Vance Bombs at Brutal Town Hall

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Join the more than 6 million people who entrust SimpliSafe with their home security. Right now, save 60% off with professional monitoring when you visit simplisafe.com to learn more about SimpliSafe. That's simplisafe.com slash crooked. And when you order, please write in Pod Save America in the checkout survey. It lets them know we sent you and really helps to support the show. SimpliSafe, ahead of crime in real time. This is LeVar Arrington from Two Pros and a Cup of Joe. Let me tell you about Xero. That's X-E-R-O. Xero is a financial management platform that loves giving small business owners the clarity to have the confidence in their numbers. It puts accounting, payments, payroll, and analytics all in one place. So you always have one clear picture of your business. With visual dashboards, Xero makes it easy to understand your cash flow. You know exactly what's coming in and what's going out. So you can make smarter decisions that can help grow your business. Xero's AI can even offer insights to help you make your best move. It's powerful enough for an accountant and simple enough for you. Xero is the all-in-one to get business done. Learn more at Xero.com. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lubbock. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, we'll talk about Donald Trump closing strong with a pro-Putin, pro-corruption message. That's how you bring it home. We've got fun new details about the untimely demise of Katie Zachariah's career. Some updates on the pivotal Senate races in Maine and Michigan. And J.D. Vance's latest 2028 audition at a CBS town hall. We'll get into how it went. Then you'll hear my conversation with Mayor Paige Cognetti who's running to flip a critical House seat in northeastern Pennsylvania. But first, CrookedCon is coming up right after the election and we have just added a bunch more great names to the lineup. We've got Governor J.B. Pritzker's coming. Senator Chris Murphy. And then over from the House side, Ilhan Omar, Robert Garcia, Sarah Jacobs, Jamie Raskin, Sarah McBride. We also have Carlos Eduardo Espina, Simone Sanders Townsend, Eugene Daniels, David Pakman, Jessica Tarlow, Heather McGee, and then all the other people that we've announced on the website, plus more to come. Great list. Check out the full lineup and get tickets right now at CrookedCon.com. We'd love to see you there. That's CrookedCon.com. All right, let's get to the news. Two weeks to go until Election Day. That's less than three Zacharias. And Republicans are just hoping that Donald Trump can give their candidates another week that's as focused and helpful as last week where the White House message calendar included firing their ambassador to Greece over a corruption scandal, firing their new White House press secretary after five days. Over her inability to read out loud. Or talk. Speak. It's tough, right? Canceling a live streamed execution, violating a judge's orders by cutting down a bunch of trees to renovate a public golf course, another wild corruption scandal involving two Trump advisors, the Kennedy Center, a Turkish billionaire in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the fact that the president seems to have switched sides again in the Russia-Ukraine war. But it's a new week. And on Monday morning, Trump was at the White House just hammering his affordability message. The prices are coming way down. I'm seeing down, down, down. Big, big improvement from the previous administration. And if I might, that stone is so beautiful. See the cushions, those beautiful yellow cushions? They're supposed to be a half an inch high. I said, how about four inches? Don't they feel nice? They don't make them in four inches. I had them specially made four inches for everybody. What do you think? Four inches feels nice? Yeah, it's sort of a nice, you know, just a little bit of, a little, just gives you a little bit of something, you know? Not more than you need. Certainly not, certainly not as much as you could use. It's akin to him salivating over the rock-hard asses of other candidates he was seeing out on the road. We give rock-hard ass, you don't need the four inches. He's tried to show some of those asses his four inches. Hey, here we go. You know? Look, if you think that the ass thing is just something that us libs make fun of here on our podcast, made the New York Times, headline in the New York Times about Trump just spending the last couple of weeks just talking about men's physical appearance. Finally, finally made the gray lady. Our ass player president. He's an ass man. The gray lady. A term I haven't heard in a while. I like it. Yeah, it's just the hard copy thrown to my front door today. All right, let's start with Russia-Ukraine where Trump now appears to be caving to Vladimir Putin. On Friday night, he signed an executive order pulling back the tariffs and sanctions placed on Russia as part of an overwhelmingly bipartisan law named after Lindsey Graham that Trump himself signed just weeks ago. You may also remember that Trump recently lifted sanctions on Russian diesel as well, which has done nothing so far to actually lower the price of diesel in the U.S. He tried to explain all these moves in a Truth Social post on Saturday saying that he doesn't want to do anything that would drive Russia away from the bargaining table even though no one knew they were at the bargaining table. But it's pretty clear he's trying to blame the war in Ukraine for the high gas prices that are actually caused by Trump's war in Iran. He then got asked about this at the White House on Monday as he was leaving for a rally in Kansas. Mr. President, have you agreed to a trilateral meeting with President Xi to talk about Ukraine? No, but I would do it. Not so much for Ukraine because Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine. Zelensky says you're on the wrong side of history on this one. Zelensky said it? Yes. Zelensky doesn't know what he's talking about. Zelensky is a man that should have had this war settled a long time ago. If he would have listened to me, he would have made a much better deal a long time ago and he'd have a million people living from his side. And to be honest, I think it's time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine. We've given a lot to Ukraine. They've given nothing to us. Tommy, can you walk us through what's actually happening here? And our best guess right now about what Trump thinks he's trying to achieve here? He seems a little perturbed there. He's very sweated, too. I have to say, a reporter just saying, hey, Zelensky criticized you in this specific way is like a geopolitically dangerous question to ask. Like, just specific. It's like, it's nothing wrong to, it's not wrong to ask the question, but it's, man, it lets him go off in a way that is just escalatory. Yes, I had the same reaction. I'm sure it wasn't from a straight news outlet. Poke the bear. Yeah. So there's been this flurry of activity on Ukraine. I think it started with this diesel deal, which is, you know, basically sent like $4 million American dollars to the Russians, got no supply into the market. And at the same time, Trump announced an energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine that was news to everyone involved. The structure was like entirely tilted to the Russians, and then the Russians violated it right away. So Zelensky didn't respond to any of that positively, as you would expect. He kind of popped off, said some things that were a little bit overheated. And now there's a bunch of retaliation seemingly happening. So there's a report today that Pete Hegsath is holding up a shipment of Patriot missile interceptors. So that's the latest thing, which are the only way that Ukraine can defend against ballistic missiles. The administration was also messing with Ukraine's Starshield internet access. That's like Starlink, but it's the government contract side that goes through DOD. And what that did is they throttled the speed at which you could use Starlink, which means the interceptor drones that the Ukrainians used to take out Russian drones could not operate at the sufficient speeds they needed to to work. So these drones are just raining down on Ukrainian cities. There's been questions about intelligence maybe getting cut off around incoming ballistic missiles. I'm not sure the veracity of that one. But then finally, there's the Lindsey Graham legislation piece, which it should surprise no one that Trump kind of discarded with that because no one thought he was going to use the authorities he already has to get tougher on Russia. But he did essentially just stomp on his friend's grave by signing this waiver. So big picture, it's just the latest example of Trump not putting any pressure on Putin to get to the negotiating table. And what they were doing for a while was saying, if you make a peace deal, we'll give you all these incentives. And now it seems like they're even front-loading the incentives to try to get him to make a deal, like going to the Europeans and saying, hey, what if you guys bought Russian natural gas again? Wouldn't that be great? And the Ukrainians are just getting hung out to dry. And like Trump is literally helping the Russians kill civilians by cutting off intelligence. Yeah, we're saying that doesn't make sense. You want to pressure Russia into a deal, not remove the obstacles and the pain. experience for refusing to make the deal. Well, he doesn't want to piss Putin off. As he said in the truth, his truth post, he was like, well, I don't want to do anything to they haven't they haven't done much to help Iran so far. So I don't want to basically I don't want to fuck with them because I want to cozy up to the murderous dictator that has, you know, killed thousands and thousands and thousands of Ukrainians, civilians, children, all that, because otherwise he will help Iran where are, you know, we're fighting it, which is they're helping the Iranians. I know. So it makes sense. It's crazy. It's also it's very unclear what happened with this energy ceasefire, but wherever it came from, it seems to have come from purely conversations between the U.S. and Russia. Right. Because because the Putin called the Putin call to Trump. And so Zelensky, when he was asked about it, like this is the first time hearing about it. And so then it seems to have been a conversation just between Trump and Putin that he, he then posts about with Putin, which Putin then immediately violates. And then, of course, Zelensky violates. But then it's cast as this the breakdown of an energy ceasefire, but really was just Putin's. Who ever knows? There never was one. There never was a ceasefire and they never agreed to it. Right. We have no idea what that conversation was and why Trump then goes on to post energy ceasefire as a what? Like, is that encouragement? Well, I think what happened was Putin pitched him on this idea of an energy ceasefire, which is like neither side can blow up refineries, but only the Russians have refineries that are getting targeted. The Ukrainians had one and the Russians bombed it. So he was like, yeah, it's a great deal for me, the Russians. If you can't, you know, it's just not reciprocal. I'm sure Putin looked at what's happening here in the United States domestically, politically, and just thought to himself, well, he doesn't want he wants lower fuel prices and I could sell him on this this deal. And then maybe like Putin's playing like a fucking fiddle like he has forever. Putin also knew that the the deadlines on this Graham bill were about to hit. So he probably called Trump to get ahead of it, offer all these fake incentives to get Trump to issue the waiver that he actually did, which basically got rid of all the mandatory new sanctions that were part of the Graham bill. We're saying also that when the Graham bill was being debated, one of the objections was how much authority it gave the president to waive sanctions. That is why most of the House Democrats and some Republicans in the Senate, too, voted against it. Yeah, because there was basically like a trap door in the bill that would let Trump do exactly what he just did. So that's where we are. Good. But it's just like I mean, it's trying to guess why Trump is doing what he just did. It's just like, I mean, it's trying to guess why Trump is doing what he just did. But it's just like, I mean, it's trying to guess why Trump is doing what he just did. It's just like, I mean, it's trying to guess what he's doing on Russia. You know, like you don't need any sort of conspiracy theories about like Trump being a fucking Russian puppet or all this. It's just the guy has his own parochial personal interests, political interests. He's pissed that the price of gas is high. He knows that he can't blame himself, which is where the responsibility lies, because he started the round war. And Iran is why the gas prices and the diesel prices are so high. And so if something somewhere in the world could be potentially in the world could be potentially making diesel prices higher, like the war in Ukraine, then he's very, very willing to throw anyone under the bus and have a bunch of civilians die just because, fuck it, if it helps me a little bit politically at home, then that's great. Well, the amount of diesel we're talking about, too, I mean, like the full 1.8 million tons is like three and a half days of supply. So it's just like a de minimis amount. But meanwhile, I mean, that's over several months, right? That was the amount that was like for November, December, October, November, December, the full it was three hundred thousand and five hundred thousand and a million liters. So one point eight total is three and a half days of supply of the global supplies just does nothing. And then the broader context is Trump is having these calls with Putin and making these deals as the Russians have really increased attacks on civilians like they blew up a bus station for no reason. And a lot of experts I've talked to think the plan is, well, it's been reported everywhere to the Russians want to cut off major cities like Kiev from heat and electricity supplies. So there's a humanitarian crisis through the winter, which will, you know, obviously, like freeze and the population and submission. And you could see a place where a lot of civilians have to flee Ukraine and they go into Europe ahead of all these major elections and potentially destabilize, you know, other countries and lead to the rise of right wing parties. So it's just like a very feels like Putin is playing a very long game here. It's evil, but it's a long game. It was like nine million people displaced so far in Ukraine and like, I think, three million within Ukraine and six million into Europe, which is just horrifying. So we haven't had the chance to discuss the pay for play Kennedy Center scandal. Rather complicated story. I will do my best to briefly summarize and then you guys can jump in. So Trump's former lawyer, former U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Alina Haba, claims that her billionaire Turkish husband arranged a business deal that was supposed to include a nearly $6 million donation to the Kennedy Center that never got there and is accusing Trump's former Kennedy Center director. Rick Grinnell of diverting the money. Somehow this also involves a payment from the government of Congo to a Texas defense company that he's connected to that the billionaire Turkish husband is connected to, which, of course, is often how people support the performing arts. Right. Then on Monday, Axios reported on an alleged text from Grinnell promising Haba's billionaire husband access to Trump White House staffers and quote VIP events. Grinnell is denying he sent the text. The White House is apparently investigating the whole thing and no one seems to know where the millions of dollars actually went. When asked about Haba and Grinnell's competing claims at the White House on Monday, Trump said only I know they're having a little bit of a feud. Whatever it is, I wish them luck. What does that mean? What I missed? Grinnell is right. There's still graph that's going between the two. It's the whole thing is all you can sort of when you look at the whole thing, like whatever the actual substance of what's going on here, which we can't know because all these people are fucking liars. Like it is it stinks to high fucking heaven. It's really as far as I could get with all this. Yeah, there's a lot of weird sort of scandalous tabloidy stuff happening. We've got Gilfoyle's MX and all the other skills. This to me is like by far the weirdest one of all. Like just just a couple of facts like Alina Haba's husband. This guy, Turhan Mildon, he's a 29 year old Turkish billionaire, but maybe he's 25. Right. We don't really know his real age. He's like lying, lying about his age. I think it comes from a family business in Turkey, but he has ties to the Maduro regime in Venezuela, including like close ties with the Maduro advisor who was released from U.S. prison in a prisoner swap by the Biden administration and was accused by DOJ of, quote, profiting from starving of Venezuelans. So that's who his buddies are. Mildon told Forbes he's in the cement business down in Venezuela. I'm sure that's on the up and up. Apparently he's also in the shrimp business. His first marriage was to the daughter of a guy close with President Erdogan in Turkey. That relationship got him connected with the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, to whom he eventually became an advisor and now has like construction and mining interests in the Congo. Then he links up with Haba at the Kennedy Center. So I have no idea what's happening here. But everything about this fact pattern screams these are not legitimate businesses. These are fronts for something else. He's got a great attitude. He's got a great energy. Big cushion. And Rick Grinnell is saying that he didn't send this text that says it's from him because he's claiming that the Kennedy Center was spelled T-R-E instead of T-E-R. And that's like because it's the British way of spelling center, it couldn't have been from him. So it's like the three fingers from Inglourious Bastards, you know? Yes, yes. You know, whatever it is. Even though apparently the text shows like the picture of him, you know, like you have a picture of yourself on the text sometimes, like it's got his picture on it. So here, like, you sort of step back. Also, like, what would Rick Grinnell do with the money? What is it? Who knows? I guess it's not Rick's turn to get his beak wet. Cash it. When's it going to be Rick's time? Look, I have no it's really very confusing. These are all people you can't trust. It's all very dirty, seeming and shady. And all these people are liars. But you step back and just this is what happens when corruption is tolerated, when the Supreme Court rules in such a way that the president views himself as above the law, when the president is corrupt and making money off of his office, it invites all of this underneath. And it is a cancer, right? Like, corruption is one of those dangerous things that can happen inside of a democracy. And like, we are starting to see that all across the government. You see that with Guilfoyle, you see that with what's happening in crypto, you see that in this case, and whatever the specifics of this one event are, we are so far from normal. We are so far from kind of the norms of good governance and the fact that people don't profit off obviously, they don't intermingle their personal relationships, and the promise of meetings and VIP receptions. It is very bad. And Rubio, Rubio wanted to go the hard line, let's ultimately depose Maduro path. And I think Grinnell was more for rapprochement and talks. So it makes sense, actually, this Turkish guy with business interests in Venezuela would kind of have a financial relationship with Grinnell because Grinnell is the kind of guy who could grease the skids for you down there back in the day before he got kind of deposed and sent to the Kennedy Center and ultimately fired from there. So we don't really know if this money was ever exchanged, what the truth of it is. As far as what's public, there really was still just the $270,000 or so that was actually granted to the Kennedy Center, something to that effect? Yeah, well, the White House is investigating. Which I also, I will say, these are both former advisors now. And Alina Haba is no longer the U.S. attorney from New Jersey. Rick Grinnell is nothing right now because he left the Kennedy Center. And yet somehow both of them, they were like running into the Oval Office to complain about this. To complain to daddy. Which is, and then so Trump being like, whatever it is, I wish them luck. Like, I kind of get it from Trump right now because he's like, he's probably like, what the fuck am I dealing with this now? He told Will Sharf, the former staff secretary. To investigate. That guy's going to be like, how? Like, what authorities? But this is the thing, though, with the blending of the public and private, right? Because Jared Kushner is not a government official. He has just as much legitimacy as these guys, but he's in and out of real meetings. You have people on the outside promising all kinds of things. All of the kind of graft around the pardons are people that are outside the administration making all kinds of promises, right? Because there is no rule of law inside of this White House, it is about relationships. It doesn't matter if your badge works or not. I just love the idea of being like, throw your Kennedy Center donation into the other check. I'll take care of it. Don't worry about it. Yeah, yeah. Listen. Just send me your ID. Send me your ID. Send me one Venmo, and I'll Venmo the Kennedy Center, and I'll Venmo the restaurant. The new Kennedy Center, brought to you by the DRC. It's crazy. I love that Alita Haba didn't know where the money came from. She's like, oh, he's stealing from my husband. Then they look at the wire transfer, and it's like, this is finance minister of the Congo? What? What are you talking about? So the three of us also haven't had the chance to talk about Katie Zachariah's record-breaking tenure. She did great. As the shortest-serving White House press secretary. Political reporter. Reported on Friday night that the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, allegedly helped to set up the Sean Hannity interview that brought Zachariah down. Two White House sources described it to Politico as, quote, a sanctioned hit. But then there was another report that actually Zachariah, she booked the interview herself. Yeah. That's so funny. I don't know. What are your overall thoughts on those rumors, or just more broadly, her meteoric rise and fall? Well, she was made of cotton candy, right? Like, whether or not somebody threw a bucket of water on her, it rained. You know, like, she's going to get, you know, it's like, this was going to come apart. Like, oh, wow, it was a sanctioned hit. Like, how diabolical. A fourth question? You were like, what are we talking about? He was Sean Hannity. Right, Sean Hannity. The sanctioned hit was, go out and talk. Yeah. She's going to, what was that going to happen Monday? More talking. It was a six-minute, 45-second interview. It wasn't like a hit job. Yeah. I think it's a two-things-can-be-true situation. She was set up to fail, and she was absolutely terrible. Terrible at the job to begin with. Like, she, you have to prepare for that job. You have to memorize talking points and policy positions and do murder boards and practice. Know how to read and know how to speak. Know how to speak extemporaneously and while reading. You have to spend time with the president. You have to spend time with top advisors and, like, kind of understand the thinking. And so the minute you heard, okay, she got offered the job Friday and then was briefing on Tuesday, you're like, you're done. You're screwed. And so that, like, the Hannity was a sanctioned hit. The first question. The first question was, how did you think the briefing went? Yeah. It's a bit like Katie Couric's gotcha about any magazines you're reading lately. Sarah Palin. Yeah. The other thing about this is all like, ugh, she's so unprofessional. Unlike the incredible Caroline Leavitt, who could lie with aplomb, right? She knew how to stand up there like a professional, right? She would prepare and be ready to go up there and defend the indefensible conduct, the graft and the corruption. It's one of the most despicable behavior we've ever seen in the history of this country. Like that. Like a pro. Yeah. Like a pro. That's why she didn't get fired. That's right. That's why Katie Sakurai is gone. Yeah. And so my point being only, I'm sad she got fired. I think we, this is the spokesperson Trump deserves. The best part of the Hannity thing is when he played her off with music at the end. Just that was amazing. Like it was a bad Oscar speech. I've never heard that on Fox before. It's not like they usually have to cut to something else. No. It's like, oh, we're going to miss the catheter commercial. Yes. Do we think she's going to be replaced at all? I don't know. Eventually, probably. I don't know. At least not until after the midterm. I also, I don't think she's leaving the White House. I think she's just getting transitioned to another job. I think that's the plan. It's the first law. Trump said specifically that she is going to be taking another form because, because I think that because Katie, Katie Zachariah obeys the first law of thermodynamics. It cannot be destroyed nor created. It just has to be transmuted into something else. Wow. What a, that was just, just amazing. An amazing run. Five whole days. One briefing. One briefing. Five days. Five days. Two interviews. She did Hannity. She did, I think, Jack Popasek or whatever. Yeah. She also did Fox and Friends. I think that went quite poorly, too. Oh, yeah. The Fox and Friends. Is there a. I was going to say, I was told by someone who spoke with her that she, that when Trump went out to the sticks and repeated the conversation he had with her when he was like, I told her, are you sure you want to do this? You should think about something else. She didn't know that meant she had been fired. Didn't read between the lines. Well, because she was in the middle of a Wall Street Journal interview. Is that what was happening? She was in an interview with some press. Someone came in and was like, hey, you know what? Hey, J.D. needs to see you, J.D. Vance. Which I am, my theory on that was that that is an internal White House sentence they use to get someone out of a room. Yes. Because, hey, because you can't walk it, knock, knock, knock. Hey, Katie, you're being fired on television. Right. No, of course. You're being fired on television as we speak. We'd like you to not find out about that while the Wall Street Journal reporter is in the room. So J.D. Vance needs to meet with you is like, you know, wasn't clear as if J.D. Vance was handed the dagger by Trump and was like, finish it. And that's the part I couldn't tell. Wasn't he in Michigan doing the town hall? This doesn't make Trump or Vance? Vance. That's why I thought it was a lie. That would have been even funnier if like J.D. Vance needs to meet with you. He's not even here. And she wouldn't have known because she's not familiar with the daily schedule. Walks into an office, walks into that room like Joe Pesci thinking she's about to be made. That's what I just said. Oh, did you just say that? Yeah. I said end a good fight. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, wait, no. Oh, man. Oh, man. Oh, man. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you've been sitting on the fence about trying therapy, there's never been a better time to try it with our long-term partner, BetterHelp. 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Vance and Ted Cruz have been posting some version of if Democrats win, something similar will happen here. Trump's been posting clips of the chaos or retruth in them or whatever the fuck you want to say. On Monday morning, he wrote the migrants have taken over France. They must close the borders fast. Seems like a stretch to me. But what do you all think? Just. You know, first of all, this these protests, they want to make this about immigration, but it's just very clearly about in part fuel prices, right? Like if this is coming from the Middle East, it's because of the price of fuel has more in common with that yellow vest protest a few years ago than it does with them trying to act like America's next if we don't elect Republicans. The other part of it, too, is like, well, you know, the French are ripping up the cobblestones as an old joke. It would be helpful if they numbered them so they could put them back, for the next time they rip them out again. Like we don't, you know, the French riot every once in a while, they had their revolution, we had ours, we got a constitution, they got Napoleon. Like we just do things differently and that's okay. Like I don't think we're gonna lose our heads every time the French go nuts. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, no, I do actually. I mean, just, yeah, in terms of the facts, like this round of protests started like high schools in the suburbs of Paris. These kids went back to school and they had classrooms with no furniture and sometimes no power. There were staffing shortages and they were coming off this brutal heat wave summer where none of the buildings had air conditioning. So there's some God awful conditions. So they start protesting. Some of the student led protests get out of control. They're like, you know, smashing up or burning schools. Then I think the public sector unions joined the protests. They started including grievances about the 2027 budget. And then over the weekend, you have like some say half a million, some say 800,000 people hit the streets. And at some point the riot, like it became a riot in places and they started smashing shit and burning stuff. Just destroying businesses for absolutely no reason. And so it's not clear why the protests got out of control. Like some of the protesters blame the cops for being very heavy handed. Like there was like a kid who got his hand blown off by like a cop stun grenade, for example, 15 year old. Some of the Macron government blames the far left. The far left blames the government for not delivering on any of the concerns these kids have. The far right blames immigrants and everybody else. And so it's a mess and it's terrible because these kids have like total legitimacy. And so it's a mess and it's terrible about the schools, but also the government is dealing with what is coming close to a debt crisis where their borrowing costs are going up. They have all these budget constraints and they're in a very bad place. And Macron is kind of like out to lunch. Like he cares more about like Ukraine and Javelin missiles or whatever, you know, like Patriot missile batteries than like domestic stuff. But it's a terrible setup because the French have presidential elections in 2027 and the far right is in the lead currently. And the far left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon is not, you know, is also like, it could be him and the far right in a runoff. And I feel like that's a scenario where you see Marine Le Pen. And so I've like, to answer your question, I have a hard time believing that voters in the US care about this because as you noted at the top, America is not in France. But it is like, you know, it wasn't just far right media. Like I was seeing it everywhere. I had feeds over the weekend. Oh, I'm sorry. It's scary. I was seeing it everywhere. It's just that the way they were showing it, is very, you know, immigration focused. And also like, you can tell Fox is just doing the thing where they're like, we've got nothing else to say, where the polls are down. So let's get some more Abdul. Let's get some Hassan Piker if we can. Is Mamdani doing anything? And then we got some fires in France. Let's do it. Let's do it. Fires in France. And they're pulling, right. They're pulling like pro-Palestinian images, right? As if that is what is the undergirding, the undergirding, the protest across France. When again, like it has, what is driving it? It's driving a lot of this. Like the cost of diesel is way up in France. The cost of fuel is way up. Like there is a version of the affordability crisis that is in the US is hitting France very hard. And they take to the streets in a very different way than we do. Yeah. And I just think like immigration is just less salient now in America because Trump shut the border. Yeah. It's like not the thing people are really worried about. They're worried about cost of living. And I think like French riots, I don't know. Who am I? Maybe I'm telling them. No, I think there's no way. I think they're just trying to reach for anything at this point. Now, despite Fox News showing tons of images from this, Trump is not happy with the network. He's been, you know, he's been going after like individual Fox hosts up until now. But on Monday, he posted a plea to his supporters not to watch his event on Fox, but instead to watch it on RSBN, the right side broadcasting network. I didn't even know that existed. They stream all this stuff? That's the only reason I know. He said that Fox is devoting too much time to the Democrats and quote, trying to be political, politically correct, which I know they're always trying to be politically correct over there. Classic. We have Fox on in our office all day. Although, you know, we just got our office moved around so we haven't had a TV for two days. So maybe we've missed it. Maybe they've gone full live. Maybe it's like MS Now over there. Yeah, they got Rachel. They got the Chiron's at pronouns. It's Hannity and Maddow now. Back like the old days. Remember when it was Hannity and Combs? Yeah. You guys think they're going too easy on Demick? What is he seeing? What made him mad? I don't know. Usually there's like an inciting incident. Like he was mad at the Abdul interview. Probably seeing the poll number. He's probably seeing polls that they're putting out. Yeah, I bet that's right. I bet there were Fox News polls that were not great for him. That had been like the high 30s. I think he was mad about Jesse Waters interviewing Abdul. I think he gets mad at Jessica Tarlow all the time just for like existing. Just existing. Yeah, she does a good job. Yeah, I mean, it's really a kind of baffling one. Other than, you know, there have been these moments, we've seen it with Waters and some others where like they kind of can't keep up the act all the way right now because the facts are so, we'll talk about Vance and his struggles. The facts are so bad. They are trying their damnedest. And unfortunately, even just trying to defend Trump, you have to give a little. Otherwise you have, what you're saying makes no sense. Right? So they acknowledge the problems. They have to acknowledge how bad things are. They have to acknowledge that the war is ongoing before they get to some kind of logic to support this whole operation. And Trump can't countenance that at all. Well, and some of them are doing the, I got to give some advice to the administration through my broadcast stuff now. And so, I'm sure that really bothers him as well. And you got to teach the controversy. Even some Republicans, right, have come out against the diesel rule, right? Like that's going to be covered, right? You have, it's not Thune, it's McConnell. Yeah. You got some warmongers there that are probably upset that he's not going harder with Iran or they're probably upset about the Ukraine-Russia stuff. The Russia stuff, yeah. So yeah, that's a good point. Jesse Waters is like, would I have led with 20 minutes of commentary about John Husted's ass? No. But it was a good speech otherwise. Trump had another interesting post today. He's sort of, he floated this once before, but today it really became real. New Mexico should immediately change its name to New America. We're doing that again. We are not Mexico. We are the United States of America. The name would add great value and prestige to the state. Home values and incomes would rise and you would be even prouder while saluting our beautiful American flag. Maybe even the crooked elections that New Mexico is known for would become honest again. So that's what we're doing now. Just exhausting. He's just 15 days out, 14 days out, and he is just flying around. On his way to Kansas and he's just posting about New Mexico. Yeah. New America, sorry. Does that play anywhere? Watch out, New England. Yeah, what? I, you know, who knows what's going on with this? Does it play anywhere? It plays nowhere, I think. Yeah. Absolutely nowhere. He likes, what, drumming up the anger about it? I don't know. We're sort of so past method to madness at this point. I have no idea. He was out there talking about fucking cushions that he got made. He got made special in the beautiful stone this morning. So I don't think his head is exactly in the right place. I just think he thinks it's funny. A lot of things have overlapping names. North Dakota, South Dakota. We don't have to merge them. I would just say also, it's like, hey, you know, it's called New Mexico and not Mexico because we won. Well, yeah. There's also North America. There's South America. It was also called that before it even became a state, so. This fucking guy. Okay. Let's talk about the race for control of the Senate starting with Michigan, which is closing as ugly as I think most of us expected. Trump, Mike Rogers, the extended MAGAverse are trying to tie Abdul to the Muslim Brotherhood based on a 14-year-old tweet from Abdul's half-sister saying their mom was reminiscing about being active with the Muslim Brotherhood as a college student in the early 70s, a time when the group had renounced violence, wasn't designated as a terrorist organization, and more than a decade before Abdul was born, who didn't grow up living with his birth mother or half-sister. Other than that, bombshell. Unsurprisingly, CBS News chief Barry Weiss is now very interested in this topic. She's, according to Semaphore, she's been trying to get her reporters to establish some kind of concrete link. She's going everywhere trying to, Jan Crawford is the chief legal correspondent for CBS News, was tweeting about this town hall exchange that we're about to talk about as well. She got in trouble for that. So CBS is really, under Barry Weiss, they're doing a great job. Barry Weiss seems like the kind of boomer relative that would forward around chain emails, in the early 2000s. Well, I mean, according to. But in an assignment editor. Yeah, Max Tanney, in the Semaphore piece, is basically like, yeah, they have staffers at CBS being like, most of her ideas come from right-wing tweets and random. Maybe, where is Tal Rico? Maybe he is at a health facility. Yeah, she asked people to investigate that as well. All right, so Abdul got a question about all of this, the Muslim Brotherhood stuff, at a town hall on Saturday, from what seemed like, he just called himself Tommy, this guy. Just seemed like a. For that, fuck him. Yeah, right. Just seemed like a Michigan voter named Tommy. Turns out he was a former Josh Hawley staffer turned Republican operative, posing as a normal person named Tommy. Here's how it went. I have one simple question. Will you disavow the Muslim Brotherhood? Sure, yeah, absolutely. But I want to ask the question that you're asking. Why are you asking the question? Well, because they're a terrorist group. Okay. No, no, but what are you implying? Do you assume that I wouldn't? Yes. Why not? Because I have not. I have not heard you disavow them yet. Have you disavow them? I haven't heard you disavow them yet. I disavow them. Do you? Great. We have a constitution. And that constitution guarantees you the right to live by your faith and guarantees me the right to do the same. And the reality of it is this. I'm never going to tell you what faith you can or can't practice. I want to protect your right to practice your faith as you choose, as a Christian man. The other question, though, is that it seems - It seems like you don't have I don't want to protect my right to practice as I choose to practice. So I'm going to ask you, do you disavow any attempt to read any religious doctrine into the laws of our country? You don't disavow that? So I think it's you who needs to understand the Constitution, not me. And here's Mike Rogers responding when asked about it the next morning on CNN. He didn't disavow it. He goes on this word salad trying to get around the fact that he can't do it. He said, sure, yeah. No, that's not true. Dana, listen. I'm not. I don't want to debate with you. I don't know why the press is so eager to protect this guy. Congressman, I just want to be factual. And it is. It's an ideology. I want to be factual. My argument is, is that ideology something we should worry about? I think it is. Just a fucking liar. Just so annoying that she's like kind of hesitant there. It's like, no, he specifically said it. It's on tape. We all heard it. I mean, they all. They are all just choosing to ignore it. All the right wing people. This is what. So this is one of those where Abdul's campaign clipped it, sent it around, and then also all the right wing people's clipped it and sent it around to both. Both sides thought that they got the better of the other one on this one. What did you guys think? It's a political Rorschach test, I think. I mean, like the people don't like Abdul. First of all, like they love talking about whether he condemns the Muslim Brotherhood or not. They also think that maybe he looks a little arrogant, a little obnoxious. I think Abdul's fans like it because he looks like a fighter and he sounds smart. In practice, I think it was like probably the most viral interaction for Abdul's campaign or maybe any of the campaigns that we've seen. So we're judging by attention garnered. Maybe it was a success just like kind of on that metric. I think we also now know, though, that the context like this is clearly a Republican plant. It was a guy who worked for Josh Hawley. And I think the kid's father worked for Bobby Jindal, right, and maybe worked at a PAC associated with Jindal. But personally speaking, I think I watch that and like I can understand Abdul's frustration at these like bigoted questions of like, do you denounce the Muslim Brotherhood because your mother who didn't even raise you maybe was associated in the 70s? Like it's an idiotic question. I think that the answer is like smart and thoughtful and an important point about the freedom of religion and not mixing it with politics and also maybe a little condescending and heated at points, maybe too sharp. I think there's a dialogue there. Yeah. I think that's a very well-down version that is like just a little less defensive. It cuts out the part where he's like, do you know who JFK is? Right. Because like obviously this kid knows who JFK is. And it's sort of heralded as this learning moment. But of course, this is real life. This is not the West Wing. You know, it's like easy for us to like fly spec them from here. But you don't know what it's like to like deal with this shit all day, every day. And essentially, you know, the implication is this guy's suggesting that you're a terrorist and that this is going to be the thing the press seizes on. Yeah. I don't. I don't. I don't think he's going to respond to that. I think he's going to respond to that. He's going to respond to that. fair to take that and decide that this person can't be trusted or shouldn't be in the Senate. I find that ridiculous, especially when the stakes are so high, but I'm just, I'm just trying to understand where this feeling is coming from. And it's clearly more than just a random Republican operative. Like he has a, like he has to, there, there remains like a real problem. Now you can ascribe that entirely to Islamophobia. Maybe a good portion of it is that, but there's still something to that. I think it's because he's a, he has a lot of moral clarity on his feelings about the U S relationship towards Israel. And he is unwilling to bend or give an inch on that. And there's a lot of people who want him. There is a question about Jewish safety. That's one, but there's a question. He like was pretty honest that he doesn't necessarily think that Israel is an ally of the United States in this moment, but he's unwilling to change his mind to, to bring someone along politically on that. But this is where I'm not asking him to change his mind on that. But like you look at that answer that he gives on that question. Right. And, and maybe this is slightly different. Part of this, but I do think it feeds into this question, right? Like, so when he was talking to Jessica Tarlov and Scott Galloway about this, right. And it was about people who are unwilling to call it a genocide, right? Like in that answer, right. There is a version of saying, look, I believe strongly that what Israel is doing is a genocide. I understand that there are people who may be appalled by Israel's conduct, but disagree, but we can all agree on the, the, the, the horror of this war. Or the need for Israel to be held accountable for, to change his behavior for us to stop funding the military. Right. But there are moments have that have happened throughout this debate, where throughout this debate, throughout the campaign, where he doesn't acknowledge that there might be sincere people who disagree. And he, and he kind of assumes that they are either being dishonest or not acknowledging or have a kind of an indifference. Is that what you said to them about that? It was the, I there, I'm going to, I'm going from memory. There's been a bunch of different moments like this. And again, like, I, I, I'm going to, I'm going from memory. There's been moments where I'm like, I, I, there have been moments where it, that he doesn't acknowledge that there are people with a sincere disagreement that aren't disagreeing because they're captured by AIPAC or sort of corporate or stooges or whatever. And all that I think feeds to a, into an idea that like, oh, he's not someone that I can trust. Right. And like that remains, I think a, a place where even if he doesn't give an inch on his moral position, that clearly there are people, and maybe that, maybe there's nothing that can be done. Maybe that those are people that could never be won over. But I just, I just, I don't know, but I like, that is what I hear. Yeah, no, maybe, maybe there've been answers that have been like that. I've, I've heard him do exactly what you wanted. I think people just wanted to take a different policy position. And I think he made a version of the argument you kind of made at the top here, which is look, we're not going to agree on Israel, but we agree on all these other things. So let's come together on those. And that's, you know, a tough thing for people to hear sometimes, and maybe it will be ineffective, but I, you know, look, I, I, I think he is far more in line with where the majority of voters are when it comes to US policy towards Israel than a lot of his detractors. And I understand why he's sort of sticking to his guns here. I also think that there's, this argument could be made against him fairly in the primary and right after the primary. I think he's done a lot of work since winning the primary on this. And I think to the extent that people are either there, you're right there, he's saying it, but they're still not hearing it. And that's like, I don't know what you're going to do about that. And because he can be, you know, he still has that sort of cocky attitude sometimes. I think that sort of adds to it as well. It's also a frustration in politics. Like how many times do you need me to say the same things before I've passed the test on the left? It's like, how many times do I need to say genocide before I've like sufficiently led you to believe that I agree that what's happening is a genocide on the right? It's like how many times do you have to mouth the same exact words about, you know, sort of the US Israel partnership or whatever it is to assuage those. I don't know. It seems your job is to not get frustrated in those moments, but you can tell, you know, it occasionally happens. Right. Because you want to have like an actual conversation with nuance about it and you can't because like you said, you have to say this word or this word. And by the way, like there's, this is not just on this issue, right? Like we had Katie Porter, Katie Porter, by the end of that campaign, she could not do an interview without being asked about the time she yelled at a staffer, right? And how many different times did she have to apologize? She has to answer for it every time. Look, I'm not saying that there've been plenty of moments where Abdul has had these kinds of heartfelt interactions, but there have been also the plenty of moments where he has been defiant or been, you know, define these issues in such a way that would alienate people that might be willing to support him. And I think that, that remains a challenge. It is the, the, the moral questions, but also the feeling like they are, he is not welcoming people into his coalition. Pod Save America is brought to you by HIMSS. If you're not completely satisfied with your sex life, you don't have to settle. HIMSS makes it easy to get personalized physician-backed treatment plans designed to enhance your sex life. 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From paying your rent and hailing a lift to booking dinner reservations across 50,000 or more partners, it handles your to-do list while automatically applying your member benefits. What you do is this. First, download the Built app. Then, link any credit card or debit card with the app so purchases at your local spots become even more rewarding. And third, ask the Neighborhood Concierge in the app pretty much anything, and it'll alert you about exclusive member benefits near your home. Download the Built app and join the membership for where you live at joinbuilt.com slash crooked. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash crooked. Use our link so they know we sent you. All right, let's talk about the race in Maine, which, as we've discussed, is another blue state where it's given us heartburn as we get close to the end here. Right now, a lot of the chatter in the national media is about this moment from last Thursday's debate between Troy Jackson and Susan Collins. And the candidate's response is. Susan Collins, I'm so sorry to interrupt. I'm sorry somebody's interrupting. We'll have our security deal with that. AI data centers are destroying our climate. They are poisoning our water. So this is obviously one of Troy's supporters. Oh, shut up. I didn't know that kid. I didn't even know that kid. So if you didn't quite hear that, Jackson said, oh, shut up. And now Collins is trying to make this. This is a big deal. Dana Bash asked Jackson if he'd apologize for that. He said no, that Collins was talking down to him. What do you guys make of this whole thing? I find this selective media outrage so frustrating and so stupid. Susan Collins said to Politico, I'm not going to bring up the fact that the mother of his two children is his second cousin. I don't know whether people know that or not. Dude, I was going to bring that up because for some reason I was listening to some podcast where someone played that exchange again. And I was like, that was. She got so little shit for that. She got credit from the kind of like DC elites being like, oh, what a clever way to say something disgusting about another human being. And Dana Bash is asking if like he's going to apologize for saying shut up. These are grown adults. Give me a break. We have more important things happening. Well, you're also trying to gender it too. Because like if he was running against a guy who said that, he said shut up, everyone would have been like, oh, great. You're not children. Shut up is not like. It's also like he didn't even say it in the. He said it. He said it and I kind of like, ah, shut up. Like an odd shot. He's kind of like, shut up. It's like, come on, guys. Abdul is getting called a terrorist by his opponent and we're worried about shut up. Come on. Also, like she deserved it. She lied. Right. And she tried to make everyone think that it was a fucking plant, right, in the debate to try to score some points. And so she thinks she's just going to be able to get away with that. And Troy Jackson is just supposed to fucking sit there and take it because she's Susan fucking Collins who's been there six terms, five terms. Is it the perfect answer in the moment? No. But like, is it a problem? Is it offensive? Is it going to like turn off voters? Come on. It's like Donald Trump is the president of the United States. What are we doing? What are we even talking about? We're policing an offhanded, an offhanded, very chill shut up. Like, what are we talking about? It's just insane. It is amazing how little of our politics is about what's like. It's just unserious. The next, the next, whoever could, there could be two Supreme Court vacancies. Uh, what are we doing here? All right, let's get to the good stuff. Whether Democrats crush expectations on Tuesday or whether we fall short, we know we have one thing to look forward to. J.D. Vance, 2028. And the Charm Effect. has already begun this weekend. Vance did a CBS town hall in Michigan where he was laser focused on his most urgent campaign message, that he is in fact a normal human being. We have a lot to talk about. So let's get started. Vice President Vance, thank you very much for being here. Good to see you. Thank you for doing this. And thanks to everybody for being here. I will say, Tony, you did me a huge disservice by reminding a crowd of Michiganders that I'm from Ohio, but hopefully they will hold against me. Not only that, we've got a medallion back there for the Ohio State Buckeyes. Oh, wow. Yeah, it might be stolen before the night is over. We just lost the crowd. I know. I'm a law-abiding guy outside of speeding, which luckily, thanks to the Secret Service and the generosity of the American people, I don't drive anymore. Probably good for the insurance rates in southwestern Ohio. How old are your kids, can I ask? Yeah, sure. My youngest is three months and my oldest is 21 months. Oh, wow. What's the birthday of your youngest? His birthday is July 11th. Oh, wow. Wow. July 19th. Wow. So that's when maybe Alec was born. So we have them maybe eight days apart. That's amazing. Are you running for president? Not you. I guess you're not a Michigander. No, I live in the state of New York. The Republic of Brooklyn. Vice President J.D. Vance, thank you very much. The Socialist Republic of Brooklyn. A couple of fucking comedians. Thank you all. That is absolutely brutal. Get those two a Netflix special. Brutal banter right there. The laughing, I really. We talked about on our call this morning, we were like, oh, we're going to talk about the J.D. Vance town hall. And so I just turned it on to watch the whole damn thing. And within seconds, it's like, oh my God, just from the first moments of it, that kind of horrible feeling you get when you see J.D. Vance in front of a group of people with that kind of, that laugh, that chuckle. He keeps calling people man. He's like, hey, man. There's a moment where he just goes like, look, it's so outrageous to say. Look, the bottom line is sometimes it's just about character. And here's the thing about Mike Rogers. He's a good dude. And it's like, you work for Donald Trump, the most despicable human being ever to sit in that office. And first of all, Mike Rogers is many things. He's not a dude. He's kind of a guy, but he's not a dude. Kind of an old man. Yeah. Is he ordering on old man? Mike Rogers is a good dude. I don't think so. I don't know why. He's not a dude. Vance did try to tackle some of the tougher issues he'll have to have answers for next year. It wasn't necessarily more encouraging. Let's watch. I plan on voting for Al Sayed in this upcoming election. And I want to know why should I vote for Mike Rogers instead? Now, I see what Abdul Al Sayed says about the war in Iran. I see he criticizing decisions that the president has made, the military has made. But fundamentally, we are where we are. It's easy to criticize something that happened seven months ago. You were the first person I voted for, actually. Oh, wow. Congratulations and welcome. After seeing ICE behave like military police and you recently call H-1B, I think Americans are anything but safe. So I'm just curious, why are you scapegoating immigrants for the issues you're supposed to be solving as the vice president? I think that our immigration system has to balance the fact that obviously we have duties of charity to people, people who want to come to the United States of America and build a better life. They're not talking about the system or the policy. They're talking about the rhetoric, the language. What they see is dehumanization of immigrants. Sure. And Tony, I will tell you that nobody's perfect. Certainly not me. Wow. The issue that voters see and that gets on their mind and that I hear when I'm out there is the president is making a lot of money off of crypto. His own IRS has barred itself from looking into his tax returns. You have this recent issue with the ambassador to Greece seeming to sell access to the White House. That's why people are concerned. I've seen these media reports. And I have the same reaction. I imagine a lot of people in this room have, which it makes me uneasy when I read about my public officials potentially getting wealthy off of my public trust. And I'm telling you that while yes, D.C. is a corrupt town. Tony, you know, this is as well as anybody. Donald Trump. I have not seen a single shred of evidence that he participates or sanctions in that corruption. By the way, this guy was a billion. Follow up there. Like Tony's like, OK, next issue. It's like, how about the fucking selling the crypto business to the Emiratis? Was that an opportunity? It's just like that makes me crazy on Hall. Maybe realize I'm like, oh, J.D. Vance's entire plan for twenty twenty eight is to pretend that the Trump administration never really happened. And anything that did happen, J.D. Vance had nothing to do with it. Like it's easy for Abdul El-Sayed to criticize some decision that was made seven months ago. Who made that decision to attack Iran and send fifty thousand troops to the Middle East and jack up gas prices all over the world? And we had who did that? Oh, easy to criticize us now. What are you going to do about it? The mess that we fucking created? It's I also he's not exactly, I would say that, you know, the most adroit political figure, but he's in an impossible position. Donald Trump is the most corrupt person to ever inhabit that office, probably the most corrupt Democratic leader in modern history to say, oh, I've never seen Donald Trump participate in corruption. Well, that's absurd on his face. He should follow up. But we all know that. I don't know who's out there. Very narrow group of people aren't aware of the fact that everything from the fucking jet. There's a lot of people who are not aware. They're like your job at that moment. Do one last topic and follow up a couple of times. Be like, hey, what about this example? What about that example? What about the meme coins? What about the crypto? It's like like it was a good town hall. They asked some good questions like credit to CBS. And I thought he felt like I think you're right. The other one on the rhetoric thing, we're talking about the scapegoating language known as like you. Hey, remember when you said the Haitians were eating dogs and cats? I know the most famous fucking like dehumanizing. Comment on anyone over the last however many years other than Donald Trump. He just tweeted today or yesterday about France. Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion. Is that part of his like imperfect language? He said America has a bit of a Somali problem. A couple months ago, he said that Ilhan Omar should show a little appreciation or she'd be living in a crap hole. He didn't say shit. So I guess that's OK. Like the guy has been used dehumanizing language the entire fucking administration and the 24 year campaign. Yes. But then it's like, OK, so then so in this one context, he's not going to be using that language because he's referring he's talking to somebody who is because who is an immigrant. And so he's not going to use that language. But if he is going to be running for president, he is going to be using that language on the stump. Yep. So like it does all the time. So it's like I don't really like, OK, I agree. I don't think it's going to I don't think it's going to work. But this is what I just mean. It's just like, OK, like these things should be like in that one in that moment, it would have been very good for J.D. Vance to be confronted with his rhetoric. But he is clearly aware of the problem it creates. And then he is going to go out and create more of that problem again. Right. Because most of the most of the Republican base wants to hear the fire and brimstone. Most of the country wants him to sound more like this. So that that is that was my takeaway from this thing, which is he's clearly trying something out. He does some a few times. Look, I don't agree with Democrats and everything. I don't agree with Republicans on everything. He's trying out this idea that he's an outsider who's always been kind of running against the system. But then he's confronted with the reality of his participation in what this administration has done. And he either pretends it doesn't exist, pretends Donald Trump doesn't exist or lies about it or a bunch of moments like that. Like they gave him a softball to like tee off on tech CEOs. He's like, oh, yes, they have too much power. How about a follow up about how they're all in the White House all the time, buying access, paying for the ballroom, paying off your boss, donating to the super PACs. Elon Musk was the deputy president for a while. It was just like there were some real opportunities there. How about a follow up about how they're all in the White House all the time, buying access, paying off your boss, donating to the super PACs. And then he's just going to assume that people will forget all the shit that he said. And even even when he's on the stump and doing the fire and brimstone shit with his crowds, he's probably going to try to figure out a way to sand down the edges here and there. So whatever, though, like people, you know, every Democratic researcher or every person is going to be able to like have all the video of all the things he's ever said and just play it nonstop. First of all, again, like I don't know, like Tony is DeCoppo is following up with harder follow up. The questions from the crowd, even from Trump supporters, were pretty hostile in the way in which they were kind of generous to him. But being honest about the facts. Right. Like there's a there's a nun that asked about immigration to. Right. And so he comes under he comes under with follow ups about crypto and all the rest. But the whole thing is is J.D. Vance saying crazy and indefensible things or defending the independent. So that's what this event was. Yeah, it was. I thought it was brutal. Like as much as he lied and tried to get through it and didn't get the follow ups that really got him like it was brutal for him. Yeah, as it should be. I mean, the administration's approval ratings like 36 percent, like nothing is going well. The tenor of the question should be a little negative, which is also why his his his own personal approval ratings are fucking horrible. Trump without the charisma. Yeah, exactly. The one moment that went really viral was J.D. Vance getting asked about by a man whose wife was killed in the Iran war. And I just wanted to talk about it because, you know, he tries to kind of empathize and connect with the guy. But I think the thing that everyone needs to know about that exchange is he's lying to his face. he's lying to this man because he's like, oh, you know, I don't know about the failures at the base that you're mentioning that might have led to the death of your wife. So I want to follow up with you after. This stuff has been widely reported, widely reported. So Nicole Armour was one of six soldiers killed at a base in Kuwait on March 1st. There were a ton of failures leading up to her death. The army ignored warnings about moving the base to another site that was more secured. There were no air defenses at the base against drones. They were working out of a trailer with a thin metal roof. There was not enough medical support for the wounded. Iran reportedly tracked them to this small base, and there has been no accountability publicly about an investigation by DOD or anyone else into what happened here. And so when Vance is like, oh, I don't know about these failures. I'd like to follow up. He's like, this is the first time hearing about this fucking lying because either he didn't read the press or we also know there have been all these reports that his staff is leaking about. J.D. Vance is calling around to the combatant commanders to get his own battle assessments of the impact of the war on our bases in the region. He would know about this. He should know about this. He's lying and he's covering up for Pete Hegseth and their failures. And it's disgusting what he did in that moment. That's just he did. He was trying to like he was trying to like show empathy. And he was there's no good in his in his weird way. But you're right. Like he could have been like, oh, yeah, I've heard those reports and blah, blah, blah. This is the first I've heard of whatever. Well, yeah. It's the thing about like that, that moment when he's trying to he's trying to demonstrate I want to talk to you on the side. He's kind of performing a version of like, I'm I'm a relatable figure and I'm going to come talk to you and I want to have a private conversation, get to the bottom of this. Right. But that's what comes across throughout the entire thing, which is like when he does that joke about, oh, like the sports teams or when he does a thing like, oh, you have a kid, I have a kid. Wow. It's it. Wow. Eight days. Wow. That you don't. This isn't real. That's not important to you. You don't think about people in this way. That's not how you relate to people. That's just not who you are. Like, you're just it's not real. None of it feels real. Good luck to him. Good luck to us. We have to deal with it for the next two years. All right. When we come back, Pennsylvania House candidate Paige Cognetti. 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You know exactly what's coming in and what's going out, so you can make smarter decisions that can help grow your business. Xero's AI can easily understand your cash flow, and you can make smarter decisions that can help even offer insights to help you make your best move. Joining us now is Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, who's running for Congress in Pennsylvania's 8th District against Republican incumbent Rob Bresnahan. Mayor Cognetti, welcome to Pod Save America. Thanks. You don't have to remember his name for very much longer. Good. I hope I don't. So you first got elected mayor of Scranton running as an independent, and you ran against the local Democratic machine, I think, after the previous mayor had pled guilty to corruption. Your slogan was, Page Against the Machine, a very memorable slogan. What made you decide to take on your own party in that race, and what did you learn from that experience? So back to 2017, after I was elected mayor of Scranton, I was elected mayor of Scranton, I started reading in the Scranton Times what was happening here. My husband is from Scranton. I live here. We're choosing to live here and raise our family here. 2017, I started realizing that there was a lot of corruption, very specifically in the Scranton School District, even criminal activity happening. So the Auditor General put out this report. Somebody resigned. I stood for an appointment and got to work, brought in the Attorney General, then Josh Shapiro. There were prosecutions. A CFO of the Scranton School District was writing false checks to his buddy down the street, this mechanic, like hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars that was supposed to go to kids, going to his buddy. So we started looking at corruption throughout the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I worked for the Auditor General in 2019, trying to push out the graft and the corruption throughout school districts here. When, lo and behold, June of July 2019, the mayor of Scranton gets indicted for extortion and bribery, a fund scheme where he can't get out of the school district, he can't get out of the school district, he would not give developers their permits unless they gave him bags full of $5,000. He put that stuff in his ceiling, as one does, and finally caught up to him in July of 2019. And I was pregnant with our first daughter. It was not a convenient time. I was really enjoying doing the anti-corruption work at the Auditor General. But the local Democratic Party went behind closed doors. In the wake of this scandal, they go behind closed doors. They pick some guy. He's a Republican. He's a Republican. He's a Republican. He's a Republican. He's a Republican. He's a Republican. We had standing and stayed on the ballot. I won with 37% of the vote. I had our daughter Sloan just two weeks before I became mayor in January 2020. Since then, reelected in 2021, reelected in 2025. When we came in, and you can imagine with a mayor that was extorting contractors, we were almost bankrupt. We had $184 million of legal liability hanging over us. We got to work. Since then, we've put in financial controls. We have put together the accounts that we need to for the legacy of our state. We have put in the accounts that we need to for the legacy of our state. We have put in the accounts that we need to for the benefits that we have to pay. We've been upgraded three times by the S&P. We went from junk credit to A-minus, and we have cut our debt in half. So we are on a really strong financial path, which is a lot to say for a legacy city. In a place like Scranton, it's hard. We have a lot of pension benefits that we have to do. We have a lot of legacy infrastructure. We've been able to invest in stormwater, invest in our traffic safety, invest in our police, over $5 million in police technology. We've added five officers to the force. So it's been a really awesome experience to be the mayor of Scranton these seven years. You don't run a city in a partisan way. You run it for the people. We have a great track record. Unfortunately, the guy that won in 2024 to represent us in the United States House of Representatives does not have a great track record. So here we are. Now, you've been mayor for seven years, and you obviously changed a lot about Scranton. You've cleaned up a lot of corruption. Who knew Scranton hotbeded corruption started? What is something that you've changed about the way your city runs and the way government runs in Scranton that you would try to bring to Washington? Understanding, of course, that it's a different job, very different place. But like, what are some things you learned that you think, OK, we could use this in Congress? Obviously, it's a different scale. But when I came in, in the wake of the scandal, I knew I had to do things differently. So I didn't take the car for the mayor. There was a mayor car. I gave that to PD. The detectives have it. I have no gas card. I won't take any of those types of perks. That was really important to show people that I was here to lead them. I don't take any campaign money from any city vendors or any city employees. So that was so important to me. I remember when I was looking at running, I saw some of these county commissioners. Most of their campaign report was county employees. It was just ridiculous. right? You're literally taking money from your employees for your campaign. That was the kind of stuff that was happening. It's so important to lead in that way. When I think of D.C., I think about our anti-corruption plan. We don't take corporate PAC money. Obviously, we need a stock trading ban. You can't be trading stocks on information the American people don't have. We'll get to that with my opponent. But we have to show people that we care and we're there for them. No one forces you to run for Congress. No one forces you to run for mayor. It's a choice. It is not a choice that is going to get you a beach house. You make that choice. You have to show people that. I've been really proud of what we've done. I could have gotten a pay raise this year. I turned the pay down. We have to show people that you can run a government. Right now, we have such a lack of respect even and definitely a deficit of trust in government. We have to act very, very quickly in the next United States Congress. I'm not the only one with an anti-corruption agenda. We've been running against the machine forever. In this race, we started off, against corruption. And I'm really glad to see that it's starting to really hit. We're seeing that even some polls, corruption is the number one thing that people are worried about. They should be. We are broken. We've got to fix the system. And it starts with the new Congress in January. You mentioned your opponent. Bresnahan reported nearly 650 stock trades last year, including sales of Medicaid-related stocks before he voted for Trump's bill that cuts Medicaid. He claims a financial advisor made the trades. That one before. He has also supported legislation to ban congressional stock trading. What's your argument about why this is still a problem? And what would you do to stop this sort of thing happening in Congress that is different than what Bresnahan has proposed? So this guy talking about choices. In October of 2024, he puts out an op-ed. He's running, challenging Matt Cartwright, 12-year incumbent. Puts out an op-ed. His word, sickening. It's sickening to make money in Congress. And information that the American people don't have. You shouldn't make money on your votes. So he puts that out there, gets elected, and he slides in on the wave of 24. And then gets right to work, literally day trading in Congress. He was on the radio with the conservative radio here. The talk show is a convicted county commissioner. He was stealing money from the Lackawanna County taxpayers. Served eight years, and now for some reason gets 10 hours of prime time on the radio every week. But he's on this radio show. Wow. It says last year, he says, I talked to my financial advisor about upcoming positions. He said it on the radio. We have the audio. It's out there. So when you talk about this guy says one thing and doesn't know that he's like, oh, it's sickening to make money on your votes. He does. He says he doesn't trade himself. He obviously does. And then you mentioned seven days before he voted for a trillion dollar cut in Medicaid, he sold almost four hundred thousand dollars worth of Medicaid related stocks and bonds. And seven days before Trump went into Iran the first time, he was buying up missile stocks, buying Lockheed. It's just remarkable when you put his voting record next to his stock trading record. He tries to weasel out of it. But the flimsy piece of paper that the Republicans pushed through at the end of the summer to try to run on, it is full of holes. We need an actual stock ban. Again, there's no reason for a member of Congress to be trading individual stocks. Both parties are guilty of this. We know that the top stock trader in Congress is a and we cannot do it just on stocks. It's got to be corporate PAC money. I've already had folks that have gotten to me from the D.C. lobbying world like, well, you don't really mean it. You're going to get here and you're going to take corporate money. I'm like, no, we're not. You have to talk to people. People are so fed up. It is one of those things that people really understand. They also really want term limits. I can't tell you the applause line when you are in a union hall or at a canvas launch or at a backyard barbecue when you talk about real term limits. Our proposal is 18 years for the Senate, 18 years for Congress, 18 years for the Supreme Court. People really want to see change. They want to see that you're there for them and you're not there to build your career and pad your pockets. If Democrats win the House and you're one of them, you know, it will be difficult to pass any legislation in the next two years. Even if you get Republicans to do it, you've got Donald Trump as president still. But Democrats will have the power to investigate potential corruption. And abuses of power from the Trump administration. How big of a priority should that be? Because obviously you have to balance, you know, a lot of people care most about cost of living issues. And I'm sure that's what you've been campaigning on and Democrats across the country. Obviously, like I said, it's going to be tough to pass stuff on that. But how do you balance the need to focus on that with this, you know, the potential issue where if you do too much investigation and oversight, you're going to have to do too much investigation and oversight. And I think that's going to be a big problem. Then voters are like, well, why are they just going after the Trump administration or these companies? And why aren't they doing anything for me? Right. I think people are really putting corruption and the costs together. So I think about like that first week in Congress, we have to do everything we can to try to end the war in Iran and to try to end the tariffs and have an immediate impact on costs. Also, day one, I've signed onto a letter with other candidates. We do an anti-corruption agenda. We actually show the American people that we are serious about this. We challenge those that are there now, Republicans and Democrats, to come on board with us. We cannot keep going this way. The investigations are extraordinarily important. I think about being on the school board, being at the editor general's office, digging into those numbers, digging into those contracts. And who knows what we'll find. We'll find a lot, but we have to make sure that we're doing it, that we're clear about it, and that it's not really painted as some sort of conspiracy. We need to show that we're doing that in the name of busting corruption and getting our feet back under us, not really targeting one particular person. That is, to me, a recipe for a new government. For a failed presidential bid for a Democrat in 2028. So we need to be really, really diligent on what are the facts, what are the problems that we're seeing. If there is pay to play, let's lay it out for the American people in a way that is clear to them. I think with this current administration, there's a lot of pretty clear storylines that are going to come out. We need to be sure that we're making that case. We also, I think about it as a mayor, what are the crosswalks we can paint? What are the streets that we can paint? What are the signs we can put up? What are those immediate things that people can feel? We need to make sure that in those two years, we're doing real things that people understand, and that even though those bills and those programs, a lot of them will be left at either the foot of the Senate or the foot of 1600 Pennsylvania, at least we'll have to be able to show of what we can do and how we can make things better when we have more power. I really don't want to see us dwindle a U.S. and have it just go to what the American people think is wasteful. For an anti-corruption agenda, you've mentioned, obviously, banning stock trading, corporate PAC money, term limits. Is there anything else beyond those provisions that you would want in an anti-corruption agenda? Yeah, I mean, we talk about the revolving door, the lobbying, right? You can't, we don't want people that are planning their run for Congress so that they can get in and become a lobbyist and just get in there and make money for themselves. So that's a big piece of it. And generally, auditing the government. I know it sounds kind of silly, but, you know, we were, you know, I was at the Obama Treasury Department. I was, you know, putting together the international affairs budget. It is office by office, line by line. If you dig into the budget, you can find meaningful savings. You can also find, you know, maybe some of the problems that might be happening there, the procurement that isn't right. You have to go line by line. You have to truly audit it. We know that there could be so much more digging. We need folks that are willing to do the hard work. You know, when I think about this work, I think about it like we've done as mayor. You go in and you do the stuff that is not sexy, but it, over time, really impacts how people feel about themselves and their government. You can do that at the local level. I have faith that we can do that at the federal level if we really, really tackle corruption and have folks in office that are serious about it and serious about being held accountable. When you're a mayor, you cannot walk out of your house without being accountable. I think part of what you see, for example, in my opponent is a person who thinks that this is cool. You just get to wear a pin and kind of walk around on BNTV. No, you are accountable every single day for the promises you make. This guy has been promising one thing and doing another. I think we need more mayors and county commissioners in Congress that have had that feeling every single day of walking down the street, going to the grocery store, stopping at the coffee shop, and knowing that they're going to have a conversation where somebody is going to ask them a question. I know President Han voted for, so he voted for the Medicaid cuts. He also joined a bipartisan effort to extend Obamacare and he's gone back and forth on these health care issues. What's the difference between his health care record and what you would do in Congress and what you want to do going forward on health care? I mean, we know that the ACA was never perfect. We absolutely have a lot of reforms. There are, you know, the insurance companies have too much power in this conversation. For-profit health care has too much power. And we see in places like Scranton where 30 years of the privatization and the mergers in health care have caused real problems. We have to make reforms, but we can't do it with a trillion dollars gutted from the system. So I think in those first days, we need to put the floor back under the Medicaid program. Not that there isn't fraud there. I'm sure there's a little fraud here and there. But we already have 9,000 people in these five counties in northeastern Pennsylvania who no longer have health care. I've had a bursting ER in the city of Scranton for years. It is getting worse and worse and worse. I hear those reports from our police officers and our firefighters. We cannot do this work with the system gutted. So we have to do that first and then work to reform. But again, we can't do it if the corporations are in charge. Data centers, speaking of corporations, have been another big issue in this campaign. You've said that if these tech companies want to build in your community, they're going to have to pay their own way, follow the rules. Are there circumstances where you'd welcome new data centers and what would the companies have to agree to? So Lackawanna County and all of northeastern Pennsylvania, we have a lot of energy here. There's the Marcellus Shale here. And Rob Bresnahan actually invited these companies last year. There was a big rah-rah-rah last summer. The president was talking about Senator McCormick, Rob Bresnahan. We're all saying northeastern Pennsylvania should be a center of the AI build-out and data centers should come here. And there was a $25 billion investment from Blackstone that Rob Bresnahan was only too eager to announce. Still listed on his official press release page on his website. You can go and he can see how excited he was to invite these data centers here. And now we have dozens and dozens of projects and a bunch of speculative developers that are, you know, really terrorizing these communities. I've sat in so many township buildings, so many different community meetings, hearing these developers that say they have nondisclosure agreements. They can't tell you who they are, but please give us the zoning privilege of being able to put this, you know, 51, basically the size of 51 Walmarts in your town. There's a place called Archibald, Pennsylvania. 14% of the land in Archibald, Pennsylvania would be covered with data centers if all of those projects went through. So you can have some of these. And this is. Where, you know, you hear a lot, I think there was a knee jerk, you know, especially last spring, like, okay, moratorium, we're going to stop them all. That's not the right public policy either, right? You can have situations, there's a decommissioned coal plant in Southwest Pennsylvania. There's a nuclear site in Berwick, Pennsylvania, where Amazon's putting one. You can do that. If the table is set with transparency, you've got the end-user tech company, you've got the developer, you've got the municipalities, you've got labor, you can do it. And I've had, you know, mayors tell me that they're proud of the work, that they've been doing when that table is set right. We haven't seen any of that in Northeastern Pennsylvania. We've seen some pretty crass stuff. We've seen one of the center companies offering $10,000 per household if they'll support the zoning overlay. So they're pretty desperate to be here. But it's been, it's just been so upsetting for people. People are scared for their health. They're scared for their children's health. This is the kind of place, you know, this is old coal country, right? Big industry has come before and literally left us with huge piles, you know, buildings of size of coal and dumps that have been all over, scattered through our region. We had to clean those up as taxpayers. People understand that. They remember that. They don't want that to happen again. So it's a real fight. And I'm really proud, though, of my community and seeing people coming out in a totally nonpartisan way. They are leaving their political stripes at home, just coming in and supporting each other, supporting their way of life, supporting their health. And it's a thing actually in this moment that is giving me hope that we can sow, the quilt back together in America, that we can get through what has been such a horrific decade here and get back to supporting each other. I think it's possible. And if it has to be data centers that gets us there, then I guess that's what we got. Last question and I'll let you go. So Trump won your district by more than eight points in 2024. You've got an ad running now featuring a guy who voted for Trump three times. It says he's voting for you. What's a conversation you've had with a Trump voter that has stuck with you? Like what are people who are, you know, supported him but are supporting you now sort of telling you about why they're changing their vote? So Bill in that ad actually drove me in an Uber about five years ago. And he showed up at my campaign office opening and he said, hey, remember me? And I said, oh, you're familiar. I think we chatted. He said, well, I drove you in an Uber and I didn't know who you were. And you said after I asked you what you did, you were the mayor. And you were just so down to earth and so great. And you've done such a good job in Scranton. And, you know, Trump has disappointed me and I'm supporting you. Love that. Then, yeah. He went on then to talk about the Epstein files. That is the number one reason that we learn when we talk to folks that people are shifting away from the decision that they made in 2024. There was a promise there to get justice for these survivors. And that promise has been broken. And it is even more so than the war, which was also a broken promise and also weighs heavily on people's minds. Breaking the promise on the Epstein files and protecting the people. Protecting the perpetrators instead of helping the survivors really weighs on folks. And I think it's really important that we hold the folks like Rob Bresnahan accountable who voted three times to block those files. I met with survivors here in Scranton just a couple of weeks ago. They know that they are not going to get justice with this current Congress. Certainly not with the current Attorney General. Attorney General Blanche was actually here in this district just a couple of hours ago standing alongside our congressman talking about fentanyl. I don't imagine that Congressman Bresnahan was holding his feet to the fire about getting justice for those survivors. That remains the number one thing that voters tell us gives them regret about their vote in 2024. Mayor Paige Cognetti, good luck in the final two weeks. Thank you for joining Pod Save America. And we'll be rooting for you. Thank you. And if you want to support us, Paige4PA.com. Really appreciate you having me on. There you go. Take care. That's our show for today. Thanks to Paige Cognetti for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Farrah Safari with Reed Churlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrienne Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, David Tolles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. Discover a spectacular island destination with crystal blue seas, endless sunshine, and the cool Bahamian breeze, Bahamar. 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