Trump Loses the Gerrymander War

On election night, we will all be feeling a lot of feelings. Do not spend it alone. Spend it with me, Alex Wagner. Our crooked media presents live election results. We're gonna have John Favreau, John Lovett, Tommy Vittor, Stacey Abrams, Dan Feiffer, Aaron Ryan, and many more special guests to be announced. And they're all gonna help us make sense of what's happening as the election results roll in. So here's what you need to do. Subscribe to PodSave America on YouTube and tune in on Tuesday, November 3rd, at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific for hot takes, catharsis, and as many results as we can possibly analyze. (upbeat music) - Welcome to PodSave America. I'm John Favreau. - I'm Dan Feiffer. - Look at us. - We're here in DC. - Back where it all started. - Beautiful city. - Beautiful city. - They haven't started to work on the art yet. - No, did you check out the bar room? - I was just when we were landing. I was excited to see that the monument was still standing like the monument. - Because I was, I didn't know. - That's good. Yeah, the Lincoln Memorial painted a mega red. - Yeah, right. So, everything looks normal so far. All right, on today's show, we're gonna talk about the latest developments in our new forever war, and why it could take six more months to open the state of Hormuz, even after the war ends. We'll also cover Democrats big win in Virginia in the state of the redistricting wars, which Republicans are starting to regret. We'll check in on our boy, Cash Patel, who can't quite shake the J Edgar Boozer allegations. - Just a top notch. - Top 10 all-time PodSave America title. I would say, I don't know who came up with it. They're all on the line. So, someone knows, but we're not with them. - Love it's saying it was him. - It's definitely wasn't all of it. - Okay. - So, that's all I care about. And why the biggest national security threat that we face may be sugar daddies. Then our friend Mark Liebovich of the Atlantic joins us here in studio to talk about the California governor's race. In this town, Super Bowl, the White House Correspondence Dinner, this weekend. Why we're here. We couldn't stay away. And with Trump in attendance for the first time as president and the first time since 2011. - What happened in 2011? - We're not gonna get into that again. If you're listening to this show and you don't know the story of 2011, then you have not paid attention. - Krookykan's coming back, Dan, right here in the city. - Washington DC. - Washington DC, November 5th through 7th. It's gonna be right after the midterms. - Is it being held in the ballroom? - Maybe, maybe. Yeah, we're scoping it out if it's done by then. We're gonna have more panels, more speakers, more opportunities to connect with people who care about politics. And plus there's gonna be live tapings of Love It or Leave It, pods of America, and strict scrutiny. So head to Krookykan.com, sign up for updates, including ticket release dates, line up announcements, and a lot more. Also, huge news for campaigns, candidates, and anyone who wants to be super smart about politics, take it away. Yes, we Dan. - Thank you, John. So for years, we've heard from candidates, staffers, organizers, that they are forced to turn to pods of America for political strategy and messaging guides because they can't afford a pollster, a consultant, they're not getting support from the National Party. And like, obviously it's very flattering that they listen to us for advice, but it also, it's like a pretty shameful indictment of how the whole system works. The fact that the people who need the most help get the least help, the fact that the best blow consultants like best pollsters only work for the candidates who have the most money, who tend to be the candidate who needs the least help. So to try to fill that gap, I'm launching a brand new product called Messagebox Pro. This is a consulting subscription service for people who work at all levels of politics whether you're running for office, you're working for a campaign, you work for a politician, you're just organizing to defeat mag and protect democracy in your community. Subscribers get weekly strategy memos from me, polling guidance, data-driven insights, and advice on how to get your message out in this crazy media environment. For more information, go to messageboxpro.com. You can sign up there, the first 250 people who sign up, get locked in a special founding member price forever, www.messageboxpro.com. This is a product I'm very excited about. - Is there a co-host discount? - No, we just wondering. I'm kind of interested. - Maybe I can comp you. - Okay. - All co-hosts will be comped. - Okay, good, good. Well, that's exciting. Everyone check it out. Get it, you guys have weekly strategy memos from Dan. - Wow. - I mean, that's, it's pretty great. It's a pretty exciting product, Dan. I'm really excited you're doing this. Even we've been talking about this for a while, so I'm glad you got it off the ground. Messageboxpro.com. - You can also go to the notorious, yes we, crooked.com/yeswedan, that's another option. But that's also to donate to your future races. - No, no, no, no, I'm okay. - All right, let's get to the news. And what seems to be a stalemate in a war that's been going on for seven weeks and counting. Quick reminder, it's now been 43 days since Trump first declared victory in Iran. Now we are on week seven and counting. So we're recording this mid-afternoon East Coast time on Thursday, a little earlier than usual. And Trump is about to do an event in the Oval Office where he may take questions. Our producers are monitoring the situation. We're just going to give us a wave. Just a big wave in case there's a-- - It's going to throw a sweet green bowl at us. - It's going to be big news though, big news. All right, but for now, Trump extended the ceasefire on Tuesday, didn't put a new deadline on it. And it's unclear if we still have a ceasefire because then Iran sees two ships in the straight of four moves. And the US has seized a couple tankers, including on Thursday, a tanker of Iranian oil. And there's still an award on whether there will be another round of negotiations. JD Vance just sitting at the airport, waiting to get the call so he can jump on a plane. Trump is still posting through it. This is all just today, claiming that, quote, we have total control of the straight, which we obviously don't, as evidenced in part by his next post, that he's ordering the Navy to, quote, "shoot and kill any boat laying minds there," which he claims is already happening, but wants it to continue at a, quote, "tripled up level." That's technical speak. - Breaks? "Tripled up level." He also shared two posts from a warmonger Mark Teeson. Yeah, my predecessor at the White House that suggested he should kill the Iranians who don't want to deal. So he said there's a couple of factions. There's the wanted deal faction and the don't want to deal faction in Teeson said he should kill all the Iranians who don't want to deal. But also, the Trump doesn't need a deal. So there's a few problems there. Meanwhile, this is all after the Pentagon reportedly told Congress in a classified briefing, this is from the Washington Post, that it could take six months to clear the straight from the date the war ends. So at the war ends tomorrow, we're looking at six months until the straight is opened again, and global energy supplies go back to normal, and the price of gas comes down and oil and all the, and the supply shock and all the other problems that have befallen the global economy because of this. So looks like the administration is trying to spin the ceasefire extension as a temporary act of mercy. They're saying on background, three to five days to quote, allow the Iranians to get their shit together. This is what they told Axios, and Trump keeps threatening that huge strikes will resume. How eager do you think he actually is to restart this war? - Well, he's given, I think he does now five deadlines with a lot of deadlines. - And in every single one of them, he's extended the deadline without getting a single thing he wanted. So I'm getting the sense that he does not want to restart this war, but he really wants the straight to be open and the war to be over, and it to be seen as an unalloyed American victory. But all of this is an impossible task. - One tough circle to square. - Yeah, it's an impossible circle to square. So we are stuck in this place. And every day that we, that we're still in this stillmate, 'cause really stillmate is not a term we want to use with a war in the Middle East. - No. - Been there before. Every day that the stillmate continues is makes it worse for the US and the global economy. The oil shock gets worse. The shortage gets worse. I think, you know, if you read what people, like sort of experts in the oil industry say is that the markets, the political conversation is dramatically underestimating how bad this is and what the medium term counts quite so. Like Europe has headed towards a potential jet fuel shortage. Yeah, with Danza canceled like 20,000 short flights already. It's really bad. - It's very, very bad with very, very real implications for people's daily lives. Not just gas prices, but every single part of their life, the strength of the economy, overall inflation, the cost of food. And from the day you end the war, you have six months till you can get something hopefully resembling normalcy and begin to unwind all of this. And we have no idea when that day, that day one will be. In per usual, Trump is making his problems worse because he has made it clear to the Iranians and the world that he's horny for a deal, which the Iranians know, which is why they're going to make it harder for him to get a good deal, that he can feel confident about, which he also needs to avoid seeming weak because he can't. can't see them weak. And you can tell that the Iranians are sort of showing a little more confidence and the way they're posting and talking about this. And also they're like, I've clear like the IRGC is in charge and the hardliners and it's along New York Times piece today about the new IOTOla. And he is apparently still very injured and very ill. But like it's like the way they described how Iran's being covered right now is that it's a board of directors and the new IOTOla is the chairman of the board. But all the generals and all the IRGC people have almost just as much of a say or certainly more of a say than they did when his father was in charge. So that's probably not good for world peace or getting a deal. Yeah, it's just there are such different incentive structures here. All the IRGC cares about is staying in power. And they can they can wait it up because they are a repressive awful regime. They don't care how much pain they inflict on their own people. And it's not like they have elections coming up. Yeah, there is no one sitting in IRGC headquarters worried about the generic ballot right now. And they know that Donald Trump just wants out both because he's worried about the politics and because he has no attention span. And it's just not clear what he could do to change the calculus here because all he can do is buy more things. What we all have to hope is that they end up doing a deal that's probably better for the Iranians and we would have hoped. And Trump pretends that it's some great deal and tries to take credit for it, but at least it ends the war. Like that to me is now the best possible outcome because there is no outcome where we get a great deal. No, I mean, the fundamental challenges here is anyone dumb enough to start this war is too dumb to get out of it. Yeah, yeah, that's about what we are right now. You see that Pete Higgsf fired the Secretary of the Navy, which is an interesting thing to do here in the middle of the biggest naval blockade operation and decades. Another heroic background quote to Axios quote, he didn't understand he wasn't the boss. His job is to follow orders given, not follow the orders he think should be given. The only wars that Pete Higgsf can win are bureaucratic ones. Yes. Doesn't seem great that they're losing the Secretary of the Navy. It seems like this guy went to because he was having trouble with Higgsf and fighting with Higgsf and part of what was based on, you know, Higgsf wants to like eliminate the woke army, the DEI agenda. And so he was trying to make sure he looked at every application for a possible job and scrubbed social media to make sure there were no signs of woke or DEI anywhere in the resume or in the social media. So it doesn't seem like that's a good thing. Since there's a lot of people now, I feel like at upper levels of the Pentagon who have been let go again in the middle of a war. Yeah, we keep getting rid of people who know what they're doing and replacing them with people who don't. Senate Democrats brought up a war powers vote on Wednesday. Republicans voted it down now for the fifth time this year. What else can or should Democrats be doing? It seems like they're just gonna keep bringing these votes up and it seems like each time they are getting like more Republicans who are at least considering voting for the war powers resolution. And the time limits up in terms of even if you don't have, even if you don't think that the war powers resolution does anything, the president can only be at war for a certain number of days. And that's the time limit's coming up there. And so they're now they're trying to figure out a way to get around that. Yeah. I'm always torn on the war powers resolution thing as a tactic here because one thing we know for some of the polling we've seen is that people are very, very against this war. They don't understand why we're in it. They hate the costs of it. They think it's stupid. The least effective argument is that is the process one. But morally, constitutionally, from a governance perspective, the process one is very important. That is a case that should be made. And even if we were to pass it, Trump we're not going to pass with a veto for a majority. So sort of is what it is. And so we have to think about using these votes to put as many Republicans on the record as for Trump's illegal war as possible. I have noticed that all the talk about the supplemental war funding has kind of died down. Remember, it was going to be $200 billion. And then someone said maybe it's closer to $100 billion that the White House is going to ask for. But I don't see that legislation getting fast tracked any time soon, do you? - Well, I just don't know what the immediate urgency is. Like, what we'll push this is it's very, very, when the Pentagon wants something, the Pentagon is very, very good at ensuring that everyone knows they want it. And so if they actually, like, Trump and Rust vote have made a mockery of all sort of budgeting laws so they could be robbing from all sorts of places to avoid this. But at some point, they're going to need that money and they're going to have to go to Congress for it. And then that becomes the most important, most politically salient vote people will take on this war. - I would bet their calculation is he's trying to get a deal. He's trying to get us out of this. Let's just try to wait to ask for the funding until the war is over. And then we can say has nothing to do with the war. The war is over. This is just to refill our munitions, which are running low. And now there's reporting from Alex Warden, an Austrian journal that munitions are so low that if we ever had to go to war with, say, China, that we wouldn't be able to have enough munitions. - Yeah, I mean, the risk to that strategy is the later you wait, the closer you put it to the election. We're in late April now. Congress is going to take the last thing, the worst possible scenario for Republicans is they have to deal with this in September right before the election. - Yeah, as gas prices are over $5 a gallon at that point. (upbeat music) - On election night, we will all be feeling a lot of feelings. Spend it with me, Alex Wagner, for Crooked Media presents live election results. We're gonna have John Favreau, John Lovevett, Tommy Beatore, Stacey Abrams, Dan Feiffer, Aaron Ryan, and many more special guests to be announced. So, here's what you need to do. Subscribe to Podsave America on YouTube and tune in on Tuesday, November 3rd at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - All right, let's talk about the great news of the week. Democrats won the Virginia referendum to redraw the state's congressional maps, which will likely net Dems and other four seats in the Commonwealth, and hold 10 of the 11 congressional seats there. It is now gonna be a 10-1 split in Virginia, Democrats and Republicans. Trump said the election was rigged, obviously, called on the courts to fix this travesty of justice. That was his quote. And of course, and indeed, a Republican circuit judge in Virginia blocked the results on Wednesday, which was expected this judge had blocked the referendum earlier. And Attorney General Jay Jones vowed to appeal, now Virginia Supreme Court will decide, Republicans and right-wing media join Trump in bitching about the results, and Democrats aren't feeling too guilty. Here's Jesse Waters, Jessica Tarlov, and AOC. - You guys have been gerrymandering for quite some time. You're very good at it. Trump tried his hand at it. Did it in Texas? Got some good results in it. You guys have just been running the table. Can you stop? Can you slow down? - No, all gas, no breaks. - What do you want the Republicans saying that Virginia? You guys getting-- - Oh, wow, wow, wow. - First of all, what do you think about the Republican complaining? If you could expand on, wah, wah, wah. - I mean, that-- - Because I saw it from a lot of Republican strategists. Who I think know better? Many of them live in Virginia, as many Republican strategists and different strategists do in Northern Virginia. But they are very upset. And when you say, well, Texas started it, they're like, well, no, Democrats started it first before Texas and other cycles, and in New York, they did it in 2020, and all this fucking-- - Bullshit. - Okay. So what is it that Republicans love to say? Fuck around and find out. 'Cause that's exactly what happened here. But let's just-- - That's what Kim Jeffrey said. - Do you say that to him? - And he actually said fuck. - Diddy? - Yeah. - That's very authentic. Good for him. - Very authentic. - Here's-- - Honestly, good for it. We should keep Jeffries. - And Kim Jeffrey's-- - Yeah, for a lot of credit. - Yeah, for a lot of credit. Yeah, for a lot of credit. In 2021, there was a vote to ban Jerry Mandarin. Every single Democrat voted for it. Every single Republican voted against it. One party supports a national ban on Jerry Mandarin, because the only way to do this is a national ban. One party supports it's a Democrat, but one party opposes it's the Republicans, but they don't like here as they started a dumb fight, and they lost it. - Yeah, I just think we should be consistent in the positions we hold on reform that sort of, you know, reforms corruption and rigged system and gives people more of a voice. And like, yeah, we're for ending Jerry Mandarin everywhere. And if the Republicans don't like the bill from 2021 that would end partisan Jerry Mandarin for whatever reason, because some of them have some problems with the way it then tell us what you want to do. - Give us a bill that would, and then we can negotiate on it, but I feel the same thing with. money in politics in citizens united and our democrats are spending money to know we want to overturn citizens united we want to get rid of money in politics do you also then let's do it like i think that there should be term limits and maybe age limits for members of congress and supreme court justices great let's do it i think the i think we should get rid of the filibuster and it's like oh well now the republicans would you be pissed if the filibuster wasn't there yeah i would be annoyed that they could they maybe it could pass a few more things but like i believe the filibuster is bad and so i believe that it is bad no matter what like i just think that the maybe republicans could be consistent for once on the reforms they support and when they support them yeah there i mean there's there's two things there one there's consistent the other one is whether democrats should be required to unilaterally disarm when certain when things remain legal if we try to answer of course not yes and i think that is an absurd fucking position i do think in a different era and maybe even the first Trump era democrats would not have responded as aggressively to this because we do believe your mandering is wrong we would have thought that not everyone i don't think you and i would have thought that i think a lot of many in the party would have thought that it is dirty pool too wrong still make a right we should not do it and the fact that we did certain is that democrats have learned a lesson finally of the trump area which is you if you were going to take on fascism you have to be going to fight fire with fire you have to use everything democrats are doing is legal it is the mat area it is a maximum use of allowable political power the way to fix unfair rules is to fix the rules not just sit there and let your ass get beat yeah um so uh last year Abigail spandberger um uh in virginia beat her opponent by 15 points the referendum passed by three it's a 12 point swing um why do you think it was so close a couple of reasons here one un so the the most obvious comparison point is the california um measure that passed in november that passed about 30 points this is three points california is uh more democratic than virginia but it's not is that ten times more democratic than right and if it passed by 30 points isn't it like a isn't it like a d plus 20 state usually yeah and uh calma harris one virginia by five point eight points um but some reasons why it was closer um one this was a very republic high probably turn out was quite good it was actually as um the big twenty twenty one levels um the when we lost yep when uh glenia can was elected the uh republicans did mount a very good campaign here they actually used brock obama in their ads uh both sides used obama in their ads uh the no side used obama footage of obama talking about what your man hearing was bad in their ads and then the yes side used more recent footage from obama saying passed this amendment um smart of the no side and uh and they spent real money um less money than the yes side the the other issue here that made it closer was independence so um independence in the last washington post poll that was a couple weeks before the election had independence at plus 10 on the no side which is a huge swing from uh smmberg who won them by more than 20 points in uh 20 25 and that kind of makes sense because if you're an independent who is upset with trump maybe you voted for young kin in 2021 maybe you voted for smmberg in 2025 probably trump it's 24 and you're mad at trump you see this a process oriented anti projury man during a amendment is something that you can still vote against yeah and i don't i don't know how the vote broke down in any of the individual districts but i also think it is very understandable if you're an independent or if you're a republican and you're deciding whether to come on voter or not or vote like if you're in a district that's going to get jerrymandered and so you no longer really have a have a say and you're a member of congress or you're not going to ever get a republican i can see why you vote against it yeah it's it's like jerrymandering in general is bad and they shouldn't have sent us down this path and the interesting interesting the one group that blew the doors off and it's probably why democrats one was asian american voters yeah and black americans too i thought i saw i saw both asian and the asian vote in the black vote were more quite high yeah um because again especially black voters like know what it is to be jerrymandered um let's talk about the uh redistricting war trump started with texas heff rot uh when you add up all the states now that have redrawn their maps democrats are uh as of this moment plus one in the overall count the only state left is florida where the legislature has a special session scheduled for next week uh but it's actually unclear if desantis changing the maps will net republicans any additional seats and some in the party are already feeling what axiots described as quote buyers were more yeah bet uh it's a bummer huh um when asked if the redistricting effort was worth it the chair of the nrcc whose job it is to keep republicans house majority uh told axiots quote it's not for me to say because really it wasn't my decision uh in california independent kevin keiley uh who was a republican and now it caucuses with the republicans still uh told axiots quote i wish none of this had happened oh shit yeah what he wants to see yeah exactly um did we win redistricting yes yeah i mean yet yes we won redistricting um you know when florida's done it could come out that we are a cedar two behind um florida's interesting because desantis could redraw the maps one just worth noting that part is in jerrymandering in florida is illegal according to the constitutions so he's going to so it seems that seems like a hurdle it is a hurdle the floor i would say the legal reasoning of the florida supreme court is nallable uh eileen canons on that yeah and so there's there's some thought that they're going to find a way to twist this twist the illegal pretzel enough to get it done but even if you draw it right so this is the problem desantis is under pressure to to do what new sim did because desantis was run for president in 2028 potentially this is his chance to like read to show himself to be uh you know an important republican player but if he drew experts you look at this thing that anything more than adding to republican seats puts them at real risk of what you call a dummy mandor which is where you draw the districts in a way that in a bad year you lose a bunch of seats um so even i think even if desantis were to do it he's going to get two seats at max so you end up minus one for the whole thing and then what i think in the sense that we won i'm not sure anyone's going to do this again right in mid-year right obviously we're going to have to do this again after the the 2030 census across in every in every state but i think democrat sent a met a you know a message to republicans that if you try to do this we will do it too and you're not going to get that much it's not going to be worth the juice will be worth the squeeze a long time florida republican consultant uh talking to politico he ran the numbers then that person ran the numbers and concluded the new map couldn't at republican zero seats for the reasons uh you talked about so because right now they hold a 20 to eight edge and um because basically there's nowhere left to cram democrats without exposing safe republicans to incumbent so it is it's going to be really hard even if the supreme court doesn't if even if the supreme court allows it the other thing that we've been waiting for is this supreme court case um uh that could upend the map um in the voting rights act and basically say that all majority minority districts uh can be redrawn um which would cost democrats a bunch of seat but i i do think um as of now it's like too late it's too late for it to matter in 2026 partly apparently because um two southern states which is where it would heavily affect it was affect southern states more than anyone two southern states have already held primaries and candidate filing deadlines have passed in every state before yeah so even if the supreme court says it matters for this election like they just can't it would be mass chaos if they were to try to make it in place yes and just like for the states that already held primaries you can't do anything i guess you can i guess the legislature could go try to change a filing deadline by passing that's the way they'd have to pass new laws to um basically do emergency elections to do it you have new filing deadlines people have to get signatures for those petitions then you'd have to have a primary then you have to have a then then the general election of ever seems and you have to draw the districts at some point right to so seems fine for 2026 it is a problem and it's it seems like the decision will be bad um but a problem for another day yes um so the rejoin that majority where we have it yeah for the next two years uh the redistricting fiasco only adds to the republicans midterm woes trump and the party continue to hit new lows in polling both the ap and arg had trump's approval at thirty three percent and thirty two percent respectively so that's fun uh sarah longwell says that's the that's the bush line right there uh could political report released a new poll on thursday finding that in just in swing districts that trump won in 2024 by an average of two points democrats now hold a six point advantage on the generic congressional ballot so that's pretty big and in a new fox poll voters gave democrats the edge of republicans on inflation and the economy for the first time since 2010 i think that's a six point spread in the mid in the generic ballot as well uh how much hopium are you huffing these days i know i'm not really a hopium huffer for say i know that's what i'm asking but i think that the political environment looks about as good as we ever possibly could hope for democrats right now and the poll that everyone should really be paying attention to is the cook political report poll of thirty six the thirty six districts that will decide the house all of the Tom. up lean Republican lean Democratic districts and that was the one that was the that I yeah that's 6.36 and in that one Democrats have big double digit advantages on lowering prices and on the economy which is something that is that is changed Trump's unpopular Republican bases divided like we have the opportunity before us as we get we'll get to this conversation there are some hurdles to maximizing that opportunity but it like this has the potential to be a 1994 2006 2018 style election for Democrats whereas a massive rebuke to the president incumbent president and the party in this party. And we've been talking about the House but headline of Nate Cohen's newsletter earlier this week was why a Democratic Senate once unthinkable is now a real possibility. What did you make of Nate's reasoning? He's not someone who just no he is not a hopian buffer lies off the handle now just starts making. We've made this case I made this case on Polarcoaster multiple times and we talked about a little bit here but it like once again as we've said it is a tall order to get the Senate because you have to win two of four states that Trump won by double digits. In addition to winning holding all of our ones we have in winning in North Carolina and but the advantages we have are we have good candidates very very good candidates in three of those four the poor status i will judge the hasn't had its primary yet so you have Mary Paltoba in Alaska top-notch candidate Sherrod Brown in Ohio top-notch candidate James Celebrico in Texas top-notch candidate and there's some view in the work Cooper in the work Cooper in North Carolina and then May it's not one of the four. May it's not a race anyone's ready to talk on this podcast so you know it's it's under the radar race and the Democrats are overperforming in special elections by a margin that would deliver puts that all of those states in play right we got to win those we need plus 10 plus 11 environment to win those states and we're seeing that's the sort of environment we're in right now and then you can add some additional points to that case you have candidates who are going to perform better than generic Democrats. Yeah the paragraph in Nate's piece that really stuck out to me was I'm so much Sherrod and and and Mary Paltola says in Ohio Mr. Brown lost by 3.6 points in 2024 Ms. Paltola lost by around two points in Alaska. Today the Democrats are fearing about eight points better on the generic congressional ballot than they did in the 2024 combined U.S. Congressional Popular vote or put another way Mr. Brown and Ms. Paltola probably would have won re-election in 2024 if those contests had been held in this political environment so that's pretty big echelon did a set of polls in the senate states echelon really good pollster run by republicans Patrick Ophini and Kristen Soltz-Sanderson they have us off up 51 44 in Georgia in Maine they have platinum up on Collins 51 45 they have mills up by an hour 48 46 that's that main Senate race yeah yeah I'm just holding my tongue on that in Iowa they have Zach Walls a two-point lead and Josh Terrick a one-point lead so they do have a tiny lead inside the margin or in Iowa and then the only tough one there is in Ohio they have Sherrod down 51 45 and there's been a few Ohio polls that have been kind of troubling lately but we'll see so speaking of Patrick Ophini who you know literally wrote the book on the so-called realignment that delivered Trump to the White House in 24 he tweeted a few days before the Virginia election that if the referendum passed by around a five-point margin of course passed by three it meant republicans quote have some fight in them and can quote hold down dem seat gains in the house and keep the senate what did you make of his case it's not crazy so like his original point here is democrats tout every time we overperform and so he's going to go on tout the one time we underperform so you know sporting I guess the what I think is and I want to stipulate that a process oriented ballot measure is very different than a candidate race where the candidate it's it's hard to hold the no on redistricting measure accountable for why you're angry at Trump yeah and just to your point about ballot measures let us not forget all the abortion ballot measures in deep-red states that made us excited that maybe we were going to win the stage and they did not we do not the twenty five point congressional or performance in Georgia from three weeks ago or whatever it was is a is a better indicator than this also it is certainly not evidence of an improving political environment Trump's actually doing worse than he was before the generic ballot is getting bigger not smaller and so I think it's a bit of a vacuum what I think is true is that what republicans effectively did here is a nationalize that collection and when you nationalize an election that gives them a chance to turn out more of their voters because we are winning both through massive democratic turnout persuasion and diminished republican turnout they're not going to turn they're not going to drive down our turn out they're probably not going to do a lot of persuasion but they the one thing they can do is drive their turn it up and that is a difference between us winning a bunch of Trump plus 12 seats and that's not winning Trump plus 12 seats yeah and the other the other point I found compelling about Patrick's argument is he he basically said in all these special elections that we've had so far republicans really haven't been able to sort of up the stakes and make voters feel like there's a lot of stake in the selection and in Virginia they were able to do that because they made it seem like you know you could lose your your voice and your district forever and so once you get closer to the actual midterms and everything's nationalized as you said and the stakes are higher and they're spending you know all the money they have which we're about to talk about then you could get a closer environment than you've had in some of these special elections which I do think is yeah possible republicans are going to get their shit together in some way shit before that is going to happen it always does the I don't they're not going to get Trump level turnout they're not going to get the turnout they want but they're going to get better turnout than they've been getting and these some of these special elections and that is going to hold that that is not enough to save the house it may be enough to save the Senate but it's not enough to save the House but it could hold down March is there between Democrats picking out 15 seats and 25 seats on election night we will all be feeling a lot of feelings do not spend it alone spend it with me Alex Wagner for crooked media presents live election results we're going to have John Favreau John love it Tommy v. Tours Stacey Abrams Dan fight for Aaron Ryan and many more special guests to be announced and they're all going to help us make sense of what's happening as the election results roll in so here's what you need to do subscribe to pod save america on youtube and tune in on Tuesday November 3rd at 9 p.m. Eastern 6 p.m. Pacific for hot takes catharsis and as many results as we can possibly analyze the New York Times reported this week that republican party political committees and allied groups currently have a massive $600 million dollar financial advantage over the Democrats and their political committees and allied groups the DNC's total cash is actually negative 4.5 million which seems less than ideal what do you make of the overall disparity there i would say one of the funniest things i've read in a long time is there was a political reporter was passing along i was Natasha correct he i think was passing along some of the spin from Democrats and one of the spin from some of the Democrats about this was well we had all this money in 2024 and we lost anyway so let's try running it back with no money in 2024 we had a candidate and we lost let's try it let's try no candidate that's good thinking here's what i'd say it is bad when the DNC has negative money okay that is bad going on it is not as consequential as i think people on the internet think the DNC is not intimately involved in funding house races or senate races that is the DCC they have less money in the republican counterparts but that's a much narrower gap and then where Republicans are truly crushing us is in super PAC and nonprofit money in dark money and it's and that's not even counting all of the hundreds of million dollars in the AI and crypto super PACs which are mostly going to help Republicans but where Democrats are crushing us our candidates are raising a lot more money than their candidates and here's why that matters because every dollar in political fundraising is not equal by law it's television stations have to sell tv ads to campaigns run by candidates the actual candidates and what is called the lowest unit rate they have to do that it's what the going rate is is what the charge of candidate thinking they gouge the living shit out super PACs so super PACs in the last 60 days before an election are paying two three four times the amount of the campaign so let's take uh north Carolina right we're a group of race they're good zillion dollars let's say the Republicans plus Michael Watley's republican nominee have 80 million dollars that's equivalent to 20 to you know 20 or 20 or 30 million dollars of recruiters money and so like it it is bad we should have more money it is bad that we are being outraged like this but give money to campaigns because those dollars go further so you can do by going to go to America dot com and what's like the best place to give him up to send your money. Don't want to be wasting any of it. Seems like Trump is responding to the grim political outlook with his tried and true method of firing people. So he's reportedly considering forcing out more members of his cabinet, Laurie Shava's derailleur, the labor secretary resigned this week in scandal, following Christine Nome and Pam Bondy. There's some speculation that Howard and I almost just said nut lick. You can say that? Yeah, but it's just natural now. What's going to suit you? Oh, I guess, maybe, that maybe nut lick could be next or possibly cash Patel, who's again, not having the easiest time. Tells a gabber, too. It could be. Oh, I saw it. Tells a gabber. Yeah. Cash is having trouble rebutting the Atlantic story that did lead to his new nickname. Jay Edgar Poozer. Here's Patel and his boss acting AG Todd Blanche responding to questions about the Atlantic story at a DOJ press conference on Tuesday. Let's play the clip. Can you say definitively that you have not been intoxicated or absent during your tenure as FBI director? I can say unequivocally that I never listen to the fake news mafia. I'm like an everyday American who loves his country, loves this fortahaki, and champions my friends when they raise a gold medal and invite me into celebrate. I've never been intoxicated on the job. Obviously, you've read the Atlantic article that's now a subject of a defamation loss you probably have. I absolutely did not read that article. You're being extraordinarily rude, and I know maybe that's part of your profession, but please just stop. You're lawsuit contends that you are not able to log into the system. What did you think after you were unable to log into the system? Let's have a survey. How many of you people believe that's true? It was never said. It never happened. I was never locked out of my systems. Anybody who says your lawsuit says the opposite. The lawsuit says the opposite, the key line for the reporter at the end. Meanwhile, the Times reported on Tuesday that the FBI began investigating one of the New York Times reporters, Elizabeth Williamson. After she broke the story last month that Patel has signed FBI SWAT teams to protect his girlfriend and drive her to her concerts because she is a country music sensation and even a hair appointment. Patel is now denying that the FBI investigated even though the bureau basically confirmed to the Times that they had looked into Williamson's quote methods. How hard is cash? Tell a crush on it right now. What do you think of that for his girlfriend? Oh man, so uncomfortable in every situation. Yeah. He's just trying too hard at all times. Just an average everyday American who loves hockey. The lawsuit is helpful if you read the lawsuit because it does detail every allegation. That is bad in the Atlantic peace and one helpful page. Just puts them all down one through the Atlantic article so long you couldn't get through it. Yeah, no, it basically gave you the summary of it right in the lawsuit and did essentially admit that the story about not being able to log in to his female system was true. Do you think Trump gets rid of cash? I don't know. It's like even more than Bondy and Kristie Nome, I think that this would be seen as an admission of the Iron Trumps part. It was the other, yeah, I just, I mean, I mean, first of all, Trump's never had a drink. He doesn't drink. So I think he doesn't like the idea that someone is like running around drunk in the FBI. And not because he like, I think this is all through the prism of like it makes Trump look bad, right? This is not about, he's in care about like the safety and security of the country and also what Trump wants is revenge on his enemies. And I mean, look, that that press conference was about indictments they brought against the Southern poverty law center for it seems like crazy charges, but it seems crazy. But so I think Trump's annoyed with that. So we'll see. I don't know. I would have said, I said this on Tuesday show, but I would have said, no, he'll keep him if it was before Bondy and Nome. But now that he's got those two out, I feel like he's got a taste of like, I fire someone. It's a story for a day and then we move on. So would you, I know we don't predict on this show, but if you were on some sort of prediction market platform, would you put any of your heart on coin on the idea that Cashmetel will not be in this role on Thanksgiving? Yes. You think he'll be gone by Thanksgiving? Yeah. I think they'll, yeah, because he definitely post midterms. But you think, not definitely, but I feel, you're the best would be, like if you told me, like, by 4th of July, I'd be like, yeah. So you think? You think post midterms, but definitely before the end of the year. I think so. I put money on that. Okay. I don't know how much money, but I put money on it, speaking of money and staff behaving badly. It is our solemn duty to discuss the case of Julia Varvaro, the 29 year old who is serving as deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security. Don't worry about it. That's not a big job. According to a former romantic partner who filed a formal complaint against Varvaro, she is actively on dating sites where, quote, sugar daddies agree to fund the lifestyles of younger women, including one called seeking, where she offered, quote, mutually beneficial relationships, according to the Daily Mail. The whistleblower slash X said he'd spend $40,000, not betting that on Cash leaving. On gifts and travel for Varvaro over the course of their three month relationship, and he thinks she's under financial stress that constitutes a national security risk seems like the government agreed, because she was placed on administrative leave after the story came out. As you know, Dan, our producers are constantly urging us not to kink shame on the show, even though I continued to stress that kinks that constitute a national security threat do not count and traditionally have been frowned upon at the highest levels of the federal government. That if threatening as security is your kink, well, then, then what do you do there? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. No. If people want to go on wherever this is to get some sugar daddies, that's fine. If you want to be a sugar daddy, that's what if you want to be a sugar daddy, that's fine. John Favreau, April 23rd, 26th, just, you know, just when you, when you have a government job, especially one that involves counterterrorism at homeland security, I don't know. I have to put yourself in a position of being blackmailed. I have to admit to you that when we were slacking about this, yes, it was on my plane. I did not know about this story. It was all news to me. Then I went to my computer and I was about to type in sugar daddy politics, and I thought better of it. Yes. There's a lot of pictures of this guy of the sugar daddy with her that the daily mail is publishing around else. And there's one, right as we started recording, of course, our old friend Travis Hellwig, who used to work here, sent it to me. And it's just, it's just the sugar daddy saying next to her with a little sign that says she's horny. Again, fine. But if your deputy secretary for counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security, maybe less fine. Counterpoint. On the scale of corruption in this administration, this is fucking quaint. Well, it's not corruption necessarily. It's just, it's a risk, but it's also a corruption risk. Oh, I guess. Yeah. But there's a blackmail risk and a reason that a normal FBI cares about all of this. Reason they all did interviews with all of us before our security clearance and stuff like that is the idea is that if you have lied to the FBI or you have secrets that you haven't revealed or some foreign actor, someone can blackmail you and say, if you don't do this for me, I will reveal publicly what I know about you that you go on this website, whatever. Then you are more likely to do the thing that the foreign government or actor wants you to do. That's the whole, that's the whole reason. Okay. Um, that's that, that's that Dan, sugar daddy's for dessert, you get food, sugar daddy's for dessert. That's what we got for today. All right. When we come back, we will talk to the Atlantic's Mark Liebavitch about the shit show in California. On election night, we will all be feeling a lot of feelings, do not spend it alone, spend it with me. Alex Wagner for Crooked Media presents live election results. We're going to have John Favreau, John Lovett, Tommy Beetour, Stacey Abrams, Dan Feiffer, Aaron Ryan, and many more special guests to be announced. And they're all going to help us make sense of what's happening as the election results roll in. Eastern, 6 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Thanks for letting us back in the town you rule watching a DC. Mayor of DC, they call them. It's me. Yep. So all these parties I'm blacklisted from, you know, I'm not even invited anymore. Really? Yeah, you were blacklisted from ours until we just. I know, it was just like. That was. Unfortunately, it would be more fine. Sorry. Just don't make. I won't say it. I won't say it. Um, so you visited our fair state to report on what you and Mike Murphy, lovingly referred to as the stupid circus, aka the heatier governor. Well, I guess I guess I could. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I love. The circus mechanism. I think that's a good mechanism. Take the quote and go from it. Yeah. You start the piece at a literally game with Eric Spalwell, which you note, quote, "felt consistent with the wholesome image that the campaign had been straining to projective late for reasons that would become clear soon enough." I could. Maybe laugh out loud. Um, did you get any bad vibes from your conversation with him? I got bad vibes from everything I had heard about him going into the conversation. This was one of those things where I'd spent the whole week just sort of touching as many bases as I could. And Spalwell basically lives here. I don't know where he lives now, but he lives in DC, you know, back in the quaint days when he was getting heat for like not really living, spending that much time in California and that was like a scandal for him. He was, you know, he's here a lot. His kids are here. His wife is here. Oh, here in DC? Here in DC. Yeah, yeah. He lived. I mean, he'd played it a place on Capitol Hill. So, or at least he used to. I don't know where he is now. But he is. Look, I'd heard everything. It was starting to perk up on social media, but that was kind of commensurate with whatever momentum he had. Because there was definitely some movement to him and Trump did him a huge favor. Well, I guess the Patel did him a huge favor by releasing these sort of like completely ridiculous 10-year-old file that found nowhere on doing. So, you know, a great way to get elected statewide in California is to be a big target of Donald Trump and, you know, Adam Schiff proved that and knew some, I mean, well, he certainly got Prop 50 probably over the finish line. So, I thought so, but I was thinking, you know, how far does this have to go before? I mean, do I ask. Do I bring this up at the end or do I wait till another, for another conversation? But, you know, there. There was no other conversation. Well, there wasn't. I mean, literally three days later, the implosion happened. But I mean, you guys know, there's a big gap between stuff that everyone talks about and reportable actionable stuff. And to the eternal credit to the San Francisco Chronicle first, later CNN, I mean, they nailed it down and looks like it was kind of the tip of the iceberg. So, I mean, I definitely caught. I knew the reputation. I mean, he's a perfectly. He can present. I mean, he's a thoughtful-ish guy. I mean, he's kind of Adam Schiff light in some ways, except with with all the personal baggage. But, so, yeah, and I knew something was coming and they were clearly very self-conscious about it. And he was going over the top about his kid's little league thing. I mean, he didn't, you know, understandably wanted to keep his kids out of it, but it was a whole dad thing. He brought his wife along. She seemed very nice. So, it was a little over the top. In all your reporting, like for people who aren't from California, you haven't been paying attention to the race, like, why is this the field? That's a great question. I mean, the short answer is Kamala Harris, Alex Padilla, who apparently everyone wanted to run. I'm not sure I'd buy that. I think there's a little bit of revisionist history there, but they're big names. They would have, if not cleared the field, definitely would have probably guaranteed 25%. Certainly, Kamala would have maybe a little more. And George Clinton lives in France, as you know. Yeah. Newsom's term limited, I mean, there are quite a few, I think, quite talented members of Congress from the delegation, I think, you know, a couple of mayors. But again, there's not, I mean, there's not like a giant in the race. And there, I don't know if Kamala would have been that person, but there wasn't. So when you have just the math of seven Democrats splitting their votes seven ways, two Republicans who are complete unknowns and, you know, I wouldn't think on elect, I wouldn't think that electable in California under regular circumstances, they're just splitting their vote two ways. You know, this is the math issue. So the Republicans, for anyone who doesn't know, there's a runoff system, jungle primary, top two finishers in the June 2nd primary, regardless of party, go on to the November election. And in a lot of the polls, the top two finishers have been Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, the Sheriff of Riverside County, just basically two Republicans that no one's heard of, but they could get there in November and there can be no Democrat on the ballot. And California is interesting because it's such a big state that it's almost impossible for anyone to be known in it. And we just had this situation where our last three governors were Gavin Newsom, who was quite famous when he eventually won because of became marriage, Jerry Brown, who had been governor before and was a national figure and run for president. And Arnold Schwarzenegger before that. And if you are a member of Congress, you cannot, it's so expensive to run for governor there. You just, it's almost impossible for anyone to, unless you're a member of Congress and they national profile, which Schwarzenegger had, it's impossible to raise the money to run there. And you just have to get name ID because we have a million media markets and no one can become famous. And so I even, I think Padilla, who was a state where I liked official before he became senator, even if he had run, he still would have fit into this mix because he's no more well-known than Javier Basera, who had been an attorney general and HHS secretary. They just maybe think, not to get us off an attention, but like, don't you think that's the future or where we are now of national politics at the presidential level too? Like it just seems like if you go back, the nominees of each party, who the president ended up being for the last 10, 15 years, just the way the attention economy works now. If you are not famous, it is very hard to become famous out of nowhere in national politics and in a national level. Do you have to be someone who is a master at attention? Right. Like Peep Buttigieg is the example someone who became famous. He's the one example. So every other candidate in the 2020 Democratic primary, finish in order of name ID, at the outset, other than Peep Buttigieg. No, but there's a wildcard here, which is relevant to this race, which is Tom Steyer, who basically became known, you know, got actually under debate stages in 2020, it was actually, you know, finished seventh in New Hampshire in, I think, sixth and I or something like that. He finished third in South Carolina. Thank you. That's what Juvenile on stage at the end. That's what people remember about that. Yes. Yeah. I mean, actually, no one really remembers that Joe Biden was rescued in South Carolina. It's only, it was only that. No. So Tom Steyer, I mean, he basically, he spent $140 million so far in this race. I mean, it's really quite something. I mean, his strategy has spent as much money as possible, put as many ads out there as possible and take the most liberal position possible. And maybe that gets you home. I mean, Swalwell wasn't, was known, but it, that's because of MSNBC and CNN. I mean, it was, and hearings, right? So, but that's all national, nationalized political news and very Trump centric. Basera. Um, he's one person, like, surprisingly absent in your piece. Is that, did they, did they not give you an interview? You know, so that was just, I mean, when I wrote it a week ago, he was nowhere, and I kind of had to make, I mean, I had, you know, 2,500 words, I took about 4,000. And, you know, still, there's a lot, there's a lot to explain. There are a lot of characters, and Basera seemed kind of back in the pack, and a lot of it's just logistical. I mean, I was out there to cover this debate, the debate was canceled, I had 72 hours, I basically could only stick around Southern California. He was in Northern California. So, I mean, there's, sometimes, not, not a lot of rhyme or reason. He also might just not have wanted to talk to me, as Steyer and Porter didn't. Did he, uh, which was a huge mistake on there, either of them? Not much. I mean, I, I mean, I really, I, I'm trying to figure out, um, he's had the, the surge is real with Basera, like he's, it's now been a number of polls where he's either in tied for first or right after that, and the money has followed, and I'm just like, what, what happened? Yeah. Well, I mean, the number is thinned. I mean, I mean, Betty Yee, who was at 1%, she dropped out too, so I mean, that's a number, but I mean, Swallow dropped, um, and there was a sense for at least a couple days that Steyer was just going to be okay, he's going to inherit the wind here, and I think there was an immediate backlash, and a lot of people I talked to were just instantly just offended by that, just a part of it is just sort of like the basic American ideal, but it has hostility towards buying an election, which is basically what this is, um, and, and also the guy doesn't particularly present all that well. And I think Basera, if you ever got a first look, got a first and a half look or something like that. And he's quite credentialed. I mean, he, he was in the Biden administration. He was the AG in California, um, you know, he's out there. There was a debate last night, I don't know how well he did. What did you guys think of the debate from what you saw? Dan, what do you think? I, I saw highlights of the debate, and then I watched parts of it on 3XP this morning in my one hour to do this, um, I, if Basera had delivered a great performance, he could have essentially locked up a spot here, I think, um, but he did not. And so that leaves the, I think you leave the debate still wondering who the candidate is who could actually solidify in this field because people are really hoping it was going to be Basera. You know, in California, braces are largely funded by interest groups, the California teachers, the environmental folks, trial lawyers, and they would rally around him. Well, they could have, like, they're looking for someone to rally around because swallow had a lot of these labor endorsements. Um, some of them is going to stire since then, um, but they could, he could have seized the momentum. I'm not sure he did. - Sure, how many people watched any of it? So it's hard to say. I thought Matt Mayhan was aggressive in a way that like he needs to get attention, right? And so I thought he did ball there. It's dire, took a lot of incoming, which I was surprised, I guess, because he's the front, still kind of the front runner. And so it was a lot of like people attacking Steyr. But Sarah didn't seem like, I thought that Sarah and Katie Porter were both kind of quiet in the debate. Like they didn't have a lot of big moments. - Yeah, Porter was a little better than I think. I mean, I don't know, I don't think anyone, I don't know if people are going to give her a second look. She kind of stalled. I mean, she, like Swalwell, had a bit of a national profile, with a very effective kind of anti-Trump Democrat during the first term. And didn't get a lot of traction. I mean, there were some pretty nasty viral videos about her, but she caused. I mean, when he's sort of jumping down the the, the throat of a staff, we're just yelling at a staff member, yelling at a reporter, come up a lot of other things. So some reputational issues. - Newson told you he wouldn't endorse unless it's a break-class moment. What's your read from talking to him, both his relative absence in this race and his seemingly inevitable 2028 campaign? - Or his preference, if he's preference. - His preference. I would say, okay, I have some, I think some informed wisdom on that. I mean, I think he is, as underwhelmed as a lot of other people are, a lot of other Democrats are about this field. I think he hasn't been that shy about it privately. Even he told you, he said, "I think the field is interesting." - Yeah, this field has a great personality. - Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. Yeah, you know what, I'm not, yeah, exactly, yeah. So there's that. I mean, apparently, I mean, he, I think, was looking to have some kind of Bacera break out. I don't think he has issues of, I think he's fine with Bacera. He doesn't like Mayhan. I think he has reservations about Porter. I think he has reservations about Steyer. And for a lot of reasons, but I think that he was really looking for a reason to have someone like Bacera sort of, like make his decision for him. So we'll see, I don't know, though. I mean, I think he would love-- - Real a real process of illumination, Pek. - Yeah, it's not, I mean, unfortunately, you know, knew some, I mean, he's not always the most decisive guy in the world, but I do think that his indecision here is quite, or his hesitation here is sincere, and I think it's reflective of a larger ambivalence among Democrats. - He did endorse the Lieutenant Governor's race this week. - He did, he did. - So he can't do it, did he? - He is allowed, yes. - And he has experience as a Lieutenant Governor. - Yes, so it's your favorite weekend of the year. - It is. - You're super bowl. - But yeah, the White House Correspondence. - I'm already grow the whole thing, yeah. - I guess the only thing different about this year is the Trumps gonna be there at the dinner for the first time since 2011, first time as president. - Yeah, that'll be interesting. - What do you think, though? Is anything changed? Has the dinner regained any of its splendor from years ago? When are you getting the grander party? - But, I will. - I haven't been invited to that, so here's the thing. Okay, full disclosure, I've known you guys a long time. I'm 60 years old now, okay, I'm. - Spring chicken in Congress. - Look great. - Thanks, I feel great. - 20 years younger than the median Democrat. - That's true, yeah, I'm my two young for the Senate. - I will do a Saturday night. First of all, now that I'm not at the New York Times anymore, I can go to the dinner. The Atlantic has, I think, two tables. - Oh, yeah, I was gonna ask about the White House. - I went last year, I think I went the year before, they asked if I wanted to go. And I wasn't sure I was allowed to say no, but I tried and they accepted my answer. Although I will say, I don't know if this is mystique or luster or intrigue or whatever, but from a pure, before you're a stick point of view, I mean, I think Trump almost certainly has something planned. I mean, I think like the greatest-- - Like a mass arrestor. - No, but some like a really great way-- - Yeah, you can see the right way. - No, I mean, it would not surprise me at all if he was intentionally antagonistic, prepared something, not the least bit clever, not the least bit funny, not the least bit gracious. I mean, to think about all the opportunities he's had to play that game. I mean, starting with the Al Smith dinner and when he was with Hillary in 2016. And I don't think he would have accepted this. Well, I mean, I think part of him just thinks, sorry, what a spectacle I'll be in the middle of it. Who knows how many opportunities I'll have to be this, it'll be different. But I'd be shocked if he didn't have something antagonistic planned. And I mean, the media's not organized. I don't know what they're gonna do, but it'll be kind of a reality show, which is what he does. And I mean, I don't think there's like a great august and, you know, beyond reproach tradition of the White House Corresponds dinner that could be lost and that he could soil like he's soiled other institutions around Washington. But I do think that, I mean, it could be, there could be some friction there that will be worth watching. And I'm kind of glad I don't have to be there for it. - Do you think it's gonna be a problem when his plan runs headlong into those first amendment pens that the reporters have read? - That'll do it, man. I am, so when I was, - Can I tell the story? Should I tell the story? - Now you have to. - So I was, when I went to college in the 80s, I graduated college in the 80s, University of Michigan. They wanted to give an honorary degree to Nelson Mandela. And there was some regent or some rule of the Michigan regents or something. He couldn't be, if you can't be there in person to receive your honorary degree, you can't get your honorary degree. Nelson Mandela had an excuse. We all know what that was at the time. And there was an alternative, those of us who were protesting that were like a big button. And I wore, you can see on my graduation gown or my thing, it was a Nelson Mandela button. So that was my protest there. - Okay, you can't tell that story. - I thought you were gonna say you accepted the award on his behalf, I thought that's right. - Yes, it wouldn't have been fun. - Liberal reporter comes out from Mandela, right? - You know what, you'd be surprised. Resistance. No, so. - What do you think about, I mean, Trump has investigated reporters, has trashed the press, has stomped over the first amendment. His secretary of defense who is a guest of the Paramount Corporation, has kicked the reporter out of the Pentagon. What do you, like, talk to me about how the press sees things about going to that dinner in that context? - I think it's, well, I think it's uncomfortable at the best. I mean, look, I mean, the Atlantic is still going, and I mean, I assume you guys have invited to some signal chain, so it's okay. - That's right. I mean, every one of the group chat gets to get to table. - I mean, look, just, I mean, this week, I mean, like, Sarah Kirkpatrick, my colleague, I mean, she wrote this cash betel story. They served us, I mean, they filed lawsuit two days ago, which, I mean, there's, that's a little bit standard. I mean, like, nasty story. - It's a constitutional response. - A constitutional response. - Yes, correct. But I don't see how many, I mean, I, I don't know a lot of journalists who are excited about it, just as many more than they would normally be. Now, there's sort of like a sport around, you have to sort of, you know, roll your eyes at the whole thing. It's like, I'm above it, but my bosses are making it. And, and, Sarah, I mean, you can also get a lot of work done. I mean, if you're one-stop shopping, and you want to talk to people and stuff. But, no, but I mean, I think the, the dissonance between what Trump talks about with the administration is done, and what the dinner is supposed to stand for, kind of, is pretty obvious. - I mean, all that'd be highlighted when the Wall Street Journal gets the reward for their Epstein letter story. - That'll be an interesting scene, right? I mean, I do wonder about it. I mean, I was actually, I still think there's a non-zero chance that he could pull out. - Yeah. - But who knows? - 250 journalists, Dan Rathers, Sam Donaldson, signed an open letter, demanding that the White House Correspondence Association use the podium to condemn Trump by name, and toast the first amendment. Do you think there's any chance they do that? - I was gonna say something snarky, but then I would say no. I don't think there's a chance. - Yeah, like, I saw it, and it's funny, 'cause the first time I'm like, "Well, that's not gonna happen," but I'm like, "Well, why should I do?" - I could imagine a condemnation that is not so harsh and unfair that it, like, I could imagine doing it in a thoughtful way. - Yeah, I can see that. But I don't, I mean-- - Who's the president? - The president of the Correspondence Association, well, actually, it's Donald Trump. - Oh, Marco Rubio, it's not the only way. - Yeah, that's gross, that's gross. - I mean, the whole thing is, it's always been bizarre, it's more of a czar now. The best argument that the media organizations can make is the money goes to pay for scholarships for young journalists. - Scholarships, yep. - There are other ways to raise money for journalists of scholarships that don't involve a toast to a president who disbanded the White House press pool, maybe, but-- - Yeah, the toast to the president of the United States and is always, I mean, I don't care who the president is, it just strikes me as distasteful. - Yeah, the whole thing, even like-- - The toast is crazy. - The toast is crazy. - Imagining the toast tonight, that March, whenever it is, that tonight, it's crazy. - It is. - There's one thing to be there with them, which is like, you can debate that enough. But the actual toast is just, what do we do? - There are two reasons to go. I mean, one, the comedians can be good. - The comedian is sure that, right? - The comedian is a mentalist. - Forget that. - The manosphere is mentalist, apparently. - And there are certain moments when presidents can, you know, with good timing. I mean, the guy you work for can do well. I don't think Biden's talks were terribly good. Bush had his moments, I thought. Clinton had his moments. I don't know, I mean, but those days are long gone. - Last question for you. to this town came out in 2013. If you were reading the 2026 edition, what's the opening scene? Who's the central character? - Opening scene. Oh man, you put me on the spot. - Can we do it for you? - Yeah, please. - You read Butterworth's. - No, that story's been done. - Is there another one? - What about that? - I thought I texted you about one. There was a funeral. There was another funeral there. - I mean, there have been a lot of funeral. I mean, 'cause you opened this town to those people that way. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, here's the thing. - Oh, there was a funeral. Was it a carder's? Were you a carder's funeral? - I've done a lot of stuff. - Okay, so here's the thing. Since that book came out. - Or Cheney. - The New York Times, I did do a Cheney piece. And I've been assigned a number of pieces. I remember the last, one of the last pieces I did for the New York Times. I was kind of playing out the string and cleaning out my desk and Elizabeth Bumiller, my boss walked over to me and said, "Hey, you know Bob Dolde died." And the, the funerals at the Kennedy Center, or not the Kennedy Center, at the National Cathedral on Friday, you got to cover it. So, I mean, there were several moments like that where I was kind of became the funeral guy. That was during COVID, too. I remember, like, and it was a huge deal. - A fun beat. - To wear a mask, 'cause you were in a cathedral. You were packed with elderly people, you know, signs everywhere, where I'm asked, where I'm asked, DC rules, the whole thing. And I remember looking, I was sitting in the press area right above where the Senate was seated. We're most of a lot of the sitting senators where every single one of them was wearing a mask, except for Ted Cruz, who was being completely ostentatious about it. And, you know, we're talking elderly people, you know, there's no vaccine yet, you know, right across the way. And, I mean, it was a church. I mean, just the whole thing. And, you know, he probably got a shout out for it. Anyway, there, the problem with, I mean, Tim Russell, that was the thing, though. I mean, the critique, which seems very quaint now, was that there was this one world, one Washington, you know, overly chummy world between the media and the money people and the lobbyists and the former people and the elected officials and the White House and Congress. And, that was what was insidious at the time, which, of course, in retrospect, seems like a comedy of matters. I mean, the fact that Trent Lott and John Broe, a Democrat and a Republican and a Democrat, would go into business together and make money. I mean, that was like a scandal. And, I mean, again, it's almost, I'm not embarrassed, but it just gives you a sense of how much time has passed. And the second book was "Suck Up Culture," but it was really around Trump. Yeah, and the second term does feel different. I mean, I do think, okay. So, I think that it's kind of running on two tracks now. It's "Suck Up Culture" around Trump, which is orders of magnitude worse now. I mean, it's just, it's begun beyond cult-levelity. But there's also, so my book was called Thank You for Your Servitude. I don't know if I can talk about this, but I will anyway. Jacob Weisberg has a book coming out called "Profiles in Cowardous," which I read like a part of it, and it's a similar way, there's a lot of that, and it's sort of of a piece to that. I don't know, I mean, I do think that it's hard to think of like what the one, what the merger of Maga and sort of normy politics, as we know it, whether independence, Democrats, some Republicans. Yeah, I mean, I've been gone from the city for 10 years now, but my sense is there is just the less of the stuff that was at the center of your book, which is basically this idea that everyone, cosplayed rivals during the day, and then they went to the same cocktail parties at night, and all hung out in the one party circuit, and it doesn't seem like that's necessarily still the case in the same way. Yeah, I don't see how it could. I honestly don't. I mean, I just have people who, I believe, I mean, you've all lived here. I mean, it was actually possible to have bipartisan friendships for you first. - Yeah. Yeah. It's hard. I mean, Maga, just like it's a whole different dimension, and they don't seem to want to have much to do with mainstream journalists, mainstream Democrats, people who have been critical of President Trump and vice versa. Democratic institutions. Yeah, I mean, again, I mean, I always thought that, and other presidents have tried variations on this, but I mean, blowing off the White House correspondent and there would have been a great move for any president, not just once Trump's heard Trump started doing it. I mean, I thought, you know, Obama, Bush, whoever would have gotten, you know, would have gotten credit for it in some way. It might have been some grudging out there. People would have complained, but they would have walked into your office. - I'm disrespectful to the first amendment. - Yeah, that would have been terrible. Yeah, anyway, no, but so, I mean, so but yeah. So Trump was obviously, he wasn't onto something, but I mean, he just sort of, he just trashed the whatever polite society existed here that was probably too cozy for its own good. - But now he's trying to just run it, as he went to the, I don't know, did he go to the alpha dinner? - He did. - Yeah, he did. - Which makes the White House correspondent dinner look like a Buffalo Wild Wings. - Yeah, that's a good line. - No, I've never actually been to the alpha dinner. - I staffed Obama at once. - Really? - I went, I ate Burger King in the back room while he spoke. 'Cause they didn't have food for the staff, so. So Reggie and I, Marvin, I had to go to Burger King to eat, let's make it perfect. - He probably had the best time of anyone. - Yeah. - So, Marty, what about you? - Yeah, thank you so much. - Thanks guys, we'll love you. - Come to our party, we'll toast to you. We'll do a toast to the first amendment, specifically to Mark. - Yeah, bring your first amendment, Vince. - Oh, I totally will. Yeah, actually, you know what though? There'll be like a kiddie for us to put money in for the scholarships, right? - Yes, that's the first thing. - The Pots in America scholarships. - Yeah, that's for young podcasters. - Young podcasters, yeah. - Just starting now. - All right, thanks, leave a bitch. - By the tight T-shirts. - Yeah, thanks, Mark. Leave a bitch for coming on. Tommy will be back with an interview with Sarah Longwell on Sunday's PSA, and then Tommy and Love It, and I will be back with a new episode in your feed on Tuesdays. - Bye everyone. (upbeat music) - If you want to listen to Pots in America, add free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to Cricket.com/Friends to subscribe on supercast, substack, YouTube, or Apple podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Cricket. Pots in America is a cricket media production. Our producer is Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Ferris Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Churlin is our executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglon and Charlotte Landis. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Naomi Sengal is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefkoat, Mia Kellman, Carol Pellavive, David Tolls, and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the writer's Guild of America East. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - On election night, we will all be feeling a lot of feelings. Spend it with me, Alex Wagner, for Cricket Media presents Live Election Results. We're gonna have John Favreau, John Lovevitt, Tommy Beetour, Stacey Abrams, Dan Pfeiffer, Aaron Ryan, and many more special guests to be announced. And they're all gonna help us make sense of what's happening as the election results are rolling. Eastern, 6 p.m. (upbeat music)