THE RESULTS ARE IN | Ep.087 Lemonade Stand 🍋

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make smarter decisions join the five million customers worldwide using zero learn more at zero.com that's xero.com ladies and gentlemen welcome to the lemonade stand and the official blue nami the blue kake some people i've been hearing that yeah i've heard that i've heard a lot of names for it but it's sweeping across the damn nation aiden and i i mean i think there's a lot of races to highlight uh you know i i was i've been particularly wrapped up the democrats suffered crushing blows in multiple states tom cotton defeated hailey schaffner in arkansas schaffner if you can't win there's no chance for the party kevin heard defeated nikhilia jasmine thomas by over 200 000 votes in oklahoma if we can't win oklahoma we can only win kansas iowa ohio north and south carolina texas maine possibly alaska and possibly mississippi both of which seemingly pretty likely and absolutely i mean nobody predicted let's be real yeah you know anybody that predicted this i think the most wild even the most lived up the most lived up did you not think if you were doing land acknowledgments before you still didn't predict this is crazy i did not i think uh obviously on this show all across the media spectrum people were talking about certain states like texas being battlegrounds to be flipped yeah uh and even a state as you know as republican as kansas was getting talked about i think what really turned the tide for me that i was like oh my god what is happening yeah was seeing south carolina oh yeah elected democratic senator and then early in the night yeah it was it was like one of the first ones reported so i was like oh this is crazy because i think the the realistic hope like if you wanted to sip the hopium a little bit was that in the that the senate would be flipped at all yeah the democrats uh and if you wanted to sip the hopium a little bit you would have to do a little bit more than you would have to do and i think it was it was a little bit more of an understatement and i think it was a little bit more of a i think no i i not one person did i see predicted mississippi on the battleground like section of any of the websites there was nobody had mississippi even on there it was a surprise it shocked me live watching it i think the first thing i noticed was early on in the night that florida went red actually as expected but it was weirdly close yeah it was weirdly close and i was like wait that's that means something then florida's like in a battleground like that and then every it was it was weird because you know we've been through a number of elections in our lifetimes and i've done a lot of these live and i've never had one where the news was good like every every 15 minutes it'll be another piece of good news it was such a weird experience yeah i mean i was really surprised i feel like i remember every election night very distinctly since 2016 and having a similar feeling of i don't think there's ever been one where i'm like oh oh i'm pleasantly surprised like the whole time i i did want to cover this and like why this is so uh monumental not even just from a more neutral perspective yeah uh this is so there was a ton of different uh elections across the country the primary ones we're talking about right now were the senate seats that were up for grabs yeah and uh this is the first time a democratic senator has been elected in north carolina since 2008 so it's been a while south carolina since 1998 kansas since 1932 and mississippi since 1982 so this is crazy and to top that context though kansas has not been blue since before joe biden was born he wouldn't be born for 10 years and that's that is such a monumental flip yeah it's insane and kansas managed to they they had a governor race that looks like it might flip in the other direction and it looks like the democrat is about to win uh the the governor race there as well and i thought something that somebody pointed out to me was that louisiana was only uh a win for the republican senator by like 20 000 votes it was crazy a super super small margin i think it is incredibly telling of the time that it flowed this hard in one direction you know it backfired so hard i was reading about this morning we had this whole discussion we had an episode about it on the show about the gerrymandering wars yeah and many many republican states redrew their district to get more uh seats but the problem was they'd redrew them to get the thinnest margin so they'd get more seats but when it's such a tidal wave like this they lost a lot of these gerrymandered seats like especially in texas it blew right over the wave went over that so it ended up backfiring hard and then more seats went the other way yeah so they're looking at like a 50 seat plus majority in the house which is absurd and then uh yeah uh uh you know 55 56 seats in the senate which is a massive majority able to pass a lot of things a huge swing in governorships and uh you know all that combined is a pretty big message i think we could talk about what exactly the message was and there's two different schools of thought on it probably i think there's a bit of both but i don't know if there's anything else you want to tell you about the election there's like so much we can go into these races we can go into there's a lot there's a lot there's a lot from last night i'm gonna be talking about for a while i i think me what i wanted to start with was you know why just a feeling of why this happened like really reconciling like how it could have been this bad for the republicans because even in my highest hope world yeah i didn't really imagine this happening yeah uh i really feel like trump truly punted it do you know what i mean he if i think everything else could have been the same and if he hadn't started the war with iran i think these results would be significantly different i think we would expect the normal pattern to play out where the house still flips into the democrats but the degree to which that the democrats won by and the fact that the senate flips so hard is a reflection of how how frustrated people are and i don't even necessarily think that a bunch of previous trump fans or trump voters uh you know suddenly switched sides and went to vote for the democrats i think there's probably a combination of people feeling invigorated by how shitty things are right now and then going to turn out and like vote for the democrats and then going to turn out against him but then also if you are a die-hard republican who doesn't like the democrats you're just not in a particularly motivated moment so depressed like you don't you don't have motivation to go vote because it's kind of just bad uh yeah this was the highest ever vote turnout for a party in a midterm ever in the history of america for the democrats 66.2 million people turned out people were very very motivated on the democratic side and very very depressed on the republican side they might have begrudgingly done it but there was no enthusiasm the enthusiasm gap was massive it's the largest popular vote margin victory since 1976 which is watergate which is kind of you know it ties back into the show and it kind of was very motivating for me because we've talked about how in today's news cycle no individual scandal can get the attention that watergate got even if it's worse nothing sticks but i do feel like collectively it has become a a a watergate style feeling of people just feeling absurd uh fed up with the corruption fed up there's angry in general it's not even one thing and they have the same result at the ballot box so uh i think it worked out i did want to say so there's two parts to it right i think what you're saying is true obviously iran war super unpopular gas prices record highs right before the election the day before the election he came out and said i mean like there's like a lot of 90 10 issues and one of them is people are getting uh really upset with america's ties with israel and so the day before the election if you come out and say like they love me so much in israel if they hate me here i'll go be prime minister there that was trump's statement yesterday like these are the kind of things that are just He's completely misreading the room on data centers, which in the past few months has become like an 80 20 issue on bipartisan. He's been like, if you don't want data centers, you're going to have fun staying poor. Like he has just taken the most unpopular position on many, many issues at the same time as a lot of things he promised didn't happen. So I do think like I'm trying to find out. This is what I want to show. You can pull this up. I think in a very large part, this is a big middle finger to Trump election. A lot of people are sending a signal. They fucking hate how he's run the country, how their combination of the House, Senate and presidency has done badly. And the reason I'm going to show this is because there's a guy, Eric Armstrong, who dropped out a few months ago and still won comfortably in Iowa. And he's like, yeah, I'm going to do my best to do the job, but I still have health issues that I dropped out for. Like, you know what I'm saying? On some level, these voters are not like, oh, this candidate I like or whatever. They're like, I want everything to change. So I do think that's true. That being said, I think what made it so overwhelming is that this time around. There was a new crop of very exciting, younger, speaking better to the issues. People feel candidates on the other side. The bench on the other side was better. I saw the speeches for Tallarico and Abdul Al-Sayed yesterday. They were incredible. I mean, they were like, yeah, they reminded me of prime Obama. They were like, you know, they're like inspirational again. So you have this new bench of younger, better candidates. You combine that with an absolute hatred for the way things have been going. And I think those combine to create this weird, I mean, unprecedented earthquake outcome. Which no one, I think no one predicted. If you look at the average age of all of the Democratic winners in these flip states that we were talking about, it's like 54, I think. And you're naming some of the, I think the more recognizable figures are the even younger people, right? And if you look at the people they were running against, the average age of the incumbents in all those positions was 64. Oh, yeah. And I think it speaks to a demand, even that 10-year difference. It's like people want to see younger, higher energy. It implies something new. Yeah, absolutely. A break with the way things have been going, which is kind of tilted towards the already established and old. And I think, you know, I want to try and find something else. This is the one I wanted to show you. So if you have like had to be immersed in Twitter, as I have been for the past year, the White House communication strategy has been very, very focused on like the id of young men. It has been like focused around video game related messaging. Yeah. And to do all that and to do all these kind of like, I mean, really hacky, you know, like blowing someone up in the boat and making the highlight reel. And it's the AC-130 from like Modern Warfare 2 or like it's like the me from Wii Sports and he's like bowling down immigrants or something. Just insane shit. Doing all this shit and to do all that and then to have young men go plus 38 towards them. Like if that was the area you were focusing entirely on and you lost them so completely, it was just a complete failure of messaging on every level. I mean, messaging in action and it was a wipeout. So the New York Times did a bunch of like exit polling on voters. So they're already showing a bunch of data about like how it swung in different like demographic groups. Yeah. And obviously like the swing in young people that you're mentioning on the male side was already massive. Plus 32 points. A 32-point swing in the age group 18 to 29, which is absolutely insane. I think other big ones too was a 28-point swing for Hispanics like nationwide, really speaking to this like disjointed response to the way the administration was going to handle immigration. Oh, yeah. So I'd been listening to a lot of reporting recently from areas around like Texas border states where like the Hispanic population in Texas is huge. A lot of people that live. A lot of people that live around the border and people who genuinely did have problems with the way border enforcement was done, being done during the term of Biden. But the consistent messaging that they believed in from the administration was this idea of let's clean up this process and let's get rid of like the murderers and the rapists and everybody else should be fine. That is what they like. That was the promise or like. Yeah. Yeah. I would argue, obviously. They also told a lot more. They were saying more. If you weren't listening closely, that was like you could. Yeah. But I think regardless of that, if a lot of people believed that was what was going to happen. Yeah. And for a lot of Hispanics that basically left the Democratic voter base for the first time in that previous election, they came back like because of the way that issue was being executed upon. People have turned against the. Administration's approach on immigration. Yeah. The gains they made in young men and Latinos evaporated, like just completely, completely evaporated. There was nothing durable about what they had there at all. And it's a huge part of why a lot of things that they thought were safe were not in this in this election. I mean, it is it is really easy to tell on this chart. The age, the age gap, 18 to basically 44 all went like plus 20 in every single cross tab. Every single battleground state to Democrats. Literally, if you are under 44, it was like lights out. And the entire base still holding was, you know, 50, 60, 65 plus and mostly white. That was it. It was if you were old and white, you were rock solid for for big T. Yeah. I wouldn't say 100 percent rock solid. But yeah, that was that was his only base left. And even they, you know, I was listening to so many of these exit poll interviews and so much. So many of them were fed up. They were just talking about how annoyed they were at what they thought they were going to get and what they got. It was none of the promises came true. And everything was so disjointed. The tariff war has not benefited Americans. The, you know, antagonizing every ally plus Canada, which nobody had any issue with before this administration. I mean, for young people, the thread I've seen pop up a lot is the Epstein file stuff as well. Like, I think people did care about that. And I always laugh about it when I see it. Because I think it's one of the things Trump actually didn't talk about that much while he was trying to play. But everyone around him tried to downplay it. But all the guys around him were like, we're going to get the files out of files. And Trump was like, well, it's not really that big. Like that one coming back to haunt him is actually kind of funny. It's like this really absurdist way. I mean, it's just I think, you know, he's been able he's listen, he's been remarkably adept politically over his 10 years of fucking being in the spotlight. And he's usually pretty good at rolling with lies kind of in the way. Like Elon can promise something, but then kind of shift the timelines or whatever. Yeah, but he's made a few concrete things that, you know, whether he said it specifically, but Epstein files getting released is like a hard promise. You can remember. Yeah, like no new wars in the Middle East is like you can remember that line. It's like it doesn't get thrown away. And so when you do exactly the opposite, it's so hard to keep the cognitive dissonance going that this guy is not. Yeah, I do. And then, you know, if you're a fan of Trump and you read his true socials and watch Fox News and he does interviews, he comes out every third week. Saying the war is over, the war is over. Gas prices are about to go back down. And then you go fill up your pump and they haven't. So it was just it was a miserable handling of a miserable action. Like the actions of bad and then the PR around it is worse. I actually did want to ask you about that. His his reaction, because he did that in that Fox News call that he did at the end of the evening. And I saw you listening to it. So I think in the wake of these results leading up to it, Trump actually. It said that he would accept the results of the election. There was like an initial quote from a few days ago where he said, like, I'll accept them if they're like done fairly, sort of implying that he would go back to the old strategy of not basically saying that this is all fake and I won't. But I think that the torrent is is just too hard to deny in a way like even he could not say that this was like stolen in so many different places and ways. You hate to say too big to rig, but it's too big to rig, baby. It does feel like it was. It's kind of overwhelming and certainly very difficult for him to use his usual playbook. And so I think the day leading up to the election, he told The New York Times that he would accept the results, which I thought was interesting that he was willing to do that, given his history. And then we go into the evening of the election and they have that phone call on Fox News where the I love the way the hosts ask him questions on that show, man, because they kind of like called him and they're terrified at the same time. Like say anything against him. But they have to ask. Mr. President, what do you think about that? Like, it's just it's fucking embarrassing. Long silences and pauses. And it's just awkward. If it's not clear, by the way, this far into the episode, I know a strength of our show is generally presenting things in pretty neutral terms and then evaluating them and then sort of giving our opinion after. This is a pretty biased episode. I'm enjoying it. I understand that. Yeah. I want to speak on that real quick. I just think it's so I think this result. Shows that a lot of Americans agree that on a base level, the direction of the country has been bad. So regardless of where it goes from here, I don't even know. You know, we should talk about what the Democrats are going to do with this and all that and what we want. Yeah. But I think this is a I think especially for watching the show, this is a generally happy moment. This has not been going in the right direction. We've said this in a million different ways. We cover a lot of issues. And it's good to see that other people agree and like things are shifting. It's also good to see transfer of power done peacefully and democratic process to work. And. I don't know, votes to matter. It's so important to me. has been so much ink spilled on why even vote he's probably going to steal the election why even vote he's going to do a coup yeah why even vote like it doesn't even matter anyway and all that shit has been done is to like depress your vote reduce your ability to have an impact and the people that ignored that just had a huge resounding win like it was so it's such a repudiation of that ideology and i'm so happy to see that happen and i think it's going to inspire people that maybe listen to that to do more even next time so they can get even more from here because again youth vote was up but not enough enough i think i saw a map i think one of our researchers made it yeah i don't know i mean i could find it but no no it's okay i think to summarize what the map was uh it was basically if gen z turned out in the numbers like they're the equal capacity to the boomers yeah the way the map would look nationally like in in the rest of the senate races that had been read and even more seats would have flipped yeah it's even more strong and like some places were like plus 50 or something it's absurd you know so there's still an aspect of like young people not getting out there and voting i i do think something interesting that i encountered this morning is i went to a coffee shop that i go to a lot and they're two i i asked three of the staff there just what their general opinion on the election was and two of the three of them were basically like i'm pretty checked out of politics like i don't really pay that close of attention yeah and it was sort of this like reminder of like i don't really pay that close of attention yeah and it was sort of this like reminder i'll be at a small sample size of as big as turnout was this is still a midterm election where a ton of people like the the gap between this and the average like national uh presidential election year is still pretty large and there is a ton of people who are just totally checked out of politics that don't bother to show up and i can understand why people arrive at that point like they kind of gave me their own background on why that's the case yeah but i think it's a lot of people who are just totally it shows that there's a lot more room to grow it's like there's a reason to reach out to people and encourage them to get out there and vote and i think louisiana even like a 20 000 vote gap is an example of like dude that it could have swung the other way in a world where like more people turned out i mean i think yeah the perfect example is so this is a meme that i saw or it said how it feels voting blue in mississippi and it's a guy looking at a button that does nothing and like this is an example of like a vote that was won by dozens of vote i mean it hasn't even been called yet it's so close but seemingly he has won by dozens of votes like such a small margin incredibly razor small margin the vote mattered so much there literally the listenership of the show in mississippi if they all swung one way could have made the difference it is insane how close it was uh in a lot of these places your vote does matter and i also think even in a place where it doesn't i don't know difficult to to argue against to it sends a mandate it shows if you're young and you vote it sends a message to politicians that youth are votes are worth courting it all matters a lot i think it matters a lot bro and i think people kind of saw this today i don't know i think it was a that was one of the big lessons from this yeah i i the the vibe shifted i i think does matter it has impact down the line sport for this show comes from anthropic so here's the deal it's i have specifically been using it recently to reorganize my notion it has been amazing so you can take claude and you can directly integrate it with notion and say like i want you to make this type of table with all of these data sort it this way and then connect it and then it will create the pages for you like 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all my presentations for five years got relabeled they were all called final final final v1 every presentation for three years and they actually found what they did in the presentation and named it correctly it was actually it's actually a miracle you even know how to use powerpoint when i think about your workflow for problems worth solving get started with claude at claude.ai slash lemonade that's claude.ai slash lemonade and check out claude pro which includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode claude.ai slash lemonade and check out claude.ai slash lemonade if you run a small business you know that having a clear picture of your finances is invaluable zero spelled with an x is a simple but powerful platform built for small business owners that makes managing business finances easier from day one accounting payments payroll and analytics are available in one connected platform reports visual dashboards forecasts and ai insights help owners better understand cash flow and make smarter decisions join the five million customers worldwide using zero learn more at zero.com that's xero.com support for this show comes from upside listen and you and i met the upside team in person mano a mano handshake deal it's true and he had a lovely long island accent i thought it was fantastic and they said they had an app where you can get cash back on gas groceries and dining and i said i had a lot of cash back on gas groceries and dining and i said i had a lot of cash back on gas groceries and dining and i said i had a lot of cash back on gas groceries and dining and i said how is that not a scam that is a real question i asked in the meeting was how the business works and essentially all it does is if enough people use the app they are driving customers to specific locations specific gas stations specific dining restaurants or whatever and so those places will give the cash back to upside as a way of driving the customers yeah you get the business gets the benefit of having more customers driven through the app and you get the benefit as the user because you get cash back on your services through anywhere that supports upside so once we heard how it worked it sounds like a really cool deal obviously upside has given back one billion dollars to its users to find out how much you could earn download the free upside app and use promo code lemonade to get an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas that's an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas using promo code lemonade check it out before we get to a few other things that the point uh i wanted to ask you about is this trump talk after the elections and like his acceptance of it so on that phone call he kind of admits what feels like for the first time that the iran war is the reason that a lot of these people did not vote in support of him like he says it flat out before rambling about how he could finish the war at any time and iran should come to the table soon if they're smart he did tack that on and then uh he also now none of this should ever happen but it's because of biden and yeah he also threw on because the host asked him about the rallies and the effort that he had put into campaigning because uh he suggests that because his name was not on the ballot and that he wasn't involved in the races that that has to do with the failure and then the fox news hosts asked him like well you did all these rallies and you did do campaigning events in places like kansas like isn't isn't that putting effort in and he said like well the rallies were huge they're the biggest you've ever seen uh dude i mean more specifically a he went to all these swing states and said pretend i'm on the ballot and then as he's losing the night of he goes if i was on the ballot he would have won yeah it's like ridiculous it's it is so i think there's an ft opinion article about this that suggested this he forced himself into the conversation like this vote is a referendum on him as an individual 100 by him making himself such a centerpiece of everything he actually made things worse for a lot of the candidates that were chosen to run like you could make the argument that in south carolina him picking the sister of lindsey graham yeah uh who was a candidate that many would argue was not prepared for that race or not the rights pick is the reason that like they lost the race you can make you can make a strong argument that he individually has torpedoed the republican party for six plus years yeah no absolutely i mean like you're saying listen i think there's a difference between blue texas including the fact that you know it's getting more urban there's more latino voters there's there's things that they've been talking about for a while but these things have not manifested in blue texas in a long time but this time around you know instead of the popular incumbent senator he forced ken paxton he forced him through the republican primary a guy that everybody in his own party hated and has absolutely zero charisma no message it's just and he's ugly apparently trump calls him ugly every third speech and so like he hand-picked a lot of these people and he was in the fox news call being like well people were saying they weren't pro-trump enough they were it's like bro shut that makes no sense yeah i think it's this dilute i mean he says it so many times publicly that i kind of have to believe that it's not just a strategy and it's genuinely his own delusion of like but the economy is actually amazing everybody actually supports me the rallies are actually the biggest they've ever been like he he copies this kind of overwhelming pro-me response across everything and so many places that at this point I kind of have to believe he truly does believe it right when if you look at his approval rating it was it's so obvious you're disliked right now like any third party political strategist and probably anyone that was willing to tell you to your face uh that would that would challenge you who who he just fires yeah he's probably removed he's surrounded by a bunch of yes men and people that tell him he's right all the time because everybody who hasn't done that has been fired over time is he he truly believes in this weird world where he is god king and he's right about everything and i it's it's he paid the price for it right here like no people don't believe that and when you put it to a fucking vote they voted against you yeah and i think that is the primary motivation across the country is as much as i want to believe in this era of like uh maybe like dsa-esque candidates like uh you know al said is like not dsa but he's like a lot of dsa adjacent people voted for him like people want to believe in this new era of like progressive candidates and this like new energy on the left and or we're believe we're backing like this package of like new ideals and policies but i do think at the core of this rather than people supporting those things yeah it's this current thing is not working and i hate it how i think this is the misread is that the republicans thought when they got to power that it was a huge endorsement of their wildest agenda hopes and like that and instead it was people getting upset in 2024 with inflation and gas prices and do you know what i'm saying most of it was them being fed up with the way things were heading and so they gave republicans a chance and they took that and they they thought they had to mandate from heaven do whatever the fuck they wanted and no one and it wasn't like a huge endorsement of love of trump some people had that but most people wanted you to deliver on the wild promises you're making and then none of them happened another like surprise wiley coyote style there's no ground underneath like this was a very very thin chance you had to try and show it and so now everyone's switching back so i think in the same way i think you know america works this way we can talk about the future now i think democrats this is a little early because he's still a president he can still veto but like going forward maybe two plus years if you get a democratic president from there you also have to deliver do you understand you also have to deliver otherwise this will go back and i will say i think the first takeaway from the day for like what goes goes forward is that starting right now you can already see it trump's era is over it's just over his his control of republican party is at its death door and there is the now the tucker carlson nick fuentes candace owens oh good yeah i'm not saying it's a good thing i'm saying this is where it's going yes finally somebody more reasonable if you don't you're telling me that's the guy who's next extremely fucking far right uh online commentator he loves saying the n-word i'm saying a lot of crazy shit he did tweet everyone get out there today and vote democrat yesterday that was that's what he tweeted because there it's a complete coup of like the party as trump controls it is is gonna it's falling apart today this is such a colossal loss that this wing is gonna fight with the the mitt romney jeb bush neil conservative wing is like they thought of trump as like a passing storm this weird guy very charismatic but he's weird and wrong and we're gonna get through him and we'll get back to the way things were so it's gonna be these two fighting i think that neocon party has no chance with the way the internet works now and it's gonna be this new like america first wing but they're starting today gonna dismantle whatever remains of broken party and try to pick through the scraps but it's the way it is is completely wiped out his energy is fucking gone he was out there today trump was out there today doing his first post-midterm speech and he did it entirely in and about the ballroom just fucking today today he didn't answer one question about the midterms and they wanted to ask he shuffled around he talked about marble he talked about how they were building new pillars it was today and it was like it was it was almost like isn't that isn't that a little beast mode it reminds me of like a weird like uh i don't know like uh what was that uh the borat guy he did a movie where he was a dictator oh it reminds me of a weird isn't it literally called the dick yeah it's called a weird dictator thing he's just ignoring reality around him and talking about this monument and uh dude he wants to turn dc into like turkmenistan before he leaves man build everything uh so he's gonna do that i think it literally looks like he's gonna be a lame duck maybe vetoing some shit while building his fucking vanity projects that are gonna get torn down the first day in 2028 uh so yeah i think that that part's done and then on the democratic side i mean we can talk about that but yeah sorry no i okay so i i wanted to hang on to something specific you said which is that like shit needs to get done and i remember i think what is so good about your when you went on gavin newsom show uh and he's trying to ask you about fortnight over and over again and discord and hit me and you're just like please gavin you don't understand if you if you take power and you do not deliver for these young people you will like they will turn on you you need to like president nick fuentes i swear to god yeah i'm not kidding because every time these things ping pong back and forth they get more extreme it will get more extreme until somebody delivers uh stability in like housing prices the ability to get a good job like if nobody delivers these things people are gonna freak they're already freaking out we're already at the frayed end of our society people are so mad online i mean this is a hopeful day but in general people are at wit's end bro someone's got to do something so yeah this this was my problem if i could say this 30 minutes in it'd be a bit of a buzzkill is the amount of like hopium i saw in the wake of these results which i can understand people being happy yeah is i would i was like there has been in my lifetime plenty of times where it has already swung in this direction like the democrats have gained power maybe not by these like margins but where the democrats have had power in my lifetime and and it swung back the other way because people were unhappy and i think something that is so important going from here is like holding these people to account and expecting it's like this is uh when you look at the republicans being in power for the basically the last like couple years i would argue on a legislative front actually a pretty low impact uh they don't do much like the tax cuts every fucking few years that's it it was the big beautiful bill and not much else in terms of actual legislation and i think it's a pretty low impact and i think it's a pretty low impact legislation pass a pretty low impact uh outside of all the executive orders and i i think it's really really important that when the democrats have this power they need to make use of it they need to make changes that have a material effect a positive effect on people's lives it is so so important because it will just flip-flop back in the other direction six years from now if nothing and i think i it's crazy to say like i'm old enough now to see i feel like i've already seen this play out and i felt a skepticism at i don't want to be jacked up because 56 democrats are in the senate now because they need to actually fucking do something and and i'm hopeful i want them to um so i fully agree with you 100 agree with you but i want to say this um i think this is a very important thing and i think it's a very important thing and i think it's a very important thing and i think it's a very important thing and i think it's a very important thing because presidency specifically this term of trump has shown people and i hope it's shown people that shit even if it's bad can get way worse this was a uniquely fucking bad presidency i made plenty of videos during biden's term where i complained a lot about decisions that were made but there is it's no it's not comparable you know what i'm saying even even if you treated trump one and trump two as different guys it's it's like two different which is crazy to say because trump was pretty bad right and this is this is dramatically worse so on some level like i understand what you're saying but on some level i think it's it's hopium and it's celebration on a pure level of triage this has been a fucking awful year and a half to two years like every ally fucking turned away yeah you know the trade war is terrible the war in iran would not have happened even under like a the most centrist whatever whatever guy you don't like whatever fuck ezra klein or whatever you've got they would not be able to do anything it's uniquely fucking bad and it is good to have a check on that power and i'm not exactly the same in that i don't expect so much out of uh congress in the house until there's a presidency because of the way our system is designed i yeah they can veto pretty much they should pass a lot of legislation and try to get him to veto it to send a message but like if they haven't fixed everything when they don't have the presidency in two years i'm not gonna be like well i'm fucking pissed i won't be able to give him a little bit of wiggle room here because he is completely obstinate he tweeted out a picture of a maga hat that said veto on it he's you know like there's a real chance that he's they're not gonna be able to get a lot through yeah um well i think that's a that's a good topic to move on to is like what what realistically happens now in the next two years like what functionally changes with these people in power number one thing bro maybe maybe just for me maybe for some people yeah the one thing they can get done is they can fucking release the epstein files that is easy that is the one thing that's been blocked by is mike johnson refusing to have a vote and now they have the votes now they can get it done they can get it released or at least force him to individually veto their release i guess repeatedly and like that is tough to say they can release it now Yes, they can release the fucking Epstein podcast. They can just get those out there? Yeah. I mean, I think we need to be cautionary because we don't know what names could pop up and we don't know what they did. You, me, and Doug did a programming stream where we made this joke program and I was making fun of you. And I photoshopped a picture of you and Epstein like buddy, buddy. And then I forgot about it. And then I had 40,000 viewers yesterday and I switched to the wrong, and I'm very sorry. I saw! I saw that! I'm watching, it's like, I'm watching this clip and it's fucking, you switched to an OBS scene and it's me in Taiwan in an Ikea t-shirt like hugging Jeffrey Epstein. And when did you, you made this a few months ago? When we did the programming stream with Doug, I forgot about that scene and it was like a, what a terrible time. I did it to 40,000 viewers! I did think it was really funny. I had this realization after we recorded last week is we're, we're filming an episode. It's just us, same, so Doug's still on vacation right now. Doug's in Japan. Yeah, we'll be back soon. By the way, just everyone know, Doug is not dead or gone. He literally is in a three week well-earned vacation in Japan. We ruined every other vacation he's had. We ruined his last two vacations in Japan. And so finally he's getting a real one. He's back for next episode. And we, and Doug, I fucking, I, I, I, I'm looking at the episode and I realize that as I do the call to action, the action at the end for everybody to vote. Yeah. Like if you, if you clip this as zero context, you don't know who I am. You're looking at a guy in a Chinese flag hat telling you to vote Democrat. I was like, I was like cracking myself up. Like. Did the check from Xi clear or no? Did that, is that weird? Oh yeah, it's huge. Okay, that's awesome. 50K. 50K, baby. That's all it takes. Any, any foreign nations watching, I will vote for whatever. Next week, just like, it's super brilliant. Wait, speaking of money, there's another topic I want to bring up, bro. What do you think about Elon Musk putting in half a billion dollars into the Texas race alone and getting completely, just literally burning that money? I think it will. It's like a two way issue, right? Yeah. One, it's hopeful in that. Okay. We have such a clear cut example of if people rally, you can still, we'll combat that level of financial influence over an election. It feels weaker than ever, right? Yeah. That part. Well, hold on. We'll get, we'll get to that. Cause I want to talk about how things did fail in California. I think if there is concentrated enough of an effort, that money can be toppled. What people feel and think can like still stand up against that. And at a time when like record money and record dark money is flooding into politics, we can still like take a stand and turn the tide. I really, really like that because there's proof of it now, but it also is reflective of how out of control this problem has gotten. And we reflected on this earlier in the year, but the amount of money, even in midterm elections that is flowing in to influence outcomes is absolutely ridiculous. And I think citizens United being relitigated, overturned, combated somehow in the way that Hawaii was able to earlier this year is so important. I do not think that anyone thinks it's normal that one guy can spend $200 million on an election. I do think that is effectively trying to buy yourself a Senator. It is. It's insane to me. Yeah, I agree with you. I, I, I heard Tallarico say someone asked him what priority one would be. If a night like tonight happened, this is before it happened. And I think this is even greater than he expected. And he said political reform, which is like essentially getting money. I don't know. I think it's like getting out of politics, finding a way to reduce the dependence of our politics on money. And, you know, ideally we get some change on electoral college and that these are all things that like, because it's hard to make all the other changes we all want until we get rid of a system that is so tilted toward incumbent interests. If you want to change anything, that means somebody who's profiting off the current status quo will be hurt and they can spend a lot of money to prevent that or slow it down or put a lot of friction in the way. And it makes any change so slow. And I think, I think that would be a massive, massive good first step. I don't think they can do it without Trump, but I mean, that's if you make that your priority. And I do think, I do think the Democrats and there's like a big wing. Now there's like, you were progressive to more central. I think they need to get the fucking gather and get a platform of like, uh, consequences for corruption, uh, political reform, uh, Epstein files release, like a few key things that are like 95, five, five issues and hammer those on. Don't spread so thin that nothing gets done. Like it would be really good to focus on those things and make sure you get them done. And I think people would really respond to that. Really concrete things to just concrete things that we, this wasn't there. It is there. Okay. I, I, this sections into some of my more disappointing election news, which was in California specifically. Oh yeah. And I do think this matters because the things I'm going to talk about were litmus tests for these types of policies being rolled out elsewhere in the country. Um, the, uh, one thing that really bugs me when I talk to relatives or I mean, I don't, when I say relatives, I mean sometimes my dad and then, uh, my in-laws, I love them. And is this like this culture of being like California libs, commie fornia, like you guys are going crazy over there, sort of rhetoric, which I have seen increase in recent years. And this, this pains me. Because when you look at the way California votes on certain issues, it is just so fucking far from the case. And, uh, this showed in this year's election. So we talked last week about the wealth tax. That was proposition 40. That was going to be a one-time 5% tax on billionaires on their assets and the accompanying, uh, proposals, propositions, uh, uh, proposition 41 and 42, which were kind of meant as things that if they passed, uh, and the wealth tax passed, then they would sort of cancel out the wealth taxes. Effective stupid, weird, quick time event where you had to do, you know, yes on 40, no on 41, no on 42, or they all get canceled out. It was really stupid. Yeah. And what I didn't take a close look at was 43 was also tied into this. I don't know if you saw this 43 was protection against future taxes being rolled out within the state. Basically any future taxes like this, instead of just needing a majority vote, need a two thirds vote. So securing that, going into the future. Right. And if you look at the results, prop 40 got blown out. People, people said no pretty heavily. And then I think 41 also got a no, uh, which is like kind of good, but again, that was, it was meant to come back. 42 got a yes. Right. And then 42 got a yes, which why that matters. 42 is the prevention of taxes in the future on assets of any kind. So fucking ridiculous. And I, I think people, I saw the words, I think it's kind of understandable. People see the words of taxes on personal property and they're like, well, I don't want that, but it's like, it's not about, it's not about you. It's not about the schmuck who has like $10,000 to his name. It's not about, it's not about the schmuck that has $10 million to his name. This was all about taxing people who have a billion dollars or more, which is such a select few people in the state. But what's fucked in is because some of the people I also do want it. Like I, I think one of the biggest problems in, in California is prop 13, which prevents property taxes from ever rising on someone who already on the home. Yeah. And it's created this massive wealth disparity from boomers who had houses a long time ago. People who buy houses. Now you can have the same two houses, identical houses next to each other in the street. One of them pays almost nothing in property taxes. One pays a lot. Yeah. And so they're just, you know, using the system while paying nothing into it. And I think if you look at this map, this is who voted yes and no on prop 40, but it's the same kind of map. I do think there's a fucking control of, of wealthier asset owning boomers who vote heavily in these things, who have absolutely heavy resistance to ever being taxed on their fucking hugely appreciated property. I know that this was about billionaires and I agree, but I think they are just like, they want to lock in 42 to make sure we never, ever fucking find any way to increase the taxes on their houses, which is like, makes it impossible to build more houses in California, which I guess is one of the reasons everybody fled to Texas and turned to blue. No, I think they shored up. They, they basically are pulling the ladder even further up on potentially being taxed in the future, even though prop 40 specifically wasn't going to tax is just billionaires. But I do think like, I don't think they're just stupid. I think it was like, Oh no, no, no. Maybe I don't ever say it's not about me. I think people that voted on 42, their ears perk up at any idea of ever being taxed on fucking houses or property and they fucking make sure to lock it out. Yeah. I think a bunch of people, I think a bunch of people that own like a five to like 20, a million dollar house in Newport beach and like, aren't billionaires probably hated this proposition. I do think that, uh, I think what bugs me is like when people vote this way and like when you see the results of props in this state go kind of against the tide of progressive politics. I, that's what makes me hate those comments about like liberal California. And, uh, it reminds me a bit of, I think last year, the year before we voted to like keep slavery for prisoners. Do you, Did you see that proposition? - Yeah, I remember that. It wasn't called that, right? It was the idea that, like, you can't, like, put prisoners to work for, like, minimal or, like, no wages, and then California voted no. They're like, you should, prisoners should be, prisoners should lose their rights, and I had, like, a very surreal conversation with my parents at the time of, like, they were in favor of that. They're like, you go to prison, you lose your rights, and I was just like, what do we, I think when I see that, it just stands against this idea that, like, California just votes in the direction of these things without thinking, when it's, like, usually not the case. No, it's, like, the few cities, you know what I'm saying? It's, like, you know, you can find deeper blue in San Diego, L.A., but, like, most of California is purple. I do want to make fun of the libs a little bit. Make fun of them. The L.A. libs. Because there was one. That's our new sports team after this fucking blue wave. So there was one proposition, I think, that worked in the opposite direction, and this was kind of a testing grounds of, like, trying to build more housing. In a place like Los Angeles. And it was basically, it was, like, putting a cap on the amount of time that environmental reviews can be used to, like, hang up new buildings. And it was a, it's like a NIMBY policy, basically. It's, like, by, like, whether it be the government building housing or private corporations building housing, they're held up by the way reviews drag out the process of building homes in California. It's something we've talked about a lot. And that makes. It makes building homes even riskier and more expensive, which contributes to a lack of housing supply, which makes housing more expensive, which in California, it's, like, the most expensive in the country. Big issue here. Everywhere, kind of. That is also the, I think, because it has this word, like, environmental in it, it's kind of a catch for people who are traditionally progressive, and they're like, well, I don't want the environment to be bad. Yeah. And they voted against it. And this is something that will contribute to the increasing cost of housing. And in California, it was probably my only, it was, like, one of the, if you look at the way I voted versus the way, like, the LA Libs voted, this is one of the ones where I, like, broke rank from, like, the broader trend. I'm like, you need to pass this sort of legislation in order to make housing cheaper. Like, it's just, it's just a necessity. I think I'm kind of fed up with this prop-based system. Like, the system of government we have, ideally, is we elect smart cable people who will fucking figure out the right solutions. Even if they're, like, painful in the short term or whatever. Ian's getting naked. We were in on your cam in the edit. In the edit. Nobody saw that. Yeah. I think, you know, a lot of this stuff, people are just too busy to, I was, you know, when you're voting in California, and I'm looking through all these props, it's like, even me, who is, this is my full-time job, and I can read about this shit all day. Yeah. It's like, it's very hard to figure out who supports what, why it's there, why it's worded this way, what exactly is going to happen, where, how it's going to happen. How it's funded. All this stuff is difficult, and I think. It's hard to parse. It's hard to parse. And certainly, you can't ask millions and millions of people to correctly fucking, you know, they use shortcuts. They use either a voter guide, or they see a word-like environment, whatever. They just fucking go by it. And so, I'm not a super fan of that direct system for every fucking policy. Yeah. You want a capable leader who's like, you put this, this is your job, figure it out. Yeah, absolutely. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. 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This is on the left here, Cindy Hyde-Smith, who was running against Scott Colum in Mississippi. Again, this is a red state. And she said this. Gone price of beef continuing to go up. You know, you have so many proteins to choose from. Pick another protein. Shit. I'd rather pick another senator instead. She done lost her damn mind. I'd rather pick another senator. That shit worked. He did that while also going to a bunch of like right wing rallies and like meeting people hand to hand and shaking their hands and talking about their issues. And that kind of ground game. Again, there's this larger repudiation of Trump. But like that kind of movement, I think, made Mississippi possible when it wouldn't have been. It was a really well run campaign. And I'm still blown away. Like even in the middle of the night, whenever everything was going blue, I was like telling my chat, stop getting greedy with Mississippi. It's not going to happen. Yeah. And then I saw it flip in real time. It was crazy. Bless Mississippi. It is fucking crazy. So no, I that that ad, it reminded me of a lot of pieces. I've seen reporters going to like farming communities and then interviewing farmers about like how tariff policies have impacted the economy. Impacted them over the last year. I think they're in the beef industry specifically there. Trump introduced that policy of like Argentinian beef can now be sold in the U.S. Like we made a deal for that. And then it crashed the beef market, which harmed a bunch of cattle farmers in the U.S. who predominantly voted for Trump in the last election. And I think there's there is a even in rural communities, there is a direct negative effect. Of policies like that, that again, I don't think necessarily made people go out and vote for a Democrat, but made a lot of people be like, well, this guy isn't working for me. So fuck it. I'm not going to go. No, no. He kicked his own base in the teeth like month after month since getting into power. Like diesel prices are more important in rural counties than city ones. And they're they're skyrocketing. And then kept saying they love me to the camera. And talking about the damn ballroom. It's like it is really. It kind of makes you spooked a little bit, though, because imagine if Trump, which wasn't the biggest idiot. What if he was like just even remotely able to like. Day the right thing and read the room a little bit. Is this even isn't that kind of an interesting thing to say at all, though? Like, I feel like that was his strength for so long was that he could read his base. Yeah. And like the wave they were moving in so well for so long. And that was one of his. His strengths. So to see it turn into this like outright denial on so many fronts like he's never. Don't don't get me wrong. He's never been good at like acknowledging his faults publicly or something like that. He's never been. He's never been that guy. But I think he's been good enough at like inching the conversation in a direction that his base would like. And then kind of making decisions that they'll fall in line behind. But you can only take so many. Kicks in the stomach. You know, that's what it feels like this year. Well, I was thinking about when I was watching the very beginning of the night, the Texas race. And I was listening to the speeches by Tallarico and Paxton. And it's like, you know, you've seen the meme where it's like everyone gets a puppy versus diarrhea forever. Like, I think that's a little bit. These are super biased means where people have different. But in this case, when I was watching those two, I was like, damn, Ken Paxton is a generationally bad candidate. He is so uncharismatic. People don't like him. His rallies are empty. He has nothing to say. And Tallarico is like really good speaker. I like how you're like, Paxton's got no weed, no hose. He is chopped. Fucking clothes suck. I mean, and so it just took that level of a gap to get blue taxes. And it's cool. It's locked for six years. But it makes you realize, like, what what a bad campaign was was put up on every level to make these possible. I will say on that, Nassim Taleb said on. Twitter, and I think it is true. This is the loose strategy we've been talking about. No one has done more to promote left wing ideas than Donald Trump. And I think that is actually factually true. Not intentionally by any method, but like, there's just there's no fucking where we have a blue Kansas with if there's Jeb Bush, it took someone this committed to running it down, running it down. He's running it down. And he takes the turret shots. It's crazy. See? so i did want to cover a few of the things that people have talked about that democrats like could do okay this next two year period so base base stuff yeah the power of the purse has switched over to the democratic party on paper congress is supposed to be able to the the uh the people that vote on how money is going to be allocated and spent in the government okay so that if if trump wanted to pass some sort of like new budget or or something along those lines he's no longer able to do that anymore um they also have the power to block nominations so whether they be like uh cabinet positions or uh if a supreme court judge needs to be replaced now we can block oh yeah i mean based on the math for the next six years we're almost certainly going to have at least two uh supreme court justices step down like retire they're they're old enough and they're in the window and so it'll be impossible to confirm a a republican replacement i think pretty much possible with the way the math is in the senate till 2032 uh i mean that's that's such a huge swing because it's it's been so one-sided for so long now uh i do so i imagine you've seen a bunch of stuff about impeachment and the ability to pursue that again i imagine we have a similar take uh realistically they could go through an impeachment process again but you still need two-thirds of the senate to actually impeach the president yeah and uh unless a bunch of republicans really turn on trump that is just not going to happen and i do think the downsides of a third failed impeachment on this guy are like too much like it looks too bad to fail three times yeah so i i i think while people have talked a lot about that unless like a bunch of Republicans have talked a lot about that unless like a bunch of Republicans have talked a lot about that unless like a bunch of Republicans have talked a lot about that unless like a bunch of Republicans have talked a lot about that unless like a bunch of Republicans have talked a lot about that unless like a bunch of Republicans are like promising their vote for it yeah i don't think pursuing it makes sense i agree with you i i think it's i think it's a red herring it's a waste of time uh not that he shouldn't face some justice but i think you know releasing epstein files going after corruption like even getting members of his family on open corruption that they've done that have just completely flouted the law is a better use of like oversight power than trying to run the presidential impeachment process again which is so impossible to do and i think it's a waste of time and i think it's a waste of time and i think it's a waste of time and i think it's a waste of time and i think we're going to have to force through and will be a huge distraction i mean you can you know i'm like i think corruption we've never talked about corruption on this cushion are we talking about kush right now not kushner kush is one of the kush is clean right he's clean that slush fund is clean thank you thank you let me stand investigated i saw channel five channel five put on an investigation that vending fair excerpt i saw there was a but lemonade stands investigation kind of came out clean so it's all even in the end if you think about it um well okay so you're touching on that robert garcia which is a california rep who like won his re-election yeah he's supposed to be the new head of the oversight committee within the house and this means that they can uh make it like do investigations into people like trump family associates elon musk elon musk and while i do think there's so there's value uh in having these people like testify under like putting out some kind of investigation i think it's a waste of time and i think it's a waste of having people testify under oath having that on the record having that in the public zeitgeist i think people are getting a little ahead of themselves where you still need the doj to like prosecute those cases a doj that is controlled by donald trump right now and it's very unlikely we'll throw every subpoena in the trash and yeah yeah and i think that part does kind of suck where like people are getting very excited about this right now but the ability to like charge people for crimes and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point and then not to mention that trump can still pardon people on the way out including preemptively for crimes they may be charged for uh which i'm sure if biden was willing to pardon hunter on the way out yeah i'm sure trump he's promised pardons already to fucking everybody's ever worked with the list is gonna be fat it'll be a massive pardon i think pardon reform would be an interesting thing to talk about once we have a new president that would be very interesting i think the way it's in the need for or why a pardon existing might make sense but other countries have done it with like a a panel they've had like a nine person independent panel or something there's a different the way of doing pardons where it's just one guy who's so biased they have such a political bias no matter which side it's on they should get one person from each political podcast to be on the panel yeah we said we send doug this seems like a doug job it'll be doug logan paul doug lp uh myron myron from the the really sexist podcast i forget the name of it he's on positive america we're gonna live and we'll get it'll be it'll be it's gotta be balanced it's gotta be balanced of course of course the day who gets a pardon that is better system we have now andrew take can be on there he'll be in prison but he can be on there uh i i think the also there's like a statute of limitations issue there too i saw like if you want to try people for crimes that they were committing in like 20 years i think that's a good thing i think that's a good thing i think that's a good thing i think that's a good thing i think that's a good thing i think that's a good thing i think 2025 2024 you uh there there's a five-year statute of limitations on most federal crimes so by the time a democratic president is in charge and presumably somebody else is in charge of the doj then your ability to prosecute those fast enough is actually not it kind of sucks yeah when i as i looked into this i was like oh i'm not as psyched as i thought i would be yeah uh no i i do think people should temper their expectations in this two-year period where there is a lame duck veto everything president that's just the things you can get done are smaller than you think which is unfortunate reality but it is a cap on his power um you've been reading the ft i'm surely yeah dude they keep saying angry duck they love saying angry duck right now you've been seeing that they're like he's not a lame duck but like what i don't know i read what they said i don't understand what an angry duck can really he has he doesn't have the support like if he had enthusiasm i think he could make something happen but people aren't even with him on his own team i did i did have this thought have you ever seen that i think you should leave sketch where tim robinson is like i'm and if i start and if i start losing the argument i get sad and go on my phone like and then he's like sitting he's like debating the guy yeah and that's when he was doing that fox news interview last night that's what i thought i was like this man sounds so pathetic and is there a world where instead of like tripling down in iran this guy just kind of like quietly just goes i think he quietly focuses on the ballroom i swear to god that that is what it's looking like he's gonna focus on projects in dc he loves real estate he loves marble he loves gold that's what he seems to be like leaning into he's gonna fucking do his last two years pardon everyone and get out he made insane amount of money off this of this presidency uh yeah i mean i'm not sure here's a question that i want to ask it's been floating around and i'm sort of putting it out in the ether i think the possibility space is the phrase i've been using a lot of donald trump not doing the last two years of his term of of sometime in this next two years he either steps down or theoretically could die i guess not not like of old age or whatever but i mean he could die it could be by april 30th it's just a guess yeah i'm just saying no i'm not saying anything like that i'm just saying the next two years he has lost uh legislative power and i think starting today basically it's like a real coup in the party people are starting to to drift away from him uh politically in the republican party i can't imagine him resigning though do you i i feel like what you're saying if there's a air of truth to this at all like it's not a base case i think you'll for about these two years and pardon a bunch of people and leave it would come in the form of enough republicans in the senate being pissed that they're willing to impeach him right that's possible because people are angry in their districts being associated with them has become so toxic and after this it's going to be even more toxic it reminds me of like you know people didn't think i don't know joe biden stepping down or trudeau stepping down were as possible until it ramps up so quickly the anger is like people just start getting the damn breaks and everyone agrees this person fucking sucks and i think that's starting to happen very quickly for trump and it would not surprise me sometime between the next two years where everyone just collectively agrees we're done with this guy and the pressure gets on to make a polite exit it'd be it'd be your read on like a political points for you right if you're a republican senator you're gearing up for the next election and you're trump is so toxic to me right now that if i move to impeach him it will empower me and i'm not going to be able to impeach him and i'm not going to be able to impeach me with my voter base that's the decision that needs to be made the power brokers left in the party sit him down in a room and basically say we need you to both politely and quietly step down right put vance in and like i i can't imagine he would ever do that though i agree with you i agree with you but this guy with this level of denial possible than it was before it's more it's it's because two years is a long time and people are so bad imagine he turns it around he turns it - He walks the fuck in, he reaches across the aisle, they pass the best bills America's ever seen. he goes down as a modern fdr this is all part of his plan to save america he's like he's he's stewing in the oval office is like like i need to go out the most popular president of all time and he just 180s on every policy people love the ballroom when it's finished it's actually awesome it's beautiful it's the gold's so tasteful i donald i didn't know yeah i don't know dare to dream i guess okay one thing i did want to ask you about and fucking this because this race technically hasn't been called yet and i want to because if it was the other way around i think i would call it out is i think this alaska dan sullivan stuff is so let's say it fucking cheesy dude yeah so people are familiar uh pal uh mary peltola is the democratic candidate running in alaska and she's currently beating out the incumbent republican dan sullivan and we had mentioned that there is another republican dan sullivan that was seemingly running against it running in the race yeah and they have ranked choice voting and there was this big thing about oh what if people vote for the wrong dan sullivan uh and the big story and we were joking about this is like oh this guy happens to be running with the same name yeah what if he's like a plant what if this is a plant the new york times like a week ago confirms that this is indeed the case basically dan sullivan the one that's not the incumbent republican was scouted by like a democratic political consultant that used a pseudonym to like contact him and encourage him to run whether or not mary peltola knew that this was the case is i think still up for debate right but it is confirmed that democrats did intentionally do this and i think it's important to note as i looked into this this type of behavior historically is not uncommon both parties have run similar gambits in a variety of elections over the course of our like electoral history uh that does not take away from the fact that i think this is incredibly lame yeah it's not illegal i just think it's incredibly lame to try and cheese an election like this because it just doesn't look it doesn't look good and maybe this is the era of like gloves off politics we need to do whatever we can to win i think there's there is merit to that argument uh but i don't know i think it i think it just i saw this and it was like oh i feel i mean i feel icky about it as of right now the minute we're recording you know mary peltola is winning by like 700 votes and daniel j sullivan jr has 3 500 and since this is not a real candidate it's a plant like you could make the credible argument that this swayed the election if and and while it's not a legal trump has said that the doj is willing to like look into this they said basically if mary wins by small enough of a margin that the other dan sullivan's votes make the difference they will use whatever legal power they have to question the results of this election so yeah it's it's a bummer because i don't think i mean maybe in this case it did but i i don't think this is the campaign you need to run in this environment people are already so fed up uh i i'm not happy with it for sure so i don't know what's what's i guess good to know is that regardless of how alaska breaks out the senate majority is confirmed yeah you know i'm saying they have a they have a massive seat majority the house majority is massive confirmed so this is we don't need alaska we have mississippi we have mississippi the mississippi win which i knew and i bet a hundred thousand dollars on an unnamed prediction market you are now the wealthiest man the wealthiest man now you're working i had a million to one odds taking the parlay on alaska losing mississippi winning his yeah uh so i don't know how this will play out but yeah this was reported it was a plant and it is kind of lame to do yeah i think it just sucks like it's like oh i hate to have this asterisk on this win especially at a time when i think because i'd probably be in a position where i'm like oh i'm not going to win more inclined to say a bunch of people voted for this other dan sullivan like kind of for the meme rather than actually the right choice voting yeah i'm not convinced this was the deal breaker but i do think the asterisk is annoying it's like you don't especially with every other state all these crazy states flipping without needing any asterisk i'm just like pure good campaign and the vibes against trump it's annoying to have alaska yeah it feels more proof of this likely being the case that it would have been fine if this hadn't been done so one more thing we're we're doing the hype of this episode but i want to talk about uh an implication there's there's a groups of people especially the very powerful tech oligarchs who kind of went all in on the trump wave they kind of thought that 24 coalition was very durable and would be huge for them they donated a bunch of money and they you know sundar pichai changed the fucking names of our lakes in google maps and and uh and it's gonna be interesting to see how that shakes out starting today and we already saw it you on musk uh he went back and deleted some tweets he deleted some tweets today i saw that deleted some vote red tweets deleted some and i think there's some movement i've already seen um this was happening leading up to this election because the polls were so bad but companies are starting to change their lobbyist teams to find people that are more connected to democrats and republicans they're trying like they're trying to get ahead of it because they know there's likelihood of subpoenas coming uh a lot of these companies have spent absurd amount of money on data center built out turns out data centers is like an 80 20 issue either way and they're not going to be able to get away but the democratic party has leaned more into the anti-data center movement yeah this election which means there's going to be slowdowns a lot of the builds they're trying to do which uh is very impactful on their stocks and what they've been planning like they've got all this money with a longer build-out time so i don't know the answer to this but i do think there's going to be a big reckoning on the um tech side that being said the response from the stock market today was absurdly green after this election yeah i was kind of surprised by that do you have any insight into why because in my head it was you know the business environment doesn't necessarily feel like it would go in this direction i i see the arguments for both sides in my head i'm curious if you have a better answer so both the stock market and the bond market did well which is rare and it seems to be that investors are betting on gridlock as in nothing will happen very little will get done in the next couple of years next two years uh so for the bond market that means there'll be no big spending packages which is means the u.s debt is easier to borrow and then for the stock market it means nothing's going to be regulated on these companies that being said there were two outlier companies that did really bad today you know google did great amazon did great meta did great spacex and tesla had awful days and so people are betting that elon musk specifically will be singled out and probably subpoenaed his companies will be more investigated it's very likely he will be a target having spent absurd amounts of money on the stock market and he's going to be in trouble he has a lot of money on political campaigning he has a lot of doge stuff he got away with and yeah his companies have been very intertwined we've been reading a book called blockers by michael lewis which is about like how doge came through at the beginning of this trump term and i don't think i've ever made it read a book that makes me more mad oh really like it is it is so infuriating to read yeah i have to start it i'm very excited it's really good uh but yeah it is i i mean it makes you understand like why he might be targeted first yeah they're like a random person who's going to be targeted first yeah they're like a random person who's going to a fact that he and the people he selected had no it is i mean i want to know what because he's a fucking richest man in the world i don't know what'll happen but i am hopeful because he has had such a insanely smarmy attitude about his ability to influence politics and get away with literally anything so shameless yeah just really really shameless and as a regular citizen it is very frustrating to see the richest man in the world also own the media platform i have to use for news and also constantly shove his version of the world in my face 24 7 so anyway and you want to give your final thoughts i think i think we covered a lot of things we want to talk about the election it was a monumental day that'll have echoes for years to come this is going to be a really really pivotal moment in our political lives um and it was cool to experience it i don't know if you have any yeah i i feel very similarly i uh i encourage everybody to have a cautious optimism if this is the result that you wanted obviously it is the result that i advocated for and i just think it's really really important to keep your ear to the ground over the next few years and demand performance out of these people that have been elected because i do fear a world where uh not much changes over the course of the next six years under democratic control and it swings back the other way to an even more radical right i think we talked about it a bit on this episode but there is a small there is a small small silver lining of trump kind of being fucking dumb yeah here that i think a more maybe a younger a more articulate a smarter right-wing president in his position could have done even worse things or maintained power for longer and kind of because of his hubris he is in the position that he is now where the elections can swing back so heavily the other way um and i don't just like flip the switch blue for a bit and then party because the lights blue things need to fucking change uh anyway i really appreciate that we get to do the show with you guys i'm glad we did this episode a day late just so we could cover this i think it was an extraordinary evening uh and i hope you guys have a great week If you want an extra episode of the show where we talk about some other things, you can go to patreon.com slash lemonade stand. 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