to know I definitely hope that the assassin loses his congressional race me too hey everyone my name is Elijah Cone and I've been a producer here at Cricket Media for a decade I love making our shows with the smart creative people who work here and hearing from all of you who was in every week but the thing that I'm proudest of is that video we made of your vegramas while me grunting while hitting baseballs no wait sorry the thing I'm proudest of is the work we do through votes of America see we don't want our shows to only leave you feeling anxious about the state of the world we want to give you something you can actually do about it just this year our listeners have raised millions of dollars and filled thousands of volunteer chefs to help candidates and causes into 2026 midterms and we have no plans to slow down as we head into 2028 as far as I know there's no other media company that does what Cricket does we make entertaining thoughtful content that brings people into politics and then we give them a direct way to get involved and if you believe in that mission one of the best ways to support us is by becoming a paid subscriber your subscription helps us keep making the shows you love in building a media company that doesn't just talk about politics but helps people change them and if the mission sounds great but you feel like you need some sweet subscriber benefits to get you over the finish line we've got to cover subscribers get ad free shows plus excellent exclusive podcast newsletters and much much more so thank you for listening and supporting what we do head to crooked dot com slash friends today to learn more and become a subscriber one reaction that was notable if unfortunately not surprising was the absolute explosion of conspiracy theories about quote what really happened our DC correspondent a crooked Matt Berg got a hold of data showing that there were four hundred fifty thousand twitter posts containing the words conspiracy hoax staged or false flag in the twenty four hours after the shooting which is almost as many as right after butler is this just the new normal and why do you guys think so many people want to entertain the notion that this may have somehow been staged I think it's the old normal to i mean there's something in america's dna that just makes us distrustful government in constricted power in prone to believing conspiracy theories I think it is a it is a feature not a bug of america life the the founders of our country believed in conspiracy theories about like british plots to do things there was a masonic temples the catholic conspiracy theories were around forever and also like as you come back on top of the the u_s_ government is given people uh. ample reason to question official narratives from the JFK assassination to uh. the lies about vietnam to quaintell pro to the iraq war and then more recently you have q_n_ on which is obviously bullshit and crazy and has a thousand offshoots that are insane but did you have to scan till i think made people feel like huh maybe they weren't so wrong and so um. you take that american d_n_a_ you sprinkle on some social media algorithms and some news outlets that make money off the stuff and are like seating at all uh. and it just feels inevitable and so i think on a human level conspiracy theory makes you feel like um. you have a unified theory to explain why bad things happen that isn't the world is chaotic and out of our control and that's just the way it is and and like it just makes you feel like oh that's the one thing okay like now i have i have some sort of control over this when you really don't yeah and i was thinking it's like instead of trying to to frame it is either i should believe conspiracy theories or i shouldn't or i should trust the government i shouldn't just take like each one as it is it's like i'm just trying to think about staging this fake assassination attempt like how does it work what is the and also like what is the benefit here like he gets a he gets a five point bump in the polls that goes away in a few weeks or and the judge in the in the ballroom case feels bad and then dismisses the lawsuit and that's that's worth risking his own life in the lives of the people around him i just i'm not sure the juices work the squeeze on this one on the station the attempt also i'm not not sure quite how you do it the guys from california he's been posting things about opposition to trump for like couple years now see that's a long i was going to say that's a long it's a long game it's a long game yeah man the the like i think everything Tommy said is right but as with everything else like people are more isolated they are like that the out when you start seeing one conspiracy theory start to see others and it just feeds that world view and there's not enough natural kind of checks against it whether it's people seeing the news on their television just happen upon it and people having tighter social circles people having more friends i just think there is this conspiratorial kind of the internet is conspiratorial social media is fundamentally conspiratorial so i rewards the right more than it does the left it feeds a kind of anger and an animosity and loneliness and a paranoia in a sense that everything is happening to you and that you have no place in it sir long long i were talking with us on the sunday pod we do it like people are now in focus group saying well i'm a big conspiracy person it's not like a thing you're ashamed of or like you know kind of like walking on eggshells around it's like oh people i love conspiracy it's like it's like part of their identity now i then i guess i would just say for folks who believe that on this one think about it this way and a couple other people have made this point so it's not new but um uh donald trump would he have rather than night gone how it did or um would he rather have gotten to give his speech where he had the press captive for a full hour and was going to just tear into them so that everyone could hear and make all those jokes you know like he really he was really excited to do what he was excited to do this so i've got much probably more beneficial well he wants he's he's he's so excited but he wants to he wants to re re-schedule it uh for 30 days so we can go give the speech y'all in again yeah i just i think uh i don't know if this is the this is the best outcome um before we move on uh we should address the other incident of attempted political violence in dc on saturday night um at an after party hosted by sub-stack independent journalist michael tracey and jimmy kosta get into some kind of a shouting match about my amy herald reporter julie k brown who's reporting broke open the epstein scandal uh speaking of conspiracies not july brown but the epstein scandal afterward uh tracey tweeted quote jim a kosta threatened to fight me tonight at the sub-stack party to which a kosta replied that's because you are trash um Tracy then posted maybe one of the greatest tweets of all time quote still have no idea whatever went on with trump tonight just know jim at a kosta through a fucking hissy fit pussy jim meet me in front of the hampton in then he posted a picture of the hampton in no first of the hampton in no first the address including the uh the area code and the country oh good then he followed up with a photo and about like façade and then the caption was jim i'm literally waiting for you right now you piece of shit so then julie julie k brown posted that jimmy kosta was a total gentleman uh yes so it does sound like i mean michael tracey sounds like he's a piece of shit so the julie brown she said the michael tracey she's like tweeted criticism of him before uh she said he was pay she asked or wondered allowed on twitter if he was paid to harass and smear epstein's survivor so i think he asked her about that but tracey is also attacked her reporting and accused her of fabricating quotes so a lot of like the underlying dispute is about the reliability of claims made by some of the victims especially virgin did you fray so i don't god knows what they were talking about but uh julie brown says the tracey was harassing her jimmy kosta steps in to try to get him to calm down and that led to what I think are some of the funniest tweets in the history of Twitter. Like me being Ohio style, I'm waiting for you outside the Hampton Inn. It's so funny to me. - Yeah, well, so like on that night is everyone. It's everything else is so serious to go down like it's just a constant streaming list. I don't know what's going on with Trump tonight, but you are trashy pussy. Meet me in front of the Hampton Inn. (laughing) - And then later Olivia Juliana was like a 23 year old woman political activist. She's still like, "Hey, since you're like picking on women so much, why don't you pick on me next time?" And Michael Tracer responded to her, "Okay, let's do it. You want to meet up somewhere tonight?" Like he was trying to fight her. So now this guy is threatening to beat up this Gen Z woman. And then he later said, "Who are you sending in your stead, Adelavia Juliana?" I would have loved to give you the nice beat down you requested and no holds barred. - Do you think he's still at the Hampton Inn right now just waiting for anyone to show up? Who might have a sub-stack or any kind? - He's just waiting for an influencer to walk by. - There's a counter. - I will say, I used to have beef. - Or like, "Oh, how do people get radicalized and do crazy things? I don't know." - Yeah, we got to follow the figure out how do we get Tracy off the Hampton Inn pipeline. But yeah, like I remember when we were working on dinner back in the day, it was like, "It's a little bit weird, all the press is there. It feels a little too chummy." Like, you know, it feels like his politics just a show. And now all these years later, it's like, you know what, it had its problems. But like, there was something good about people being able to be in one space. But then I think, you know what we were really missing? That like, 1960s, 70s, 80s, coked out people who don't have an internet. So the only time they finally get to fight each other is in person. And there's like, and like, Gore Vidal's getting slugged in the face boom and mallet. Now, mailers, they're making a little quip. Like that, that, that, come on. Let's get back to that. - But again, it does sound like the in-person portion of this fight seemed much more boring than what we got online. So even that, like, it seems like there was a little altercation in person. But the, the hamptorks don't want to fight anybody. - Right. Because it's like the hamptorks. But this, no one would be talking about this without the beautiful Hampton in posting. - Yeah, I don't know if it's worth saying it. The fact that, yes, like, what a confrontation. It seems like based on what everyone was saying, that Tracy, like, wouldn't let Julie K. Brown walk away from him. So it's basically like, kind of like yelling at a woman at a party about the Epstein files. - Yeah, wild. - Like, also, you guys don't want to fight anybody. Like, best case, you win the fight and then you go to jail. Worst case, you lose the fight and then you're like severely injured. None of you will, like, just stop it. Stop pretending you're fighting anybody. Fight exactly. Your adults. - Movies make punches seem like movies and punches. I think give people a bad impression of punches. - Yes, but what happened is you will throw one punch, then you'll grapple, and then you'll be exhausted, and you'll fall on the floor, and the cops will arrest you. - Yeah. - Have fun. - All right, well, there are other things happening in the world, believe it or not, as Trump's interviewers over the weekend tried to remind the president. Here's his answer to Fox News's Jackie Heinrich in a phone interview about why he called off Steve Whitcoff and Jared Kushner's trip to Pakistan for a new round of around talks and where things stand right now. - We're not doing this anymore. We have all the cards. If they want to talk, they can come to us or they can call us, you know, there is a telephone. We have nice, secure lines. We've wiped out, largely wiped out the opposition. If we ever had to keep going, we'd wipe them out very quickly. The rest of it, the remainder. And I hope we don't have to do that, but it may be possible that we do. You know, they have no cohesion, their leadership is very strange. Sometimes you don't have any idea what that you're dealing with. - So in a separate interview with Fox, Mark Rubio echoed that last point saying, quote, "Unfortunately, the hardliners with an apocalyptic vision of the future have the ultimate power in that country, seeming to indicate that the new Ayatollah and his loyalists are stopping the more moderate block from offering any concessions on Iran's nuclear program. The state of play right now. American officials say is that Iran is offering to reopen the straight-of-form moves in exchange for an end to our blockade of their ports and punting the issue of Iran's nuclear dust." - That's right. - Notice the more than 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium to a later date. German chancellor Frederick Mertz said on Monday that Iran is, quote, "humiliating the United States with how it's approached the negotiations." Tough to disagree. Tommy, where's this leave us? - Frederick Mertz. Yeah, this makes me triggered on a lot of levels. Back in the day, we would talk about how there were politics in Iran and a diversity of opinion and moderates and hardliners and Republicans would be like, you're so naive. They all chant death to America, they all hate you. And now it's like Rubio's whining about the hardliners, killing off hopes of a nuclear deal with the moderates. Like, yeah, buddy. Well, maybe because Trump pulled out of the JCPOA in 2018. And then you started bombing them with the Israelis and you bombed them during talks and then you killed the Supreme Leader and you killed Ali Larjani, who was one of the negotiators. And now the IRGC, the military, is grabbing more power, just like literally everyone predicted. So now it sounds like we're left trying to negotiate a deal that is just about a straight-of-formos, which is now closed, but was open before the war started. And all the nuclear issues are unresolved. The 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium is just sitting there. The Iranian military has lots of ballistic missiles. They're repairing the launchers that they used to fire them. And the U.S. is kind of relatively protected from the economic fallout. Our gas has gone up, but not a lot. But factories are shutting down in Asia. Boothons canceled 20,000 flights because of fuel shortages this summer. Yet countries rationing energy. And if this keeps going, there's going to be recessions in Asia, Europe, the Gulf. You could see higher food prices down the road in Africa if not shortages. So yes, this is humiliating for the U.S., as Mert says. Not just, though, because J.D. Vance is sitting on a tarback in Islamabad, but because Trump has started a war and he has no ability to end it, we're losing it. I noticed in reading some of the pieces about this that the U.S., or the Trump administration officials, and Trump himself have not yet rejected this plan from Iran on opening the straight-of-formos for-- and in the blockade, and then kicking the nuclear negotiations down the road. And I was starting to wonder, I could see an outcome, knowing Trump, where they make that deal. He opens the straight, and then says, and we got our eyes on the nuclear dust anyway, and we're going to get that later. They try anything with that dust. They don't even know what's going to happen. And we got all the cards, and we're going to negotiate real strongly later. And you know what, we've destroyed the regime. Regime change. We've destroyed all their missiles, not true. We've done all this stuff, and now they made a big deal. Because the blockade hurt them so much that they couldn't deal anymore. And now we control the straight, and the straights open, and we want. It's a lesson from Donald Trump for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, which is, no one can humiliate you without your consent. It is-- yeah, I think he's going to try to walk away from this thing. Yeah, that's like-- I could see that happening. Although I guess it-- also part of the deal was that Iran was like, if the straight-of-formos opens in this deal, they're still going to charge the tolls. Open for that means, you go on the route, we tell you to go, and you pay us a fee. Which is so it's actually worse than it was before. Everything will be worse than it was before. They will have more revenue to rebuild all their nuclear infrastructure and all their military infrastructure. And by the way, there's some reports today that Iran retains 2/3 of its Air Force. The bulk of it's infrastructure is just a mess. Even that was bullshit. All right. When we come back, love it, talks to California gubernatorial candidate, Katie Porter. Hey, everyone. My name is Elijah Cohn. And I've been a producer here at Cricket Media for a decade. I love making our shows with the smart, creative people who work here and hearing from all of you who us in every week. But the thing that I'm proudest of is that video we made of Yvesek Ramaswamy grunting while hitting baseball. No wait, sorry. The thing I'm proudest of is the work we do through votes of America. See, we don't want our shows to only leave you feeling anxious about the state of the world. We want to give you something you can actually do about it. Just this year, our listeners have raised millions of dollars and filled thousands of volunteer chefs to help candidates and causes into 2026 midterms. And we have no plans to slow down as we head into 2028. As far as I know, there's no other media company that does what Cricket does. We make entertaining, thoughtful content that brings people into politics. And then we give them a direct way to get involved. And if you believe in that mission, one of the best ways to support us is by becoming a paid subscriber. Your subscription helps us keep making the shows you love in building a media company that doesn't just talk about politics, but helps people change them. And if the mission sounds great, but you feel like you need some sweet subscriber benefits to get you over the finish line, we've got you covered. Subscribers get ad-free shows, plus excellent exclusive podcasts, newsletters, and much, much more. So thank you for listening and supporting what we do. Head to Cricket.com/friends today to learn more and become a subscriber. [MUSIC PLAYING] She's a former member of Congress from Orange County and a candidate for governor, the real single mom of Orange County. Katie Porter, welcome back to the show. Great to be back. So I want you to know something. I'm an undecided voter. So this is an interview, but I'm also a constituent. First of all, what have you learned on the campaign trail that has surprised you so far? I would say how just kind of demoralized people are about politics, the biggest opponent in this race. And there's been a lot of speculation about who's going to win and who's winning and who's not winning. Actually, the biggest opponent in this race has been apathy. Until a couple of weeks ago, people would stop me and say, you're running for governor, you're great, but I like Gavin. And I would be like, hey, guess what? I'm not running against Gavin. Gavin's term limited. Even now, I think people feel like they look toward politics, what they often see is what's coming out of Washington. [BLANK_AUDIO] that is upsetting and so then they don't want to think about politics at all. But from the standpoint of a Californian, this is a huge decision for our state. And so one of the things I think that surprised me is having someone who's been in a swing district year after every two years swing district. Like voter statewide or not is tuned in to we need to make decisions. It's okay to vet and choose among candidates. And so I've been a little surprised in Orange County everyone was like, I don't know, I'm not sure. Like as you were the Republicans persuade me. And it's statewide, it feels a little bit more like tell me what to do. And I think like we need to flex our political muscles and look at candidates and listen to them and think about what the moment calls for and make choices. And I think Californians are a little bit out of practice about that. - Yeah, it feels like there's two big reasons. One is Trump sucks up all the oxygen. And the other is the problems that are California-based are actually not thought about by Republicans. Is a democratic state with a democratic legislator. We've got a democratic governor. Our cities are run by Democrats. So let's talk about each part of it. Let's start with Trump. Governor Newsom told Mark Liebuwitch that he would encourage his successor to meet with Trump and build a relationship because it starts out interpersonal. And that Trump might really want that relationship to stick it to Newsom. What do you think about that? Would you head to DC hate take one of those smiling pictures like Mom Donnie and Karen Bass? - Well, I would definitely head to DC and one of the things I would head there for is not just Trump but to meet with a congressional delegation because I saw this when I was in Congress. Our state government, whether that's the governor or the legislature in California, needs a much tighter partnership with our congressional delegation. Because our biggest problems here like housing are not the biggest priorities of our congressional delegation. That's a mismatch. So definitely go to DC in terms of Trump, like think you all be start out. I knocked out a lot of doors in Huntington Beach and I would approach Trump the same way I approached a Huntington Beach Voter. Hi, I'm Katie Porter and see where it goes from there because if you can have a productive relationship, I'm not real confident it's gonna last given what Trump's doing. But I took Governor Newsom's advice here to be get a positive thing going for as long as you possibly can. And maybe we can make some progress on things like aid for fire victims that we have been waiting too long on. That said, it's pretty likely that Trump is going to hurt Californians and you are gonna have to be ready to punch back. So there's been a few different approaches by different Democratic governors. You have Newsom, I think has been the most publicly pugnacious. You have Pritzker that has I think done similarly, but also I think had a lawsuit and kind of focusing a bit more on the courts. You've had others that like Gretchen Whitmer that have at least publicly tried to be more conciliatory. Is there a model that you think looks the best, that works the best? I don't think you can have an answer to that because you have a president whose main characteristic is wild unpredictability. So I think most of us get up every day and be like, what are we getting today? So I think you can't know for sure. But I will say my time in Congress, I think I really showed all of the ability to have all of those different responses. So there were Republican members of the delegation like Doug Lamolfe, who passed away not long ago that I did two bills with Doug and passed them through the house. There were other Republicans, Darrell Iso, like I just can't get along with that guy and I don't want to. Don't feel bad about that. Just can't find that opening space. So I think you have to kind of be willing to adapt to what Trump is throwing at you because I think it's going to, we see him changing on the minute. So let's talk about some of your proposals. You pitched getting rid of income taxes for California's making up to $100,000. Now for reasons that people outside of California may not, no, we have a proposition system. Property taxes are limited in a way. The governor can't change. And what that's meant is because we have progressive taxes here, year to year, there's huge swings in how much revenue the state has, boom and bust, boom and bust. Wouldn't narrowing the tax base make that problem much worse? The opposite actually, I think. So first let's talk about progressive taxes. We have progressive income taxes in California. But we actually, because of Prop 13, have absolutely not progressive property tax. In fact, if you buy something and then it appreciates wildly, you get the same benefit as somebody who buys something and it stays flat. So we're not progressive there, but more importantly, and what I'm really interested in is the fact that we do not have a progressive corporate tax. If you're a corporation in California and you make a dollar and hard earned profit, you pay 8.84% on that dollar. If you're a corporation and you make $500 million in profit, you pay 8.84%. So we could actually adjust that just slightly and actually provide some tax relief for those really corporations that are struggling. Some are big, some are small, but they're struggling. And in the most profitable years, we could say to corporations, you were a banger of a year. You're gonna pay just a little bit more because that's what we say to Californians. You got a big bonus, you got more income, you're gonna pay a little bit more. So that's the first thing. The second thing is almost all of the volatility in our revenue system comes from the tippy tippy top. It comes from capital gains, not from variation in the income. But the reliable part is the income part. You will have, the taxes will be applying more at the top. So we get over $100 million in income tax every year. The people paying under $100,000 generate about 8 billion of that. So it's not a huge, huge fraction. And I think we can safely say we are gonna have corporations that make a profit every year. I mean, I've pretty much never seen all corporations lose money. And so I think that's about it. But the bigger reason to do it is, look, everybody's talking about affordability, to which I say welcome, this has really been my life's work. Families in bankruptcy, people, victims of predatory lending, families facing foreclosure, pharmaceutical prices, all of the work I've done my whole career. But a lot of what I see candidates doing, not just in this race, but across the country, is describing the problem to voters. Voters know they are already having trouble making ends meet. So affordability might be like a new talking point for some politicians, but it's been in people's lives for a long time. And the second thing is pointing the finger at everybody else for affordability. It's the fault of pharma. It's the fault of fossil fuel. It's the fault of, now look, if you see me with her without a whiteboard, you know I'm all about holding those people to account. But government also can take a big step to give people more money. And so if we think it takes $100,000 to support a family in California, if we think that's what it takes, then government can give people more of their money and be part of solving that affordability crisis. - Right, but aren't, are we just downstream of the problem? Like California had an income tax when we were always an expensive state, but when the state was more affordable. As of right now, if we keep on this trajectory, housing's getting more expensive, schools getting more expensive. I know you have policies for all of that, but the reason California is not affordable is not because we have a broad tax base in which everybody pays into the system. It's because California has a whole bunch of other problems, some caused by the state that are long, that hit long before you get to the tax code. Aren't we like kind of just sort of well shit? California is way too expensive. Nobody likes taxes, let's get rid of taxes. - I don't think that's right. I think we're actually agreeing here, which is that it's not one or the other. The biggest problem Californians have is the cost of housing. That is the biggest slice of virtually everyone's budget. That's why housing has been my number one issue, not only in this race for more than a year, but in the Senate race, focusing on childcare cost. Why? Because if housing isn't your biggest expense, it's probably because you've got little kids and you've got childcare, focusing on college tuition. That's a really big piece. So you can't nibble around the edges of affordability. But look, we are also facing population loss. We are not retaining our own working age people. Our state is kind of demographically aging pretty rapidly. If you look at the 10 cities in the United States that have the most aging most rapidly, like six or seven of them are in California. And there are big cities. So we do need to say to people who are coming out of college, or coming out of apprenticeship programs, who are like five years, 10 years on the job, stay here, stay here because we're gonna let you, and they're often earlier in their earnings, they're often those below 100,000 people. They've got a lot of student loan debt, they've got a lot of childcare expense. They're the ones who are suffering on housing, right? So it's not an either or, I think it's in all of the above. But I do think it's really important for government to own directly some of what we put on families. If you're making $50,000 a year in California and you're a single mom with a kid, let me go back to my GP Morgan Chase, Jamie Diamond example from Whiteboard from years ago, you need every penny. And so the state should do that, should help you have what it takes to live. And so it's not to take away from all those other problems. It's just to say like, we need all the above, and we need to really get out California's reputation as a place that supports the next generation of workers, the next generation of Californians, come here for a better future. - If you got every proposal, you have put forward through, would the California state government be collecting more revenue or less revenue? So on the free two free years of college, which is one of my proposals. So we have two free years of community college under Gavin Newsom. Big shout out to him on that. I think it's, I someone who's a parent of a 17-year-old with a lot of B-minuses, transformative, okay, to know that I have that option for my kid. So I would do tuition free years at a CSU, a UC, or a Cal Poly. And then no taxes on families earning less than 100,000. Those two I can make up and have left over with a little touch up from 8.84 to maybe nine and a half or 10 on the best, the most profitable years on our corporations. The childcare is a little different. The childcare is going to be something that is bigger. It's longer term. It's probably gonna come through a mix of tax revenue. It could be a small payroll tax. It could be partly through corporation taxes. But let me be clear. Free childcare is not something I'm doing for kids. It's not something I'm even doing for parents or grandparents who are trying, tired of being the free childcare. Childcare grows our economy and that's what California needs. - Yeah, well that's the reason I asked that is look, I love California and you can tax the fuck out of me. I'm happy to pay it. I'm not leaving. - You and Tom Steyer. - Yeah, me and, yeah. - Or apparently not. 'Cause he said, he said me not paying taxes. Me paying more taxes is not the solution. - So here's the right, but here's the problem, right? 'Cause the politics of this are good old fashion. People don't like taxes and they don't like billionaires. But right now, California, we collect more per person than every state besides New York. We have the highest tax, top marginal rate of any state. Highest gas tax, it's $10 every time people fill up their tank. We have the worst roads in the country. Highest sales tax in the country. We're losing population to places like Texas. If you look at that, you say, you know what? This state doesn't have a revenue problem. And that may be kind of something that doesn't play well with certain parts of the democratic base. But the reality is what we have is a deeper structural issue with how our government is run and where the money is going. And that to me is what we need the next governor to focus on. And to be honest, watching that debate, the two Republicans who would be a fucking disaster seem more excited about that and more energized about that than the Democrats. - So let me tell you where I got. 'Cause I think, you know, I'm notice a straight shooter. So let me be really straight with everyone. Do you know where I got the idea of no California state income taxes on people earning less than $100,000? - Where'd you get it? - Steve Hilton. So the reason I tell you that is, I mean, I think Steve's got crazy pants ideas coming out of his mouth most of the time. But I'm looking for good ideas. And the fact that Steve said it, I thought about what that would have meant for me early in my career. I thought about the person who's working as a cashier at my Albertsons. And what it would mean for them to not feel like they're paying in to a state that right now, they don't feel like they're getting what they need out of. So I also think that's part of it is like you're saying, you have to be willing to look at spending. You have to make spending decisions, period. Like, and we have been sort of when Gavin Newsom ran in 2018 and really he gave me so much help on the campaign trail. He came to campaign for me, but look, it was a different moment. And he basically said, we'll have this, we'll have that, we'll have X, we'll have Y, we'll have Q. You can have a free pony. Like everybody can have everything. That's not where we are right now. So I am absolutely willing to make tough decisions. One of the things I've said is, for example, on homelessness, we've got to put more money into prevention. Why? Because homelessness prevention programs take about $6,000 to prevent someone from losing a home. Permanent supportive housing after someone's been on the streets for six months, that's $850,000. So I'm absolutely looking at where do we need to shift our spending to give taxpayers more bang for a buck. When I ran in Orange County, I don't think I've ever seen Orange County Republicans more mad at me than when I had lawn signs that said KV Porter tax payer advocate. Because they're like, you can't be a taxpayer advocate. You're a Democrat. But we should all be taxpayer advocates. People should feel like they're getting bang for their buck. And Democrats should own that and lean into that. And it doesn't mean you're taking services away from people. It's the contrary. You're saying, is this spending actually doing what we want it to? And so if it's not, we got to redirect it to somewhere it is. So let's talk about how we, like our roads, California roads, they're the worst roads in the country. We also have the highest gas tax in the country. We spend 2.5 times per mile than the average state. What do you think explains that? What would you do to fix that? Like, let's, I want to talk about the reform aspect of what we need the next governor to do. So I did not support the gas tax in 2018. And so as we hear everybody say, this is all Democrats fault. It's like, I didn't support that gas tax. And the reason I didn't support it back in 2018, that extra $0.12, was it's deeply regressive. It hurts low-income people who have to make long commutes with older cars. I got the 2010 Sienna. It's not getting good mileage. So I think we have to be careful about doubling down on that approach. This is a question of what do you do with your general fund? What are your priorities? California roads also have improved in many parts of California. I don't think that people in Los Angeles feel like they've improved. But I will tell you, my roads in Orange County are great. And we've seen lots of projects and lots of improvements. So there's also like, it's a big state. We've got a lot of places that are doing things that are different. And so I think one of the things I also bring to the races, like, I'm not running to be the governor of Los Angeles or the governor of the Bay Area. Orange County is the sixth most populous county in the United States. San Diego County is the fifth most populous county in the United States. And these places get treated like political backwater. So to Californians in every part and pocket of the state, you've got to look everywhere. And when you have one city that's not getting it done on any given issue, sometimes it's the city. And you've got to think about how to have those conversations and figure out what's going wrong there. On education, again, another area where California is spending a ton per pupil. There's been improvement over the years, not a totally bad story, but we're clearly still not getting the value we should be in our system. Part of that is we have, again, a very convoluted bureaucratic system. Governor Newsom, in January, put forward a set of reforms that have been on the table for literally decades. The Board of Education and the Department of Education are separate and go up to different places. This is a proposal that would have more authority and accountability flow up to the governor. Do you support that proposal? I definitely support figuring out sort of having one place where the buck stops. But why don't you stop with you? Why don't I? Yeah, let's have a stop with the governor. Oh, so I don't have any problem with it stopping from me. But I do think that the governor needs to decide if they're going to do this. And this may be a decision the next governor doesn't get to make, right? Because Newsom's made the proposal. We'll see if it gets through, is the governor has to set more steady educational policy. This is one argument for it being with the governor. Yeah. Because one of the things we see with educational policy being diffused through those different agencies you mentioned, plus the legislature, right? Plus the governor is, we change educational policy every two years. So, and I've seen this as a public school parent. First, it's two years of phonics, then it's never mind. It's Common Core Math, then it's never mind. It's remedial this, then never mind. It's textbook reform. Then never mind. It's class size. One of the things I want to do as governor is decide what we're going to try for eight years. And then really decide at the outset, how do we measure this? And I think states that have made progress on education have done that. I think there's a lot to be said about looking at the state level at where do we lose people and we can never get them back. So if you're not reading fluently by age seven or eight, we, we never get you there. That's just about brain development. If you don't make that jump from Algebra one to Algebra two, you are not going to have any of those STEM engineering, even a lot of the building trades careers are not going to be open to you. And that's a place where the state could really concentrate its resources. We changed things up with the local control funding formula several years ago. What we haven't done is go back and see whether it's worked or not. So but isn't this an easy one? What is the reason to not just say, hell yeah, it's stupid how we do it. I don't want to have the all the accountability defused. We have a bunch of laws in California that distribute responsibility, haphazardly. It's true in our city. We have this particular city and county. It's true in our, I want a governor who's going to be like, I need this authority because I have a limited amount of time. These are great reforms I'd go further. I don't understand the hedge. No, it's just a matter of saying to yourself, you have to realize that when the governor takes all that, you are still dealing with every county board of education. That's not something you're eliminating. You are not dealing with the school, local school boards, they still have a lot of authority. So I just want to be very clear, you can and I think probably should consolidate it all at the state level with the governor, but let me be very clear. What happens in local school boards? Much less what happens in every classroom, that is, that is also in the mix. So if the governor had a stronger authority, you have one entity to do that negotiation. I think that's probably a good reform. So there remains a chance right now that Democrats are going to be shut out of the general election because of our jungle primary system. So we just had this debate. It was you and three of your opponents on the Democratic side and two Republicans. Should the other Democrats who didn't qualify for that debate drop out? Well, look, the ballot is set. We have 62 people on the ballot. 62. And I just want to remind everyone that's not totally uncommon for California, for governor's races. When New Samaritan in 18, there were dozens and dozens of people on the ballot then too. There's always the person who's name is like IP-free-ly right who has to be on the ballot, I think everybody is starting to consolidate. I think we see this typically happen right around the time ballots go out. I think it is important for groups that are hosting events, whether it's a forum, whether it's a debate, don't platform people. If you're concerned about this problem, if you're concerned that we're going to end up with too many Republicans, don't put the candidate with 1% on stage. Let's act like grown-ups about this. But I also think that there's been a push to, and we saw this with Eric Swalwell. There was a huge push that everyone but Eric should drop out. Aren't we glad we didn't do that? Yeah, that would have been a real botch. So I do think when we ran in 18, we had New Seven, we had Villagorosa, this is Villagorosa Governor Part Two run, we had Villagorosa, we had Junchung, and we had a lesser polling candidate to Lady Stin. But there's probably a three pretty high polling candidates, maybe a fourth one hanging out there, and that worked out just fine. So do we want to have eight candidates all duking out on the Democratic side? I don't think so. Should we have three or four so people have some choice or two or three? Yes, I think we should. So let's talk about the other people in the race. Why would you be a better governor than Javier Basera? Yeah, so I have shown a willingness to go toe-to-toe with corporate America and an unwillingness to shake up the status quo. You just said this yourself, John. The status quo isn't so hot. You started this with a litany of things about California that are frustrating. Javier Basera first entered office when I was in middle school or high school, and I'm 52. I've had Botox a couple of times, and people keep telling me on social media. I need it again. I don't disagree. You need your face. Your face is your instrument. So I think we need someone who are in a moment of California where more of the same is not going to cut it. We need to change. We need to recognize that we can't just pat on ourselves on the back and say we're California, we're the biggest. We got to say to ourselves what's holding us back from being better. And so I think that taking on the status quo, being willing to do things a little differently, not just going along to get along, I think that's an important quality right now. I also think I'm someone who has, it came into politics because of Donald Trump. So like Abigail Spenberger, like Mikey Cheryl, like Deb Hollen, like this whole next-patcher governors that we have in our electing, these are my classmates. These are my generational peers in terms of when we came into politics, and we have a different vision of how state should work together than I think we have traditionally seen. And so I think that's really important. And then the other thing I would say is, I'm rolling out real policies. So I am rolling out concrete things that people can count on. And so things like two years of college, nobody's confused about what two, three years of college means. Housing, number one priority, been our biggest problem. I think that's different than what we've seen in terms of all getter done. I think people need a different level of specificity and they need to know that you have led with a different level of accountability. So when I was questioning the CDC director early, early in the COVID pandemic, and I asked, will you make COVID testing free? I wasn't content when he said, y'all work on it. I said, will you today make COVID testing free? And he did and people got it. And I think that is the willingness to kind of reimagine government accountability that I think this moment calls for. And so, and then same question on Steyr, but my, you know, a lot of the knock on Steyr, which I think is a very reasonable thing to knock him on, is when in his, you know, he put his wealth into things like private prisons and detention centers. And I think that's gross. And he's had to explain that. But I'm curious just as a governor, why do you think you would be a better governor, not based on what happened before, but going forward, why would you do a better job than Tom Steyr? Yeah, let me, let me tell a story about being in a caucus meeting full of Democrats. And they were talking about gas prices. And they were like, you know, gas prices, they're high. This is true, by the way. This is years ago, a couple of years ago, gas prices, they're high and everybody, you know, got in line and wanted to talk about gas prices. And I raised my hand and I said, you know what? I want to talk about grocery prices because that is the number one thing that has been going up early, rapidly, like I am seeing boxes of cereal for $10. I am seeing eggs. I am seeing bacon. I am seeing blueberries that are eight bucks. This people are like, wow, who knew? John, I knew because I pushed the shopping cart in my family as a single parent. I'm parenting three kids who are 13, 17 and 20. So basically three teenagers got helped me. I really think about what's, what's it going to mean for them if we don't bring down the cost of housing? What it's, what's it going to mean for them if we don't bravely tackle AI? With all respect to Tom, his kids are going to be set. They're trust fund kids. And it's a different context. So when we talk about like kitchen table economic issues, and you hear politicians say that we should talk more about kitchen table economic issues, that stuff happens every night at my kitchen table. And so I think that it's as much a question about, are you really awake and attuned to what it's like for California families in a way that I just don't think a billionaire can be? So you've been asked to explain for years old videos where you lost your temper too many times. And I don't want to do that. But I had this feeling when I was watching you in the debate. And what I thought was, where's that energy from Katie Porter telling someone to get the fuck out of her shot? Like you think Tom Steyer is buying this race but 120 million dollars in just to get his name up there. You've been fighting this on the street. You think Javier Boursera did a terrible job at HHS. You think he's super vague. He has no idea what he's doing and won't be able to get anything done. That's what I think you think. But I think there's like a part of you that is like, I don't know. Like, where is that part of that? And I worry that like, you've been hit with this attack. And you, you should treat people well. And I believe you do. Or you've apologized for this in the past. But like, like, sometimes I'm like, I don't want it directed at your staff in the room. And I think this person deserves to be yelled at. But I would like to see that get out of my fucking shot energy on the campaign trail. And I wonder if you feel that tension as a as a woman as a candidate. I mean, look, there is California's never elected a woman governor. Let's just put it out there. And the last time Democrats had a woman nominee, do you know? Little trivia, live trivia. I don't know. 1994. I was a sophomore in college. And a lot of voters weren't born at that point. It was Kathleen Brown. And the, you know, the sister of the governor, the daughter of the governor. So there is real people who have a hard time believing something they haven't seen. I have a new appreciation in this race for what it means to go first. And a lot of my life, I wasn't necessarily a first. I wasn't the first woman even elected to represent my district in Orange County. I was the first Democrat in a long time. But I beat a woman to get there in the Senate race. I was running with Barbara Lee, right? And iconic woman. And so the dynamics were, I think the gender dynamic and the discussion was different. I also think people are really sad that we have Donald Trump as president and are trying to assign kind of why that might be and how to understand that. You're seeing that pop up in discussions of who the 2028 nominee should be. But nobody should make any mistakes. Like I'm tough as hell. And that hasn't changed. And I'm running my campaign and taking on policy issues that are tough. We just had a back and forth about taxes in which, you know, you ask tough questions. And I explain to you why I think you're wrong. I'm running my campaign not taking corporate money. Believe you me in a state like California where quote, that can't be done. Quote. I'm showing that it can be done. And I'm willing to be tough and say that I don't think our next governor should be bought and paid for by Chevron or be funding their campaign with fossil fuel money. Those are crazy quote by Pacera, by the way, about how do you need Chevron? Who needs Chevron? Do I need Chevron? Do you need Chevron? Have your besera should not need Chevron just to be clear. Like we right now need gas for cars in California. But no politician needs to be bought and paid for. That's a choice that every one of us makes. And I've made a different choice. And I think that is one of the reasons Californians can trust me. Back to kind of the debate stage look like every debate has its own Evan flow. The more candidates you have on stage, the harder it is. I think I was the only one who punched hard at Chad Bianco for telling California to get over racism. And I said without missing any words, racism is not something you get over. Racism is something you fight. And you, Mr. Bianco, are unfit to lead a state with that's diverse as California. What you're saying to black and brown Californians to immigrant Californians is unacceptable. But this is also a moment where people want to know you're tough, but they also want to feel like they can trust you. And I think you're always having to balance that. And so you're going to see that our first TV ads, they have me, they're up on air, they have me with the whiteboard warrior. I'm taking these people to task, you know, diamond, Trump's appointees, Ben Carson. And then you're going to see some ads that are more about like what we just talked about, like here I am, a mom. Don't want my kid to live on my couch. And frankly, like staring that down with these three teenagers, are they ever going to be able to live on their own and so we you always want to have a balance on that, but I don't I don't think I've changed. I think it's just like when you're doing an oversight hearing, you're there to do some oversight. That that stings. In a debate, you're trying to show people different kinds of sides of you all in a one-hour format and we've also got more debates to come. So make no mistake like people who are not being truthful and not taking accountability for their own mistakes. As you said, I've taken accountability for yelling at that staffer four years ago, five years ago, and that's appropriate. But that doesn't mean that Javier Bacero shouldn't have to take accountability for losing 80,000 unaccompanied children. He should. And I'll hold him to that account. Last question. You said you were watching heated rivalry. Ever on a plane? It's a tough show to watch on a plane. No, no, my plane worse, worse than on a plane. I was sitting there. I was on episode two and my two teenagers come home 13 and 17. And Betsy walks in and she's 13 and she says, "Clock it." Because she's apparently unbeknownst to me. Watch she did rivalry and loved it. Okay. So, and Paul says to me, "You 17, why do you have to watch porn in the living room?" Right? And then we had an interesting discussion about would you feel like this, if this was porn, if this were heterosexual sex, an interesting discussion. But like, I am enjoying it. I have one episode to go. And actually, I wanted to ask you something. Can I ask you one thing? You can. Love this book. So, I want to pitch something. I am not a pain influencer. That's awesome. Yeah. Would it would working? Would work in? Did you guys publish this book? Yes, we did. Okay. So, I didn't know that until yesterday that you guys had a publishing house. Yeah. Everybody who is interested in understanding what it's like to be a trans person and where different trans people can be in their journey and how people can help them and hurt them. Love this book. Would working? Not being paid by crooked media. But just telling everybody, this is my library copy. Highly recommend. Wow. Shout out to woodworking. And I have like 30 pages left so don't blow it. Not gonna. Not gonna. Not gonna. No spoilers. No spoilers. Well, Katie Porter. Good luck on the campaign trail. Thanks for talking to me. Really great seeing you. Thank you. That's our show for today. Thanks to Katie Porter for coming on. I'll be gone for Friday's show, but Dan and our buddy Alex Wagner will be back with a new show on Friday. If you want to listen to Podsave America, add free and get access to exclusive podcasts. Go to Cricket.com/Friends to subscribe on SuperCast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Cricket. Podsave America is a cricket media production. Our producer is Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Churlin is our executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglon and Charlotte Landis. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Hayley Jones, Ben Heffkoat, Mia Kellman, Carol Pellavive, David Tolls, and Ryan Young. 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