We Polled 1,417 Americans About Sports, Politics and Everything in Between

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out brought to you by Apple card. I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is Steven a no way Right after this What is Tim Miller furiously typing right now? I like just a million things. Who are you angry at? Are you guys ready for me? Oh, yeah, we're broadcasting right now. Oh, sorry. It sounds multi-tasking So you may have noticed that we take finding out extremely seriously on this program But that's sometimes especially say the week before the pivotal midterm elections here in the United States Good information can be hard to come by And so for this episode we decided to draft two sports fans It's part of a particularly ambitious political project and the bull works Tim Miller in case you haven't seen him on PTFO before is both an unhinged Denver Nuggets fan and also a former Republican operative who helped run presidential campaigns on the ground for the likes of John McCain and Jeb Bush Only to eventually realize that his future was an independent media So the bull work started as never-trumper extra-publican Commentary outlet and you know, we started to see some success on YouTube and my old buddy Sam calls me And he's like, you know, I think we can make this a real successful news operation instead of you know, just you farting out your thoughts And as for that aforementioned Sam now the bull works managing editor You may remember him from his previous life as a White House correspondent Sam Stein, Huffington Post, where's Sam? Thank you Mr. President Today Senator, I'm from Connecticut like right now sort of on the dividing lines from Red Sox, New York Giants of all Teams, but a big Yukon Huskies basketballs my pride and joy damn you in our slack channel Oh, I love it. I was honored to be in the poblatory site show. I was hoping that somebody would be accidentally put something in on one of your other Investigations in there and I could get a little heads up. Yeah, I was hoping for that too. You might be looking into that LeBron fanatic stuff, you know And we will get into LeBron later in this episode I promise But what you should know is that the bipartisan project that all of us have been working on together on Slack Is something considerably more ambitious I do want to just wave the stack of papers In front of everything here because we don't settle for mere theory and takes on this show as you guys both are aware We also at any given opportunity want information and evidence and data absolutely and the theory of why the bull work in PTFO have sort of For this collaborative effort joined newsrooms for a second is because Of course, I believe that politics is downstream of culture and culture is dominated by sports This election you may reasonably argue is a bit of a sports election Full show Republican former NFL sideline reporter Michelle Tafoya does appear to be gaining some serious ground former MLB players Mark Tashera and former NFL kicker Jay Feeley. Why are they running for office? Excess Senate race for Democrat James Telerico is taking a page from the Friday night lights playbook We are in the fourth quarter. It's time to leave it all on the field. What are we gonna get? Some wonderful people elected. This is iron Mike Tyson Mike Tyson. He came to a less route and He got named Jake Paul. His name is Todd Gurley and everybody knows We like Sophie cutting him. Ohio tends to like football make fun of me on Buckeye football all you need so long as we get out there and make Mike Rogers the next senator for the great state of Michigan Alabama Republican senator and gubernatorial nominee Tommy Tuberville Before he's elected the Senate. He was a college football coach many airline pilots flight attendants and air traffic controllers are part of the furry community And so if you're asking yourself in this stack of papers did ptofo and the bulwark spend the last few weeks Conducting and analyzing. I buy partisan poll of 1,417 American adults with the experts at you gov shout out to you gov Asking 42 custom questions one of which is about furries. Can I just say you can sometimes learn serious things from silly questions I just think it's really important to explain for people who aren't familiar with the furry community Why former Auburn head coach Tommy Tuberville was so Entranced by the premise. Do you guys have a way of explaining furries to people or do you want me to read from Miriam Webster And the dictionary. I think that's part of the algorithm. Yeah, I think it's part of the LGBT QIA plus community that one is for me Yeah, the plus has an F in it. Definitely. Yeah, the plus Yeah, the F kind of fits in the plus category and The furries are people that get dressed up into costumes I think most people where pup masks and little puppy tails and then you know you hang out together You dance you frolic and then There's some sexual Stuff that happens between the furries and sometimes it's a human with a furry and then you go fly the airplane the next day, right? I don't know about the pilot. Oh, you don't you're part of the cover-up Yeah Who amongst us doesn't at some point consider what would it be like to be an anthropomorphic animal or creature Attending perhaps a convention of like-minded individuals. I among us have never thought that but yeah The answer of course brings us to question number 42 U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville recently said Many airline pilots flight attendants and air traffic controllers are part of the furry community If accurate do you think this would be good thing a bad thing neither a good thing or a bad thing and not sure And Tim America said 6% of patriotic Americans said it would be a good thing for the pilots to be furries and god love you 20% said it would be a bad thing 42% of regular folks said neither a good thing or a bad thing Don't care whether the pilot is interested in furry material and 31% weren't sure what how they felt about it And so just to be very clear about this that means that 73% of Americans we actually surveyed I can't stress this enough. We didn't actual poll. They remain open-minded Yeah, a super majority are open-minded about furries which remains very encouraging even with the margin of error as we go through this of plus or minus 3.6 points. I want to talk to the six percenters. I do Well, you're talking to one right now But one of the things that we get to as we see these results is that Yeah, we have 100 plus pages of objective polling data And there's also for instance, Tim this question Do you think that if a political candidate had the following background it would make you more or less likely to vote for them And the options here were a state legislator a member of the military a mayor a business owner a professional athlete or a tv commentator And Sam The official top-line poll analysis we received from the experts that you gov suggested this Athletes and TV commentators are the worst resumes for a candidate and they're even bad among sports fans 41% say being a professional athlete would make a candidate less likely to get their vote and 43% say the same about being a TV commentator I that's tough for Michelle. That's what I guess. It is just funny that we're living in the time of sports, but Americans are also just like look What the fuck man? Like we don't actually want athletes and TV commentators. That's kind of interesting here to me just off the top It is, but sometimes if there's you know revealed preferences versus stated preferences And that's why it's interesting to do the research to go through the polls to what people want And like on the one hand, I think people want to be serious people You know and you see this across this poll They like they desire to see themselves as serious people and then Sometimes it doesn't turn out as much When real life and I think there's a thing that athletes have right now In our politics and the reason why we're seeing so many of them is because Campaigns are all about being able to control the narrative being able to get attention And there's a connection with people and so they're able to kind of get over that first hurdle And so then we end up in this hellscape where we're in where we have you know these minor celebrities Taking over our political space particularly from sports. That's that's my take The revealed preferences point Sam that Tim is raising reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from the Simpsons In which sideshow bob says Your guilty conscience may force you to vote democratic but deep doubt inside you secretly long for cold hot Republican to low attacks as brutalized criminals and rule you like a king Yeah, I have to agree with Tim here and sideshow bob But the other part about being an athlete of course is that you get this credibility in terms of your man But this brings us to the other question that we wanted to ask. These 1400 Americans are so earlier this month because I suppose part of the inspiration here was our secretary of, and I guess I will say it because our secretary of- You don't have to say it, you don't have to say it. No fanny, no fatties, no tre- no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals, just warriors. No fannies. Wow. Okay. For realizing now we do. I guess. Yeah. A difference in the administration on the topic of fannies. Absolutely. Absolutely. The ANIS is a wedge issue in its own right. That's good. Well, you please read question number 40. How strong a role model do you think the following is? And Tim, if you look at the charts that we got back, in terms of how are the American male role model power rankings looking, this is, we're going to rank this from least strong to strongest male role model here in our large bipartisan sample. We get. I was really excited about this question, in particular, because of how focused Pete Hegseth is. I was just, I was hoping that I'm not out of touch, you know, because I look at Pete and see a guy in a lot of makeup with an obviously tiny penis, and I'm like, I hope that my fellow Americans do not see this as a strong male role model. This next poblatory investigation. Yeah. Well, what we found, what we investigated, was it seems like the American people are with me. And at least most of that, the number nine, the lowest ranked person, as far as being a strong male role model, was Bluey's dad, only 24% strong. I agree. Bandit Heeler suffered from recognized ability issues, 64% were not sure who that is. And to them, I say, be a better parent. Eighth place, Pete Hegseth, eighth place, only 28% strong. Yeah. Wow. A bipartisan sample, which is why this is all especially meaningful, but it continues. Seventh place, Joe Rogan. So he just, he's like a five foot four man that just sits in a podcast studio and people see him as more manly than Pete Hegseth, that's notable. Gavin Newsom, number six, a better male role model than Pete Hegseth, John Stewart, fifth, also a better male role model than Pete Hegseth. Donald Trump finished fourth, 37% saw him as a strong male role model. And he came in right behind, Mr. Taylor Swift himself, Travis Kelsey, 42%. And the number two slot, there was a tie. The McConaissance continues, Matthew McConaughey and LeBron James were tied for the second biggest male role models. And who might number one be, Pablo? There he is. Hussein Obama, 59% see him as a strong male role model. But I do actually think this is pretty meaningful because the Trump and Hegseth administration have really tried to, you know, center a lot of their arguments on how, you know, they represent strong manhood and how they represent strength and that young boys should be looking up for them and that we want warfighters, we don't want fatties and trinkets. And simultaneously to that, there was like a very long effort by Fox and folks me back when I was a Republican to kind of make fun of Obama's manhood. And you know, there's a picture of him on the bike, when he looks a little effeminate and, you know, he's an arugula eater like all that kind of stuff. So there's been like a decades-long campaign by people on the right to position their leaders as the examples of strong men and the Democrats as these being these weak girly men. And yet, the poll reveals like that campaign hasn't worked at all. So that's kind of encouraging. Yeah, I would just add to that, it's not so much like so we listed the numbers that showed them strong, but actually I thought it was kind of more interesting, the numbers that showed them to be not strong and then an ulceriousness. So like Donald Trump actually had a 37% strong, but he had a 55% not strong. So that was like the, that was the biggest delta actually of anybody. I was a negative 18 point delta and then Hegseth was a negative, was a negative 11. He was the second worst of all, of all these people. So it's not so much that they failed to prove their point that manliness is, you know, no fatties, whatever it is. It's that people actually recoil at it and think it's, you know, antithetical to being a role model, which actually is a little nice, a little data point and makes you think that the James Harika's gay campaign might not be as effective as they think. Yeah. Well, the questions of what does masculinity look like? It takes us to our next focus of the polling, which is the transgender athlete debate. Kamala's for they them, President Trump is for you. They told me to shut up and swim. I don't support biological men playing women's sports and boys should not play in girl sports. How do you define socialism personally? I think in reality, what it actually means in the American context is that you want to replace American workers with foreign workers and you want boys to play in girl sports. Where's freedom? I saw a man here, the largest human being I thought, where the hell is freedom or at least stand up, please? Look at this guy. He dreams of playing against women. So this is the culture war wedge issue of our time, perhaps. This specific topic and what Trump there is referring to, of course, is former NBA center and recent would be WMBA finals at 10D, Inus Cantor Freedom, who has seized upon the opportunity in ways that I think are beginning to be boring, but perhaps are born of a strategy that, of course, has been empirically proven by the far right at this point. Yeah, but Inus is a loser, but he tried to go to the game, he couldn't, he called security. The only thing I know before you tonight is the sweets. Do you know everyone? It will be me be out there is going to hear about this right? I guess in some ways he is becoming a Karen, not a woman. A person for whom a private suite with security was not enough. By the way, there in that very little case study is the difference between, you can be there, you can even be protected and supported and catered to, but you're just not going to be on camera as much. And that is, that's the lie and beyond which it's unacceptable. I'm being silenced, godly. And so what we did here in our poll was we asked 1,400 plus American adults if they support or oppose allowing transgender student athletes to play on sports teams that match their gender identity. This is rather than this sex they were assigned at birth. Sam, what does our poll tell us here in terms of supporting trans athletes? So strongly support was 12% somewhat support is 11% somewhat oppose is 11% and strongly oppose is 51% Tim 62% oppose this, right? Which I just want to be very clear out about this. This validates exactly why Republicans and in his canter and his associates, it's why they keep running the playbook, right? They see it as a winning issue and they're right. It's interesting in the montage you played, one of the ads that you highlighted was a Democrat actually is Annie Andrews running in South Carolina talking about how she opposes allowing boys to play in girl sports and she's running for the Lindsey Graham seat that he's trying to bequeathed to his sister, darling Graham. We had her at our Bullock event last week and so even, you know, Democrats running in red states see kind of where the public is on this issue. There is a little bit of a counter-vailing element of this brewing though that I think has been interesting in Texas in particular where they're trying to make this the central issue against Tallariko and it's not really sticking to them and there's like this is viral post going around from a conservative poster on Reddit talking about how like my kid didn't even know what transgender was until you started playing this ad constantly during commercials of the Texas saying I'm gay and, you know, this thing is switched where Trump used it successfully against com likes it was like it feels like the left is really obsessed with this issue and I'm going to care about issues you care about and now that has kind of flipped where you're in this situation where even conservative people in Texas are like the only people talking about this are you guys like the politicians like the rest of us are concerned about you know cost of gas or other stuff that's happening and so while I don't think that the Democrats and kind of transgender sports activists are winning the argument obviously they maybe kind of winning a broader battle. And so one thing I want to add is that we also asked David Montgomery who was not unfortunately the Texans running back who you may have drafted a fantasy football but a senior data journalist with our pollsters that you gov and he observed that look empirically speaking support for trans athletes this specific category it is tanking pretty much across the board you've been asking this fairly regularly since 2022 there's always been more people who opposed transgender athletes being able to play on the they're it does seem to match their gender identity than who support it but it's become less popular back in 2022 about 50 percent opposed and 30 percent support and now overall it's more like a 60 20 issue Republicans are already almost all opposed to this so there's not really any room for that line to move much Democrats have become also slightly less supportive what we've seen with independence is they've fallen from moderately opposed sort of minus 25 or so. So down to minus 40 minus 45 that neighborhood, which is very close to what Americans overall have done, sort of as it will go independent, so goes the country to a certain extent. So the ongoing fascination, guys, as we are presented with data, which we do not argue with, is sort of like, how did we get here? And this brings us, Tim, to another poll question. What share of athletes currently competing in NCA sports, do you think identify as transgender? - And the results of our surveys, Am, say what? - This is depressing. A combined 15% of Americans think more than 5% of athletes are transgender, ridiculous. - We gotta translate the math here, right? So there are more than about half a million NCAA athletes. And so by this math, more than 5%, our sample thinks that there are at least approximately 27,500 trans student athletes in America. And for those not familiar, the reality, according to the 2024 testimony of NCAA president Charlie Baker before the Senate Judiciary Committee, was this? - How many transgender athletes are you aware of? Less than 10? - So just like the delta between 27,500 and less than 10, we wanted to actually just even further drill into this. And so we went to the NCAA and we asked the spokesperson to give us the best last available data. And this is what we were told, quote, the NCAA's policies fully aligned with the Trump administration's 2025 executive order, end quote, which brings us to the fact that the number of student athletes currently competing women sports, who identify as transgender, is now effectively zero. The golf between, there are none of them anymore. According to the NCAA, effectively zero, which only 3% of Americans said in our poll. The fact that that's reality and the politics are winning on the back of fiction. - Yeah. - That's why we're here. - It's crazy, man. Think about how much money this cycle will have gone to ads about transports in all these races. We're talking like what? Tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars spent litigating an issue that literally doesn't exist anymore and may decide the course of several races. It's wild shit. - It also just shows what the purpose of this was totally, which is to win the Cultural War, which is to advance political power, right? It's like, the Magas don't have a ton of dub to use lately. Started one war, lost it. Gas prices are way up, economy's bad, Trump's approvals down. People don't think he's manly. This was a W for them. Like they started this Cultural War and the result of it is there aren't any transgender athletes in women's sports. They're spending more money on ads on this topic, this cycle than in 24. - Because the entire theory actually of this political position is we are losing. We are losing our scholarships. We're losing our girls to these boogie men. We are victims. And if the victimhood actually is a blowout win for you, well, then that's not as animating from a turnout or a culture politics perspective. But look, I'll remind people here, we are also the podcast that did this whole episode about Riley Gaines, who by the way, was in that montage somewhere talking about being told to quote, shut up and swim. And her menacing slash trolling of Simone Biles, there's a lot more on this issue for you to get to if you're interested. But I want to now just keep it moving because when it comes to the question of trolling and the trans athlete debate, we asked another question. - In an August former NBA player, Ian's Cancer Freedom, challenged transgender inclusion policies by declaring himself eligible for the WNBA. Do you approve or disapprove of freedoms? What do we have to call them? - Of freedom's actions. - To which are otherwise, again, majority anti-trans inclusion sample Tim said this. - 30% approve of NS Canter's troll, 47% disapprove. Imagine how stupid and pathetic your gambit has to be to take a sample of people where there is, where there was like a plus 50% agree with you. - Plus 60. - On the merits of the issue. - And then you engage in a troll to appeal to those people and they look at you and you seem so pathetic and annoying that by a 17% margin the people who agree with you on the issue say that your gambit is stupid and you should go away. And that is what has happened at NS Canter. He has managed to turn off like a plurality of the country that agrees with his stated position and I salute him for that. - A true bipartisan issue. - Yes, that in his canter. - And his canter being annoying. - Yeah, he's kind of a loser. Dude, kind of sucks. (laughing) (upbeat music) - So I want to explain that we also didn't just pull Americans about like politics, sports stuff. We also asked them about sports. For instance, I'd like to just formally apologize to the brewers and the raised. But it's very clear that football by far, this is the least shocking result, is obviously America's favorite sport. This according to our bipartisan poll of the 1400 plus adults that we got the information from. Soccer and basketball in that order, by the way, they actually lead among 18 to 29 year olds. - That feels right. - But another thing you may have felt. - You guys, (beep) - No, I'm sorry, you, this is what my former Republican needs to come in. - Two Libs have been trying to force soccer down our threats for decades now. - I don't know. - The Pablo Tories in the world are like, the next generation's gonna love soccer. Well, here we are. We're all 44 now. And people and soccer's still in fourth place. Okay, so like, let's just be real. All right. - I will point out that among conservatives and among conservatives, we did get some interesting data about what their other favorite sports are after football. Second place was baseball. Third place was checking out John Hustead's ass. (laughing) And fourth place was basketball, 32%. That's right. It's really just baseball and basketball. - Baseball and basketball in that order. And among the Libs Sam. - We got basketball at 38% and baseball at 33%. - Hell yeah. - A little bit surprised I guess. - Conservatives like baseball more than basketball. Libs like basketball more than baseball. I think this all feels like about what you might expect. That kind of tracks. But in terms of the individual athletes that Americans love, this is where I wanna get into some of the granular data because for this big bipartisan sample that we have, we presented a hand-picked group of 16 superstars across a range of sports and ideologies as quote unquote favorable. And so here is a list starting with the least to most popular in our top five. - Tiger Woods. - Hmm, that's tough. I just brought it on himself. - Number four was Travis Kelsey. - Number three was Patrick Mahomes. - And second place, we had a three-way tie between Steph Curry, LeBron James and Caitlin Clark, which is pretty astonishing, given where women's basketball used to be. - Yeah. - But now, perhaps as eye-opening is that the number one most like athlete in America, Sam, is. - Simone Biles, that actually did surprise me. And I'm sure was dismaying to the aforementioned Riley gains. - It's interesting because this contrast, can I flag somebody that did not even finish in the top five? My girl Angel Reese. - Bye you Barbie. - She was like, had a really randomly very high unfavorable at 21%. And I went into the crosstabs to figure out what was happening there. - Oh boy. - And you'll be not surprised to find out that among Trump 2024 voters, she has a 24% very unfavorable, and only a 5% very favorable. And so we can see what's driving that there, seems like racism to me. But you know, Simone Biles, I think, was maybe able to overcome that with her Olympic gold and maybe after Angel Reese wins the WMBA championship. - Is she paying you to run her Super Packer? Is that just a volunteer position for you? - I do, I want (beep) justice for Angel. Like this is crazy. Like there's all these Twitter posts about her missing layups, and now I get this pull back, and it's like she's less popular than Tiger. It's like what? And Tiger's out there drunk driving all over the place. You know, like, you know, screwing around and his wife, why is Angel unpopular? Caitlin Clark, last I checked, just like me, no rings. Angel has a college championship ring. She is now up as we take this today to get a WMBA championship ring. And we've got all these red necks right, was don't watch WMBA, I don't like that. I don't like that Angel Reese. I was just like, that justice for Angel right now. Next year when we do this, I want to see her skyrocketing. Chuck go up her Angel. - Sam, I do want to dig into the crosstabs though to Tim's overall grievance, because let's break them out among Libs and Conservatives, right? So among, The Liberals. Here are the top five favorite athletes. I've been going five to one. We got Caitlyn Clark. This is just among the lips. Then Travis Kelsey, which is, by the way, this is just Taylor Swift's luxury box so far. Incidentally, it's number five and number four. Then we got Steph at number three, then we got Bronn at number two, and then Simone Biles again. And number one, this is just among the lips. Yes. And so among conservatives, the top five most favorable athletes are the following. Number five is the tie between Simone Biles and Aaron Rogers. Number four is Sophie Cunningham, which is not even on a team right now in the WNBA. I challenge the people that offered a positive view of Sophie Cunningham to name another women's basketball player besides Caitlyn Clark and Sophie Cunningham. Name a team besides the fever. Anyway, whatever. Number three is me and Sam and Pablo's old friend Phil Nicholson lefty. All lefty and to do to get the cons to like him was sign up with Saudi Arabia and get fully on board the Sharia law. And send a group chat message that got leaked to me and Sam Cobbleman, which read, quote, "Big daddy Trump ready to swing his 14-inch in front of Newsom's face," end quote. But I digress at the separate episode. So there you go, that's how Phil Nicholson got there. That's how you get a good approval. Fantasizing that Donald Trump's truck is 11 inches longer than it really is. Number two, Patrick Mahomes ties with Kyle Busch. The late great NASCAR legend. Number one favorite athlete among the conservatives. Not LeBron, not Steph, Caitlyn Clark. But Sam, you were quick to circle a particular cross tab on this subject in the Slack channel, and what does this one say? Sophie Cunningham's favorite believe on Trump voters. Somewhat favorable, 16%, very favorable, 39%, which is like off the charts if you think about it. They just love her. Yeah, I'm getting cheat. I talked about trans inclusion. That was the ESPN quote that helped sort of skyrocket her culture war stuff. But there was another thing I put in that Slack channel that I don't want to glass over because I take some joy in it. Which one? Bryson DeChambo. Oh God. Can we talk about Bryson? What did the data say about Bryson? Well, all I cared about was how few people actually knew who he was. He was the least known athlete of anyone we pulled. 72% of people like who is this guy. He's a YouTube sensation. He it's golf balls over his house, tries to make home ones. And yet no one knows who Bryson is. Even though Sadie Rabia paid him $125 million. Yeah. Apparently in June of 2022. Poor guy. Yeah, the Sophie thing. I'll offer people a silver lining about the Sophie positivity. It really drives home how much of a stupid loser and it's cancerous. Ostensibly Sophie and NS have been arguing about the same thing and they've been centering the same issue as part of their brand. And for Sophie, it has yielded high positivity. Yeah. And for NS, it has yield negative 17 approvals and widespread mockery. It is a remarkable continuing pancing of NS canterious cultural impacts that we are really finding out about today. But I now want to get to our gambling section because these next two questions. This was devastating. I think this was as as I opening as anything among the data from our 2026 state of the American sports fed survey pulling 1400 people by partisan sample. Because this was our question. Do you think legalized gambling is having a positive or negative impact on sports 7% has had a positive impact on sports 34% say gambling said neither positive nor negative impact on sports 44% say it's had a negative impact so 37% more people say that gambling's had a negative impact on sports than positive. What's the case for positive? Oh, sure. Easy. Easy. Some play the case. Go for me in college. Okay. Nothing to do Tuesday night. Don't want to study. Don't want to study. You turn on ESPN and it's like Hofstra versus Dartmouth. And I'm like, if I just throw 20 bucks on this right now and have two beers, this is a great evening. Like this is a game I couldn't care about otherwise. And now I'm having a good time and I've got some great memories gambling on that when my daughter was born, you know, you're staying up all night. And I want to let my husband sleep so I would go down when it was my turn to do the overnight feedings. We go downstairs the living room. She was born in January. So it was Australia and open. Throw some cash on which one side of the other who cares. And now I'm locked in. Now I'm staying out. Now it's not even tired the next day like my blood my blood's pumping. So I'm just like I'm the six percent. I want a furry pilot. I'm on the seven percent gambling is help sports. That's just me. It is also interesting to note that among gamblers and hardcore sports fans like to Miller apparently, the impact among that sample of legal sports gambling does rate as a bit more neutral than that negative. Yeah, you're telling me gamblers are supportive of gambling. Well, holy shit. Okay. Wow. That's the lead of the poll right there. But according to our pollsters that you gov, there is no demographic in our survey in which more than 25% of respondents think that legalized gambling is having a positive impact on sports. She said she got to keep going down to different demographics. Like if you just get down to like you got to get to the gay sports fans currently in New Orleans, who's currently podcasting this very second, you'll get 100% support, which brought us though to this follow up question. How often do you think active professional athletes alter the way they play to help sports gamblers win bets? We did not cue them up with the name Terry Rocheer. Unfortunately, so actually that made it cleaner as a question. By the way, this is in some sense, the question of the utmost concern to everybody drinking from the trough of gambling, right? If you're a league, if you're a team, if you're an executive, if you're a coach, if you're a broadcaster, this is the thing that you're trying and hoping and praying doesn't undermine your business, which is otherwise when it's not gambling centric is integrity centric. Yeah. And here to him were the results. Four percent say they never altered the way they play because of gambling. Twenty percent say they rarely alter the way they play. Thirty-seven percent say athletes sometimes alter the way they play because of gambling interests. Fourteen percent say they do it often. So doing quick math here, that's over 51 percent. A majority say that athletes sometimes are often altered the way they play as a gambling. Wow. I mean, a majority of Americans thinking that pro athletes are manipulating games for gambling reasons. Every commissioner should be turning in their grave. Like that's right. Wild man. Well, I assume most of the commissioners are alive. Well, so you know, turning in their office. I don't be so dramatic. But like, this is jarring to me. And I'm cynical. I'm a cynical guy. And the fact that a majority of Americans think this now already, I mean, this is a big deal in my view. It's crazy because basically what we're saying is that the majority of Americans think that the sporting events that they're watching are being subtly impacted by athletes who are betting on the games. And then those Americans are still betting on the games. They're just betting. That is a key connective piece of logic here. I combine this like what was kind of formative for us like millennials right is the steroids stuff in baseball, you know, and like why did that end up becoming a big crisis, right? Because you eventually end up a point where you like can't disbelieve your lying eyes. You know, it's like Barry Bond's head is huge. You know, I mean, it's just like this is crazy. Like something is happening. And so like they're it feels like they're kind of on the precipice of that right now with gambling, right? Where it's like people are cool with that or fine with it now. I mean, they don't like elements of it, but they're still watching, but it's like if it tips over into a place where that many people think the games are being manipulated or rigged, I do think it's a real threat to the businesses. Yeah, but it's worse. It's worse because at least with the steroid thing, they were injecting themselves for the purposes of doing better and winning. Yeah, right. And this one, they might just be throwing the games. And that we're not getting rebounds or whatever because I'm under three, you know, I want to get under the three rebounds over under. Yeah. The idea that you can't take incompetence at face value anymore. But look, so just in case you're wondering, right? Well, maybe this is just speculation from non sports fans who don't really know the games and they're just assuming all this stuff is happening, moral panic stuff, blah, blah, blah. You should know that this number gets even higher among gamblers and sports fans. Wow. Wow. So those paying attention are even more cynical or skeptical. That's meaningful, actually, because it doesn't really matter if some goody two shoes person that doesn't, that calls it sport ball. Thanks for cheating, right? Like that doesn't matter to their business, really, right? And so like that, that makes it more meaningful for sure. I should say for the record that 25% of the total sample, they said they're not sure, which means that there is a swing vote possibility here at this moment in history in which by the way, the NBA just last week, they and the big betting companies all agree to restrict, quote, low likelihood high payout bets. This is including those in the genre. in part that have some of these NBA players headed toward federal trial here in New York, which we've also separately been investigating. So I should point out as well for comprehensive this is sake. When we crunch the crosstabs on the actual number of survey respondents in the South who self identified as gay men, there are nine of them. 80% think gambling is bad. We are a data driven show we rely on in very cleverness. I'm in the minority. And speaking of investigating, we also just crunched the crosstabs on this among the two survey respondents out of more than 1400 who live in the South who self identified as gay men and who also specifically know who Tim Miller is. 100% think that gambling is bad. Well, I can win this too over. That's a little bit of a teaser. You may recall that one of the very high-level findings we got from our pollster that you gov in this 2026 Bullworks/PTFO Survey of the American Sports Fan was this? Athletes and TV commentators are the worst resumes for a candidate and they're even bad among sports fans. Right. And so that is our setup for the Derby. That is the vice presidential nominee race. And so look, I want to start first with the incumbent party here. Seventh place for this person that Republicans or Republican leading independence would be most excited for as a VP candidate was Pat McAfee. And to say he was in seventh place a little bit over states it since 0% were excited about him. We could not find a single American that was excited about Pat McAfee being the vice president. Three way tie for sixth place. This is all at 4% excited. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Aaron Rogers who did score high, but again sports figures not exactly lighting up politically. And our girls so if he cunning him only 4% would be excited if she were the VP. In fifth place we had Dana White who were more excited about him than Aaron Rogers. In fourth place we had Nikki Haley. Third place Joe Rogan. The second place he'd have to step down from the boards of two major betting markets to do this but or maybe not. Maybe he could just do it all at the same time. Donald Trump Jr. at 24% excited to be the running mate. That's pretty alarming. I'm not it's expected. That is totally expected for me. I'm surprised now. Man, I had the under on that one admittedly. The person that they Republicans were the most excited about to be VP was big ear a little Marco. 45% excited about Marco Rubio blowing out Don Jr. at 24% okay. As for the Dems, their VP power rankings drawn again from our hand pick list of running mates. Who do we have bringing up the rear Sam? For the Democrats right now seventh place is a tie at 3% excited between Steve Kerr and my guy. Charles Barkley. I thought Chuck might be a good Chuck. I thought he might be. The Dems might be interested in him as a VP. I know sixth in the power rankings was another tie. Seven percent were excited about Matthew McConaughey or Stephen A Smith. Number five. We got Westmore Governor Marlon. Number four John Stewart. Number three Gretchen Whitmer, the retiring governor of Michigan. Above Gretchen Whitmer. Wow. Friend of the show. No for two in the VP power rankings. Mark Cuban who was asked for paperwork by the Harris campaign. I can tell you right. They did vet him. We discussed this on the bull or podcast a while back. So who knows? Mark Cuban number two. Yeah. And the top VP spot goes to yeah. Get another former podcast guest of PTFO but also of you guys Sam. It would be Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. Wow. Okay. Astronaut. It's a very he has a very VP. He kind of feels like a Dick Cheney good wolf. You know, they're both bald. You know, both kind of military guys. I don't think an astronaut is military for what it's worth. But yeah. Wow. Oh, okay. And I hadn't thought about this debate. I didn't want to throw NASA under the bus. Another poor question. Do you consider astronauts members of the military? Do you think an astronaut for their service? Sam Stein says no. And that is anti-american. Look, I watch what was the Bruce Willis movie where they had to go get in. Armageddon. Yeah. Okay. So maybe I should take it back. So I take it back to clarify that Mark Kelly was also in the Navy for like a quarter century. Okay. Okay. I take it back. All these things are relevant perhaps to his number one pole position. But here's the thing. We also asked Democrats which of these hand picked fantasy draft vice presidential candidates would not be acceptable. Okay. And the biggest loser clearly according to our polling, Tim, was who? Oh, devastating. I was really hoping it was going to be SAS. No, Charles Barkley, 41% unacceptable. I find this number to be like a polling. How could you not like Chuck? Is he just like universally loved? Because you're not wanting to be the vice president. Yeah. Well, there is someone else who found this number appalling according to our reporting. And I'd like to hear from him now. Okay, Pablo. You know, I got love for you. First of all, Matthew McConaughey is one of my favorite people. I think he'll make a great VP. I love John Stewart. I got a lot of respect for Steve Kerr. He'll make a great VP. Steve and A. No way. I mean, if everyone could watch that video, you could see him. You could see him going up in the polls. I think he's got room to grow. There, clearly. As Charles is also saying, and that's for me, I'm not looking for another job. He's not looking for another job himself. That is Charles's official position if you're wondering is Charles Barkley running? And if you're just curious, because we also asked Charles for his own personal power rankings for a celebrity vice president, he then provided some more data. Matthew McConaughey, John Stewart, Steve Kerr and no fucking way Steve and A. Smith. Very clear. I don't know how it feels about Steve and A. Yeah, we gotta do some more polling on that question. But look, guys, we hear it. Pablo Torre finds out in the bullwork, of course, and the effort to do yet more polling. What we did was ask 1,400 plus Americans about the 2028 presidential election. And what we found is that in head-to-head matchups, JD Vance, who was last seeing outside NFL locker room getting, we counted one dip from the entire Cincinnati Bengals roster is losing to Gavin Newsom, AOC, and to Mayor Pete Buttigieg, each head-to-head. But, if you add an independent to the race, like, for instance, Steve and A. Smith, I'm a registered independent, because I'm gonna trust out the side. What happens, Tim? So alarming things happen. Gavin Newsom still leads over JD Vance with Steve and A. Smith coming in at just 6% of the vote. In the hypothetical with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it's now a tie, so Steve and A would be a spoiler for AOC, 35, 35 to 6. And in a race with Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Mayor Pete would go down to 34% JD, would stay at 35%, and Steve and A would take 7% of the vote. That would obviously be a devastating result for millennial homosexuals for the country. Couches. It does leave us, though, with one more sports candidate here, the one non-political creature who happened to perform the highest in our vice presidential survey. Who would you be more likely to vote for in the 2028 presidential election if the candidates were Mark Cuban, a Democrat, and JD Vance or a Republican? And the former Dallas-Mabrik Zonor slash PTFO frenemy, Mark Cuban, performs how? Cuban mocks the **** out of JD Vance. Cuban 39, JD Vance 34, Cuban is winning by five, significantly better than the traditional politicians. Again, plus or minus, 3.6 percentage points is the margin of error, but data is data. And when you add in the independent candidates, Steve and A. Smith, Cuban as a Democrat, he does tie with Vance for the record here. Yeah, but this is before Chuck goes harsh negative on Steve and A in the campaign, right? That's right. That's just going to put a super PAC together and just take down Steve and A. Well, sure. Now, when I requested comment from Mark Cuban about the results of our very serious polling and whether he would actually consider running for president in 2028, he said this, Tim. No chance. My family would disown me. Looking at the cross tabs again, by the way. and the UGOV software here, it does appear that the favorability ratings from Mark Cuban are pretty evenly split among demographics. And so there's just a lot I think we can learn from all of our research. I didn't ask him for you're a real journalist, an investigative journalist, so you talk to Mark. He knows it's on the record. Mark and I DMed on this as well. I did not ask him if it was on the record, so I'm not going to share everything. I'll just say he was pretty adamant that he thinks a door would be open for him in the Republican primary. Yeah. I don't concur. Yeah, I could not. The data does not concur, but while Mark said that his family would disown him, and I didn't, you know, and again, I didn't put on something about whether he would. We were speaking more than a hypothetical term, but he saw the lane through the Republican primary as like a reform type of capitalist. I think he misunderstands the Republican base a little bit, but what do you know? I've been wrong before. Does he want to cage immigrants? Yes or no? Just the idea that Tim Miller just soft-launched Mark Cuban as the Republican candidate on this show is a bit much for me to process at the moment. Sorry. But it brings us to the fact that we did, in fact, pull the aforementioned Tim Miller as well. Yes. And so let's conclude as we were always destined to by talking about ourselves. What's the data here saying about how 1400 Americans felt about gas bags like at least me and Tim here? You know, Pablo, I think it could be better podcast if you read the results. We got to throw it up there. From most to least favorable, this time, number one, Charles Barkley, 45%, number two, Joe Rogan, 36%, number three, Stephen A Smith, 22%, number four, Pat McAfee, 20%, number five, Dave Portnoy, of Barstool Sports, 16%. Right on his heels, though. Number six, Tim Miller, 13%. And number seven, out. Pablo Torrey, 11%. That's tough. Too small. This is what happens when you take down the clippers. I did dominate you and the data as the data. That's okay. I will say this, either there were a lot of twigs in the poll or that maybe some of the younger men thought we were asking about Tim Miller, the director, the movie director? You're wondering if your own polling advantage is because people thought you were the executive producer of Sonic the Hedgehog 3. We'll never know. And so all we know is that I beat you by two scoreboard. This has been Pablo Torrey finds out a metal arc media production. And for more on our poll, please check out the bullwork.com and also you can listen to me over on the Bullwork Daily podcast. And yes, be sure to stay tuned for more updates about the election and our ongoing investigations over on our YouTube channel. And please do not forget to vote. I'll talk to you next time.