1: Trump vs. The Blue Wave: A Midterm Extravaganza

I think I'm just like a little bit nervous. That's why I know I know I know it feels weird. It feels weird Welcome to still counting I'm Dylan Drake. I'm Claire Malone and I'm Nate Silver and we're talking too fast because it's the first episode and we're a little nervous. I also read my name. I was like I'm Claire Malone and this is our first official episode. Yes, we did a freedwarmer. Yes, we talked to Podsy of America, but this is it folks from now on on Wednesday evening, you're going to get a still counting podcast episode in your feed. And so for, you know, first, I'll say this is what we're going to do on today's podcast. We're going to do a midterms extravaganza. We're even going to kind of play a game. We're also going to talk about sort of the past year plus in Republican voter sentiment. It's been a pretty topsy-turvy year for the Trump coalition. We're going to talk about the convention and all that, just the anniversary of Charlie Kirk's death. Before we get into everything that we have to cover today though, we should say welcome back everybody to our past listeners. Spread the word. Welcome to the new people. Hopefully if you have no idea who we are really, welcome to still counting. Well, actually, Claire, who are we? Who are we? I'm Claire Malone, who the script says we all worked together at a data site called 538 and I was hired by Nate to be like the normal magazine reporter. I was hired by Nate to be normal to be like a magazine reporter person. And then my I'm sort of a traditional reporter. I am a writer at the New Yorker. I cover media and politics there. And I am currently on book leave for the year actually going back in like six months. And I'm writing a book about the Mahat movement. That's who I am. Nate, who are you? I'm Claire Malone. Yeah, so my trajectory into journalism, if that's what you want to call it, is highly non-traditional. Before I ever like got into journalism, I was an online poker player. I was building baseball models. Basically, 2008 comes along. I'm living in Chicago. This campus hipster, as I thought it name Barack Obama, decides to run for president. It was a very exciting time in politics and also a time when there had been in baseball and sports a lot to talk about analytics. This was a kind of money ball revolution, so to speak. I was getting burned out with the baseball stuff. The poker was not going super well to be honest. And so I started trying to build a forecasting model first for the Democratic primary in 2008 and then general election. And it's just kind of improbably, improbably took off. But yeah, I, you know, I try to look at the world, I sometimes do reporting, but I'm looking at the books. For the books, I do actually do reporting, which for the most recent book involved hanging out in Las Vegas playing poker for a year. I spent all time in Vegas. Yeah, it was a nice excuse to look on Valley Miami. But like, I don't do a lot of insider gossip with, oh, what's the scoop about the internal polls in New Hampshire? Like, I think that is actually a waste of time. You're being spun a lot of time. I think the goal of a model, we talked about this on the pod save trailer, it's to force yourself to be more rigorous in analyzing the news. And explaining how you view the world. And now and, and he had a, he started five, three or eight, which was at the New York Times, then I moved to ESPN, then they closed it, yada yada yada. Now he has a wonderfully silver bulletin, which said Nate silver.net. But like, we look, we got flippers or mintures model. We got. Okay, I will do a briefer, who am I? I was hired by Nate at 538. Not in the less weirdness initiative. I'll tell you that much. I was hired to be a podcast Wayne get 538. We were hired at about the same time. Yes, we were. We came from Wisconsin. I came from straight from Wisconsin public radio, which at the time I could not have imagined how good of an education Wisconsin would have given me for what was to come. In American politics, we were cheering. Well, incredibly well. Anyway, I stuck around 538 for about a decade, where I did basically a combination of field reporting analysis, looking at the data, did things like the Jaymandering project, and once 538 shut down, I started GD politics, which is a podcast that I host on Mondays and Thursdays talking to a bunch of people who are journalists, authors, sometimes politicians, pollsters who look at data and try to make sense of it all. And I'm going to try to take some of that knowledge that I get from all the people I talk to and bring it to folks here as well. But anyway, enough of that, enough throat clearing. Let's dive into what's I hand today. But first, let me just say, dear listeners, and for our YouTube audience, I'm looking straight to camera for this one. Previous listeners, new listeners alike spread the word. Subscribe on YouTube, wherever you listen to podcasts, also rate and review us. Like, I don't know exactly how the algorithm works, that's Nate's job. But apparently, on Apple, on Apple podcasts, the more you rate and review us, the higher up we go and the more people see us. And then we'll maybe get introduced to the podcast. Basically, we're out here trying to rebuild an audience. And it's going to, it's like a political campaign. It's going to take all of us. Yes. See, I would, third, I would never do that, right? That's why we're good. We're doing. We're doing. We're doing. We're doing. We're doing. We're doing. We're doing. So the podcast podcast, podcast twunk now. Okay. We are officially post. We're officially put, I almost wore a white suit coat this morning, which first of all, wouldn't have Claire would have popped on your account. A nasty employee. You must not be wearing white after Labor Day. It's an old school rule. So yes, we are post Labor Day, which is officially when we stop wearing white, when we go back to school, it is also historically, when people begin to tune into the elections, like in our highly polarized and partisan and engaged environment, I think people pay attention a little bit sooner than that. But nonetheless, we are going to use that as an opportunity to dive in to the midterm. So right now, Nate, your model named flipper suggests that Democrats have an 83% chance of winning the house. And the Senate forecast is split exactly 50 50. Nate, did you design the forecast that way to build suspense at the start of election season? I'm kidding. So when you first launched the Senate favored Democrats slightly, not overwhelmingly, but I think it peaked out about 58% less than a month ago in terms of Democrats, likelihood of taking the Senate. What has happened between then and now? So a couple of things have happened. Number one, people get really sensitive about like 50 versus 55 versus 57. It's not a big deal. It's like in an NBA game, it's like one point being scored, or two points being scored, you take it from nicks ahead by a point to the raptors ahead by a point or whatever else. So when you're near 50 50, small moves affect the probabilities of fair bit, that's getting a little technical. There are a couple of things that have happened. One is that we've started to get more polls among likely voters and not just registered voters. And that matters because turnout is relatively low in midterms higher than it used to be. But as our model has been adjusting to those, earlier in the cycle, it felt like there was a bigger didn't feel like, I guess I don't know if it has feelings. I guess we use AI, right? I mean, maybe. I don't know if they're omorphizing models, Nate. I used to be an anti-anthropomorphicizer. And now just you say, oh, the model thinks, anyway, as we've gotten more generic ballot polls among likely voters, they don't show quite as much of an enthusiasm gap. I mean, I'm being too technical. Now I'm just, by the way, as to interject, now I'm just thinking about whether or not you think the model could ever kill you. Per discussions on Twitter about AI. I switched from Claude to Chech-E-P-T in the middle because it was trying to kill you. The Claude Opus' were kind of weird, right? They would like, they'd be quite stubborn and lazy. What is a Claude Opus? I don't use it. We have the full range of AI use here, which is like, Nate has at least 12 AI employees. I use AI. I regularly, but like, don't make it code for me. I literally, you don't use AI. I do not use AI. I don't know what it means. But here's a summary version, right? As we get closer to the election, I think you see like a little bit of a rebound in Republican enthusiasm. It's having a marginal effect on the numbers and some of these kind of less-pulled races in the generic ballot. Look, Trump's approval rating is 38 percent or so. His disapproval rating is 58-59 percent. He's not very popular, but Democrats aren't that popular either. I think you might be seeing just the slightest bit of a reversion to the mean, but there's lots of layers in flipper. There are expert forecasts. Isn't New Hampshire now a state that's in play? How realistically do we take Talleriko's? The model says Talleriko is a slight favorite in Texas. Do we buy that or not? We're going to get into actually all of these dates, and we're even going to get into Trump's popularity and his coalition and whatnot. But first, we're going to play a little game. I mean, not first. We're going to play a little game in order to talk about all of these states. But it's educational. But it's education. We're not. A little game, which is we're going to draw the most competitive Senate races out of a hat, and that's most competitive, according to the polling averages. That means that we don't know the order that we're going to talk about. It's the state of the race in Game of HUD. Yes, exactly. I will say I have a GD politics hat here, which is only because we don't have-- Shame on-- Shame on-- Shame on-- Shame on-- Because I'm a shame on shale. And also because we don't have still counting merch yet. But I hear it's coming. I hope it's coming. I think it's coming. I think it's coming. You know, we got to need-- you've got to stop advertising. I mean, we all love the next. We live in New York City. But you've got to stop advertising the next for free. We're getting silver bullets in here. By the way, I'm happy to advertise in NYX. You know, as long as Dolan doesn't kick me out of-- - Okay. - He's good. - You are first. - Okay. - So pick a race out of the time. - Wait, by the way, last night in preparation for talking about all of the Senate races, I think I watched ads for every single Senate candidate or most of them just to kind of get a flavor. I was like, I wanna see like-- - And did it make you feel more optimistic or more pessimistic about American politics? - Well, I have to say, it was quite pessimistic. Like that was after watching like, you know, kind of close to like 40 minutes of just like, you know-- - Don't, don't, don't, like-- - It's, it's, well, none of these people have ever been to Washington DC. It was, it was basically all about like, how much beef costs and isn't it terrible and insurance companies and that was both parties. It was like, yeah, it was quite striking how public it was. Anyhow. Okay, I picked North Carolina, which is a bad pick. (laughing) It's definitely a bad pick. It's a bad pick because we're pretty sure that the Democrat Roy Cooper is going to win in his race against Republican Michael Wattley, Roy Cooper and that win probability according to Flipper trademark Nate's over. - It's pronounced with a dolphin, it's like Flipper. (laughing) - How do you, how did you name it? - We've already had a problem with Ferries and the 538 politics podcast brand. We really don't need to give them any fodder. - How did you name it, Flipper? - R's are good because like R is for regression or like, we just, I don't know. - Okay, so, but Flipper gives the Democratic win probability at 86.9 purse and ditch points. - Let's put it like that, it's, it's not a sure thing that Cooper wins a North Carolina. - But it would be embarrassing if he lost. - Democrats are fucked anyway. That means the polls are probably way off again. They need four seats. By the way, Gail and you're saying, well, 50, 50 is that just to cut out, it's kind of a coincidence because like, we think it's gonna be, and everyone thinks it's gonna be a very democratic year, but they have to win four seats, two of which are in quite red states. North Carolina is not a quite red state. It's a slightly red state. Like we have, and your handwriting's actually better than Flipper, Gail. - It says, this is Saul. - This is Saul. - It's pretty good, we're introducing producer Saul who has in the, it's reading pretty good handwriting and I would agree with that. That's the only job that might survive the AI apocalypse is like good handwriting. It's rare. - What you were gonna say is that Trump won North Carolina by three points in 2024, which is a slightly red state. - And Harris only, he only won the whole thing by one and a half point, right? So North Carolina actually moved toward the tipping point. It was one of the few positives out of Kamala Harris's night in November 2024 was that North Carolina actually became more purple and Cooper's a strong candidate. He's the former governor. If he weren't to win, then it means the polls were way off, we're way off again. - Right. - Yeah. I mean, in terms of overall trends to look at, I think an interesting one here is that we've all been talking about the anti-establishment sentiment amongst the electorate, this go-round. Roy Cooper is like a two-term governor. He says. - Good candidate, like well known in the state. - But he is, I mean, he's not really the establishment because he's running against the Democratic Party in part. And he's like, you know, I don't belong to anybody. I'm my own man. He's very much been a feature of state politics and not national politics. And so I think the benefit of being a governor suggests that he is a good candidate to run in North Carolina. But he's not running, you know, the Republican Michael Wattley is not really a populist outsider who can say the establishment has sort of taken the country in the wrong direction, whatever. He's like the former chair of the Republican Party in North Carolina. So I think whereas maybe being so entrenched in politics could have been of vulnerability, the contras of this race are not gonna let us see that. - Great, so takeaway is panic at the disco for Democrats if Roy Cooper loses. - Still counting is brought to you by Sundays. We are what we eat and so are our dogs. A long, healthy, active life starts with clean, real food nutrition every day. Sundays for dogs is different. It's human grade. Real food you'd feel good eating yourself. Sundays recipes contain 80% plus all natural meat. That's about twice the meat content of some leading frozen brands. Plus ingredients like kale, ginger, and blueberries. No fillers, no chemicals, just simple, complete nutrition. 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(dramatic music) - Nate? - Nets the sprays that you're picking out of the hat. - Okay. - Suck it in there. - Of course, this is written Michigan. - Michigan. (laughing) - Dramatic pick. - I'll say it leads by roughly two points in the silver rule of some polling average. Does that include, by the way, a new Glengariff poll? I don't think that came out last night after publication to a line that might cut it down to one or one and a half? Look, we've talked a lot about Michigan. If you haven't listened to any of the previous episodes, we're on a pod save, we're on a pod save. - We're on a pod save about the Michigan race. - The basically of the land is something like this. Michigan is about as purple as it gets, it almost exactly follows the national trend. The national trend this year is around D plus seven, meaning in the average state, if you count up all the votes for all four and in 35 house races, you'd expect Democrats to win by about seven. Michigan therefore is also about a plus seven. The question is, can L-Syed be a quote unquote bad enough candidate? I'll explain what I mean by that, right? Or microtures a quote unquote good enough candidate to overcome that seven point spread. Now the different ways to define bad candidate, when a certain type of election nerd, like me, means that it just means they're likely to underperform the baseline. It doesn't mean they're a bad person. It doesn't mean that, I don't like that. - They're not charismatic or yeah. - And there's a lot of research that I think people are in some degree denial about that says in general, more moderate candidates, how you define moderation is complicated, tend to overperform. - And moderation, and moderation we should say, just complicated to define it, can often be affected by gender, race, things like that. - It's interesting by the way that L-Syed is kind of like playing into this kind of almost like fuckboy image, right? It's like, oh yeah, like women, I like, you know, it's like, he's not like-- - 'Cause I think it's more like he lifts, right? - He lifts. - Like that, he lifts. - He lifts. - So he's raised a lot of money. He inspires a lot of young voters. He also turns off a lot of voters. And so, but, you know, here's the thing, even if you believe, and we do, that moderation hard to define probably helps. We also understand that polarization is driving everything, and actually voters are pretty smart, right? Voters might say, I understand that Mike Rogers might come across as moderate, but empirically, he's getting about with Trump, the large majority of the time, and L-Syed, we're probably about with Democrats, the large majority of the time, and we're kind of moving into a parliamentary system where the candidates matter less. So, in a model, you might say, okay, there's like a three or four point penalty here. Seven point question is enough to cover it. In the polls, there's for now a little bit more of a penalty. It's closer to a toss up, maybe L-Syed by one point, then plus seven. - And by the way, in my tour of candidate ads last night, I mean, I actually think the way that L-Syed is kind of trying to present himself to general election voters is not moderating on the issues, right? Which is, which is, I think kind of, you know, key for his campaign, right? He's running a real, like true believers, Medicare, [BLANK_AUDIO] plan in some ways. He's not actually a democratic socialist, but I think he's sort of running the Elizabeth Warren playbook where it's like, I'm a progressed, no hold on, wait, let me finish my thought, which is like I'm a progressive, but like don't worry, I'm not here to tear down capitalism. Like that was her thing. And I, but I think where he is, where you see him trying to quote unquote moderate is on that perception of him as an extremist, right? So like he has a lot of stuff about like he has the add with his grandparents, he has the add about like I grew up playing football in Michigan. Like I feel obligated as a Ohio and just say muck fish again, but like that stuff, that stuff, was that one plan? Was that one plan? It just came to me, it just came to me, but that's, but that's where he's trying to moderate on is the perception, right? Like of him as it as the like scary foreigner, right? Which by the way, like Rogers is playing into by like saying his saying like up the Iran, and you know, so there's, there's interesting dynamics, but what we mean is a moderate candidate. Yeah, I'll say somebody who got some blowback from in the comments after we were on the comments. Because I had described Elsa as a below average candidate reliable to perform below where a quote unquote generic Democrat is, I was really talking about the numbers. And the perception of, I'll say it as an extreme candidate. And I think like people interpreted that all to be about Israel, because that's kind of where a lot of the comments are sort of, I guess, in the left space online. But I really don't actually think as much as that has been a sort of knockdown dragout fight for the Democratic party. What is going to decide this race? I think the most important thing that like my takeaway for the Michigan race is that it is a very high profile test for progressives for the activist left. You said he hasn't moderated that much. I will say on issues like, and I think issues like defund the police abolish ice Medicare for all those kinds of things will actually motivate voters more than the Israel question. Because those are the, for example, health care safety cost of goods corruption. Those are the kinds of things that are motivating voters in the selection. I mean, I looked through all of the polling and really like the Israel Palestine question as much as it may motivate activists for the broad sort of base of American voters. It is not ranking up there. It's really again, inflation sort of incompetence and government and corruption. Then what the economy more broadly data centers, flock cameras, like these are local issues that are actually on like the one when you ask you like what's very important to you 50% of voters say the war on Iran 22% of voters say the Israel got issues. So I think I just want to say here that like when people, when this battle placed out sort of in the general election in Michigan for Senate, I think that the test is going to be so he has pivoted away from defund the police. He has not pivoted away from abolish ice. He's pivoted a little on health care was he wrote a book with the sort of prologue written by Bernie Sanders about Medicare for all. He said, you know, I don't want to now he said, I don't want to abolish private insurance. Those things can coexist, et cetera. And so I think that this is going to be viewed as a test for whether the left can perform in a battleground state ahead of what's going to be also a knockdown dragout fight in the 2028 Democratic primates. Look at we got the most boring and the most controversial first two picks. Is is a former podcaster, yeah, we're covering podcaster that that might be too much to overcome. Well, we this is amazing because polling groups have asked Americans what are the most attractive and least attractive traits for a candidate at, you know, these kind of strategy groups. Can you guess what one of the least attractive traits for a candidate is. Well now I know podcast. We can never and while socialist was also one of them. He said again, he's he is not DSA, although he sort of is seen oftentimes with AOC and Bernie Sanders and people who align with the. Yeah, I don't think you realize it. It's like a sake. You can't pull. Yeah, I'll hold it for you. Okay. All right. Thank you. What is that? That's some rich stuff. He just said. Okay. I got Iowa, which is just struck the Democrat versus Ashley Henson currently in the polling average Henson leads by 1.3 points. Republicans have a win probability of 65% to be clear. Trump won Iowa in 2024 by 13 points. Can I give you a funny before you do your please do again in my tour of watching all these ads. So we're obviously, you know, talking about the difficult thing about this midterm, which we'll talk about a little bit more and later in the episode is Trump sort of being like pretend like I am on the ballot. And a vote for me win a lot of Republicans are obviously trying to distance themselves from him because of Iran things like that. And Ashley Henson has a very funny campaign ad where it's totally like it's like, you know, her just doing the kind of like around the state. And then there's just like a flash for a second of picture of Trump. And it's almost like someone at the last minute was like, we got to add them. So it's just like it's like a dash of Trump and then you go back to like the Ashley Henson Iowa stuff. It's a perfect visual metaphor for the line that Republicans are trying to walk, which is tricky because right in this midterm cycle. Republicans want to turn out low propensity Naga voters who show up when Trump is on the top of the ballot. Not in midterm, not in midterm years, yeah, historically not showed up in midterm years. But at the same time, if you want to talk about a state that should be just like fully in the Republican coalition, almost no questions asked. But has seen some vulnerabilities for the party, you have to talk about Iowa. Again, went for Trump by 13 percentage points. It is a relatively rural, relatively white state, a part of the electorate the Republicans have done very well with. But looking at polling work that friend of the pod Mary Radcliffe has done. Amongst rural voters, if you look at generic ballot polling from when Trump took office to now. Republicans have caught their advantage in half. So Republicans had a 26 point advantage with rural voters. When Trump took office, it's now 13 point advantage. If you believe that, if you believe that, because I'm not a big cross tab diver again. Again, there have been some problems with this kind of polling in the past, particularly in well around presidential and midterm election. Okay. Copy that mentor. The kinds of role voters who are showing up in the polls right now are more likely to vote for Democrats anyway, et cetera, et cetera. But if the polling is to be believed, this and there are some explanations as well. Like the tariffs are not particularly sort of going well for an agriculturally based economy in part. And so there is both you see some data suggestion and you also see some narrative reasons for vulnerability. Also, we've already gotten into some candidate quality issues on the map this cycle. Iowa is a place where like there are not any candidates facing real like challenges in terms of probably not. We don't have a Ken Paxton on the ticket. We don't have like a Susan Collins who way over performs. Yeah. It is more generic candidates, if you will. And I mean, Justin. Yeah. Well, but they all have they all have good stories. Yeah, Josh Turek is a Paralympian basketball player. I think you want a couple medals. Yeah. So like that's a good, you know, like in his. But we don't have any. You know any gold medal proven. We don't have any. Do I? proven electoral juggernauts on the ballot anyway? Well, Rob Sand, former fashion model, Rob Sand by the way, we know the ads are like, he's a former fashion model. It's like, oh, you don't really have a lot to work with here. Right. He used to be very good looking. It is. Wait, like, yeah, it's like you can't go with socialist. So you go with former. Iowa is the closest thing to like a generic D versus generic R. And so therefore, as that generic number has slipped just a little bit for Democrats, I was moved with it. So when we launch flipper, um, it was kind of toss up to tilt are now we'd call it lean R. I mean, two to one is more than a tilt, I'd say. Um, but Iowa to me is like the benchmark for Democrats had a great night, right? I'm not sure it's a tipping point as much as like Texas where you do have a severe kind of quality issue or Alaska, which is, it's old drummer. We'll talk about that in a minute. But like, Iowa, if Iowa falls, that means Trump deeply fucked up. Okay, we were planning on going through nine of the most competitive races according to the polling averages. I think at this point, it would take us about three hours. And although we all have the speaking stamina, I don't know that the audience has the patience. So we're going to go to a speed round. We're going to put one minute on the clock for each of the remaining races, worry not listeners. We will get in more in depth into these races in the future. But, uh, all right, 60 seconds. Let's see if we can do it and Claire here first up. Okay, I got Ohio Brown versus Houston in the Senate race, Sherrod Brown versus John Houston. Uh, when probability for Sherrod Brown is at 61.4% according to flipper. I mean, interesting one Sherrod Brown is a former senator. So rude to make the Ohioan do this in just a minute. On the gubernatorial side, do we want to do that? No, we shouldn't do that at all. But no, candidate quality wise, I think shared Brown is an interesting Democrat. He's also-- I can talk this fast. He's also an older white guy who has a more moderate stance on Israel, so he doesn't have any of those party controversies that you see in Michigan, which you sort of swing together state, that's all I got going in. You won in 2018, which is a similar year to this one. People like Democrats, when these were the red states, they won in Montana. they want to know how and even West Virginia in 2018. Okay. We have 10 seconds left. And all I'm going to say is yes, he lost in his last Senate race, but he outperformed Kamala Harris by eight points. And if you add that together with the blue environment this time round. Okay. Okay. Good. Is Nate next. Yes. Nate is next. Can't pull your own sake. All right. Start. Go for it. Nate, you got to go. We're on the clock. Texas. I'm getting the easy ones. James, Taleriko against Ken Paxton. Look, the number I point to first here is our friend, actually, an our friend, Beto, Beto, who lost by 45 seconds. 10 seconds. 2018, the best anchor year for this midterm, Trump's first midterm, Beto, a real loss by 2.5 points to Ted Cruz. The question is basically can can Paxton be a worse candidate than Ted Cruz to the point where you make up at 2.5 point deficit. You have not particularly seen since 2018. Favorite rule them graphic trends for Democrats in Texas. You saw great trends in the summer for Democrats. You saw South Texas reverting more red. Do people think that Taleriko is a Hispanic name. That's one question that I have. Galen. Okay. You guys, do you think I think Google did Ken Paxton steal a pen. And that speaks to Canada quality. And we are at time. Great. Okay. Steel counting is brought to you by in Cogni. Let's talk about something that doesn't get enough attention. Corporations, profiting off your personal data without your consent. Boo. Yeah. I mean, bad use of data. Bad use of data. No, man. We just trust all these giant corporations. They have, they know everything about us. They could steal all my intellectual property. They could, I don't even put secrets in email. Really, you know, I'm a real life conversation guy, but you have to call you on the phone to get your secrets. I don't even like the phone. I like, I like, I like your pigeon, carry your pigeon, carry your pigeon. Yeah. Or in person, meet at the, meet at the bar. Anyway. Data brokers, companies you've never heard of are quietly collecting your home address, phone number, even your family members names and selling that information to anyone willing to pay. There's no opt-in, no transparency, just pure surveillance capitalism. Yeah. That's a new one for me, but I already don't like it. It's an immediate. No bad vibes. Stay well. Are you familiar with the capitalism with the panopticon? It's a Michelle Foucault French philosopher concept. Did you guys know that they'll be silver? What's university Chicago? I have a running joke that I wasn't a joke. It was true. I never got less than an A minus on a paper when I mentioned Michelle Foucault used that, used that aspiring bloggers when you're when you're at the University of Chicago. This is better content than the podcast truly. Surveillance capitalism, no opt-in, no transparency and that exposure is exactly what scammers and bad actors use to target people for identity theft and fraud. That's where in Cogni comes in. They act as your personal privacy advocate, filing legal removal requests and getting your information taken down across 420 plus harmful broker sites automatically and on a recurring basis since brokers tried to relist your data every 30 to 60 days. They won't stop. They just keep doing it. They're persistent and persistent. And yet she and yet those data brokers persistent. Persistent is a good thing when people are doing good things. When people are doing bad things like stealing your data. You don't you don't want them to be persistent and yet, and yet they are, and yet they are. And in Cogni's got to bat him down, bat him away. In Cogni is independently verified by Deloitte. You can track everything from their iOS or Android app. I like the I like the iOS inclusiveness there, by the way. And if you're on the unlimited plan, the exposure scanner even hunts down your info on news sites, blogs and forums. Bad news if you have a sub stack with the real human team handling those manual takedowns for you. Very WWE. Man, you'll take down. I mean, take, okay, take down is a good is a good word in a lot of context. And the best part, Claire. Yeah, in Cogni offers a full 30 day money back guarantee holy macaroni. This is not a laughing matter reclaiming your privacy shouldn't be a luxury. It shouldn't it shouldn't. Yeah, I really shouldn't. I firmly believe it shouldn't. We actually believe this product because reclaiming your privacy shouldn't be a luxury. They can't harm you if they can't find you use code counting at incogni.com and get 60% off an annual plan. That's incogni.com backslash counting. I and C O G and I dot com slash counting code counting. Okay. Galen Drew with the next pick. All right. Can I give you the phone so you can. Okay. Ready? Hold on. Hold on. Here we go. Open it up. Okay. Go Alaska. I can see Russia from my house. Okay. So it is Mary Petola versus Dan Sullivan. Mary Petola currently has a sorry. Dan Sullivan currently has a 54% chance of winning according to the forecast. This is a very interesting race because we talked about candidate quality. Mary Petola is an electoral Joggernaut. She's outperformed Democrats in two elections, one by nine points, another by 20% points in a blue wave environment. That could mean that she could actually win here. There is a voter enfranchisement issue here, which is that there are two Dan Sullivan's on the ballot. I would worry that if voters get confused and want to cast a ballot for the incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan and don't and get confused that they could be disenfranchised in a way, but it is a ranked choice election. Right. So hopefully those people will still be enfranchised. Nonetheless, Mary Petola, who has rejected Kamala Harris's endorsement in this race in a way or her fundraising. Please separate herself from the Democratic Party, which is a smart move in a state like Alaska and is running on fish family and freedom for the win. Very impressive. I was like, you're like, you're monologue, or something. Yeah, truly. Did you ever do a quiz bowl? I did debate, which is why I talked to you fast. Okay. Back to you, Claire. Okay. I don't. I didn't do debate. All right. Here we go. One minute. Okay. I've got main Troy Jackson versus Susan Collins. Collins. Jackson. Jackson has a win probability of 64.7%. And I mean, have you all I can think of as the cousin thing. Listen, Susan Collins is a high quality candidate. She is, you know, her, her ads for this race, emphasize her insideriness, the power that she has for main. You know, Trump, despite the fact that she voted to impeach him, Trump is still endorsing her, which I think speaks to her power within the party. Susan Collins has done something very funny, which is insinuate that Troy Jackson is married to his cousin. Second cousin. Second cousin. 10 seconds. So she's basically insinuating that he's a bit weird. And he is basically trying to, that's, that's hurtful because he's trying to introduce himself to main voters. Very happy. Again, girls will come back to these. Nate. How many fucking states do we have? Nine and what's your choice to be nine? Okay. Okay. All right. Here we go. On the clock. One minute. Kansas. And by the way, you might think that George's remaining race, but no, we actually have Kansas in flipper as being an unlikely tipping point state. But more likely than Georgia, because awesome seems to be in such a good shape, even more than North Carolina. But yeah, Kansas. I have a lot of family in the Kansas City area. A lot of them are liberal Democrats, they've been talking to me about how you better watch Kansas, you better watch Adam Hamilton against against Roger Marshall. It's at the very, very edge of feasibility. You have seen Democrats with the governorship of Kansas a couple of recent times. They have not won a Senate race in Kansas since 1932. You do have some polling Wow, 1932 longest run for Republicans. What's that out of it? Can you do have some polling? A global strategy group poll from Democrats shows their candidate up by one point. I think it's probably not a trick, but like a device to get fundraising. I am not sure I trust those internal polls, but, but you know, if you want a real wildcard, Kansas is your state. All right. And the last one here, Clare, I'll give you the timer back. Wait, is it your trip? Yeah, we got the final. We got the final one. Yeah, I was like, okay, ready. All right, you open first go. New hamster for a real clunker at the end. So the primary was, of course, Tuesday night. Chris Papas, who is a member of Congress for the Democrats won that and Johnson, you know, people have generally thought of this as a pretty boring race. The Democratic win probability there is 86%. But it has got the polling has actually there has been some polling showing Sanunu in a tight race, well known family in the state. Yes, exactly. This is a Harris plus three state in 2024. So although it has voted recently reliably for Democrats, I don't think it does a blue as people think of at first blush. Here we have, you know, what'll be interesting here is. is that if you think of the motto of New Hampshire, live free or die, oh my God, five cycles. - Five cycles. - I'm gonna talk about how socialism is gonna be at times you're weird. - It's not gonna work very well against Chris Poppas compared with the more progressively life person. - Also, like he kind of ran away with that nominating ourselves. Sorry. - It's just the last date. - We're done. - We're done. - We're done. - We're done. - We're done. - Okay. How did that feel? (laughing) - I sort of panicked. (laughing) - So, we're gonna move on to-- - Well, let's clean this mess. - Oh my God, we gotta, let's clean up after ourselves. That was, we're really putting ourselves to work here for this first episode. - I know. - I would say one thing to summarize, right? - No, you're mind it. Your minutes over me. - This is overview. - This is me right here. - Go ahead, go ahead. - No, but you have kind of two categories of races. You have races that are gonna follow the national picture, probably, so like North Carolina, Iowa. And then you have weird races where there are exceptions because the electoral system can't equality or both. So like, Maine, Alaska, Michigan. - Yes. - Staps. Good time, right? - Staps. Staps are everybody, that was, that was work. Okay, we're gonna talk about the Republican coalition in the context of this Republican convention that is happening in Dallas. As we speak, by the way, dear listener, if you are listening to this Wednesday evening or Thursday morning, you may already know some of what has happened at this convention where recording midday on Wednesday. So we are in the past. You are in the future. You probably have more knowledge than us already, but we're gonna talk about the value of a convention. We're also going to talk about the one year anniversary of Charlie Kirk's assassination. Also in the context of what that has meant for the Republican coalition, a unifying moment. But a lot of moments have not been so unifying for the Republican party in the time since. So, first of all, to use a convention that past listeners may be familiar with, Claire, is this Republican convention in Dallas a good use of convention or a bad use of convention? - I would argue that all conventions are a bad use of convention because they require me to go to a convention hall and spend five days indoors listening to people talk. Modern conventions are essentially television programs. Three night television programs. There's usually not really anything substantive going on. You know, there's never gonna be a brokered convention. I mean, I think while listening, actually, yeah. There could be, there could be, that's true. We live in that time. But, you know, like. - People said the next would never want a championship. - It's fair. What I'm trying to say is conventions are basically just a time for people to pump up their voters, get people on television. And that's what, and usually there's a polling bump coming out of the convention for whatever party just convened. What Trump is trying to do here? - The use of convened. - Thank you. I'm a writer. - What Trump is trying to do here? - What Trump is trying to do here is, first of all, he's headlining both nights of the convention, which is both expected 'cause it's Trump. But also probably a bad idea conventionally speaking, right? Because, you see what I'm doing right now? - I'm doing so good, you're so good. - Because in these midterms, a lot of, you know, he's an unpopular president. His policies are currently unpopular. And what a lot of Republicans want to do is politely run away from him. And he is, you know, I think his theory of the case is what we were talking about earlier, is getting low-prepensity voters to turn out. That's kind of like their one trick with elections. And I just don't see that as, it's not, it doesn't allow candidates to run a nuanced race, right? If someone wants to hold you close, let them hold you close, appear in their ad, whatever you want. It doesn't let people just sort of distance themselves 'cause he's now gonna, you know, run the news cycle for the next three days. So I would say bad use of convention. - Okay. - No one's gonna watch this fucking thing. It's going opposite the National Football League, which is far more important to the future of this country than anything that happens in Dallas. I'm literally being serious. I could not give a fuck about this thing, right? Yes, it's dumb politically because Trump is the biggest problem that Republicans have. You don't wanna showcase him. And, you know, going back to the two runoffs in Georgia after 2020, I mean, Trump has been hugely problematic to Republicans trying to win the Senate. He's endorsed candidates who are poor. He maybe help push, can pack something over the top in Texas this year, you know, even among Republican influencers, so to speak, people are starting to feel more iffy about Trump. That's kind of what usually happens in second term. So this thing is, is boring and stupid. Right? - What's the fuck? - I mean, how can you, you have to have something better to do? We might only have 10 years left if AI destroys the world. Don't spend a fucking night watching a fucking Republican midterm convention for fuck's sake. Watch football? - Absolutely, literally. And to be literally, we will have #stillcounting. We will have the ratings by the next time we convene. So we will be able to tell empirically whether or not anyone listen, I just wanna sort of paint a little bit of a conundrum for the Republican party right now, which is that, again, in Trump's first term, Americans were more bullish on the economy than they were on Trump. Again, most important issue here. So a majority of Americans thought that the economy was doing well or approved of Trump's handling of the economy in his first term, whereas he was underwater. His approval rating was in the high 30s, low 40s, or worse. And so when Trump took a step back and let the economy, economic performance speak for itself or the lack of foreign wars speak for itself, then that would kind of be helpful. So in that context, you would say, what the fuck would you be doing holding a Republican midterm convention? You should just disappear and let everybody run on whatever record they wanna run on, because people feel more positive about the fundamentals in the country. In this moment, Donald Trump is more popular than his economy, right? Okay, so if you look at Silver Bulletin. - If you think about it, what a compliment. - What a compliment. So if you think about it, he's 20 percentage points underwater on just raw approval rating. The economy is net negative 28, so almost 30 percentage points. Inflation is net negative 40. So on one hand, if you're gonna use that equation from the first term, you would say, well, if Trump is able to distract people from how pissed off they are about inflation and the economy, maybe it's not so bad, which gets back to what you said Claire. Like, can he turn out those low propensity mega voters? And what is he going to do? How is he going to try to do that? Like, it's not just a sort of, get on stage. - He's gonna call everyone, he's gonna call everyone communist, right? - Exactly. - Like that's what he's gonna do. - Right, it's remind people, and we're already seeing this with the Elon Musk sort of funded ads in Ohio and Texas about trans issues, which to your point, Nate, on the PodSave America podcast was like, you're kind of fighting the last battle here. It's not clear that that's gonna work in this new environment. All that to say, Republicans see their job here as to remind every like, to drag Democrats down with them and not let sort of a good economy and lack of foreign war speak for itself because people don't feel like we have a good economy and we aren't tangled in a foreign war. - No, there is a function. There are a lot of people who are not very enthusiastic about this midterm. A lot of them are Republicans, they're not gonna vote for a Democrat, will they vote or not? Trump should be able to, like, if Republicans, Republicans, it was like Iowa, the bench work we had in the first segment, like, that's a saladable state or should be for Republicans, for example. Torex is strong candidate, he's not a former incumbent, like, sure, brown or something like that. So holding a line there, I'm still not sure that spotlighting Trump helps. I mean, yeah, probably Democrats' biggest vulnerability is that they're not that popular. And as I have this shift in the primary electorate to the left, a lot of those stances aren't popular with general election voters. - Can you guess? - And Claire, which is more popular today? Donald Trump or the Democratic Party? - Trump? - Trump, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you see the sort of, like, quote unquote, high-quality Democratic candidates are often sort of saying, like, they're distancing themselves from the national party, they're playing up state issues, they're being a little bit more, you know, I'm an independent, even though there's a D next to my name. - But it kind of, like, the Trump second term now kind of feels a little shambolic, like, kind of like a failing Broadway show where they're trying gimmicks, right? You come up on stage yourself and sing. - He's Trump running the producers. - Yeah, you know, Lake America. - A little dancing frog, maybe? - No, you had a wrestling match on it. It's like a little-- - Maybe a little shimmy, give me a little, a couple jazz hands. Claire, what do you think? Is it gonna work? - Can we get a little theater criticism? - Still counting is brought to you by Zippercurter. I gotta say, I think I've been reading Zippercurter ads for, like, nine on a decade at this point. And an OG sponsor of-- - OG sponsor, and we're back. I mean, really, we've come full circle with Zippercurter. And I could have been more excited because they make hiring these days much better. In fact, it's usually very time-consuming. I know you've got your own small business. I've got my own small business. Hiring's not easy. - No, I am very meticulous about my hiring process. Believe it or not. I hired both of you kind of. We, the feet, the feet, yeah, the feet of strength portion was very difficult. And possibly illegal. Making us scale the walls at the, you know, the ABC building 530 headquarters. Nothing you wouldn't see on American Gladiators. That shows I'm dating myself, I think. 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Again, that's zipper cruder.com/counting zipper cruder the smartest way to hire. Okay, so I think we are coalescing around this Republican midterm convention being a bad use of convention fair enough by the next time we meet, we will have sort of numbers as to whether or not people people pay attention and whether or not Trump's approval rating went up or the generic ballot tightened or whatever all that jazz. I want to move on though to a tougher topic, which is that we are at the first anniversary of Charlie Kirk's assassination. I am sure this is going to be a theme or one of the themes of the convention as it's happening at the same time as that anniversary. This was a moment of party unity and a lot of sort of frustration and fear for the Republican party, especially after multiple assassination of times against Donald Trump, the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The Republican party has been, has had a topsy-turvy year in terms of, you know, sentiment about sort of how how much the coalition has held together, but at least a year ago, it felt like there was a lot of unity. And also, so we can talk about that, but I also want to talk about this first and foremost from the perspective of political violence. Yeah, absolutely. Which, you know, we can get into the numbers, but at the very least, if you look at the polling, Americans feel like political violence is increasingly a problem in this country. I mean, Nate was supposed to speak on a college campus the day after. I did. I was like a day or two after because I'm trying to read what I wrote. Being a blogger when I was saying is you're not allowed to like invent your reaction to something when you actually reacted to it in real time. And I waited a couple of days because like it did hit emotionally, like Charlie Kirk has a prominent political figure who gives talks in college campuses. I'm probably not as prominent, but like I, you know, I get hate mail and things like that. But the first time I was the onion tried to kill you. Yeah. Um, the first star was kind of annoyance. Um, phrase more elegantly than annoyance, right? But like, it's like, why does it want to have to have a fucking take about this, right? This terrible thing happened. It's frightening. Um, how do we prevent it from happening again? Why do you have to fucking take everybody, right? And then, and then a few days later, I wrote the political mood views like September 11th again, um, meaning that like it felt like, you know, I mean, I guess I'm older than you two. I remember like my first time out of college, you'd go to like, facilities and you'd have like the security threat levels and things like that. And, and, but what's, what a year later, that 9/11 feeling of the combination of unity, but also kind of weaponize unity. Like that, that's faded. That take feels wrong, right? That story lasted for about two weeks and then fades into the background. And by the way, um, you know, you also had an assassination attempt against the president at the White House correspondence dinner this year. That kind of fades into the background. You had an arson at Josh Shapiro's house. You had a kidnapping plot against Richard Whitmer. You had the congressional softball shooting, right? I mean, mostly Pelosi House attacked. All these things, Sam Altman was the target of majority violence. More recently, our producers put together a timeline of some of the political violence that the country has experienced over the past couple of years. And like, I, it made me feel sad reading, I mean, sad, for the country, but it made me feel sad. How much of what was in the timeline that I didn't remember? Uh, so, you know, United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, and fatally, that happened in 2024. Um, I mean, I, I remember that. No, it didn't. Brian Thompson, that happened in 25th February, December of 2024. Wow. Wow. That's really, I guess, so yeah, it happened right after the election. Yeah. I mean, I think that really, I did not remember, you know, the Minnesota House of Representative Speaker, Emerida Moe's reportman and her husband were killed last year in 2025, as well, and Charlie Kirk and the assassination attempts. And as you mentioned, the arson at Josh Shapiro's house, also, I mean, this is like very different, but created this environment where people were having reactions to politically centered vouchers, like the killing of really good and Alex Pretty and the clashes in Minnesota. And it's just like, yeah, and the way that I almost didn't remember the amount of like high profile violence over the past year and January 6th, and you had, but over the peaceful protest and riots in 2020, let's be clear. Yeah, I think it's, I mean, the past year has been, I mean, just to take the Kirk, the Kirk shooting felt, I think it was, it was amplified by the political media class feeling like, you know, all of us are on social media. Everyone worries about their families. That felt very frightening where it's like, we are now 10 years into super hardcore polarization. I mean, listen, we used to be on a mainstream news network, and now we're on, we are, we are a journalistic podcast that's that has no political affiliation, but we're on a left-leaning network, right? That speaks to the partisan nature of the country itself. But I think just like the violence associated with that, the fact that it's, you know, people like flocked cameras and AI, I brought up earlier, like people are really worried about these sort of existential things. And so I think that the Kirk killing felt was certainly amplified by a political class that felt personally very frightened. And then I think this past year of, I mean, yes, the killings of Renee Good and Alex Prede and others, right? Like I think we also forget like people who are dying in ice custody. I mean, I was particularly like there was, there have been a lot of sort of really disturbing stories about children and detainment centers. I think there was a little bit of not just sort of the political violence angle of it, but the number of times that we were reading about deaths in the context of U.S. government actions was out of the norm. And I don't think, and I think Republicans felt that too, right? That's a, that is a, that is a thing that is, it was sort of a death-soaked year in a way that felt very, you know, the political violence of it felt very like 1960s. I mean, we talk about that a lot, but it's now, I think we kind of can't deny that we now live in an era of political violence. And I think a little disturbingly, and I'll stop in a second, that we live in an era where because of that hardcore partisanship, because of infighting within both parties, there isn't a lot of clear moral leadership, right? Like who do people listen to, right? Like that's a, that's a thing I've been thinking a lot about, because a lot of, you know, you can have voices in the party saying, please don't amplify this, please, like, let's all call for calm. But America actually has a little bit of a moral vacuum problem. I think it's one of the reasons, I mean, this takes seriously, when the astronauts were up in space, everyone loved the astronaut content because they were like, I mean, they literally are like the best and brightest, but they were also being philosophical and religious and like, or like the Pope, right? I mean, obviously the Pope is now a partisan figure too in America, because that's what we do. But there was this sort of sense, I think, of like, we need like some bright spots. And I think about that as sort of like this vague America's moral code kind of rambling around. I think that's very real. And I think back to the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's assassination and like the degree to which it was treated in at least amongst online communities, which again is so not real life. But like, as a point for sort of jokes and like, it did be over whether or not like, Charlie Kirk was a good guy or it was justified or whatever on the left. And like, where is the moral authority to say? But then people were also getting fired for posting things, which is also. And then and then a more like authoritarian impulse on the right that's like, no, this kind of speech is unacceptable. I want to put some numbers to this to be like that guy. Because I think this encapsulates, we've been talking a lot about a feeling. And I think that these numbers from the US Capitol police sort of encapsulate something and I'll quote from their numbers that were at the beginning of 2026. The number of United States Capitol police threat assessment cases has climbed for the third year in a row. In 2025, the US Capitol police investigated almost 15,000 concerning statements, behaviors, and communications directed against members of Congress, their families, staff, and the Capitol complex. That is a 58% rise in threats against members of Congress from the year prior in 2024. And by the way, I believe that the Supreme Court asked for a budget increase this year because like almost purely because they want more security. And so. from also like a rigorous perspective, we know you said like who's the moral authority? When you ask Americans like is political violence acceptable, you get sometimes numbers as high as like 30% or so, 20, 30% or so. That polling, we should take that with a lot of skepticism. You know, if people may be answering and abstract ways off the cuff, when you get down into the specifics of like, do you think a specific act of violence is justified, like a killing, a property destruction, whatever, the percentage of Americans who say that it is justified is in these single digits. It's like 4% or lower. I mean, when we're getting into talk of real, sort of harm to individuals, maybe say as low as one or two percent bad news is in a country of 340 million people that is still far too many people who endorse the use of violence in politics. But what we do know about how to get that number lower and how to make people understand that political violence is never acceptable, is it requires the political leaders from which they take cues. And so if we don't feel like either of the parties have a clear more authority and there is this kind of breakdown and intra-party fighting and like no one, it doesn't really feel like- - But it's also, you know, the thing, I can't find the number right now in the document, but the United Health Care killing was, like broadly Americans said that that kind of assassination is immoral, but for people under, let's just find the number. - Yeah, I got the number for you. - But yeah, so for, so this is an Emerson College poll and the majority of voters 68% by far, right? Said that the actions of the killer were unacceptable. But 41% of voters between 18 and 29 found that killing to be acceptable. And I, you know, it's such an interesting as the wrong word, but I think that that vigilante killing because of a health care, because of the problem with the health care system, which I think like again, going to the political ads, right? Everyone hates insurance companies, right? Everyone loves Dalai Parton and everyone hates insurance companies. But I think that the direction that younger Americans are going to is on both sides, like there's, there have been a lot of really interesting pieces about sort of like the hardcore quasi-fascist, anti-Semitic things of like college Republican clubs, right? Like, you know, or the more extreme Nick Fuentesi. And I think that that just speaks to, to go to like, you know, the September 11th of it all. The past 25 years of American life had been, there have been profound shifts. I mean, I graduated in 2009 in the middle of an economic crisis, right? There, with the 9/11 generation is coming of age. And they are dealing with a society that they are right in some macro sense that there is something deeply, there are deep inequities. There are deep problems with our political system. I mean, like, if you are 18 years old and about to vote in this election, you have only known the Trump era as the kind of discourse. And I do find that disturbing, right? So those numbers are, you know, I think the killing was reprehensible, but that speaks to people having these frustrated ideas about like, how do we, how do we even fix the fuck up a re of the American system on a number of levels? - It's also, I mean, I would say, I guess as the, again, it was the elder statements, statement was podcast. - As a tenet. - Yeah. - As the only gen XR. - The only gen XR, um, the 1960s and 1970s were profoundly more violent than we have right now. You know, I think that's worth keeping some things in perspective. - Were there school shootings? I mean, like, I think you can art, like, politically violent, maybe, but like, I also think that we live actually in a quite, I mean, like, people who have school-aged children. - I mean, a lot more people are murdered. - Okay. - I mean, I don't like it too much. - No, murder rate is actually way to, say something nice about America, the murder rate is way down. - Historically, well. A lot more people work. I feel because of unsafe working conditions and car accidents and things like that. And like, I'm not, I'm not a big- - You're saying it would- - Of certain types of deaths, I guess. Of course, if you cover politics and everything. - Yeah, but it's an argument that a violent death or well-publicized death in that way is different. - It's tricky to de-amplify things, right? Let's don't take Charlie Kirk, 'cause Charlie Kirk is a political figure, journalists, whatever you wanna call him, right? When there is an act of terror and the primary purpose of the act of terror is to make people fear. And there's evidence that oftentimes, terrorist attacks, school shootings, things like that have a copycat effect where the more you publicize it, the more incentive there is for someone to try to be the next whatever that gets a movie made about him. To say, I don't think we should be talking about this as much, right? That's very hard to do. Because you'd be like, are you being insensitive? And if you say that, then you actually, it's hard to say the unsafe, you amplify it, and this was particularly true for that whole segment. - Yeah, I mean, do you think, do you think that? - Part of the reason I want to have this little half segment on Kirk is 'cause like, it is interesting looking back a year later how it felt, because I would have thought it would have more lingering effects than it did, and the fact that, frankly, Moe and I have remembered it until our producers, until we have these weekly meetings to think about every possible story we can cover, like, that seemed like a change. I just wanted to take that, you know, and I think that speaks to, I think some of the, I mean, it speaks to the multiple tabbed browsing brain, the Twitter brain that we all have. Like, it is actually a problem that none of us can remember what happened 12 months ago. And I mean, that's societally, right? Like, in the whole way to used history repeats itself, like, the fact that people don't have any lingering sense of-- - And, you know, look, we, you know, the president was shot, or the president, potential candidate, former president, Trump, and now current president was shot, in a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, was it June or July, 2026, 24? - July, yeah. - July 24. You know, you can easily tell a story where that was a pivotal event in the election, his favorability ratings. - Yes. - When Joe Biden exited the race shortly after that, and like, that's kind of not remembered. Well, maybe it should be. Like, if you remember, you know, the first thing I remember about 2024 is the chaos over Biden, right? But we had a president, so kind of come within millimeters of being killed, or seriously, seriously injured, and like, you know, shouldn't that have been the-- - It was, I think you're, we talked about this a little bit in the meeting the other day, where we were, you know, Butler is such an interesting, shocking moment. But Trump's even reaction in the moment, right? Whatever you can say about the guy, he knows how an image or a visual work, and so when he raised his hand, and then it sort of became a thing, and then Elon Musk was like, that was when he came out to say I'm for Trump. It's when Bobby Kennedy first reached out to him, and that was when the talks happened, and eventually, that eventually led to him endorsing. So it was this kind of maybe, maybe we can't specifically tie numbers to that assassination, but it had a profound psychological impact of moving people towards consolidating behind Trump. And what strikes me a year after Charlie Kirk's assassination, is that that didn't happen. In the same way for the Republican Party, it is much harder to be the party in power and deal with all of the infighting and responsibility that that brings. But this is very much a conversation for another day. I think we should talk about how sort of consolidated the Republican or the Trump coalition is, because it very quickly devolved into conversation within the Republican Party about Epstein and the war in Iran, and sort of disappointments with Trump and that whole thing. And I think this will be a reminder for Republicans about that sense of unity that they had. But I think I'll cast forward to future episodes. We'll talk about that. - Yeah, and just to add one more thing, I think about what the Kirk assassination and the months after it said about Republicans, I think there was at first this outpouring, and unity, and then I think some of the traits that have defined the modern Republican Party really came out in full force, namely conspiracy theories, right? Very prominently led by Candace Owens, who I profiled here for the New Yorker a couple of years ago. I mean, she was sort of talent scouted by Kirk, and then she did this quite, I mean, grotesque turn on him, and it was just a very strange series of weeks, and then people started talking about, you know, conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk and Israel, and you know, there were all these things that really, I think exemplified how the Republican Party deals with it, sort of ending up with like the Epstein transparency stuff, which it's too much to get into right now. - Well guys, we've had some highs and some lows, this first episode alone, if this is any indication of the rollercoaster ride of fun, seriousness, numbers, emotion that we are going to have on this podcast. I think folks are, I think folks are in for a ride. No, it's, it'll be fun, but it will also be information worth knowing about, we're thinking about, and so Nathan Claire, I wanna thank you so much for going on this rollercoaster ride with me today. - Thank you. - Because we're still counting. - I'm not participating in that. - That's it for today's episode of Still Counting. Listen wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe on YouTube. Of course, you can see us in action or pretty faces, all of this lighting, all of the sort of, my gesticulation I speak with my hands too much as I'm learning from this project. But anyway, subscribe on youtube.com/atstillcountingpodcast. We are going to be back next Wednesday evening with the next installment of Stillcounting. Until then, thanks for listening. (upbeat music) - Stillcounting is a crooked media production. Our producer is Saul Rubin. Our music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our production team includes Reed Trillin, Johanna Case, and Ben Hefkoe. Production support from Matt DeGro, Katie Long, and Adrian Hill. Our production staff is proudly unionized with writer's guild of America East. (upbeat music)