Trump Admits He's for He/Him, Not You

Pod Save America is brought to you by SimpliSafe. At the risk of saying something controversial, we're not big fans of junk fees around these parts. Yeah. That's why we love SimpliSafe. SimpliSafe has no long-term contracts, no hidden agendas, and no ulterior motives. They just provide 24-7 protection without trying to trap you in endless fine print. John Lovett set up a SimpliSafe all by himself. All by himself. Good for him. And he has had no complaints, and he set it up easy. It works great right from your phone. With SimpliSafe, you can customize your system to fit your needs. It ships fast directly to your door. The app-guided setup is simple, and there's no drilling required, so you can install and arm your system in under an hour. SimpliSafe is more than just a security camera. It's a comprehensive system of sensors, indoor and outdoor cameras, and 24-7 professional monitoring. It's backed by SimpliSafe's 24-7 professional monitoring agents who dispatch emergency help when you need it. Over 5 million people value and trust SimpliSafe with their home security every day. Right now, our listeners will get 50% off a new system when you sign up for a professional monitor and your first month is free. Just visit SimpliSafe.com slash Crooked. That's half off at SimpliSafe.com slash Crooked. There's no safe like SimpliSafe. CrookedCon is coming up right after the election, and we have just added a bunch more great names to the lineup. We got Governor J.B. Pritzker coming, Senator Chris Murphy, and then over from the House side, Ilhan Omar, Robert Garcia, Sarah Jacobs, Jamie Raskin, Sarah McBride. We also have Carlos Eduardo Espina, Simone Sanders Townsend, Eugene Daniels, David Pakman, Jessica Tarloff, Heather McGee, and then all the other people. All the people that we've announced on the website, plus more to come. Great list. Check out the full lineup and get tickets right now at CrookedCon.com. We'd love to see you there. That's CrookedCon.com. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ the Republican gerrymander spree. More updates on the DNC, and its phantom 2024 autopsy, and of course, why the new 22-foot golden statue of Donald Trump at his golf club, blessed by his spiritual advisor, is definitely not a golden calf. Before we get into any of that, if you're a friend of the Prod subscriber, which if you aren't, you should be, you can now buy tickets for this year's CrookedCon. Special pre-sale just for subscribers. So go get your tickets. Get your ticket now. If you're not a subscriber, which must be because you hate pro-democracy media and love podcast ads, you can buy CrookedCon tickets starting next week on May 19th, Tuesday, May 19th. Either way, it's going to be a big fun party after the midterms, November 5th through the 7th. I am sticking with big fun party, Dan. Okay. Luck, you won. Go to CrookedCon.com for more details, including how to become a Friends of the Pod subscriber, in which you can get tickets for the next week. In which you, again, get ad-free episodes of all your favorite Crooked Pods. And you get special subscriber-only pods like Polar Coaster with Dan Pfeiffer, who I'm hosting with today. And you also get access to all of our excellent sub-stack newsletters and all kinds of other cool stuff. So go check it out. Become a subscriber. And buy your CrookedCon tickets. CrookedCon.com. All right. The president is in China, glazing Xi Jinping. He called the communist dictator a, quote, great leader while dropping some knowledge, on his Chinese hosts. Chinese restaurants in America today outnumber the five largest fast food chains in the United States all combined. That's a pretty big statement. Pretty, pretty big statement. Pretty big statement. Glad he gave them that one. The Beijing leg of Trump's affordability tour puts him out of the country at a moment when the president has never been less popular. After starting a war he can't seem to end that's led to inflation he doesn't seem to care about, which, for some reason, he won't stop telling us. President, you promised to bring inflation down. It's now at its highest level in three years. Are your policies not working? What's happening? My policies are working incredibly. We have a ballroom that's under budget. We're right now on budget, under budget, and ahead of schedule. I doubled the size of it, you dumb person. It's double the size. When you're negotiating with Iran, Mr. President, to what extent are American financial situations motivating you to make a deal? Not even a little bit. I don't think about American. financial situation. I don't think about anybody. The best part of that is, like, it would have been bad enough if he had just stuck with not at all. Because then, like, that's still bad, but then you would have had to, like, you know, make sure you heard the reporter's question. But then he, like, does the quote, as if it was, like, here's the line that if you say it will be a major gaffe. And he's like, I will do the whole line. I will just say it. I do not think about Americans' financial situation. The only thing that would have been worse if he'd asked him to turn the helicopter engines off first so he could say it, so the audio would be better. OK, folks, I'm going to do one more take. I'm going to say it a little louder and to camera, just so it looks better. Let me hold this big box of gold right now while I do it. Yeah, exactly. Can you get the-- can you get the unfinished ballroom in the background shot? In fairness, the one group of Americans whose financial situation Trump keeps improving are Democratic ad makers. In the pantheon of gaffes, where do you rank this one? Donald Trump has said many offensive and morally odious things over the years, but from a political perspective, this is the worst thing he has said by far. Hands down, not even close. Do we think so? I mean, oh, god, I can't remember. It's been 10 years. But yeah, it's up there for sure. It absolutely has to be. And here's why. Because a lot of Trump's, like, the terrible things he says, like Nazis are fine people. Right, right, right. I trust Russia over our own intelligence agencies, all of those things, which are really, really bad things for a president to say on every level, are offensive. And it's a field from the thing Americans care most about. So right here, he is doing the worst kind of gaffes are when you say the truth out loud. And that's what this is, because what he said was the exact thing that the people who voted for Trump, who have grown disillusioned with him and are thinking of voting for Democrats, fear most, that he does not give a shit about them. Yeah. It is like he said the whole thing. And you just-- that is our message. Like, somewhere on a whiteboard in a Democratic super PAC is Trump does not care about American people's financial situations. And then he said it. He said our message. On camera. That's bad. Remember, Kamala's for they/them, Trump's for you? I guess Trump is not for you. No, Trump is not for you. This is-- Trump says he's not for you. Yeah. This is like when Kamala Harris-- the two quotes, which we'll get to this later, but when Kamala Harris said that Bidenomics were working, and when she had no ways in which she would separate herself from Joe Biden, similar, right? When you make a gaffe that fits with people's greatest fear about you, those are the gaffes that hurt the most. I was thinking whether this was even the worst gaffe within the context of all of the terrible, politically stupid gaffes he's made within the context of the-- just affordability, just in that category. Because remember, it was like, affordability's a hoax. It's bullshit. It's bullshit. Everything's fine. People are OK if it could be worse. Gas prices-- I mean, there's just so many of them. I do think this nicely encapsulates that aside from any one policy or him being out of touch with how people are feeling, he actually just doesn't think about it. Does not care. Could not care less. Back to the ballroom. It was like the advisors are saying, well, he was talking about this in the context of Iran having a nuclear weapon. And what he was saying is that he doesn't think about Americans' financial situation in a way that would stop him from doing what he needs to do to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, which is also funny because he hasn't done that either. That's right. They still have the uranium dust and our gas prices. The gas prices are really high. Zero progress. Zero progress since this war, the latest war began in February of '28. Whatever he bombed over last summer is one thing, but nothing on the nuclear dust since this war started. So hasn't figured that out. Doesn't think of Americans' financial situation. It has been funny to watch Republicans respond to this one, which so many of them have been asked to do, including the Vice President and the Speaker of the House and random members of Congress. Let's listen. Yesterday, the president was asked about whether Americans' financial concerns were motivating him to make a deal with Iran. His response was, I don't think about Americans' financial situations. Do you think that's the right message? The president should be considering the financial tool. I don't know the context in which he made that comment, but I can tell you the president thinks about Americans' financial situations. I talked to him on average twice a day, sometimes three or four times a day. If I could just kind of give a little clarity to what I think President Trump was saying is, look, he does care about the American people. He does care about the price of the pump. Well, I don't-- I don't think the president said that. I think that's a misrepresentation of what the president said. So good. So good. Let me just clarify. Let me just clarify. When the president said he doesn't think about Americans' financial situation, what he actually meant was that he cares about America's financial situation. It's like, look, he's an older gentleman. He doesn't get a lot of sleep. He gets confused sometimes. I like that Mike Johnson went to-- I mean, I talked to him two, three times a day. It's like, what does that have to do with him caring about Americans' financial situation? that there's the question was, do you think that's a good message. I don't know the context, but like no one has a narrower media diet than Mike Johnson. I feel like every democratic candidate on the ballot in 2026 should make their Republican opponent answer for this. Right. It feels like a leading question, John. I'm just saying like why I haven't, I'm trying to figure out like why I haven't seen more of that yet. I mean, I guess you can only really do that in a, I guess the place to do that is in a debate. Cause if you do some video where you're like, I call on my opponent to, you know, no one's going to, no one's going to actually do that. That's not going to get you very far, but I do think it'd be a good debate moment. So I think the way we generally think about this, the way that question is framed is like based in this other world of politics that you and I came up in where these Republicans are out there on the campaign trail, they're being trailed by a pack of experienced local reporters who are waving recorders and notepads at them demanding answers, sort of like Jeff Bezos took all their jobs. So that's not, well, it's that doesn't, that's not how the world works anymore. And so it's, that's not like, I would like a world, like I want every Republican walking down the halls of Congress to be swarmed by the staff of punch bowl news and demand it. They can't leave the Senate subway until they answer this question. Like I would like that. That is good karmic justice. What is it? And people should use it in debates. The better thing to do here in this media environment is you take the Trump clip, you mix it with a, the, you then follow it up with a bunch of the policies that this Republican member supported or is fine with or has done, or they themselves said that illustrate this larger point that Trump and his Republican flunkies do not give a shit about your financial situation, the focus on all these other things. And I think that's sort of the way it happens now, like in a campaign. I just like, you hear this all the time. And I think about this obviously like, why is no one forcing these candidates to ask about it? It's because there is no one to force them to do it anymore, right? There's maybe one reporter trailing them in some of these places. You know, I watched the, I don't know if you've watched any of these, this is sort of off topic, but I watched the last California gubernatorial debate. It seems like there's a couple opportunities there. The CNN one or the Buffy Wicks one? Neither. The, um, the local NBC affiliate one that came after the LA mayoral debate. Oh, okay. Yeah. I watched the CNN one and I watched the Buffy one. Yeah. None of them. The Buffy Wicks, Buffy Wicks sponsored a housing debate. I know that as a, yeah, for those who are wondering, I will say that Buffy Wicks is an assembly member in California and a friend of ours. Yeah, no, I will say that neither the LA mayoral debate or the, um, California gubernatorial debate that I watched was very inspiring. Yeah. If you've done, if you've done local races, the, and it's been a long time since I've done that, but like these debates are never, they're not presidential debates. No, they're really not. There's not a lot of hard follow-up. It's not a lot of rules. Sort of. But anyway, anyway, for other people running for Congress, I do think that could be a good moment, but you're right. I think you throw it in an ad. I think you could be creative, whatever. We could talk about that forever. I think that could be a good moment. I think you could talk about that forever. Pod Save America is brought to you by Common Power. We don't need the DNC's top secret election autopsy to tell us that we lost the youth voters at an alarming rate. That is accurate. Wow. We'd still like it. They really know their audience. Yeah, they really do. Research from Tufts University found that Democrats lost a 21 point advantage in the 2024 presidential election compared to 2020. An important part of that shift came from conservative youth organizations like TPUSA. Since then, Common Power has been on offense with college programming that educates and trains students across the nation to volunteer for Democratic candidates and eventually lead the party. Winning the House and the Senate is crucial, and Common Power is the organizing force training and deploying volunteers to door knock for Democrats across 20 battleground states in over 50 races this year alone. Their travel teams are driven by next generation leaders, and we need your support to fund their travel and efforts to fight for a new America. Oh, look, guys, we got to win back, young voters. It's an absolute disaster what happened in the last cycle. Vote Save America partnered with Common Power in the 2024 elections and helped send hundreds of volunteers to win in important races across the country. They're an amazing partner. They will not waste your time. You'll go out there and you'll actually do some real good. If you want to support Common Power, the organizing force of volunteers fighting to shift the balance of power in Congress, go to commonpower.org slash crooked. That's commonpower.org slash crooked. Pod Save America is brought to you by Mill. In our polarized climate, there's still one thing that unites us all. Dealing with communal household and office trash sucks. The food waste, the smell, the constant overflowing trash cans. That was until Mill just kind of took care of it while we weren't even looking. Mill is the odorless, effortless, fully automated food recycler. Potato peels, avocado pits, chicken bones, even dairy. Mill takes almost anything. While you sleep, Mill quietly transformed food scraps into nutrient-rich, chef-stable grounds. No mess, no smells, no fruit flies. Mill can process up to 10 pounds overnight, and it can work for weeks before you even have to think about emptying. You can use the grounds in your garden, add them to curbside compost, or Mill can even pick them up and get them to a small farm for you. The Mill app tracks how much food you're keeping out of landfills, and Mill has already helped its customers put over 15 million pounds of food to good use. Mill is sleek, beautiful, and looks great in any kitchen. And Mill offers a 90-day risk-free trial, so if you don't absolutely love it, you can just send it back. We have a Mill recycler in the Crooked Kitchen. Apparently, we've recycled 222 pounds of food scraps so far, and I'm wondering who did that weighing. That's about 53 pounds per month. You think Lovett did that math? Yeah, probably. Our art director, Zevi, takes the food grounds home to use in her garden. What a story. Well, next time I see Zevi, I'm going to ask her how the garden's going. Hakuna Matata. Circle. Try Mill risk-free for 90 days and get $75 off at mill.com slash crooked and use code crooked. That's $75 off at mill.com slash crooked and use code crooked. The president may not be thinking about Americans' financial situation, but he's always thinking about his own. And he continues to use the presidency to make himself richer in cartoonishly corrupt ways. Remember the $10 billion lawsuit Donald Trump filed against the IRS over his tax returns leaking? Well, the New York Times reports that Trump's Justice Department might settle the lawsuit any day now and that, quote, a settlement payment even a fraction of the size of Mr. Trump's requested $10 billion. Could be much larger than his other attempts at private gain, potentially doubling his net worth with our tax dollars. I know a lot of these corruption stories are a bit complicated, but this would just be Trump literally just taking the tax dollars we send the government and putting them directly into his pocket. First of all, before we get into like the political implications of this, do you think they'll actually do something so brazenly stupid as this, even by Trump's standards? Yeah, I think they might. And I think they'll justify it by saying, look, it's not we didn't do it for $10 billion. We did it for $1 billion or $2 billion. You think so? Yeah. The other thing that they kind of floated in the story, and I couldn't tell if this was some reporting that they couldn't bear out yet, which was there's a possibility they might just say no financial award goes to Trump from Trump's Justice Department, but that somehow he gets protected from ever being audited again, which is also incredibly corrupt, of course. Yes. But I do think any kind of dollar amount is fucking nuts, man. It I mean, would have to be. Let's say it's let's say it's $1 million. Right. Let's say it's let's say just still stealing. This is a lawsuit where Donald Trump sued Donald Trump. And now Donald Trump is going to settle with Donald Trump to give Donald Trump money, our money. He's basically just backing up a truck to the Treasury Department and taking our money and giving it to himself. And he's going to say he's giving it to charity. That's what he said when he was pushed on this in an NBC interview earlier this year. Donald Trump's been lying about giving money to charity his whole life. Like this would be the greatest example of presidential corruption in American history by a factor of a thousand. It's just stealing money. I was going to say the easiest to explain. Don't fucking get out your message box on this one, Dan. No, don't worry. I'll be message box. Let me tell you, it's just like he's stealing from us. You go to work, you get a paycheck. They take taxes out of the paycheck. It goes to the government. Now those taxes go in Donald Trump's pocket. He's a thief. He is he is stealing from us. Ten billion dollars. He is a crook. That's it. I mean, it's it's wild. It really also it's like a lawsuit that I mean, not to get into the details here, but now that we've done our top line message like an IRS fucking like leaked all these tax returns of a whole bunch of wealthy people, including Donald Trump to ProPublica. Apparently the guy went to jail for five years over this and others who had their tax tax returns leaked, sued. None of them got any damages. Ken Griffin, the billionaire, he was one of them. He got like a public apology from the IRS. There's all kinds of problems with the lawsuits. It's for way too much money. First of all, he doesn't seem to have filed it at the right time. And so there's only one party in the lawsuit. Well, I was going to say that's the big thing. But no, I think the big thing is it is it's also clear that if it was Donald Trump suing Joe Biden's federal government or some other president, this lawsuit would he would never get anything from this because it's a fucking phony lawsuit. And the only reason he would win the lawsuit is because he decides the lawsuit because he is the Justice Department, because the Justice Department is an independent. And so he tells them, hey, settle this lawsuit that I filed against us. and I'm gonna pocket the cash, or I'm gonna pretend that I give it to charity. It is un-fucking-believable. I hope he does it. I know what it is worth. One billion dollars in taxpayer money. I will. I'll write some kind of a check. Not for that much. But I would I mean, this would be the greatest political gift. Now, this is the easiest one. But I know you have thoughts on just in general how Democrats should be talking about corruption over these next couple of months leading into the midterms. Yeah. You know, way back in 2020, I one of my arguments was that the way before we before Biden was a nominee, where it was beginning run of Trump, 2019, 2020. Well, I my argument was that Democrats should frame the argument against Trump around chaos and corruption. And. You were in some of these meetings, pollsters would come to us and they would say corruption does not work. We've tested it. Voters do not buy the idea or so they don't buy the idea that Trump is corrupt. It's that it does not move them. It's not new information to them. They they are willing to accept a baseline of corruption from Trump. It's kind of priced into their baseline and they kind of think all politicians are corrupt. Flash forward to now, even even as recently as as early last year, when Trump was really doing a lot of all this crypto stuff, we heard the same thing from the same pollsters that corruption was not a message that worked with swing voters. And I believe these pollsters, I believe their data. I just think they are. They are tactically correct and strategically wrong. And there's two things here. The first is corruption. This is a different backdrop. People may be OK with Trump dipping his beak when gas is under two dollars a gallon and prices are low and the economy is going good. They feel very differently about it when gas is 450 a gallon and the economy sucks. That's a very different. There's a very different backdrop to this. That's one, two. I think how we use corruption is very important here. Because. I think too often Democrats treated as if we were in a court of law, like we are going to present this evidence. There is the Qatari jet. There is the theft of the 10 billion dollars. Look at the crypto schemes. We have presented this evidence. Jury of my voter peers, please tell me whether you find the president corrupt. And if you find them corrupt, then we're going to get rid of them. But that's not how it works, right? The way to think about corruption is to understand that is to treat corruption as an explanation. For why? Everything sucks. It is the keystone to explain why rich people are getting richer. Politically connected people are getting pardons and gifts and access. And you're getting kicked off your health care. You're getting kicked off your food assistance. Why nothing works. Why corporations are getting richer. Small businesses are hurting. Things costing more is it is all because of corruption is a corrupt system. It is bigger than Trump. Trump is a part of that system. He is exploiting that system. And if we don't talk about corruption as a party, then what we are do. We are implying to voters that we're OK with that system because they think we're part of it, too. Now, I think there's a lot Democrats have to do in terms of the positions we have, the policies we advocate for that show that we're willing to take on that system. But if you just refuse to acknowledge this giant elephant in the room that people believe the system is corrupt and it is corrupt because Donald Trump is showing us every single day, then you're just leaving so much money on the table. No pun intended. How much do you think an actual reform agenda? Should be part of that. I don't think it is credible for the Democratic Party running in twenty twenty six to have a this is our reform agenda. I don't think anyone's going to believe that. I think individual candidates should be running on it. Obviously, like the the biggest layup ever that we seem incapable of accomplishing is banning members of Congress from trading stocks. Like truly one of the biggest mistakes of the Biden era was not getting that done when we had the majority, you know, dark money, you know, the AOC. And I think. I hate this is I think Ted Cruz have this bill that says that members of Congress can't become lobbyists when they leave. Like I think individual people should have their own to show that they're taking on that system. I think it should be a big part. Like I want our twenty twenty eight candidate to be seen as a reformer like us off is doing that in his stuff right now. But I don't think there's like a Democratic Party agenda when we get in. If we take the House, one of the things we should do is pass a a government ethics campaign finance reform bill. We know it's going nowhere, but we should show that we want to deliver on it. I kind of think that and I don't know if this is for if we take the House and then just want to pass a bill that is sitting there ready for a Democratic president or this is the candidates who run in twenty twenty eight who do this. But I think you need a few very big, ambitious, haven't heard before reform ideas that people can grab onto, both because that's what it takes to get attention in this information environment. And like. The stock trading ban is great and obviously polls through the roof. We get that. But like people have been talking about it for so long. Like, when is it going to happen? I think the next thing that's going to get attention is someone actually fucking passing the stock trading ban. But how would you stop the corruption we just talked about? Donald Trump stealing from the Treasury because he controls the Justice Department. Like, we're going to figure out a way like this is again, this is another conversation. But like the idea that the next Democratic president. It's just going to be like, well, the Justice Department is independent again, and that's going to prevent the next Trump from doing what he's done with the Justice Department seems a bit fanciful to me. I'm talking like like his store, like we have gone through in these last this term, especially like historic levels of corruption we've never seen in the United States of America. And so it seems like you'll need reform that has also will be reformed for the history book. That we've never seen in the United States of America, too. And I and I worry that you'll get this like fucking mealy mouth, like, you know, just bit by bit reform agenda that is just recycled from Democratic campaigns past. I think there's sort of two things that are at play here that sometimes get conflated. One, and I would say they are related to one is reforming campaign finance law, lobbying, just like government ethics. Right. Like akin to a version of what Obama. Ran on in 08 and when Democrats actually passed in 2007, I think there's six or seven. We passed it. And then there is like, what do we do with the fact that we that our system is so filled with Swiss cheese that a bad person can exploit it with no consequences? Like, how do you ran that? And what can you do to rein in presidential power? Like, is will a Democratic president come in and be willing to rein in their own power in ways that would put them under more screen? And it's hard because the Supreme Court immunity decision makes it hard. Like you say, like, what? Is the like, you could put in place a bunch of different disclosure laws or conflict of interest laws that apply the president make the Hatch Act apply to the president doesn't currently do other things like that you could do. And it is. But what do you do? What are the teeth? Right. If the president just says, fuck you, like, what actually can you do in a world in which the impeachment system does not work? When I wrote my book on Trump in America in 2020. I guess it came out. Yeah, 2020. Yeah. Right before the pandemic. And like one week before the pandemic. And one of the like, this is a big spend a lot of time working on this and why I thought Democrats both politically for the sake of the party and the sake of the country. The next Democratic president should do this. The next Democratic president did not do this. But one of the things was repealing the OLC memo. They have a legal council member that said that the president could not be indicted. Now, the Supreme Court has because that that's one of the then the Supreme Court just made that memo case law. Now, so you can't do that. But we do need to think like this should be a big part of Project 2029 or whatever is thinking about how we how we what like what lessons can we learn from all the bad shit Trump did? And how can we stop future presidents? Because the system never anticipated someone as craven and corrupt as Trump. Yeah, the the easy way to say it and not the message you way to say it, but it's like you got to all the norms got to become laws codify. But how do you force the law on the president? Then there's the that's that's the question. Like you can make the people around him. Like there are all these things that you would want to do that are very hard constitutionally. What you have to do is is I think right into law because the loophole that the Supreme Court decision gives you is anything that is clearly not an official act. He can be prosecuted for and so you would have to make sure that certain thing you have to put into law that certain things that the president does are not are obviously not official acts in the legislation. I think that's I'm I'm not a lawyer. Obviously, it's good enough for me. It feels like by then some smart lawyers and maybe Claude. Can help us figure this out. Anthropics you really start paying for this. All right, Dan, we're going to we're going to move on. But there's some breaking news on this IRS thing right from a drop the case. Well, so ABC News is reporting that Trump is poised to settle the case. And instead of the $10 billion, it's going to be $1.7 billion that he still gets. But he's saying it's going to turn into a $1.7 billion. And he's saying it's going to turn into a $1.7 billion weaponization fund so that people, I guess, can sue people who've weaponized the government against Trump allies. And I'm sure there'll be strict oversight over such a fund that, of course, does go to Donald Trump. And and that's that's what will happen there. So it's a slush fund for Trump, potentially his family and his friends. Yeah, that is about right. That is about right. A good use of taxpayer dollars. The compensation fund is believed to be the main condition for Trump to drop a series of legal. It's about. The settlement terms are expected to prohibit Trump from directly receiving payments related to those claims. However, entities associated with Trump are not explicitly barred from filing additional claims, sources said. Oh, like his family and his business who also had their tax releases. The proposed fund, which would face significant legal hurdles, would draw money from the Treasury Department's judgment fund. $1.7 billion will be coming out of the Treasury in this scenario, going into some slush fund that Donald Trump controls is what you need to know. Cool, correct. So it is some combination of what we thought it might be. And still bad. Yeah. Yeah, I'd say it's still bad. Still a lot of money. It's a lot of money. $1.7 billion. Just taking it out of the Treasury. Positive America is brought to you by Fast-Growing Trees. All right, we got it. You might be skeptical about ordering plants online. I'm not skeptical at all. You're probably thinking, is this thing actually going to show up alive? But after receiving multiple plants here at Crooked HQ, we can say with confidence that Fast-Growing Trees is shipping plants down to a science. Oh yeah, they got you. They got you. They nailed it. It's hand-picked. They're carefully inspected. Their packaging is designed specifically to keep them secure in transit so they don't get damaged. They even have a lab where they test the best packaging materials to protect against cold, heat, humidity, and more. You will not believe how good your plants look when they arrive. Hot-ass plants. Plus, every order is backed by their Alive and Thrive guarantee. So in the off chance you do have any issues with delivery, which you won't, you're covered. Fast-Growing Trees is America's largest online nursery with thousands of trees and plants for every space and every climate, and they make it easy to get plants that actually work for your yard delivered right to your door. Look, Fast-Growing Trees, they do it all for you. They will help you pick out stuff that will survive in your climate. They'll help you keep it alive. They'll send you great stuff. Check it out. Right now, they have great deals on spring planting essentials, and listeners get an additional 20% off your first order with the code CROOKED at checkout. That's 20% off at FastGrowingTrees.com with code CROOKED. Terms and conditions may apply. Hey, everyone. My name is Elijah Cohn, and I've been a producer here at Crooked Media for a decade. I love making our shows with the smart, creative people who work here and hearing from all of you who listen every week. But the thing that I'm proudest of is that video we made of Vivek Ramaswamy grunting while hitting baseballs. No, wait, sorry. The thing I'm proudest of is the work we do through Vote Save America. See, we don't want our shows to only leave you feeling anxious about the state of the world. We want to give you something you can actually do about it. Just this year, our listeners have raised millions of dollars and filled thousands of volunteer shifts to help candidates and causes in the 2026 midterms. And we have no plans to slow down as we head into 2028. As far as I know, there's no other media company that does what Crooked does. We make entertaining, thoughtful content that brings people into politics, and then we give them a direct way to get involved. And if you believe in that mission, one of the best ways to support us is by becoming a paid subscriber. Your subscription helps us keep making the shows you love and building a media company that doesn't just talk about politics, but helps people change them. And if the mission sounds great, but you feel like you need some sweet subscriber benefits to get you over the finish line, we've got you covered. Subscribers get ad-free shows, plus excellent exclusive podcasts, newsletters, and much, much more. So, thank you for listening and supporting what we do. Head to crooked.com slash friends today to learn more and become a subscriber. So despite all of this, Republicans are still projecting confidence about the midterms, which of course could be bullshit. Of course they'd project confidence. But the one thing they can legitimately point to is the success they're having gerrymandering the maps, courtesy of, again, the Supreme Court. Some new developments there. South Carolina now looks like it will redistrict, even though a handful of Republicans joined Democrats to vote down the idea earlier this week. The governor's going to call a special session that will apparently require only a simple majority. So that's not good news. Louisiana advanced its plan too, but they're getting rid of one Democratic district, not two. So slight good news there. On the Democratic side, Maryland may now move to redistrict the cycle after all. The Senate president there, who would oppose the idea, is now in talks about it with Governor Wes Moore. So fingers crossed there. Mississippi and Georgia will both redraw their maps, but not till 2028. So that's temporary good news. Would-be Speaker Hakeem Jeffries has announced a no more Mr. Nice Guy approach, pushing every blue state to redistrict by 2028. And promising to shame any Democrat who resists. And he also is sharpening the rhetoric on Republicans. He promised this week to, quote, crush their souls. OK, then there's Kamala Harris, who popped up on an organizing call about redistricting with with this advice. I think that we need an expanded playbook. This is a moment where there are no bad ideas of no bad idea. Brainstorm is what I'd like to call it. We talk about what we need to do and think about doing around the Electoral College. We talk about the idea of Supreme Court reform, which includes expanding the Supreme Court. We invite a conversation about multi-members districts. Let's talk about statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C. We've got to neutralize these red states from cheating, including blue states expanding their maps. So that was Kamala Harris zooming in from I don't know where let's have a let's have a nobody. No bad ideas. Brainstorm, Dan. OK, what do you what? I haven't been a part of many of them. That's it's not possible. There are there are bad ideas in a brainstorm. I've heard many of there are many, many. Sometimes they sometimes they leave the brainstorm and then we're saddled with, in fact, saying that just usually elicits more bad ideas. People should have a little bit of fear of what they suggest in a meeting. What is anyway? Well, talk to talk to Kamala Harris's team about the backdrop anyway. She's going to be doing. If this was not a media event, she was zooming into right. She was a merge, which is an organization that recruits in trans women candidates, I believe. So good. She's out there chatting. We like it. What do you make of both the Democratic counterattack plan in the short term and then some of the longer term stuff that Kamala was talking about there? We have to recognize that we are now because of the Supreme Court, we are now in a state of perpetual political warfare. The maps will be redrawn every cycle and at every time when there's a change in power. So if we have a trifecta in Oregon now and we redraw the maps, Republicans get a trifecta two years, four years, six years later, they'll redraw the maps again and we're just going to live like this. And it's going to be that way up until the moment Congress passes a ban on partisan gerrymandering. And so we have to approach this fight with the attitude that I think he's bringing to it, which is we need a maximal approach. We have to use every single lever of power we have. If there's an opportunity to draw more Democratic districts in one of these blue states, we have to do it. If we have to repeal or find clever legal workarounds for anti-gerrymandering laws and amendments, then we must do that. Because as we can already see, Republicans are wasting no time. They're leaving no stone unturned to find extra seats. And I hate gerrymandering. You hate gerrymandering. Democrats hate gerrymandering. This sucks. You know, you guys joked about the-- or you discussed and joked a little bit about the plan of Virginia to retire all the justices and put new ones in. And that does seem extreme. And it was, I think, for a variety of reasons, logistically unworkable this time. Mainly for IT reasons, apparently. Yes. But even-- yes, it's confusing. But either that sort of idea-- I hate to say this-- has to be on the table. That idea is no dumber or worse than just packing the Supreme Court as they've done in Florida and Utah and other places. Or like throwing out votes in an election that had already happened in Louisiana. Yeah. Yeah. It's-- like, we just-- I don't want to do those things. But we have to be-- we have to think like that. Because we are-- we're now in a total war for democracy. The Republicans are trying to-- they are just-- they're just eliminating black districts across the country. You know, when this is all said and done, 30% of the Black Caucus could have their district-- they didn't lose election. Their districts would be written out of existence. Because the Supreme Court says that racial gerrymandering was OK. And we have to have a very aggressive attitude about it. So that's the short term. Over the long term, this gets into the conversation we just had about how you reign in political power from-- you know, in corruption from Trump, is we do need to think about how-- when we have power, how to use that power to protect democracy and fight fascism. And we-- and the way to do that is you have to make the country more democratic. That means getting rid of the filibuster. That means giving DC statehood. It means giving Puerto Rico the opportunity for statehood. Shit, if the people of Venezuela want to join America, given Trump's approval ratings right there, we'll take them, too, right? The-- Cool. It is, you know, court reform, as Kamala Harris mentioned, including expansion or certainly term limits would be very helpful. There are creative ways that I think you can get around some of the constitutional language on term limits. But we-- all these things should be on the table because Republicans are exploiting the loopholes in our system. And they're doing it ruthlessly and relentlessly. And we have to find ways to-- and the system cannot work. The whole thing falls apart if the popular will of the people is denied because of a handful of justices who were put on the court by Donald Trump, a guy who only won the popular vote once over the course of-- you know, there's still ruling this way decades later. We have to think really hard about how we reform our system and fix our democracy. we should be willing to expend political capital to do that. Now, I don't think we should run on that message right now. That's not what I'm arguing. But I think when we're in power, we have to look at that very seriously. Well, but I also think there's an expectation setting here too. That's a, I think as a challenge, because we just talked about, and you just talked about sort of, um, gerrymandering or redrawing maps. If we have a trifecta in a blue state and like the same breath as, you know, Supreme court expansion. Right. And I think that we have to divide all of these reforms into, um, reforms that, uh, we can do because we have power now in certain places and reforms that we can only do if we amass power, that is much more power than we have right now, which we can only do if we do the, we can only do the latter. If we do the former. Well, right. Well, that's also true. I mean, they go hand in hand, but like, you know, you really can't blame any blue states right now for, except for Maryland, this, this, this one guy in Maryland who's like the state Senate president, I think. Um, yeah. Who has, who has refused to do this. So as of right now in the calendar, like he's the only one who's not doing what he could do with the power that they have in Maryland. Right. Then you sort of wonder, like, if you're looking back and it's too late now, but could Illinois have done redistricting this time around if they jumped on it? Maybe. Maybe. Like, did Pritzker make a mistake there? I don't know. I don't know why they didn't do it, but like, you know, it's, it's too late now, but like that was one state Colorado too. Like, did they miss the, miss the chance on this? I do think there's a series. And then New York, I think there was like more of a legal thing, but look for between now and 2028, you think I get, you get New York, you got Illinois. I think you got Wisconsin maybe, um, which is going to be tougher because there's a Republican legislature there, but I don't know what, uh, Evers can do or the next. Pennsylvania is an option. Pennsylvania. Is an option. Colorado will be an option. It's Maryland, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Colorado, New York, New Jersey, maybe. Yeah. I think I may be missing one. There's a list of states that can get you well over a dozen new seats. Yeah. And so all that, all those, uh, all those states got to move for sure. And if they don't move, then they deserve all the pressure and all the criticism that they have coming to them for sure. This is hard because what happens sometimes when you have a lot of people that are in the black districts that off that are largely their urban districts, usually made up of a large segment of the black population they have. And then you, you basically do the reverse of what Republicans do, which is then you divide that district up in several ways and put some of those black voters into these, into these, these swing districts and make them more democratic. And you do, and this is one of the things that has even New York has already said, there's already been reporting that New York may not take a maximum approach to this in 2028 because there's fear that it will reduce New York's black representation. in Congress. And so we're really going to have to wrestle with that and figure that out. But ultimately it's not good for anyone. If Republicans just call control Congress ad infinitum because we don't draw the districts in the right way. Yeah. Cause you know, you, like you guys were doing the math, the math on Tuesday's podcast and you know, and I like the political environment still suggests Democrats will take the majority, but this is a historically good political environment. We're not going to have that every time. And if, if we can only have the house when the president is at the Republican presence at 38% and saying insane shit all the time while involved in a protracted war in the middle East, we're not going to have the house that often. And which means we're not going to govern that often. It reduces the chance that a democratic president has a governing trifecta actually get shit done. Yeah. I mean, I was, I was doing the math on this before we started and I looked at the cook political and you tell me if my calculation is wrong on this, but if we, if Democrats win all the toss ups and all the lean ours, which is pretty, pretty good, but like in a, in a big blue, you know, that means we get 13 seats. We flip 13 seats and that, and for that, I was saying that, um, if that's if Republicans then win all the likely ours and all the solid ours. And of course there are now some blue seats in solid R and likely are because of the re because of the redistricting. But so like winning all the toss ups and all the lean ours and only netting 13 seats is like not, it's not great. We didn't win all the, uh, the lean ours and all the toss ups in 2018. Right. Exactly. So it would have to be a better environment than 2018, which it might be, but like still, um, now to your, to your, uh, to the broader national reforms, which again, like we are not going to win this on a longterm on a state by state basis. Like you have to have national reforms. National reform is the only way now, you know, federal legislation is the only way to stop gerrymandering everywhere. It's the only way to change the electoral college. It's the only way to change the Supreme court. And in order to do that, it really comes down to like, can we field candidates that win Senate seats in, in this cycle, at least Alaska, Texas, Iowa, Ohio. And people might say, Oh, those are some hard States. It doesn't get easier than those. It doesn't get easier. And so if we're fielding candidates who can't figure out a way to win in those States, and we're not focused on how to win in those States, then no one should be talking about all the other reforms because they're never going to get done. And one thing I do worry about is that for people who don't pay close attention to politics, they're like, well, why won't the Democrats pack the court? Why won't the Democrats do this? Well, they can't because we didn't win the Senate and we didn't win the Senate because we couldn't have a can't, we didn't get a candidate who could win Texas or could win Iowa. So I just, I only say that to tell people that like you, we really have to focus on winning very difficult States, um, which we have a good chance of doing this in this environment with these candidates, Mary Peltola in Alaska and, um, James Tallarico in Texas. You can go on and on, but like, those are the kind of, those are the States that aren't just nice to win. Like we have to win if we ever hope to have these national reforms. It's a longer conversation and it's a quite depressing conversation about the state of the Senate map, because if you sort of look at it, but it's like, that's every, that's everything. That's all the stuff we're talking about. All the anger over the VS, the, uh, the voting rights act and the Supreme court, all this shit, it all comes down to the Senate. Yeah. And I mean, exactly right. And so if you look at the Senate map, I'm doing this off the top of my head, but there are only two Republicans in States, like in remaining in, in truly swing States. And it's Ron Johnson in Wisconsin and Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania. Yep. Cause we have both centers in Michigan. We have both senators in Arizona. We have both senators in Georgia. And, and it's like, and this is the map in 2026 where we are expanding into Alaska. This is why I think Mary Peltola's race is so important. Like if we can now put Alaska in the column, then perhaps then if Murkowski retires at some point, maybe we can get the other seat there. So now we have that. But like, it's, it's, everyone's looking at Texas, like, Oh, Democrats always, they always dream about Texas, but it never happens. And it's a lot, it's really exciting. It's expensive. So it was like, well, there's not a lot of other options. Yeah. You know, like we're going to have to win Texas if we hope to survive as a democracy, unfortunately. And, and Florida too. Like, I mean, this is just, unless we want a bunch of liberals moving to Wyoming and fucking Montana, which honestly, it's the highest leverage play that Democrats could do to move to Wyoming, move 50,000 to a hundred thousand, move a hundred thousand Californians to look Jackson or to Wyoming, do it after the 20, 30 census is completed so that we don't lose even more electoral votes and then go. Yeah. That's a, you know what? No. Hey, you know what this was? A no bad ideas brainstorm. There, you know, there could have been bad ideas, but there weren't. At least, well, that's what we're going to call it. That they could be bad ideas. You know what I mean? You end up with a cash would have gotten through a zip recruiter end up with a cash Mattel. You end up with a, what's the sec def guy's name again. Jesus. Thank you. Hexeth bunch of idiots with zip recruiter. That's never going to happen. You know why? Cause they are going to use their powerful matching technology to find you qualified candidates at the jump. So you're only looking at qualified candidates and I'm morons. I mean, we do want, do we want that administration to have better people? I don't know anymore. I can't tell either way. If you want, if you want better people to get zip recruiter, find candidates who really want your job on zip recruiter. Four out of five employers who post. On zip recruiter, get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at zip recruiter.com slash crooked. That's zip recruiter.com slash crooked. Meet your match on zip recruiter. Try to answer some big questions, stuff like if we won, how did we win? If we lost, how could we possibly have lost? And with 2028 around the corner, where do we go from here? If you believe in democracy, community, and fighting for the future, now's the time to grab your tickets to crooked con at 2026. Head to crooked con.com to get your tickets now. So the redistricting strategy, Trump political director James Blair is about to take a leave from the White House to run the midterm operation full time. like any good beltway strategist he marked the occasion by conducting a lengthy interview with dasha burns at playbook about his plans um which were then transcribed uh and he summed them up as attack attack attack and his key quote swing voters already think the democratic party's too far left and we're going to make sure voters know just how far left they are they are woke weak and way too liberal you get three w's you always need alliteration he knew that liberal one at the end needed a way because you need the three w's that's otherwise it's not a good slogan and the and the whole country will be reminded of that uh he also told uh dasha burns that democratic primaries and infighting are doing real damage to the party and that he plans to capitalize on that seems like that's a play for social media to get everyone fighting even more but we can leave that aside um if i'm not mistaken uh message box pro subscribers have already seen your take on this dan um but for those who have not visited message box pro subscribers have already seen your take on this dan um but for those who have not visited pro.com to lock in the special early sign up price before it's too late how's that for an organic plug that's organic and i'm going to make even more organic in a second yes how do you think democrats should be prepared to respond to the weak woke and way too liberal attack well john great question and great opportunity to talk about message box pro so thank you for that wonderful some of you may remember uh a few weeks ago i launched message box pro which is a subscription service for people who are work in politics and communications at any level and subscribers get weekly strategy memos from me data driven uh insights on what to say advice on how to get your message heard polling analysis and access to a community of candidates operatives activists and organizers nerds nerds some are nerds some are quite cool um the real nerds are not subscribers for the word um and we are up and running we've already have strategy memos out on where swing voters get their information on how to construct a narrative for a coherent cohesive narrative for this election you know what the latest polling on the economy says and what to do with it and the message box pro community is up and running and it's truly amazing you have all these people in there every day connecting sharing best practices they're posting their questions for me i'm answering them uh every day it's like it's really awesome i'm really excited about it and as you mentioned the there is a special founding members discounted price of 49.99 a month for the message box pro community and it's really forever it locks in forever no matter how much trump's racist prices and everything else you get to lock this in this price in there are only a handful of those left so there is no better time to sign up than now so go to messageboxpro.com end of quasi organic plug thank you i'm going to give a quasi organic plug on a plug here um i was doing a uh fundraising event where i was moderating for a couple uh house candidates uh in this cycle and um and they're in the you know the red to blue program and and they could they could flip their seats and they said to the crowd that um because the like you know the d trip offers them financial support and all the support that the d trip can but like they're not getting detailed campaign advice they're not getting detailed strategy advice it is hard to hire pollsters strategists right you've got your like very small team if you're running a house campaign and so they were like we listen to pod like we to try to get advice and i'm like oh gosh now i'm sorry like we gotta we gotta make sure we get some no we can't have too many no bad ideas brainstorms here but our friend dan here um doesn't just spout off ideas on the pod he's gonna write them down in memos precisely for candidates like this who can't afford to hire fancy consultants but dan can provide his wisdom in written form to all of you who are running for office especially and that's our house candidates what about people who are running for like local office and and uh races that are even smaller than that and and uh and and they definitely can't afford to have these consultants so i think it's a fantastic service that you're doing this i think it's very much needed and if you are someone who's running for office out there or working for someone who's running for office i think this would be a very very valuable use of your money well thank you for that um double on quasi-organic plug but now now i'm gonna see your original question yeah i forgot forgot i asked the question so we're just basically let's the question relates to james blair yes woke weak and uh way too liberal and so basically what james blair is doing here other than just puffing his chest uh in a political interview is trying to rerun the 2024 strategy in 2026 and i have bad news for mr blair it's not 2024 anymore the world has changed views of trump have changed the in 2024 trump was seen as strong seen as much stronger than biden much stronger than kamala harris democrats were seen as the extreme party that has flipped pluralities of voters now describe trump's leadership as weak there is a tip poll from last week which shows that a large number of independents describe his leadership as weak he is not seen as a strong man anymore in part because he is dawdling around out there he's not getting anything done he's sleeping at events he just seems distracted enough he doesn't seem like a strong figure because he promised to take on the system and he really didn't do any of that and even well i'm not saying the democrats have we have are associated with american flags baseball and apple pie right now but voters now because of the way trump is governed voters now see the republican party is more extreme in the cook political report poll of the 32 battleground districts more voters are worried about republican extremism than democrat extremism so like i'm not saying that this that this strategy can't have some some effect it can it's more likely to have an effect in ginning up gop turnout than persuading swing voters but it is not maybe it's the only strategy available to them with a president with these approval ratings saying all the dumb shit he's saying but it's not necessarily a way to do it it's not necessarily a way to do it it's not necessarily a winning strategy you get one of these attacks uh if you're running in a senate race or a house race run a bunch of ads that you you know some crazy position you've taken in the past and uh and you're weak and you're too woke and all that kind of shit do you how do you respond uh you respond to the attack you ignore the attack or you do the um they're just doing this because they have nothing to say about um the fact that you can't afford gas and rent and your mortgage you don't do that last one uh let me let me explain i think the way to think about this is um they just it's we're six months from the election there aren't really ads on the air in any of these races they've told us what the plan is so you can prepare for it so you spend that between now and then inoculating yourself against that attack and there are a couple ways to do that one is this is an attack on generic democrats don't be a generic democrat find ways to separate yourself from the party you can do that going to the middle you can do that going to the left depending on your district you can do that by criticizing the former the most the former president you can do that by criticizing the leadership run again be willing to run against the democratic establishment that it will help inoculate you against an attack on generic democrats so that's one two is the way you demonstrate strength is not trying to talk tougher on immigration or crime than trump although you should if those are issues in your race you should have positions on them that show that you that you take people's concerns about them seriously the way you demonstrate strength is to show that you are a fighter right how you fight is more important than whether you fight left or you fight right or you fight middle it is that you are fighting for something so look for ways to highlight that about yourself and go on offense and attack the other side as extreme and demonstrate their extremism okay all right good advice you can get some more of that advice at messageboxpro.com all right while we're talking about democratic strategy uh there's been some developments around the dnc autopsy report uh in which we have taken great interest uh the chair of the dnc less so uh the ap reported on wednesday that quote democratic operatives have begun informal discussions about recruiting a new chair uh and that senior strategists have even approached our pal amanda litman founder of run for something about the job though she has declined um they also interviewed the ap also interviewed current and former party officials who defended ken martin said his job is safe uh and are apparently mad at us for asking him why he hasn't kept his promise to release the autopsy um then on thursday our friends at the bulwark published a piece from former biden harris deputy campaign manager rob flaherty titled here's what i told the dnc autopsy um we've talked to rob before he's been on offline i feel like he's been on the pod at some point yeah i've interviewed him um it's a long piece long long piece but uh especially if you're working on campaigns if you're an operative if you're in the field if you're volunteers uh plenty of interesting insights that we can get into but one notable thing i want to highlight um rob writes that he's been on the pod for a long time and he writes that his understanding of the autopsy mystery is that quote no autopsy was released because there is no actual autopsy the members of the autopsy team were in over their heads and struggled to put the thing together what they produced was a loose summary of a bunch of interviews that were largely done without talking to the campaign or the big spenders end quote now um tommy and lovett and i sort of talked about this a little after the ken martin interview tommy had heard similar reports i had heard similar reports from people from different people so this is just more corroboration of that story from rob who was interviewed by the autopsy team and then his autopsy we know what he told them was never went anywhere um and so he uh published this piece um your reactions to rob's piece um and also the continued frustrations with ken martin and the missing autopsy it's just the great title for a hardy boy's book um The Autopsy, DNC, Ken Martin conversation. is so frustrating because it's very clear what happened here right like there is ken martin promised to do an autopsy the people he picked through the autopsy did a piss poor job there is no autopsy he looked at that what that was said we cannot release this it would be embarrassing and now he's under he's out there saying we can't release the autopsy but there's no autopsy so we can't solve the problem because he what he can't do because he has not been like the easiest thing to do would be to say to do it right the first time which would have been cool that's number one yeah number one failing that to just be honest and say it needs more time and you would have taken some shit for that but that is better but then to say it's finished it's in a drawer it's incredibly useful look at the playbook we use based on it well will you release it well we can't release it because it doesn't exist and so we're just like it's a never ending he's he's basically lied himself into a corner here yeah yeah he has and this is what made this is what's so enraging about it because like you said would he have taken some shit if when they said the autopsy was going to be released he said you know what it's it's not ready we need more time you know there's a whole um yeah but like if i had interviewed him then and he said that to me even if he said it to me when i interviewed him a couple weeks ago he was like you know what i know i said we were going to release it i know people want it we're gonna the midterms are coming um and we're going to be working on it and then you know the day after the midterms we will release fulham because it'll be you know we're going to head into primary season then and then for campaigns running for president they can learn lessons then and we're going to do that i would have been like oh okay cool instead of what he's dealing with right now and it is the thing that everyone's like oh the autopsy the autopsy who's obsessed with the autopsy is not the fucking i mean it is the point because i think it is it is very useful but it is the like the theoretically theoretically useful but it's like dishonesty that is that is really crazy right now um um and on on rob's thing like so what we have here and this is rob's thing in relation to to ken's answers we have a single senior biden harris official wrote his own autopsy that includes more info and more lessons than anything ken martin's dnc has released and you know contrary to what ken tried to tell me like the world hasn't ended democrats aren't tearing themselves apart over it rob writes that some of his own colleagues like disagree with some of the things that he concluded in there fine they can write their own people can debate it figure out the best way to move forward so we can win we're all big boys and girls like we can all be trusted with the information and what it seems like for every time ken martin talks about this and now some other dnc officials former and current that are defending him is that like they don't believe that we should be trusted with the information um they don't think that we should have it they they in ken martin either thinks that we're stupid or that we don't deserve the full truth and either option is completely unacceptable for the person who's running the department or the person who's running the democratic national committee you know yeah it's so the whole thing is just so stupid and pointless because we didn't have to be here like what matters a lot of people say like what are you going to learn from this autopsy but even it was perfectly done that's to me beside the point yes what what bothers me about this is that the way the autopsy has been handled is indicative of the larger problems at the dnc and you hear this from a lot of people in the party donors operatives elected officials very few people are happy with the way things are going the dnc they're not happy with how the money's being spent they're not happy with how little is being raised and we in like ken martin with you can debate all the factors of it but there is dissatisfaction there it is and there are challenges in the leadership and it is poor myself so like what do you do about that can you get a new dnc chair i don't know it's not a particularly easy thing to do so apparently the big problem is not the rules and getting rid of the dnc chair it's finding someone who will take the job because the job sucks and yeah and it's very very hard and ken martin was dealt a very very very tough hand with and you know it's just the whole thing is dumb well it i think the the problems of the dnc and the lack of transparency and the dishonesty from ken are also i think emblematic of a larger issue with the democratic establishment and this goes back to rob's piece rob who was one of biden's most senior staffers writes in the piece quote never should have run for re-election in the first place end quote now like credit to rob for admitting that and also for acknowledging that when he publicly made the case after the biden trump debate that biden was still the only person who could beat trump and the rest of us who thought otherwise were you know self-important bedwetters um self-important podcasters specific words in combining two was also and then everyone else is the bedwetting brigade yes so beyond podcasters anyone who thought that anyone who thought that maybe that debate was bad and maybe joe biden should step aside was part of the bedwetting brigade which i guess included most americans um and basically and rob to his credit and the thing says uh he was basically just trying to be a team player because he was on the campaign it's like that's fine but the reason i bring that up is is i promise not to relitigate old beefs um but i don't think let's do let's do this entire section on ken martin and the guy who wrote the email that called the self-important podcasters but the goal is not to relitigate old beefs no and this is what everyone should read rob's thing and i and i want to talk about some of rob's insights because i think they're great um and and rob and i have talked about it privately so it's not like this is the first time uh this is happening but i do not think that the democratic establishment has fully reckoned with the magnitude of the credibility problem that it has with voters and a big reason why is that a whole bunch of them tried to tell us with a straight face that they were not going to be able to that joe biden was fine and the debate wasn't that bad and he was still the only person who could beat donald trump and now ken martin is trying to tell us with the state straight face that actually he has been releasing the lessons from 2024 and we're all assholes for wanting the the full autopsy and the dnc's finances are totally fine and if people in the democratic establishment who work on campaigns candidates officials if they want to keep doing that shit fine but don't be surprised when people don't believe what you say about politics it's just like i and like i don't i it's like there is a there is a credibility problem here and i get we've been on the inside and i get it and you're on a team and you just you've got to like anyone who criticizes you their bedwetters and all that bullshit but like you have to forget about the people criticizing you have to think about beyond that what the voters think and don't treat voters like they're stupid like people know when you're lying to them expect like like everyone like everyone knew that ken martin wasn't telling the truth in that interview it was pretty obvious yeah i mean that there's there are two different things here yeah that was the big problem there's a different way in which the interview goes where ken martin comes on he gives his answer and is not defensive about it and and doesn't keep trying he basically kept trying to tell you that he actually for all intents and purposes released the autopsy so you should stop asking about it and that's that's how he ended up down this rabbit hole yeah which he could not get himself out of i i guess the only thing i would add this and if you want to talk if you want to talk about the recommendations and rob's report which i do i think is quite good but i just think it the one just to put a button on it and i say this and with good nature is that rob who called the self-important podcasters in that email discussed the autopsy today on his podcast which rob is self-aware enough to make jokes about which is great yes which is which is totally fine again it's call us whatever the fuck you want but it's just i don't care about that the whole it's actually great for us in the long run right joe biden not stepping aside cost us all a lot right all of us and not forget about us but it's just like we're going to have to put lots of people not us it didn't cost right yeah i'm fine but like the whole country collectively collectively that's what i meant yes collectively and i think you know part of the autopsy is not like oh well biden's gone whatever but it is the the ken martin thing and i think the reason i was so excited about it is it like it was like ptsd from 2024 where the democratic party is like all is fine don't believe your eyes everything is good here leave it to us we got it and you're all you're what do you think some of some of the recommendations uh and insights from rob's uh memo like what what's what stood out at you so what i worried a little bit about just sort of 2024 lessons in general the autopsy is 2024 is somewhat of a black swan event right you have biden you have this older candidate who does not leave then face plants on a debate stage and then they just throw the vice president with 107 days to go yeah against someone like donald trump who then gets shot in the ear like you know it's just like every like tough series of events tough series events that are not gonna you know knock on wood will happen again um and so like there is this world in which you could take the wrong lessons from something like that or you could just throw up your arms and say it was 107 days we were fucked inflation was high what i thought was useful about rob's was i think some of the lessons in there are useful for campaigns going forward in terms of how you think about communicating in this media age yeah like even in you know even he makes the point that that the campaign spent half as much on digital as on tv um which was a dramatic shift from 2020 when it was 70 30 digital 70 30 tv digital i believe um but tv was sort of the sort of the still the dominant medium right it was really how it drove them is where the campaigns the messaging they truly believed in when it sort of was how they they thought about the campaign strategy and i thought just thinking about like you know almost not just the campaign strategy but the campaign strategy and i thought just thinking about like you know almost not just the campaign strategy and i thought just thinking about like not getting rid of all tv ads but shifting the focus more digital the one thing i thought he said at the end that was very smart was and this is something that I think it's smart because I've been, I agree with it. I've been arguing for it for years is that you have to digital should no longer be an apartment in a campaign. It's all digital. Um, and I think that we really have to just think that way. And there's a lot of very specific things about how you deal with creators and how to think about branding and all of that. And some of the, there are unanswerable questions about how, and we're getting really nerdy here, how you think about digital persuasion in an algorithmically powered world that only shows people on content they already agree with. Yes. We had the debate a million times, uh, throughout the 2024 campaign about, um, what is polling well and testing well, and the people who test these ads and they test it with like, not just 300 voters in some shitty public poll, but like thousands and thousands of voters. And like with, you know, and they're like, these are, these are really great testing messages. And yet, you know, uh, Kamala Harris talking about fascism or this or that, or, or brat summer, all the bullshit. And, Rob talks about this in terms of brand and I hate the word brand it's icky, but I think it is useful in this context. Yeah, I get it. Um, but he says at one point, you know, we could have focused more on prescription drugs or whatever the top polling issue was, but that would have been driving a message when we should have been building a brand. A brand is a story about who you are and what you believe that everything else, the ads, the organic content, the surrogates, the creator appearances, the events levels up to. I think this is, I think that is so important. And I worry sometimes that we don't have that. And, and this is like a, I think a legacy of when we grew up in politics, which was like, you get the polling back, you get the messaging. These are the top polling messages. We must get these messages out because they work with voters, but voters are never going to fucking hear these messages anymore. If they are boring. Um, if they don't tell a story about the candidate, maybe they'll hear the messages, but they won't be persuasive as to voting for the actual candidate because they may like the message, but they may not like the candidate delivering the message, or it may not trust the candidate. delivering the message. And so everything has to level up to who is this person? What do they stand for? Why are they running for president? So much of what Rob's memo made me think is that like, just the importance of the candidates themselves. Like I know, I know, but like you, you think that's fucking obvious, Dan, but it's clearly not, it's clearly not in our party because we do all this stuff around the candidates, give them good ads, good messaging, this, that the campaign staff, we blame for this, that. And I think that's a really good message. But it's like, if you don't, I mean, at one point he talks about, um, he says, digital presence is a direct reflection of a candidate's brand. It's how voters come to understand who a candidate is for this to work. The candidate needs to be actively engaged in the planning and execution of their social media presence. And Rob tells a story about when AOC endorsed Biden. He like talked to AOC for like 45 minutes about, and she had like detailed ideas about digital, about how she wanted her, the, the videos they did with her, what she wanted to say, all this kind of stuff. And then he said, when he worked for Beto, uh, back when Beto ran, Beto was like the same way when, when Beto was like going viral and all that kind of stuff. And this is the same thing that I say a million times with speech writing, right? Which is like, because Barack Obama was so involved in his speeches. And because I spent enough time with him, that's the only reason I was able to like help him deliver good speeches. And I think on a lot of campaigns, the candidate looks to the staff and the consultants and is like, all right, make me a winner. And I just don't think you can do that now. I think if you were going, especially if you're going to run for president, you need to know exactly what you believe, exactly why you want to be president. And you need to be able to communicate that if not first to the American people, to at least your staff on a regular basis. And I just don't think that has happened in a while. This is going to be an unpopular suggestion that I often offer to candidates when I talk to them and this drives the staff fucking bananas. But if you were thinking of running for president and you do not have TikTok, Instagram on your phone, and you're not going to YouTube and just watching it, then you should not run. And maybe you want to put on a burner because you don't necessarily want the Chinese government slash Larry Ellison to have all your shit. But point being is you have to be fluent in the language of today's media ecosystem to understand it. And it can't just be that you're, and Rob makes this in the point, it can't just be that your staff walks in and gives you a, a quick five minute briefing and a memo on what you're supposed to do because you don't understand it. When they relaunched the HQ account as headquarters or whatever it is now that was the Kamala HQ and Kamala Harris did this briefing, she did a video for it. She clearly had no idea what it was or what it was going to do. But that is, unfortunately, that is a lot of Kamala Harris's appearances. Yeah. You have to swim in the sometimes very rough and dirty seas of today's internet to be able to truly communicate. I was going to say when you said sit down and make sure you're on your phone. Yes. I think the other thing you need to do is before you even meet with your advisors, like, and this sounds maybe cheesy and a little antiquated, but I don't know, write down, type out why you want to be president, what you want to do. Do you have a few big ideas, like actual big ideas? Not like I want to grow the middle class. I want to, I want, I want to bring down costs. No, no, like, like people didn't like it. It was controversial. Everyone knew what it was by the end, freeze the rent, free public buses. Um, like, like, uh, if you want someone more moderate Gretchen Whitmer, when she was running in Michigan, fix the damn roads, right? Like just pick fucking something that you actually want to do that you will be able to talk about and communicate about in an authentic way on all of those platforms that you are also watching because they're on your phone. Yeah. If you do not know why you're running, you can't answer that. What the, what is known once known as the Ted Kennedy question. Right. Um, cause he failed to answer it. Yeah. Um, in the 80 race, uh, then you shouldn't run, but then, then all the time with TikTok is not going to help you. Then you're just, then you're just consuming content. You're just doom scrolling. Um, anyway, go read it. It's at the bulwark. Um, I'm glad Rob did it good for him and other people should do the same because I guess we're not going to get it out of the DNC. All right. Uh, one last story before we go, uh, the new gold statue of Donald Trump that was gifted to the president by crypto grifters and blessed by his spiritual advisor and pastor who has repeatedly claimed that quote, this is not a golden calf, but rather a symbol of resilience and gratitude to God. For sparing Trump's life from a sniper's bullet in Butler. All of that is real. That is a real thing that happened earlier in the week. Uh, Trump himself couldn't make it to the statue dedication, which was, I believe it has a Doral golf club. Um, but he did call into the ceremony with, uh, with this observation. It's everybody is taking pictures of it. Everybody is my people told me that it's unbelievable all day long. They're taking pictures. They stand up next to it and it is unbelievable. He is correct about that. I would definitely take a picture next to it. Um, the, uh, the Palm beach post interviewed a bunch of, uh, PGA pros who were at Doral for a tournament, best response. It's big and gold about all I got. It's his place. He can do whatever he wants. I guess that's true. It's big and gold and he can do whatever he wants. What'd you, what'd you think of this one? Just so fucking weird. It's so weird. Like I want every person in America to see this. Like it is a, just the idea that the president just, I want you to think about this for a second. We're at war. Prices are high. Shit's not going great. Generally presidents, even in the best of times are pretty busy. So there's a scheduling meeting. They talk about the things the president could do. And remember when you're scheduling Trump, you have to schedule it around six to eight hours of Fox news viewing and, and truth socialing and truth. Well, the truth socialing really happens after working hours when he should be asleep and you decide this request comes. And you're like, you know what, that would be good use of the president's time. You know, it wouldn't be fucking weird at all. You know what would not, what would definitely be good politics and not at all contribute to the idea that he's a narcissist who cares only about himself. Let's have him call into the ceremony about the gold statue delivered from God of the president at his golf club. It's so many parts of the story are funny. They like the people who did the statue, created the statue, used it to sell a meme coin. And they're like, I don't know, this is a meme coin called Patriot coin. So these are the crypto time. And then there's the pastor who's a, I guess became his spiritual advisor. I just did a great doing a bang up job of that. Sign me up. Um, just did an Isaac Chotner interview, which, oh man, he asked him, uh, like, well, how, how'd you get into this? How'd you get to become a Trump supporter? And he said, so early on, I was there and the Lord told me then the first thing the Lord told me, I was going to be a Trump supporter. And he said, well, I'm going to be a Trump supporter. Was to show the world that this man's not racist. And then, and then at the end, Isaac asked him about, asked him about the, um, the AI image of Jesus and what he thought about that. And he said, well, again, I was one of the first people to reach out to the president and say, that was bad. Please take that down as fast as possible. And as I said, what did he say? He said, he thought it was a doctor, but again, he's no theologian. And then Isaac says, I'm not a theologian. And I knew it wasn't a doctor. And the pastor just goes, great, great. So good. So I'm so glad we can still laugh. Yeah. You know, just throw the statue up there with the ballroom and the arch and the $400 million Qatari jet and the $10 billion he's putting in his pocket from the IRS. Oh, good free idea for democratic digital consultants is we'll have a little bit more time to get into it, but it is illegal in some States, but we need images and maybe it's the new and the, I'm using fucking Photoshop. Um, you just need images. images of vulnerable Republicans worshiping at the Trump statue. That's a good idea. I think we can do it with J.D. Vance and or Marco Rubio. You know what? Not even Message Box Pro. That shit's free. I mean, it is now. You just said it. We're not putting this behind the paywall. Lucky you guys. All right, that's our show for today. And in case you want more Dan and more great advice, he's back in your feed on Sunday with our pal David Axelrod. Can't wait for that episode. Excited. Have a good weekend, everyone. Bye, everyone. Pods of America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Farrah Safari with Reed Churlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kiril Pelleviv, David Tolles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. Hey, everyone. No, wait, sorry. The thing I'm proudest of is the work we do through Votes Save America. Head to crooked.com slash friends today to learn more and become a subscriber.