Why Trump Is Entering His Worst Ever Doom Spiral

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This is the beginning of Donald Trump grappling not just with his mortality, but seeing, hearing the clock. Tick, tick, tick on the wall. And all of his behavior is going to be driven by this. How do I remain relevant? How do I use the power that I've got? Particularly if the Congress has taken away from him as an option. We're already watching the decay of this mind. I mean, there are all these early signs of dementia and everything else. But the next couple of years are going to be watching a meltdown, like a nuclear meltdown, with the Chernobyl inside Donald Trump's head. David Rothkopf is in the studio. David, it's so exciting. So exciting. It's the day before the midterm elections. It's exciting. We're here. We're ready to celebrate. Yeah, we are gearing up. We've got the entire Daily Beast team ready and we're limbering up. It's like a race. Well, you don't want to injure yourself celebrating. No, well, we really don't. We really don't. And we have slightly different opinions on what's going to happen. I suspect you know much more than I do. I just feel like everything that's going to people are saying about, oh, the early turnout, it's very good for the Democrats. I feel like we were saying that about Kamala. We were saying it about Hillary. And you're absolutely right. You know, in three years, I'm like, go on TV shows. And I remember seriously, like looking at the camera and going, Hillary is definitely going to win. Don't worry about a thing. And I get home to my wife, who's from Michigan. She's like, well, I was just home in Michigan and she's not going to win. It's so anyway, we are here to discuss it. But how could we how could we even go this far into the podcast without saying a feel free to share this podcast with your friends? We're independent media. So please subscribe to the Daily Beast. Become a B-Beast tier member. This is the perfect week to do it. And of course, you can go to the Daily Beast dot com, sign up and get blow by blow accounts of what's going on. But what we really want to talk about, is there anything else to talk about except Ailey Stevens? Versus Al-Sayed, Abdul Al-Sayed in Michigan, the Michigan meltdown. Or as we might say here in New York, the Michigan Mishigas. The Michigan Mishigas. That's very good. I don't think it would like I don't think Al-Sayed would like you to say that. No, he would. He's embraced. He's embraced his inner diversity. Oh, has he? Has he there? Okay, so controversial candidate. And I mean, well, start the story from the beginning. For those of you who don't know, I'm not going to go into the details. I'm going to go into the details. But for those of you who aren't following this as closely as we are, Haley Stevens lost Congresswoman in Michigan, four-term Congresswoman, lost the primary, Democratic primary for Senate to Abdul Al-Sayed in the summer. Turns out she hasn't recovered from it. Yeah, it scarred her. Because for several months, everybody was saying Haley Stevens is going to win. She's the establishment candidate. Chuck Schumer loves her. Everybody loves her. And AIPAC brought a big, dump truck over to her house and dumped tens of millions of dollars into her campaign. Like 60 million, I read. Well, I think the total was, right? I think it was 30 million officially. And then there was all this money from these other friends. So she had a ton of money, no business losing because she had the establishment and so forth. But first of all, she wasn't a great candidate. Secondly, Al-Sayed took a different perspective, which is get the money out of politics. Mm-hmm. And AIPAC is the problem. And he was a very different kind. He was a progressive candidate at a moment where progressive candidates were doing pretty well in a variety of places. And he won. He eked out a close victory. Very close. It was under 1%, wasn't it? Right. But almost instantly, the newspaper reporters were, this is going to tear the party apart. He's a progressive. She was the establishment. This will, you know, and that'll create the opening for the Republican. And maybe because they were writing that, but every single Democrat in the establishment, every single Democrat in Michigan, you know, Gretchen Whitmer and Jocelyn Benson is running to replace Gretchen Whitmer and Debbie Dingell and Alyssa Slotkin, wherever they were on the spectrum, they said, I'm for Al-Sayed. And they all fell into line. This must have really roiled Haley Stevens. And we should say Haley Stevens, she was an advisor to Obama. She was involved in keeping the auto industry on its feet after 2008. She was, by all accounts, a good congresswoman. She was. Works across the aisle, got shit done, which is all you want a politician to do. Or perhaps you don't want a politician to do, actually. No, no, no. That is what you want. And also, Michigan's such an important state that people were, you know, invested in. Clearly, Obama and the others, you know, came in and got into that. But. I think something snapped in Haley Stevens. I don't, you know, I don't know whether she was, like, percolating this for a while and I'm going to switch over. I don't know whether AIPAC was knocking on her door and saying, you got to stop this guy because he has an Arab name. And, you know, he said he wants there to be a Palestinian state as well as a Jewish state. And, you know, I mean, his views, I'm a Jewish guy from New Jersey, right? His views on Israel are the same as my views, which is, you know, Palestinians, deserve their own straight, treat them properly, you know, and, you know, let's find a solution that makes some sense in the context of international law. Anyway, you know, something happened. Something really big. In fact, I think maybe the signature thing in this election happened. Barack Obama went to Michigan, like, a week ago. And he got up and he did this rap. And it was like, it was like Superman had gone into the phone booth, switched into his super costume, and we hadn't seen. We hadn't seen him in a while, right? Barack Obama has been like, I do podcasts, I make some movies. What has he been doing? Well, he is like a production company. He's been making his library happen. A lot of people, honestly, a lot of Democrats think he's maybe been too low-key, not playing the leadership role that he should have for enough. But he stepped out onto that stage, and there was instant, you know, real chemistry between him and al-Sayed. And he got it. And he was old, obedient. Obama, energized, funny. This is where he made the joke about Trump and Saddam Hussein and the Cheesecake Factory, which drove Trump crazy, because not. I mean, he was offended with being compared to the Cheesecake Factory. He never brought up the fact that he was compared to Saddam Hussein. Of course, right. But he also, you know, I think Obama sent a message to the whole Democratic Party, which was, "Don't. Don't reject what you're hearing from these progressives." al-Sayed's message about everybody getting health care, the anti-corruption message, the "get the big money out of politics" message. Obama was the first big, major figure who said, "Yeah, I get it. I'm behind it." And all of a sudden, I think, you know, she was like, "Oh, my God, the tide is really turning against this view." And maybe AIPAC was like, "Oh, my God, he's actually going to win." Whatever it was, something snapped. And she's like, "Okay." 24-hour period, because she called up a bunch of people in the Democratic Party, James Clyburn, all these other people, and said, no, I've got it. I'm going to go there. I'm going to endorse him at the end. I'm on Team Osai. And then in the course of a 48-hour period, she switched over and endorsed Mike Rogers. It wasn't just withholding her support or being tepid or on the fence or whatever. She endorsed the Republican opponent, who's a complete tool of Donald Trump, who, you know, essentially at that point is saying, I'm not a Democrat anymore. I'm going to take fascism. I'm going to take whatever comes with Donald Trump, corruption. I'm going to embrace that. If the person defusing a bomb said, red wire, blue wire, I'm feeling lucky, you'd set a personal record in the hundred-yard dash. Experience gets a lot more appealing when guessing isn't an option. That's why so many people turn to Morgan & Morgan, making it America's largest injury law firm. Morgan & Morgan has a proven track record of fighting for the people for over 35 years. And with over $35 billion recovered for their clients, Morgan & Morgan knows a thing or two about fighting to get you, the compensation you deserve. They've got more than 1,000 lawyers and 100 offices nationwide. So if your car gets totaled, you get hurt at work, or somebody else's bad decision becomes your very expensive problem, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. If you're ever injured, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. Morgan & Morgan fights to get their clients the best results. And their fee is free, unless they win. See if you have a case, you can go to ForThePeople.com/DailyBeast. Well, she said she was going to vote for the Democrats on all the other down-ballot races, just not El-Sayed. And then she sort of threw in that she'd never liked Graham Plattner either. I think she was getting at the bro-y-ness of El-Sayed, right? Well, maybe. But she was also, she was trying, because, you know, she did this interview on Anderson Cooper afterwards. And she was trying to make this message, "I don't like what's happening within the Democratic Party. And essentially, I'm an establishment Dem, and I don't know if I like these progressive Dems." But, you know, at the end of the day, she, I think, what's the political term? Shit the bed? You know, I mean, because everybody instantly, uniformly came out against her. Including Schumer, including Gretchen Whitmer, including Jocelyn Benson, including Debbie Dingell, who was very, Debbie Dingell's the nicest Congresswoman. So nice. So nice. So practical. I adore Debbie Dingell. Right. And she's like salt of the earth. My wife is from Ypsilanti, Michigan. She's the Congresswoman. Her husband, John Dingell, was the Congressman there for a long, long time. And Debbie Dingell came down on her hard for doing this. Because it was seen by all these Democrats as a huge problem. And it was a huge problem. It was a huge problem. It was a huge betrayal. Well, it's also, the Democrats are always talking about, "We're a big tent. We can accommodate everybody." Turns out she couldn't accommodate them, I think. I mean, look- Well, and she also didn't keep her word. Literally, day before, I'm on Team El-Sayed. I'm going to be the good, I'm going to be bigger than this. I'm going to do the right thing. I'm going to support the party. I'm going to do the right thing for Michigan. I'm going to do the right- And she did the wrong thing for Michigan, the wrong thing for the country, the wrong thing for the party. She lied to all her friends. She is on the out. They did an interview with the, like, head of the Michigan Democratic Party. And they said, "What's her future in the party?" She's like, "She's got no future in the party." Well, she does, however, have a friend still in politics. Can we play the clip? She was very brave in doing it. So, I don't know Haley. I've never met Haley, but Haley said what few people are willing to say. I think it probably, I'd love her to join the Republican Party, actually. I think that could happen, maybe. Within every circle. Like, her whole staff quit. Right. Her whole staff quit. A couple of things. First of all, she may end up losing El-Sayed, his Senate seat. It may go to Mike Rogers. She may trigger other people to do it. And it's just possible, because Michigan is a swing state and the Senate races are so tight, she could end up losing the Democrats, the Senate. I mean, she kept saying, "I must vote with my conscience." And you're like, "Well, that's a pretty big price to pay for your conscience to not vote with your party." But it's also complete BS, right? Oh, your conscience? You mean you're okay with fascism. You're okay with being against women's rights, women's healthcare, healthcare for everybody, affordability for everybody. What is the part of your conscience that is motivating you to support the most corrupt president in American history? Well, I mean, and she said, "Oh, the reason I'm voting against El-Sayed is that he's angry and he's not kind." And you're like, "And you're voting for a Trumper? That makes no sense." You're voting for Trump? Right. And frankly, who was the angry one? Who came out angry? Let's talk about projection. She comes out angry, embittered, left behind, and so forth. And, you know, the alternative analysis is that El-Sayed is going to get a little boost out of this. Because people feel this has backfired and, you know, it really cast a light on her and how she was the, you know, the wrong candidate at the wrong time and so on and so forth, and how important it was to go and support El-Sayed. And it got, you know, I don't think El-Sayed would have in the last 48 hours of the campaign gotten every Democrat to come out as forcefully for him as they have in the past, you know, few hours. And, you know, Gretchen Whitmer, "We have to vote Democrats up and down the line." And, you know, everybody has been saying that kind of thing. So it's going to be very interesting to watch. And in the last days of the election, it has become one of the signature stories, if not the signature story, of the campaign. It made me think that El-Sayed or his team should have been smarter in handling Haley Stevens. I mean, sometimes, you know, that phrase, bring the enemy inside the tent, have them pissing outside the tent, she's unzipped that tent, she's pissing all over them. And I sort of think someone should have seen, sorry, it's so vulgar. You're a very vulgar person. But all those business cliches come back. If you have an enemy, bring them inside the tent. And I think he underestimated her. And I'm not saying that he won't win because of this. She probably has much less influence than she thinks. Nevertheless, she had a constituency that voted her in. She lost by less than one percent. And it's tight in Michigan, right? It's tight. So if I had been on the El-Sayed campaign, I would have been nurturing her. I would have been trying to bring her in. Well, first of all, it's not that tight, according to the polls. Now, again, you know, we could do the whole podcast on the polls. Oh, the polls, the polls. Remember the last polls? No, I do. I'm so not a believer in polls. I really am not. They've just been so consistently wrong that I can't feel anything other than, let's hope. Well, I understand. But there's a difference between a poll that says the edge is two percent. Mary Peltola in Alaska is a two percent edge. Or a poll that says the edge is six or seven percent, like Tallarico over Paxton in Texas. And a poll that says the lead is 11 percent, like El-Sayed over Rodgers in Michigan. So it does seem like, you know, he has gotten some momentum going. And also, as far as working with her, you know, one of the things that came out of the woodwork in the wake of her betrayal of the party and the state and the country is she's quite an erratic person. And she has a history of going, oh, yeah, I'll do this. I'm for this. I'm against this. I'm for this. I'm against this. And it's not like she's going to do it. She's going to do it. It's not that easy to work for. And, you know, if you if you doubt it, who should be the most loyal to her? Her staff. What happened? A millisecond after she did this, the chief of staff put out a statement. I'm out of here. Everybody's out of here. The whole staff quit. They'd be out of there anyway, because she loses her Congress seat in January. Well, I see you totally support her decision. I don't support her decision. Of course not. I think they both behave badly. I think that she was a congresswoman who was popular and got elected repeatedly. I lost by less than one percent. If I were El-Sayed, I would have tried to recruit as many of her people as I could have done. And I would have had her on my side, too. But this is just management 101. He did. Did he? Alyssa Slotkin was super mainstream Democrat. Alyssa Slotkin was very different from his positions on Israel and the Middle East and all of those things. And Alyssa Slotkin said. Alyssa Slotkin wasn't his enemy. His enemy is Haley. Stevens. But she's the one that he had to bring in the camp. I disagree. Of course, if you're Alyssa Slotkin, of course, you're siding with him. him he's won no but but the point was you don't remember back to right after he won the question was whether establishment democrats would support him and they did one by one and he recruited and developed a working relationship with slotkin and with whitmer and with dingle and with jocelyn benson and with the mainstream democrats and the party and with um well and eventually yeah eventually and and and so the point is he did a lot of outreach he built a built a big consensus around him she wasn't part of it now did that help trigger her i don't know could he have done more with her i don't know i do know this we can debate this all we want we don't know the inside facts what we do know is this she lied to everybody about what she was going to do lied within her own party within a reversed her opinion in 24 hours and it literally stood up and said i'm for the trump guy and you know my you know my my issues with el-sayed are so significant that um a little more fascism a little more corruption a little less health care for everybody a little more grift um a little more you know doing the bidding of oligarchs and you know a little more iran war okay i'll take it you know and and you know to the average democrat that sounds real cynical you're shopping for everyone else making holiday plans and somehow trying to squeeze it all in but if healthier looking hair and skin have been on your own wish list here's a reason to make a little time for yourself too iris store makes it easy to bring clinically backed red light therapy into your routine at home even during the holiday rush the iris store elite uses 300 lasers and 200 leds to help regrow thicker healthier hair just wear it while you're shopping for gifts online watching your favorite holiday movie or winding down at night and then there's the illumina face mask lightweight cordless and packed with over two times the leds of most popular 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she was in some kind of emotional state and she was in some kind of emotional state uh and i hate sound you know anti-woman about it or or i don't want to fall for men have men have emotions do they yes i'm feeling some right okay but but i do think in politics the most dangerous enemy is often the enemy within and i think el sayed can come across as overconfident and broey and i think that his team should have brought her into the tent okay you know maybe we'll we'll we'll see the main thing is that you know we're recording this on a monday and it'll come out on a monday night and then starting a couple hours later the final phase of voting people have done early voting but the final phase of voting will begin and the you know the voters will decide the voters will decide where this all comes out you know and and i wonder if people just stay at home i mean the whole point was they were all supposed to be going to church together on sunday right with james cliburn king maker of carmela harris and joe biden as we know and by the way king maker you know that the first democratic primary because right it's been moved to south carolina right right and so he is like really really important to the democratic party and of course you know wednesday is i mean tuesday's election day but wednesday is a big holiday in america well wednesday's the wednesday's the beginning of the presidential people are like what are you going to do after the midtimes i'm like seriously what are we going to do everybody's going to be running from president for president on both parties you'll be we'll be sitting here going andy beshear did what you know i mean well we'll be like rfk junior did what oh well we're still doing that man yeah he's a i mean he brought measles back i mean how is he even thinking he can run how is he even sure thinking wriggly figures and what he's doing well it's true the brain the brain worm has like gone oh my goodness and and but but yeah measles i came across a new index which i thought was interesting and i thought it was interesting i thought it was interesting and i thought it was interesting and i thought it was interesting and i thought it was interesting and bodes well for the democrats at the weekend which was the halloween candy index halloween candy is something we just buy once a year friend of mine called from arlington virginia and he was irate that the price of halloween candy has gone up so much and i said well it's gone up he was irate he was irate he was like you know i've had to put two what halloween candy do you like what halloween candy do i i'm not a big halloween candy but i hate that candy corn stuff i don't understand it's the most bizarre i kind of like it do you yeah no no this is a big divide in america like it's the dress yellow or is it the dress blue or whatever right right right it's always blue it's a dress is always blue but but in any event yeah no that affects a lot of people i mean the affordability thing you know you're saying uh things are good in america you know the affordability thing is very real for a lot of people and you know people feel it in different ways and i think they may have felt it on in terms of how did you celebrate halloween did you wear a costume did you go out i i thank you for asking because i wanted to get to trompalago and his uh costumes and the the party there i had one halloween moment well it's been halloween week in new york i don't know is it halloween week in dc no right and a little bit yourself too serious no well no it depends on where you live i used to live in georgetown and all the students from georgetown you know halloween and and st patrick's day were the bad day you didn't sort of go out into the neighborhood that much um and uh uh you know i mean kids go out and stuff but it's not quite the same thing as because i lived in the village and i mean the village well the village yeah the village uh in new york city you mean yeah the village in new york city fantastic halloween parade incredible puppets it's really tens of thousands of people and dancing and everything shuts down and you can't move and it's yeah and there's barriers along the streets you can't take a car into that yeah stupidity is that there's this sort of subtext in america that a halloween custom is any costume turned into sexy costume sexy nurse sexy cop sexy this right i'm just gonna wear a little less because i came into manhattan on halloween and i was driving up the street and you know it looked it was really something because there was a lot of that going on out there you say sexy i say slutty there's a lot of slutty witches slutty cats yeah a lot of people dress up as slutty cats and they're dressed as doctors i thought and i wondered if that was a reflection on the health care situation that nobody can afford health care so we dress up and that's why you're never going to see a doctor in real life it's a good point and that's why i knew you were going to bring it back to el sayed i knew you were going to do that well he's a public health professional he is a public health professional what does that mean well he restored the detroit public health system which was bankrupt to functioning again 300 000 people got health care weren't getting health care you have the johns hopkins school of public health advisory board and was immersed in and i have to tell you public health is underrated totally underrated and also a lot of it's common sense right but 96 of all the gains in life expectancy in the u.s in the last century were from public health measures not from doctors inventing new cures it was washing your hands right closed sewer i think you have to wash your hands before you eat isn't that it you wash your hands after you've been well i haven't been on this board for a while but yes you're absolutely right well it's washed but in washing your hands and vaccinations right are the two things and sewers and and how do you manage clean drinking water exactly but so anyway and that's what he's focused on you know there are a lot of people out there well he wasn't a doctor that's not the important part the important part is do you keep people healthier and in this country we're not good at you know of all the countries in the whole oecd one country doesn't provide health care is a right to everybody and that's the united states and i have to say it was great watching you know obama zeroed in on that you know and remember obamacare was like a sort of halfway solution and and he and he's sort of getting the vibe that there are a couple of big themes in this election that really are resonating across democrats regardless whether you call yourself establishment or progressive health care corruption john ossoff on that, you know, on corruption. So immigration, you know, that Trump has abused it and that people are being dragged away. And you're starting to see your neighbors dragged away. Well, and that feels like it could be a huge deciding factor if James Tallarico wins that the Hispanic population in Texas saw too many of their friends and neighbors and school friends being arrested. Yeah. No. And I know you hate polls and particularly the early voting data. Yeah. The early voting data when they go, oh, it's a great sign for Democrats. It means it's huge enthusiasm. They said that. But in Texas. Can I just finish? They said it in 2024. They particularly said it when Hillary was running in 2016. They were like, this is excellent. All these Democrats going to the poll. And you're like, actually, Republicans just go out and vote on the day of the election. No, that's true. And people lie to the polls. But. And nobody's going to a Ken Paxton rally. Here's my fear. Ken Paxton. Well, you were just in Texas. You were talking to Texans, right? This is you're getting this. I was, but I was in Austin. So you've got to, you know, Austin, the blue dot. But no one I understand that no one is going to a Ken Paxton rally. And indeed, nobody has been going to Ken Paxton rallies. And there was a wonderful moment where he says something. He gets a solitary clap. That was a clap for people listening and not being able to see me clap. And he goes, thank you for that clap. I understand no one is going to a Ken Paxton rally. They don't like him. He's a horrible man. It doesn't mean they're going to vote for James Tallarico. That's all I'm saying. Well, we'll see. We'll see. But what I was getting at was that the early voting does seem to show that Hispanics are showing up in bigger numbers. And the polling seems to show that they feel Trump lied to them and that there were a bunch of Hispanics that supported him. And so that becomes one of those issues. And again, Obama and others have glommed on to that. And the final one is this war, because people and people connect the war, not just with another crazy war. We're spending billions of dollars and we're blowing up schoolchildren and all this other stuff. They connect it to the price of gas, the price of diesel, the price of living. And so they see it as like, well, you fight this war. I'm going to pay the price for it. And and so these are the themes that have sort of evolved. And we'll see. We'll see whether people care more about those things or not. I guess there's one other issue, of course, and that's Trump. I mean, and there's this kind of Trump fatigue and they feel lied to by Trump. And they think Trump is like, I mean, have you did you watch his rallies this weekend? I watched been watching them. And it's incredible. You know, he was going to do rallies and he wasn't going to do rallies. Talk about Haley Stevens. I mean, maybe that's why she wants to go over to the Republicans, because she likes the way Trump flip flops. But he wasn't going to go. Then people said, oh, you're not healthy enough. You're too exhausted. So he's suddenly back out there. I mean, he's so reactive. He wasn't going to go to Kansas. He wasn't going to go to the guy is the Senate candidate is losing big. Right now. And it's just thought, well, I'm not going to go. Right. But then people were like, well, he is too. He's too old. You know, what is Trump's problem? And so he's he's he's showing up at these things. Then he gives these speeches where he's talking about John Husted's ass. Not and he's not even in Ohio. John Husted's ass is nowhere close. Husted is right. You're not in Ohio. Right. But he's but he's talking about these things or he's talking about, I don't know, you know, golf courses or reflecting pools or his own. Well, he's we're recording this on Monday morning and he's giving a speech at the reflecting pool this afternoon. And why are you it's like someone going back to the scene of a crime. Right. It's like the murderer saying on the on the very part of the field where he dumped the body. I'm here. You know, this is where I found the body. I don't understand what happened. It's exactly the motivation for Donald Trump standing at the reflecting pool today. What is he doing? He's ruined the reflecting pool. And he's the murderer going back to the scene of the crime. My first reaction when I heard that he was doing this was that it wasn't true. Right. That this was crazy. My second reaction was, why wasn't Epstein Island available? You know, in other words, this is so dumb. It's like, let's call attention to something profoundly stupid that went wrong where he made up. You know, first of all, didn't need to be done. Secondly, he then made up this thing about. Well, they arrested an Olympian. They arrested an Olympian, accused him of vandalism, of somehow single handedly ripping up these 220 foot long. And now everybody's going to be able to go back and see that the guy who was given the no bid contract to do the reflecting pool had like a bad, bad experiences with the law. And then all of a sudden, when you say reflecting pool, you can't say reflecting pool without thinking ballroom or helipad or triumphal arch or tearing down 400. And that Trump is the ultimate vandal of Washington, D.C., and that he's occupying himself with this cuckoo crazy stuff like there's a war. People can't afford what they're doing. The Congress hasn't gotten anything done. He hasn't gotten anything done. Criminals get pardons for money. Criminals. Well, they're selling them for big, big, big, big. Right. There's a whole pardon economy. Right. But all this stuff is happening. And he's like, I need more gold. And the gold, by the way, is apparently melting on the horses. He painted all gold on the statues. What are those horses called? Valor. One of them's called Valor. Right. What's the other one called? I don't know. Seraphim or something. It's amazing that you know that. Well, I know that one of them is called Valor. But what is it like being in D.C.? I know you spend your whole time wandering around those private clubs in the middle of D.C. Yeah, I'm just mostly in limousines and shady back, you know. I mean, we know that we know that tourism has dropped by up to 50 percent. What a load of bullshit. I mean, to the United States, tourism has dropped. Why? Because nobody wants to go through. It's dropped to D.C. Well, it's dropped significantly to D.C. All I can say is I hear Trump going, tourism is up. I've fixed everything. I've got the troops. People used to, they couldn't go to a restaurant because they would get robbed in the street before and all this stuff. And none of that's true. You know, people, you sit and watch. And you see the National Guard walking by with nothing to do. They're literally just there. We're paying millions and millions of dollars because the president feels better about life because the National Guard, it makes him feel like he's Kim Jong-un. He's a strong man. He's a military leader. But none of the things he's done has improved D.C. in any way. And nobody from D.C. says, oh, thank you. Thank you for bringing the National Guard in. Thank you for painting the tush of this horse gold. And as I said, apparently the gold is kind of melting off of the tush of the horses. That's unfortunate. That's unfortunate. Well, and also, you know, the minute you look at the White House, you see this, the demolition of the East Wing and you see this thing dwarfing the existing. It's twice, it's bigger than the White House. Yeah, it's 90,000 square feet. It's ridiculous. It's obscene. And it's a waste of money. And he's spending a billion dollars renovating D.C. where we can't afford health care. And he goes, he talks to people. He says, well, you know, we can't do health care. We can't do Medicaid. We can't do this because we have to fight these wars. We have to do all this stuff. And, you know, neglecting the fact that he's blown up the deficit because he's cut taxes for rich people and everybody else is getting less services at the VA or there are no services in a rural hospital. Or, you know, less services in the school that they enrolled in or whatever. And, you know, there is, you know, when we talk about all these things that figure in the news, but the American people are not like schmucks, right? I mean, they've elected Trump twice. They have elected Donald Trump twice. No, I do get that. But they also know that he's self-dealing, that he's made billions of dollars, that he's making billions of dollars for Elon. Remember the slush fund? Yeah. That he was going to bring in at $1.8 billion that he would decide where it would go. And it was probably going to go to. And this was all a settlement that he struck with himself on tax fraud cases that were being brought against him. But, you know, you also have in Texas now, Elon, hundreds of millions of dollars supporting Paxson and a strange relationship between Elon and the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, which. And, you know, I think that's a very good thing. She wants to see the emails and, you know, you know, so, you know, and and and and and Paxton, all this dealing with Elon. And it's like Elon wants to buy a state. Elon wants to buy a senator. And that's Tallarico's line. And people in Texas know that. They know that Elon is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy Paxton because then he's going to make Star City or whatever he's calling it. Traditional home security only alerts you after a break-in. And that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that. Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way. We don't just alert. We help stop crime before it starts. Plans starting around a dollar a day. Right now, get 70% off your new system with professional monitoring at SimpliSafe.com slash Spotify. SimpliSafe. Ahead of crime in real time. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit SimpliSafe.com slash licenses for alarm license information. Is there an argument? So Elon Musk has given $450 million, right? He's by far the biggest donor for this midterm election. Is there an argument that people like Elon in Texas because he's bought SpaceX, he's bought Tesla, it's good for Texas in terms of jobs, it's good for them feeling that they're on the cutting edge of Elon's technology? I mean, there may be some people who are there in those businesses. But they also know that Elon is associated with giant data centers, and they know that data centers don't create jobs, and that they push the price of energy up, and that they eat up water, and so forth. And so it's not- Well, they don't have to. They don't have to. And also, we can't live modern lives without data centers. I always feel like I'm not trying to defend data centers, but I do think there is a sort of strange argument. About data centers, because everybody's on their computers, everybody's embracing AI. Look, I love your- You need a data center. I love your pro-Hailey Stevens, pro-data center stance. I'm not pro-Hailey Stevens, to be clear. I'm not pro-Hailey Stevens. I think she did a terrible thing for her party. I'm just teasing you. The reality is this. I spend a lot of time dealing with AI, and I do several podcasts on AI. I've been working in these areas for a long, long time. And I agree with you. It's not that all AI is bad, and we do need to make progress in these things. I also know that the oligarchs, the tech bros behind this business, have been trying to play a game, ram down these big data centers, are doing it in ways that could push up people's prices of electricity, are doing it in ways that use up a lot of water. And frankly, we don't know what the model- For data centers in the future is going to be. They are likely to be more efficient. And you know, Elon- They're going to have to bring their own power sources. They're going to have to do proper open deals with the local communities so that they actually add to the tax base, don't detract from it. They're going to have to spend a lot of time figuring out the water issues, right? Right. But if people did not rise up, as they have in this election cycle, and say, "No, we're not just buying this whole hog unit." Trump is like, "This is the future and it's going to create a lot of jobs." And then people see a data center built in their county and it creates two jobs. And it doesn't actually help them. And so, you know, there's been an awakening, an awareness that something has got to change and we need guardrails and we need fair deals and we need to understand progress. Well, I agree with you about the fair deals and clearly there have been all sorts of unfair deals done. There have been NDAs signed, there have been local politicians on the take. But I was making a different point. Which is, all the stuff Elon is doing is not seen as a plus. If you're creating the biggest data center ever and you're doing this and it's going to have negative consequences, people are skeptical and they're a little skeptical of Elon. You know, I mean. Well, and they're particularly skeptical of him after he, you know, raised his chainsaw and was appalling at managing Doge. And destroyed a lot of services people need. Maybe responsible for the deaths. Maybe responsible for the death of up to 11 million people for the cuts that were made to USAID. Had a bunch of incompetent 20-somethings going in that may have been resulting in data breaches. It may have been resulting in. Well, and writing hundreds of thousands of letters to people saying, "You're going to be fired. You're losing your job. Give us five reasons why you should keep your job and we need them by Monday." I mean, insulting, insulting behavior to public servants who've worked for the government, for their lives, right? Hugely insulting. And in a number of cases, having to hire the people back after they fire them because they realize that, you know, "Oh, you're the people who take care of our nuclear waste in America. Let's not fire you because we got to deal with the nuclear waste," you know? And so, he did a terrible job on that and, oh, yeah, Hitler salute and, oh, yeah, kind of a racist and, oh, yeah, running a farm to, you know, raise little baby Elon someplace with multiple baby mamas and, oh, yeah. Ketamine and, oh, yeah, big weirdo. And you know, there is a reaction, I think, in a lot of people that the richest guy in the world should not be able to spend half a billion dollars on an election to pick the officials he wants, to get the laws that he wants so that he can make more and more billions. Right. To get the government subsidies he wants. Right. And so, you know, I think that's part of where we are, frankly. I think that's part of the watershed that we're in America. And I think. I mean, we joke about Campaign 2028, but a lot of it's going to turn on inequality, corruption, whether the system is rigged, whether the system doesn't work for average Americans. And, you know, you say, I know you don't like polls, but you saw the Harvard Youth Voter Poll and in the Harvard Youth Voter Poll that came out two weeks ago, they do this every six months, they asked them, you know, "Do you think we're on the right track as a country?" Nine percent said they're on the right track. You think by the time you're your parents' age, you're going to be better off or worse off. The majority said worse off. You've seen other polls where young Americans don't think they'll be able to buy a house, that the American dream doesn't apply to them. Well, and the age of being able to buy a house has gone up to 40, right? Right. And so, you know, I think these are the issues that sort of bubble and fester beneath the surface that are distant from the headlines. You know, because we're like, "Oh yeah, let's have a fight with Haley Steele," or, "Oh, the president's going to go and get, you know, there are two Dan Sullivans on the ballot in Alaska and this is going to cause great drama and the Democrats are, you know, they're behind this high corruption." And, you know, it's like, everybody knows it's bullshit. Everybody knows that happens all the time in politics. Everybody knows the Alaska Supreme Court ruled on it and said, "This is fine, you know, proceed." And they're the final authority. Everybody knows that the federal government has no authority over this. Heck, Trump has a candidate running for Senate in South Carolina who changed her name so that it would sound more like her brother's name so she could win his seat, despite the fact that she herself admits she doesn't know anything about the stuff she needs to know about. Right. Darlene. Darlene Graham. Darlene. Which has now turned into a much, much tighter race, right? It's up for grabs. Annie Andrews. Yeah. She's the first candidate. You know who else we should mention, by the way? Because Haley Stevens is not the only person who has really blown it in this campaign, or Trump is not the only. Vivek Ramaswamy. Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio running for governor. Running for governor. Is now like 10 points behind Acton, who's the candidate he's running against, because this ad that he ran. He's taking this homeless woman. With Amy Acton's mother. Amy Acton's mother. But taking her in and running this ad and stuff, it's just blown up in his face. And then, you know, what happens is there's this kind of knock-on effect. Now he's a serial bullshit artist, and everybody knows he's a serial bullshit artist, but I saw an article this morning saying, well, you know, in his bio it said he was a ranked tennis professional, or he was a ranked American tennis player, and then it turns out that in the midway. The only ranking that anybody could find for him was in the Midwest, under-16s, he was ranked 46th, you know, and it's like all of a sudden everything unravels when you become associated with this kind of behavior. Well, he's not likable, Vivek Ramaswamy, is he? That's so much part of politics, and Hailey Stevens, it turns out, she just wasn't likable. And El Sayed is funny, he was a podcaster with Crooked Media, so he's got a background in being very good with the crowd, and that matters when you're campaigning. Yeah. In fact, it was kind of funny, because when you did that, you look at the Obama rally in Michigan, and El Sayed came out and talked, and he started talking in these Obama rhythms. And I thought, well, this is like an Obama impersonator. And you know, then Obama came out, and he was talking in the Obama rhythm. But El Sayed-- Well, and John Ossoff speaks in Obama rhythms, too, and he's a very slow talker, right? He's a slow talker. He says one thing. Let the crowd catch up with what he's said. He's a very, very good speaker. Yeah. Now, Obama's the great orator of American politics in modern times. It's possibly not that surprising that these people behave that way. But-- Well, you know that they've all been studying tapes, but not wearing a tie, the coming out with the shirt that's undone, the sleeves rolled up. And they're good on-- they're also good on their feet. Very good on their feet. You know, and they go on interview shows and so on and so forth, and they get hard-- and there are other people. People out there, like Pete Buttigieg, is really good on its feet, you know? And we'll see more of that as we get into campaign-- I can't wait to our show next week on campaign 2028. Well, I know. It'll be very interesting to see who emerges as the kind of stronger-- Well, and by the way, you know, everybody should watch this election, because we tend to overinterpret the results and let that influence politics going forward. So in 2024, Joe Rogan-- Yeah. --was the reason that Donald Trump got elected-- no, that's not true, right? But-- And everybody said it was the podcast. And right. And then it was the young men who were the reason that Donald Trump got elected. And so then everybody's like, oh, you need a young man. And, you know, Hassan Piker comes and, you know, but we're over interpreting. Let's see what these results are, because, for example, if the results are that voters of color. Hispanics and black voters, as the early voting shows, were the decisive voters in getting the turnout that the Democrats needed to win. There's going to be a candidate of color on the Democratic ticket. You're going to have to win that. You know, you're going to have to win that vote. If there were young people and. Then people are going to start saying, well, you got to appeal to those young voters. Now, by the way, those things are they they make sense. Right. And and and it's a it's a it's a good thing in many respects. But watch the election results and watch the analysis, because that's going to determine the discussion of the next two years as to, well, as we know, you know, and of course, now Rogan is dump Trump, you know, and those young voters, those young guys. who may not have been like super politically educated. Right, and they're all coming off their parents' health care insurance, which hits 26, right? They're all having to pay for their own health care and realizing how expensive it is. And they're all trying to look in the reflecting pool and think more about themselves. And there's no water in the reflecting pool. I'm being sarcastic, but young men, narcissists. That's a beautiful metaphor. Thank you. It was beautiful. And the classical undertones tied back to your participation in the all-night Odyssey raver that you went to. The Odyssey. The Odyssey was the most dramatic thing that happened this year. I wonder if this is the Odyssey election. Can we draw a connection? Christopher Nolan's not a bad director. The Odyssey, such an overrated piece of crap. Such an overrated piece of crap. Okay, comment, please. I know that's going to drive so many comments. Well, yeah. It just was, and it was too long. Are you talking about the movie or are you talking about the original poem? No, not the original. Okay. No. All right. Not Homer. No, the movie. The movie. The movie. I was like, oh, that really is provocative. No. I think we have a lot of classic scholars. The classicists. Yeah, we have a lot of classicists, actually. No, no, who read the original Greek. And, you know, no, I love the Odyssey. I'm all for it. But the movie didn't capture anything. Any of what the Odyssey was about. And it all became this Americanized story about this guy. And you sort of don't really sort of get the other subtexts that were in it. And it was too long, too indulgent. Well, everything's too long. Everything's 25 minutes too long. Used to be a movie could be made in 90 minutes. And you couldn't make it if it was longer than 90 minutes. It was a good thing. This holiday, all plans, even unlimited, are just $15 a month. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song. Like, all I want. Right. Okay, we can't afford that. You know what? Forget the music budget. We're going to stick with whatever's in the public domain. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for a 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes. May slow when network is busy. See terms. Yeah, now it's now. Now the Elon Musk movie, which I am trying to. I thought to myself, I'm going to try and see it. I thought you can't see that anymore. They've suppressed it. I cannot find it anywhere in Manhattan. How is that possible? Because they've suppressed it. Well, it's also four hours long. Because rich people have a lot of power. Well, yeah. You want to see that, by the way? I do want to see it. It's Alex Gibney. I totally want to see the Elon Musk movie. I'm prepared to take in or smuggle in a sandwich and a cup of tea and sit and let it wash over me. Well, that's how you did the Melania movie, didn't you? I remember you went undercover. I went undercover. Yeah, but it turned out that there weren't many people in the theater, so it didn't matter. I'm dying to see the Elon Musk movie because I think he's emerging as the most important person, you know, possibly globally, frankly. He's having so much sway over the election in terms of the money. Well, we won't know until tomorrow, but he's putting so much money into it. His technologies are increasingly dominant. Look at Starlink. He's the guy that said, you know, switch off Starlink so the Ukrainians don't have advanced knowledge of incoming Russian missiles. I mean, it's the most important. It's the most important war going on right now. He doesn't innovate. He's not an engineer. He doesn't create these things. But he is a guy who's good at promoting things to Wall Street, which enables them to fund them, which creates these sort of upward spirals of value. I think one of the things that we could be seeing, you know, is if there's fragility in the market, the AI boom in China has already started to come undone in the past couple of weeks. I think they've lost 400 billion, $500 billion off the value of Chinese AI firms. If that continues, the resentment against AI companies and Elon and Zuckerberg and the Ellison, all these, that's going to go back up and that's going to become a central theme. Because I think really, really, I don't think people like the billionaires that much. You know, there's some nice billionaires out there, but they're not that prevalent. Most of them are like bond villains. And Elon is the bond villainist of them all. He really is. And also, it's the tech billionaires, right? If you think back to 20, 15, 20 years ago, people were so excited about what was happening. Now people are much more suspicious because we've seen the overreach of, in particular, Meta and Mark Zuckerberg. And people are much more apprehensive now about AI. And we've seen it in the past couple of weeks, right? Zuckerberg and Meta taking the side of Bolsonaro and the Brazilian government. And they're like, "We're going to have a billion elections and make it harder for people to find out about Lula. Make it harder for people to find out about Angie Nixon, the Senate candidate in Florida." You know, that he's playing the politics of this whole thing. Well, and also, no kings, right? The recent no kings part. Right. And he is just, you know, it turned out. Remember the social network? And you watch the social network and you thought, "Those Winklevosses, they're up to no good. I don't like those Winklevosses." You know? And, but Zuckerberg, he's a little nerdy. Like, he's, he's, he's our hero, right? Well, he wasn't. It turned out they were all villains. The Winkle, the Winklevosses, the Winklevines, the Winklevines, and Zuckerberg, they were all bad guys. Now, of course, the, the sequel that they did has bombed. But it is interesting. You have the Musk movie and you have the sequel to Social Network and you've got the, the Elizabeth Holmes documentary, You Can See Everything. Yeah. We're starting to see movies about the billionaires and that we don't like them. It's starting to become sort of woven in the public dialogue and the culture that this, this marks our moment, that these are our robber barons. Right. Well, and I mean, we've seen negative shows about the tech billionaires. We saw We Crashed about WeWork, right? We saw Super Pumped about the founders of Uber and we had the dropout about Elizabeth Holmes. But now they're sort of pivoting to focus on AI more, I think. Yeah. And I think the tech, the face of billionaires today is tech billionaires. These are the people that Trump invited to the season. Ping dinner. These are the people that Trump met with a couple of days afterwards and said, Hey, I've got an agreement with them. And it's like a new constitution. And we, you know, the, the, those of us in this room have decided how AI is going to go. You should trust us. You know, that's just going to be fine. Well, they're also the guys that circled around him at the inauguration. Right. And they're the guys who backed it up. And if you look at the big spenders in this election cycle. For the ballroom, for the election cycle. You know, they're there, you know. And every once, you know, I think, you know, I saw the list of them and it was almost all Republicans there. George Soros's group was on the list. And you used to think, oh, Soros, he's the billionaire the Republicans go after. Well, they were jealous and they want more of their own billionaires. And now Elon Musk has spent more in political campaigns in the past two years than George Soros has in his whole life. You know, so things of the deck has gotten shuffled. But, you know, there is also this other weird factor. Which I think we've talked about in the past. Which is Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, the Ellisons, Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel. These are. Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google slash Alphabet. Yeah, but I'm not going to include him in that group so much. Why? Because he's always at those dinners. No, I understand. But what I'm saying is these people are odious. They're creepy. They're strange. You know, Elon Musk is strange. Peter Thiel's out there talking about the Antichrist. You know, you're like, what the heck? And he is like the guy who picked the vice president of the United States, J.D. Vance, right? Peter Thiel is like got, you know, super influence with what Pete Hegseth is spending at the Defense Department. And he is as strange as they come, as are other people within his company. Bezos? Weird. Weird. You know, the world's most public and expensive. midlife crisis that ever took place zuckerberg everybody knows he's like the poster guy for weirdo and and you know the ellison's are you know creepy in their own right somebody ought to advise larry ellison about the dying of the yeah it's not good it's i don't and the filler the over filler yeah it's just not it's not good you know but we maybe we could do a larry ellison makeover at some point well i thought you're going to say we could do a larry ellison special which we could do a larry ellison special yeah well he controls all the other media he's doing his own you know constant larry ellison vision um but in but in any event i'm just saying we don't just have inequality we have a cast of villains that have entered and who are you know sort of it creating a narrative with their personalities which are awful so david i know that um you weren't at mar-a-lago but did you see the pictures of the people at mar-a-lago face you don't have mar-a-lago face okay but people at mar-a-lago have mar-a-lago face we're showing some clips now for those listening you can't see some of the wild costumes that would be a good app wouldn't it what mar-a-lago face mar-a-lago face where you could just take anybody's picture and give them mar-a-lago face i think you can do that can't you do that on existing apps i think you can but look at these costumes we we did a story on the most heinous costumes uh which we love to do on mar-a-lago's costume party and of course donald trump wasn't in costume but he said he was he said he was he was dressed as donald trump yeah which he thinks is the most fascinating costume that could ever be the most powerful man in the world didn't he didn't i see a piece in the daily beast where he's now like talking comparing himself to like the most handsome man in history and he's like i mean he's on well you did see a piece in the daily beast about his hair because his hair has become a feature of the of the rallies really i mean he points to it himself there was the famous one where he was thinking cleveland or was it no he was in texas and he looks up and on the big screen behind him he catches his bald spot and he makes the thing of it but his hair is has a life of its well and it has for 10 years because of you remember trumpy cats where the people did cats with comb overs yes that was yes that was good that was great you know when i was the editor of foreign policy magazine and i thought i was like a genius of the foreign policy community influencing people's big decision um uh the well actually this was even right before i was the editor but nonetheless the biggest article that we ever did was called something like 17 cats that look like vladimir putin oh how funny because he's got a slightly cat-like face and he's got those kind of almond shape eyes that go up yeah that was what you were doing was it i can't take credit for that right but it but it ended and it was the big hit you know we would do these very thoughtful pieces but people wanted and you thought you were going to be running 15 000 word pieces on a wither on on yeah nuclear triad and that kind of thing and i was like oh my god i'm not going to do that i'm not going to do that right and you had no idea that the president was going to suck up to vladimir putin but i did you know i have to say you know while we're there let's give me credit because in for the first time ever in the history of foreign policy in 2016 it had never written an op-ed uh about a presidential election and i wrote one that said the biggest threat to the united states of america is donald trump that was 10 years ago wow 10 10 i mean you know there have been many other people who've done the same thing i'm just saying we've known this was coming and you know we're sitting here and we're not talking about the fact that trump's cutting deals with the russians now trump's you know doing all sorts of crazy stuff who knows what's going on with the iran war at the moment it's either on or it's off did you see this post by tucker carlson which suggested that trump had been contemplating using some kind of nuclear force to get a mountain the nuclear facility with apparently all the enriched uranium that the iranians have uh that this he was considering this after after the election i've heard reports that he's considering an attack that he's considering a big attack i don't know that he would consider a nuclear attack that would be kind of game changer in terms of america's role in the world and everything else also there is no one place in iran where all the nuclear materials are stored in a variety of places they know that these are risks but trump for years and years and years has been behind the idea of more usable nukes which ought to scare the crap out of somebody because the way our nuclear system works is that the president of the united states can give the order and within four minutes the missiles are coming out of their silos and nobody can stop him giving the order uh and uh he he is now wants to spend hundreds of billions of dollars modernizing our nuclear weapons so that there are smaller more usable ones which is scary you know i mean the last thing you want with nuclear weapons is usable nuclear weapons and you know you don't want a president who thinks that's really an option because of course that just changes the nature of conflict and in in thousands of important ways and so you know it's it's it's not out of the question because he's been talking about it for so long and as you've talked about here and you talk about any other shows or you've talked about with you know mary trump in the past he's a narcissist he just does not think the world will continue to operate after he's gone and you know we are entering and i think this is you know this is a really important thing and maybe it's you know maybe it's maybe the the last word you want to have before we embark into election time the page is turning this is the beginning of absolutely lame duck donald trump this is the beginning of donald trump grappling not just with his mortality but seeing hearing the clock tick tick tick on the wall and all of his behavior is going to be driven by this how do i remain relevant am i relevant how do i use the power that i've got um and uh particularly if the congress is taken away from him as an option and it's all going to be whatever goes on inside his head and you know we're already watching the decay of this mind i mean there are all these early signs of dementia and everything else but the next couple of years are going to be the watching a meltdown watching like a nuclear meltdown when the chernobyl inside donald trump's head it's if it weren't real it would be it would be funny but it is it's not funny and and i'm assuming tucker carlson did that because he wants trump to be dealt a blow at the mid yeah and look and tucker carlson wants to run against trump and he's bitter for some reason or whatever but there's a kernel of truth in this or two one is trump's thinking of attacking again and two trump has a relationship with nuclear weapons that should scare the shit out of us all because he does consider it he does want to think about and there are other stories of people saying well why don't we use new him saying why don't we use news and military people saying uh-uh do you think if he did do that there is uh there are people around him who would stop him clearly not pete hexeth but i think there are military people who have already deeply fed up with trump and has seen the damage he has done to the military in manifold ways where he and hexeth have done to the military in a manifold ways who would resist i just i i really do think that's a bridge too far well if that doesn't get people to the polls david rockoff i don't know what does the threat of trump well yeah but you know you can again 10 years ago i wrote something saying donald trump is the biggest threat that exists in the world to the united states and in the intervening 10 years the american people have elected him twice they saw him they saw him do a terrible job they said okay y'all let's have some more of that and so so we don't know me within it's always the enemy within it is brings us right back to hayley stevens the enemy within they're the ones you have to be careful of well i thought it brought us back to lincoln who said that if we are brought down it's going to be by by an enemy within okay good but all right erudite david always erudite that's why we love having you on the daily beast podcast i know you're going to be at many election night parties tomorrow a bunch of nervous washington democrats we're thinking is this the turning point is this going to turn out the way everybody thinks will the democrats get 235 or 240 seats in the house will the democrats switch the majority in the senate to what looks like now could be 53 47 okay so we have the the final senate polls in front of us let's just go through el sayed 53 rogers in michigan is this the new york times sienna poll this is the new york times sienna poll texas tala rica 70%, Paxton, 40%, Maine, Jackson, 51%, Susan Collins, 45%. I still think Susan Collins will win. Ohio, Brown, 49%. So that's Sherrod Brown. He was a former senator there, got voted out, but is now ahead of John Husted at 44%. Hamilton, Adam Hamilton in Kansas, amazing Democrat, at 49%. Roger Marshall at 44%. Shocking. That's shocking. Mary Peltola in Alaska up against Dan J. Sullivan, or is it Dan S. Sullivan? Who knows? 46%. That's tightened. That's tightened. It has tightened a little bit. I mean, remember, she's an elected official, you know, member of Congress. And so forth. But Alaska is a pretty out there state. Very tight. I'm still hoping it's Dan J. Sullivan who wins, the reluctant candidate who threw his name in just to be a spanner in the works. I'm hoping that she gets more votes than the two Dan Sullivans put together, which ends any of this nonsense from Trump. I want Daniel J. Sullivan to win, the teacher who lives on an island, which is inaccessible other than by boat and plane. And then we've got in Iowa, Josh Turek, very impressive candidate, 48%. Ashley Hinson at 47%. A squeaker. My concern is this, that nobody wants to say that they are supporting the Republicans. Nobody wants to say it in public. There's Trump shame, which we know. But I think that people are lying even more to the pollsters. Who knows? You know, we don't know. We know that midterm elections tend to go against the incumbent. We know that the margins of the Republican in the House are pretty small. So it wouldn't take a giant swing for the Democrats to take control. We know what the opinion polls say. And, you know, it's kind of amazing that the New York Times and Siena, whatever that is, came out with a poll of seven swing Senate seats. And Democrats were winning in all of them. Nobody would have predicted that. No one would have predicted that, even three months ago. Three months ago. And so there's something going on out there. There are people that say that these polls undercount Democrats. Now, of course, we've all lived through, you know, recent experiences. So who knows? But you want to know something? We don't have to wait very long. You're going to election night parties tomorrow. We'll be here live with Michael Wolff. We will have cocktails. And you're just going to provide views. And we will. You're going to provide views of inside Trump's head throughout. Well, I want to know what's going to be going on with Trump and at the White House as they watch the results coming in. Is this Trump has insisted he's on the ballot, even though he's not on the ballot. He's been out rallying for people. We'll see whether or not it's had any impact. One of the interesting things, by the way, and I'll be interested to watch your takes on this, is he has started to rationalize a little bit. He has started to say things that say, well, we could lose. It could switch over. You know, I may have to deal with this. People have dealt with this in the past. And you don't see that kind of resignation in him very often. And I think it's just an interesting subtext that may be more telling than the polls. Well, David Rothkopf, always good to see you. Thrilling to have you actually in the studio. Thrilling to be here. Thrilling. No, this is an incredible place. If people could only see it. Well, tomorrow night they will see more of it. They'll see. They'll see that our news report is rushing in and out with all sorts of updates on what's going on. Who's won? Who's not won? And I'm very curious to know. You know what we don't have on this Siena poll from the New York Times? We don't have Darlene Graham and Annie Andrews in South Carolina. Another seat no one would have thought was winnable for a Democrat. And now Darlene Graham, who, as you say, changed her name, looks vulnerable. Mississippi, too. Mississippi, too. Who knows what's going to happen? It's very exciting. Very exciting. So we'll be live tomorrow on YouTube and Substack for hours. Hit for hours. We're starting at 8 p.m. Eastern time. And who knows when we finish? Who knows? Are you going to drink? We're going to drink. We're going to eat. We're going to study what's going on. We're going to have us, you know, the minute the information comes into our newsroom. Hugh Doherty, our executive editor, will come roaring in with pieces of paper, with texts. We're going to be taking your comments and your questions. So comment, question, send us everything you want us to answer. It should be like Anderson Cooper doing New Year's and they just get drunker and drunker as the evening goes on. And it just makes it that much more entertaining. And do you and Michael drink heavily throughout the. If me and Michael drink heavily, we will both fall asleep. The question is, are we drinking champagne or are we drowning our sorrows in whiskey? Well, that's a good question. We'll have both on offer and maybe we'll have a drinking game. Every time someone in the comments says Trump, Michael has to take two fingers worth of whiskey. He'll be unconscious in 15 minutes. Anyway, it's wonderful to see you, David. Thank you for coming into the office. Happy election night for tomorrow and I'll see you next Monday. Can't wait. Big thanks to our production team, Ryan Murray, John Romero, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro and Neil Rosenhaus. So the good news is we have so many Bee Beast tier members now. There are too many names to read out and we really appreciate your support. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday. A holiday song like All I Want. Right. You know what? Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for a 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent to taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. 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