232. This Attack Ad Just Set a New Low for America

The National Spotlight is on the Ohio Governor's Race following Vivek Ramaswami's frankly disgusting attack add on his rival Amy Acton, fair warning, its brutal, dragging up her estranged mother to relive some traumatic childhood memories. "I did just see JD Vance's response, Caddy. This time he's really pushed it too far." Meanwhile, the Ohio Senate race is on a knife edge with the Republicans at risk of losing a vital seat and a Donald Trump who has made the whole thing, well, we're done. "Catty, he can't get over Senator John, you sted's ass. What the hell is going on?" This episode is brought to you by E-Toro. A tariff of spending plan, a regulatory change, it can all start just as the first line of a speech, but it sets in motion things that can reach far beyond Washington, an unfold for years to come. "That's right, Caddy. Markets move on expectations. Not just events, investors are constantly weighing. What a decision could mean for companies sectors and the wider economy." So E-Toro is an investing platform where you can access a wide range of markets and explore how political and economic developments could affect them. "You could also learn from the global community of investors and see how people around the world are interpreting the same news." As with all investing, your capital is at risk, see E-Toro.com/trippus for full terms. Welcome to the rest of this politics of US. I'm Katty Kaye. And I am Anthony Scaramucci. So good to have you back, Anthony, looking refreshed and tanned after a few days in Hawaii. You had a good time? We missed you. No, thank you. It was great time. I want all of you to lie to me and tell me how much you've missed me. But in the meantime, Katty, tell me you've been in politics, observing politics three and a half decades, me as well, ever seeing Ad like that from a gubernatorial candidate and tell, "Give the backstory here on Vivek Ramaswamy. He's campaigning for Governor of Ohio. And what did he do this past week?" Okay, so I think we are now in peak symbol of the MAGA age. It is not helpful politically to Republicans and it is morally pretty gross. So here's what happened, guys, in case you missed it. Vivek Ramaswamy, who is running for the governorship of Ohio, released a 60-second advert featuring the mother of the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, his rival in this race, Amy Acton. Amy Acton's mother, who has not seen her daughter since 1978 when they were in a courtroom where Amy Acton's stepfather was being charged with sexual abuse of Amy Acton. She comes on the screen in this 60-second ad and says, "You can't trust my daughter. She lies. She has a problem. Ohio and shouldn't lie. She's lied about her background." This has now raised all sorts of anger both in the Republican Party in Ohio. They don't like this at all. Several Republican politicians in Ohio have come out and said, "This is disgusting. It's gross. You cannot bring in a family member like this. It's morally reprehensible to you. Somebody's a strange mother." And there is ample court documentation around the filing and the charging of the stepfather. She accused him of rape. He was actually brought to a court but then fled the state of Ohio before his court date and never actually faced a judge. But there are all the court documents are there and he was charged with sexual abuse. And her brother, Amy Acton's brother, has come out and said, "This did happen. Amy was abused. We were both abused. She tried to protect me as a child." I mean, the whole story is super, super sad, Anthony. And I think my mind, when this was brought up by Vivek Ramaswami, who is spending four million dollars to distribute this ad in Ohio and is doubling down on this ad, my mind, I don't know where yours went. My mind went to the Epstein files. I went to, wow, this is a protection of a pedophile. This is what is happening in the case of this ad. The mother is coming on, basically saying she is lying. There's court documentation supporting her allegation that she was sexually abused by her stepfather. The stepfather has now died. And Vivek Ramaswami is wading into this. And I think he's doing it because his campaign is in real trouble. And maybe they felt some democratic strategist I spoke to, Nose Ohio, well to me, said they were in such dire straits. Vivek Ramaswami has an unfavorable rating of 17. He's at negative 17 in a state that Trump won by 11. He's very unlike in the state. He's known as a mean guy. His campaign is in trouble. They thought, you know what, we're going to play the estranged mother card and wait into this story. But I don't know, I don't know if I'm, if I'm just weird and I went to Epstein and thought Peter Files, this is just a bad thing for the Republicans to be reviving at this moment. But it's super, super sad. What do you think of it? What did you make of it? Cady, I'm blown away by this. I'm saddened by it on a number of different fronts. But it's not going to help them. If anything, he'll lose the race now by even more. That's my honest opinion. Because people won't like it, right? People will think this is a bad idea. No, I mean, it's just, it's just guttural ridiculousness. But I don't know who gave him that advice. But I want you to think of the moral fiber of Vivek Ramaswami. He comes in as a presidential candidate. He's campaigning with this soaring rhetoric, postpartisan rhetoric, can-do technologist. And he morse. It's sort of like animal farm where the pigs stand up at the end. And they're on two legs like the farmers. And he becomes everything in American politics that we all hate. By the way, my friend, Governor Chris Christie, who I spoke to last night about this, you may or may not remember this. Oh, they got into it. He literally dragged Vivek Ramaswami in one of those debates. He dragged him. If you remember, he was attacking Governor Halley's intelligence and Christie dragged Ramaswami. And Governor Christie told me last night, this guy is a really bad guy. And what happens in a campaign or what happens in a presidency, because obviously we're going to talk about Trump, all of your personality seeps out. Gadi, whether you want it to or not, if you're a bad guy, you become an even worse guy under the scrutiny, you know, and this guy is to me a disgusting human being. And I hope he gets destroyed in this campaign. But I just want to say one other thing. If you're down 50, 44 and you're an ordinary person, you're going to campaign with some grace and dignity. Think of John McCain. Okay. John McCain was down going into 2008. Some woman said, Oh, Barack Obama is a Muslim. And what do McCain do, Cady? He said he's a great American. Whether he's a Muslim is not here. He's not a Muslim. And even if he was, it wouldn't that would not be an issue. He's a great American. What a matter. It is a great American page. And it doesn't matter. Yeah. Where have you gone, John McCain? To me, this is as disgusting as it gets. It doesn't get any worse than that. It'll get worse, of course, because we've got lowbrow people that want to run for these campaigns. But this is a low moment in Ohio. And it's a low moment in US national politics. Yeah. I'm surprised. I mean, a lot of people who have covered politics for a long time, like you and I have have come out and said, this is the worst campaign ad they have ever seen. And this is the lowest moment in campaign ad history that they can remember. It is really shocking. Act on herself has come out and said, look, I've always known that my mother was deeply sick and unwell. And it's sad to see Vivek Ramaswami exploit her for his own political gain. Nikki Haley, you mentioned her. She's come out and called Ramaswami scum. You've had Republican members of Congress and members of the House and Senate. One of them said, Ramaswami is exploiting someone's childhood trauma and it's wrong. But you know, when you called it disgusting, you know who is disgusted? Anthony, talking of reaction. The vice president, J.D. Vance, is disgusted. But is he disgusted by this ad? And I have a quick look at it. No, no, no. He is disgusted by Republicans who are whining as he puts it about the ad. So I think the other interesting thing about this whole story has been how J.D. Vance has suddenly been thrust in the last 24 hours into this position of having to double down on this ad in order to embody the spirit of Roy Cone and never apologize, never back down show that he too is peak mega and exactly like Donald Trump. But I don't think he can pull it off. He can't pull it off. He's not comfortable in his own skin. He's not comfortable in his own skin because on the one hand, he's saying, look, maybe you like the ad. Maybe you don't like the ad. That's fine. But you should not be complaining about the ad. You should just be focusing on the Democrats. Well, that's ridiculous because these Republicans who are complaining about the ad are also focusing on the Democrats and are also criticizing the Democrats. They know it's a lost cause, but you know, if your job of the hut and Donald trump is Jabba the Hut. I would not want to be Jabba the Hut. I'm not going to do that role play with you. He's a blabbing mob boss. If you remember Jabba, Jabba was a mob boss, okay? Kind of weird kinky scene with Princess Leia, yeah. Yeah. But he, you know, trump is a disgusting individual. What you see is what you get. He is totally comfortable being Jabba. Okay, but Vance is not comfortable with it because he's a kaleidoscope this guy. So he's not comfortable with it, but Vance got torched this week. Kati, if I run for president, I am deeply certain that Donald Trump is going to endorse me. And Kati K, what did the president say the very next day? He sits there in the office with his doctor evil face on, and many of me is standing behind him. And he's asked, are you going to endorse JD Vance for president? That'll be a no. Yeah. And oh, by the way, we never talked about it. And oh, by the way, I never knew him. Who? JD? Who? You see that the thing was, I wish, and maybe we can get our producers to, for YouTube, to show Vance's face. Because Vance's face to me was making a statement, I've blown three years of my life on this bullshit. Okay, that's basically what the JD Vance face looked like as he was shaking his head and trying to be, you know, the kid, you know, carrying favor with the daddy, you know. And to me, he's not, he's not up for this. Okay, he doesn't, he doesn't have the skill set for this. And, you know, you've reported, and people have reported that him and his wife has moved in Middleburg, Virginia. I mean, it's in the paper. We can talk about it. She doesn't like the whole process of the scrutiny, the security, the threats. She doesn't like being, you know, in the vice president's wife's job. But here's the question for you, Kati, because he is a shape shifting individual, has changed his name three times as we reported on our members only docu series. Is the JD Vance that's married to Usha Vance still the same guy? Or is the JD Vance now a white nationalness? And therefore the, the Vance that married Usha many years ago, is he still that guy? Or is he a different guy, Kati? I think he's certainly a publicly facing anyway, mean a guy. I mean, I think the way he has behaved in the last 24 hours in reaction to this ad telling Republicans that they should stop whining about the ad, then doubling down on it at a rally again. I mean, he didn't just talk about it once. He's talked, he's now bringing this up voluntarily in a way that I think is going to upset a lot of Republicans, certainly, you know, upsetting Republicans in Ohio in this race who are doing their god damn is to keep Ohio red. And they like you can see the way this ad is going to pull people. I mean, I don't see a lot of women voters looking at this ad and thinking, wow, that's a really smart move. You know, let's get this strange mother who she hasn't seen for multiple decades on who has had health issues of her own. And let's get her on an ad to say that her daughters lying. I just, I don't think that sits well with people. The whole process of, and I think Amy Acton's pointing out that this is kind of exploitation of this woman who has been sick and had issues. And then I think for JD to choose this as his hill to die on, to double down for Vivira Ramaswamy on this issue, I think this is a big problem for him. It brings out a meanness in him and a callousness in him in Ohio, in the kind of area he grew up in, in the kind of family background he understands, he writes about all of this in hillbilly allergy and other families how he sees this kind of thing. And now he's doubling down on Vivira Ramaswamy using this for political gain. And I think the problem like you said, Donald Trump is shameless. He can do this and get away with it because he's shameless about it. And JD's problem is that it comes across as fake and conniving and therefore even more cruel. I heard that the mother, when very rogue on the daughter, but I don't really know anything about the ad, and I don't think it has anything to do with Vivek. Whose words are those? Those are the words of the president of the United States. So you think that's true, Kathy? When the president says he doesn't know anything about anything or anything about somebody, you can know for sure pretty much that it's actually what he's talking about and thinking about the most in that particular. He knows everything. That's the tell. She dated my son long ago, but just ignore the Christmas picture from 2023 and 2020. Ignore the engagement ring. Okay. No, the engagement ring. I barely knew the person. And he does that consistently. So now listen, the prediction markets have act in at 79%. Polly markets also at 79%. Is she going to win that race? Well, I think also this is following the ad, right? There was a big jump in the prediction markets after the release of that ad. I think she is going to win the race. I think Vivek Ramaswamy is not run a very good campaign even before this. He was unlikable even before this. She is a doctor. She's worked in Ohio for a long time. I think she's run a good campaign from what I've been told by people who know I hire better. So I think she does win it. And then I think if she wins it, it helps the Senate race. And we're going to come back and talk about the Senate race in a second. But, Kathy, is this the final blow for Vivek Ramaswamy as a politician, or he emerges in some other incarnation as a politician? No, this is Vivek Gohome. You tried once. You've tried again. So this is Vivek RIP. Don't you think? I mean, what is the plus side for Vivek Ramaswamy coming back into politics in another incarnation? If he couldn't get the presidential nomination and he couldn't get the governor's job in Ohio, I think he is fundamentally such a flawed candidate that he's not one of those people who just needs the reps to get better and better. He's not getting better and better. He's getting worse. He's getting desperate. And when he gets desperate, he's making mistakes like running this ad, which is not just morally gross. It's political malfeasance because it's going to turn against him. And in the closing days of the campaign, he is, I don't think I'm the only one thinking this is reminding people of the Epstein files. So this is a, he's just not a good candidate. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't see Vivek Ramaswamy's name in bright lights on the American political stage. Do you? In the future? Maybe I'm wrong. I think this is, I think he's politically dead. And I have one more follow-up question if you don't mind. Go on. So long as you don't ask me to role-play Jabba the hub for Halloween, I'm fine. Here's my follow-up question. You've been around these politicians three decades plus. They morph, Katty, right? They want the power so badly that they morally equivocate and they will do things for the power that the earlier versions of themselves or the church-going versions of themselves or the Boy Scout or Girl Scout versions of themselves no longer exist. Is that a fair comment or am I being too harsh? No, I think that's true. I think that's true. So what is that, Katty? Tell me, give me some human insight as to why that is. The seduction of power and the need to win over everything else. Okay. And I think it takes somebody, I've always thought this Anthony from covering presidential campaigns, but even Senate races and governors races, it takes a different gene to run for office in America because the process is so brutal. It's brutal on you. It's brutal on your kids. It's brutal on your family. That you really have to be somebody who wakes up in the morning, looks in a mirror and says to themselves, well, I see the next U.S. Senator or I say the next American president. Right. And to have that big and ego to think, okay, it's worth overcoming all of those downsides that I am going to spend 18 months raising money doing non-stop town halls. You have to have both unbelievable stamina and an enormous ego and that drives you to want to win, to win, to win, to want to win all the time and you start compromising the things that initially led you to want to go into public service. And I have seen it happen time and again. Last question that will go to a break, is there any coming back from Trump? My name is David McCormick. I dislike Trump. I'm Governor Mitt Romney's guy. The Senator from Pennsylvania. I'm ousted by Dr. Oz. I've now returned and I'm a Maga guy now and I hang with Trump in the Rose patio. Is there any coming back from it? Can Marco Rubio come back from it? Can any of these guys return to something that they once were or has that equivocation gone too far? You know, and I like David a lot. David is a friend of mine and he'll be pissed at me for bringing him up on this podcast, but that's fine. My thing with him is he's a great guy. So what are you doing? It doesn't add up and I'm not absolving myself. Okay, I made a mistake joining Trump and I was with him, but at least I had the temerity to say, "Hey, I got that wrong, I'm sorry." But these guys, can they return from the dark side, Katty? - So the cynic in me says, if there is a spectacular economic rebound in the next two years, and the MAGA experiment seems to be going well, then yes, we could be in for another period of this because people will vote on pocketbook issues. They'll vote on the price of eggs or gas, seems to be the thing of this election campaign, is the thing of this election campaign. So don't think that just because MAGA and Trump are in the doldrums today, means that they necessarily will be in two years' time. And if things are going well, and the Trump people look like they're taking credit for this, then you can see somebody like JD Vance still running in 2028 with more success. If the MAGA experiment and the economy is as bad in two years' time or still bad as it is today, then I think that anyone who is associated with Trump and has been deemed to have sold their principles in order to ride Trump's coattails will have to be gone from the Republican party. So I think we're gonna have to have a whole, it's gonna be very difficult. If you have been associated with Trump and Trump is unpopular for a whole host of reasons, it'll be very difficult. If you're Rubio or Vance or even McCormick to come back and say, "You know what, I made a mistake." Because you were around and you sucked up to him for too long because you needed his primary voters. That's my take, where are you? - I'm in your camp, but I think they're not. They're not in your camp. They think that they're gonna be able to shape shift themselves out of this and pretend that it didn't exist. - If the economy is bad, they can't shape shift themselves. If the economy is good, they won't need to shape shift themselves because they'll just give credit to Trump for it. So they live and die by inflation rates and unemployment rates and growth. Okay, guys, we're gonna take a break and come back and talk about the very expensive Ohio race where the main closing message from Donald J. Trump is the beautiful physique of the Republican senator who's running for re-election. - This episode is brought to you by the Financial Times. - If you wanna know what's going on, okay, in a way that's way deeper than you can get just from superficial discussion, you gotta go to the FT and I have, and I think I told you this, I've been maybe a three-decade subscriber now to the FT and yes, I'm old-fashioned, Cadi. I have that pinkish salmon paper in front of me every morning looking through what's important to the FT editors because if it's important to the FT editors, it's gonna be important to you in your life, your business, and your understanding of the world. - I particularly love my friend, Ed Lucy's a Washington columnist. He has such smart columns. He's very well connected in Washington. Calls up Donald Trump frequently. He's got a great piece this week. Scott Besson's "Wobbly House." He describes Scott Besson as the "peat-hegseth" of the Treasury, definitely worth a read. For the why, it's the Financial Times. Visit FT.com/tripus to read more. See our latest offers and decide which subscription is right for you. "Holding the Russians accountable is world-war." They took down a British passenger jerk containing 350 people. "Men in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, you want to play or not?" "You're the prime minister." "If done, nothing!" "We would need to understand the policy context." "All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today and disseminated into an operation order, or Frago." "A Frago that says to kill the president of Russia." "Yes." "New from Goldhanger." "Who is going to be able to pull this off?" "You're my shoulder, are you Sergeant Trump and Duffy?" An audio drama journey like no other. "Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons." Devised as a technically rigorous, geopolitical action forever. "Tax friendly keymen." "We're Britain plays its strongest arm." "He's the best." "Against his strongest foe." "Don't do it, Duffy!" "Bare hunt, available now, wherever you get your podcasts." "Welcome back to the rest of politics, US, with me Anthony Scaramucci and Cady Kaye. Cady, the president has an ass obsession. Let's roll the tape and see what he has to say." "And I'm studying his body, I've never studied the body of a man before, it's not my thing. Nothing wrong with it, of course, I always preceded by saying nothing wrong, but it's never been my thing to be honest with you. But I looked at his ass, and then I looked at his legs, and I said his ass, it's like a pile of muscle, and then I looked at his legs, and I said, "Man, his feet are big, then I looked at his shoulders, and they tapped him on their shoulder, and it actually hurt my hand." It was like a piece of steel. So Cady, this is the second time he's doing this now, and he's in the state of North Carolina talking about the senatorial candidate's ass from the state of Ohio, and you know, Cady. I have said to you privately, and I said, "I'm not going to talk about it, but I think Trump has some weird things going on in terms of his, let's just say, bi-curiosity." I said, "But I'm never going to talk about it on the rest of this pile to US because I don't want people to think that I'm a nut." But the president is forcing us now to talk about this, am I wrong in saying that? No. This is on the front page of The New York Times is how in the closing weeks of the campaign, Donald Trump seems to be obsessed with men's bodies. So it started. You remember, guys, we ran the other clip from Youngstown, Ohio, where he talked about John Houston, the senatorial candidate's ass, and then he did it again, like you said, he was down in North Carolina in a totally different rally, in a totally different state, and he goes back to the Ohio senators' ass and physique and can't stop talking about it. And so now you have all of the national press CNN running a montage, Anderson Cooper, who is gay, running a montage of how Donald Trump keeps talking about men. He was doing it the other night too in South Carolina, talking about beautiful men. There's a lot of talk about beautiful men. Now whether this has now got to his attention that everybody is talking about him, talking about it, and you know what Trump is like, if this is getting me attention, guys, I am happy to get more attention. And so I'm going to carry on at every campaign step. I'm almost willing to guarantee that every campaign stop between now and election day, he is going to say something about beautiful men or the way they look or somebody's ass because it's getting him attention. I'm going to ask a different question, is this a sign that he's just riffing, rambling, repetitive? He's doing it at multiple rallies now. I think a very fair question is, is he off message, Caddy, and he's he hurting the Republicans by doing this sort of thing? Okay. Well, look, so we are doing a deep dive as we have been doing the last few episodes for you guys on all of these tight races around the country. We spoke about Ohio's governor's race in the first half and now we're going to look at Ohio's Senate race, which is also a tight race. It's the second most expensive race in the country. After Texas, $500 million have been poured in, mostly in attack ads against the Democratic candidate, Sherrod Brown, who used to be Ohio's senator and is now coming back to try to be re-elected, and he's running against John Hustard, who is the current senator and who was a former football player and according to Donald Trump has a very nice ass. So let me flip this question to you. This is a tight race. Sherrod Brown is ahead. It is one of the races that the Democrats are most hopeful about picking up, partly because Sherrod Brown is liked in the state. He's got great name recognition. He was a popular senator before. He's always been very associated with working class issues and jobs in particular for working class Ohio. So it's not a heavy lift to get him back into the Senate. If you are John Hustard and Donald Trump comes in and the only thing anyone really remembers about Donald Trump giving a rally to support your Senate re-election campaign is the fact that the president spoke about your ass. Is that helpful or is that not helpful to John Hustard? No, I don't think it's helpful, and I think that this was one of those cases because Ohio's a border state to Canada where the president is hurting the campaign there. uh, you know, he would, you want to help that campaign pick up the phone and call Mark Carney, you had a deal with him before you got, uh, Howard Ludnick involved with it, pick up the phone and go back to where the deal was when you were tweeting about it and announce that you have a deal and you'll improve every one of these Republican senatorial chances along the border between the United States and Canada. So that would be the thing that would have helped. But you know, let's just go to the polymarkets because it's important as an investor, I look at those because they're generally trend in the right direction. And remember Donald Trump, 65% in the polymarkets, despite the polls in 2024, uh, and brown is a 66, depending on which prediction market he's 66 to 70 caddy. And so it's been moving in his direction since mid-October and it's moved up since Trump started talking about, uh, John's S. Okay, and his hands and his feet and all this other shit. So, so to me, it's not helpful. I'm saying is it not only not helpful, but this guy's going to go back and say, Oh my God, this was the most expensive senatorial race. I'm a sitting senator and I'm going to lose to a former sitting senator because I've got a president with a 30, 33, tell me the number, caddy, 34, it depends on the poll. He's got a 30 to 35% approval rating, which is below what George Bush was in 2006. It's, it's right where Harry Truman was in 1946. And so you tell me, caddy, yeah, that doesn't help John Houston, it doesn't help any of the Republicans running. I mean, I think that you're John Houston, though, is also in a particularly tricky position because he's done a few things which are not helping him in Ohio. He's been weirdly dismissive of Ohio's at one point. He said that people in poverty aren't very experienced at navigating the real world. He has suggested that people in Ohio who are struggling need to fix their work ethic. I mean, that doesn't go down terribly well with your voters when you're suggesting to them that they don't know anything and that it's therefore that they're in the situation they're in. He waited 14 times for the Iran war. He's also been incredibly hampered by his support for data centers. There have been something like 225 data centers have moved into Ohio and Houston voted to give them the data center companies, something like $2.5 billion in tax breaks. So he has been caught on tape saying these data centers are really an anchor around my neck right now. He's now trying to kind of reverse that position, but people aren't buying it Ohio. I found this one as in Michigan last week when you were away and to need that data centers just kept cropping up. I mean, it's in these Midwestern states. There is a lot of talk about data centers and people don't like them and Houston is getting targeted with that. I did hear from somebody who knows the state well, who's a political kind of strategist in the state who said to me, they're apparently John Houston never really wanted to run for the Senate reelection. He wanted to run for the governorship, but then Vivek came in, Rich Vivek came in as said, I'm running for the governorship. So John Houston gave up on the governor's race, but somebody told me he's run such a bad campaign and it may be just that his heart was never in it. I think if Democrats win in Ohio, it'll be partly the national environment, partly that they have a good candidate, Sherrod Brown is a good candidate. I mean, there's some issue about whether he's been around too long. He first went, do you know when Sherrod Brown first went into Congress? 30 years ago. 1993. You and I were young back in 1993, we were like, we're snappers, no wrinkles. Live in denial, girl. We are still young, caddy. No wrinkles are not a gray hair back in 1993. There's technology to fix the wrinkles, caddy. You know that. And the hair, I tell you, but so it could be that he's been around too long. I mean, it could be that we're in a change. That's one person, a democratic strategist who's been covering Ohio said to me, the only problem for Sherrod Brown is that he's a lifer, and we are in an anti-incumbency change election cycle. So he could be the right guy in the wrong election, yeah, possible. If he loses, I think it's that, and otherwise I don't see how he loses. Well, I think there's something that we're not stating, so I'll state it to people. This gentleman was appointed to JD Vance's seat. So he's never won a Senate race on his own. He's not a skilled and effective campaigner. And even though he has a nice ass, he doesn't look like he's comfortable with people, caddy. He's not a glad-hander. He's not a retail politician. And whatever you think of Sherrod Brown being in politics since 1993, he knows what he's doing. He knows how to glad-hander. He knows how to bring people in, you know. But I will say that Brown has also outraged him, okay, by a lot, caddy, okay? It's a five to one pace. So the Democrats are flooding the zone on this race. They see this as a flip. And guess what's going on with the Trump-aligned MAGA pack that has pledged 400 million dollars. Okay, pledged. Where is that money gone? Is any of that money trickled into the race? And the answer to that is, no, none of that money has come into the race. No. There is a little bit of GOP money. But not from the Trumpster, not from the Trumpster. No, not from the Trumpster. There is a GOP-aligned pack that is supporting another candidate because there is actually a socialist third party candidate running for this Senate seat, Greg Levy. He's only polling at about 2%, but a GOP-aligned super packer spent a million and a half dollars to try to boost. This is the lovely, clean, nice, friendly game of politics, guys. Don't get into politics unless you want to play rough and ready because you'll get your opponents funding or other opponents. And it's possible, look, if this is a squeaker of a race, if the prediction markets and the polls are out and this is a squeaker, it's possible that Greg Levy could peel votes away from Michelle Brown and that would hand the race to the Republican. We've seen that happen before in tight presidential races in some states. So let's see what happens. Remember Greg Levy's name on election night, if this is a very tight race and see how that goes. I think you mentioned Trump's policies and I do think there's a lot about Trump's policies that are affecting all states across the country. But in Ohio in particular, a little bit like Kentucky and a little bit like Iowa, there are states that moved fast and hard into the Republican column at the end of the kind of 2000s, beginning of the 2010s. Ohio is a state that Barack Obama won twice, Donald Trump won three times and it became sharply red and sharply mega because it had a lot of white working class voters. It has higher than the national average of people who don't have a college educated degree and as everybody reminds me, the greatest prediction of where you stand in your politics is your education level in America. People without college degrees are much more likely to vote for the Republican party. It swung to the Republican party because they liked Donald Trump. They liked that he was standing up for working class people. They were losing steel jobs. I interviewed tons of steel workers who had switched from Democrat to Republican in that period. They voted for Obama and then they switched to the Republicans to vote for Trump. But it's exactly those people who are now being hurt the most by Donald Trump's policies. They are the people who are poor, non-college educated voters are the ones who are being hit more than anybody else by the tariffs and by the war in Iran which is driving up gas prices. So I think ironically you could now have Ohio swinging back against the whole mega experiment which is also what makes this race super interesting. So who's going to win? Because we know it's still a close race even though the party markets are 70. I think it's a clean sweep for the Democrats and here's why. I think the governor who is pretty convincingly ahead pulls Sherrod Brown over the line. In some of these states where you've got a governor's race and a Senate race, we saw this in 2022, the only place where the Democrats picked up a Senate seat was in Pennsylvania and they did it because they had a strong governor. If you've got a strong governor at the top of the ticket, people imagine you go into the polling booths, you've got all these names, you tick Amy Akton for governor in the Democratic column and you just carry on going down. People just carry on going down and ticking the Democrats seats. I think they like Sherrod Brown, but I think they'll really benefit from having her at the top of the ticket and she looks like she's in a pretty convincing lead. What do you think? I don't want to sound overconfident for the Democrats because you know they know how to screw things up. You know that, right? I mean, they end up blowing a keg party these guys. So you've got to be very careful around the Democrats, but I think they will win here and I think that is the number one thing we both know is turnout. And the fact that Donald Trump is not on the ballot, even though he says, please vote for me. Like I'm on the ballot. He's not on the ballot. And I think that's going to be the definitive reason why Brown wins this. I think Akton obviously is going to win pretty easily. So we'll see, but I will say this to you that if they do win this and they win in Texas, and what do you think happens with El Sayed? I was less convinced about El Sayed after my trip to Michigan. I thought he was pretty. comfortably going to win. I'm more on the fence now, okay, but if you get those two Senate seats flipped over, it's pretty good for the for the Democrats. That's a good night for the Democrats. Okay, guys, we're going to leave it there. Next week, we're going to come back, we're going to be doing a bunch of live streams every day in the run-up to the mid-term elections. And we are going live on election night itself. We'll be in a studio together, which will be fun in London with all of the results that are still coming in and all of our analysis. We've got some great guests joining us as well. You won't want to miss that. We will be live from midnight to three a.m. U.S. time, East Coast time, and we will be five to eight a.m. U.K. time. So five a.m. to eight a.m. If you're listening in the U.K. will be live with all of the election results. All right, guys, have a great weekend. Thanks for listening. Hello, the rest is football. This is Richard Osman at Marina Hyde from The Rest Is Entertainment. I know I know you all had your World Cup this summer in America, but for tele fans, the new Celebrity Traders series is our World Cup. Yes, every Thursday and Friday, we are reacting to the pop culture phenomenon that is the Celebrity Traders on YouTube. And wherever you get your podcasts, Richard and I will be sharing our opinion on every banishment, murder, and insane fan theory. Who do you think out of the three russets football hosts would last the longest in the Traders' castle? Oh, I think it would be Michael. Of course it would be. Why are we even asking the question? People they vote out Gary immediately. Michael would just stay in like all the way to the end, just laugh in his head. Laughing is yeah. And then right at the last minute goes, I was a traitor. Yeah. So if you're watching the Celebrity Traders, don't forget to tune into our reaction episodes every Thursday and Friday night at 10 p.m. Find us on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.