Lemonade Stand - The Midterms Episode ft. Adrienne Elrod | Ep. 078 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

On this week's show... DougDoug keeps score, Aiden runs a fever, and Atrioc is too controversial. Ft. Interview with Adrienne Elrod We launched a Patreon! - https://www.patreon.com/lemonadestand for bonus episodes, discord access, a book club, and many more ways to interact with the show! Episode: 078 Recorded on: September 1st, 2026 Interview recorded on: August 27th, 2026 Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCurXaZAZPKtl8EgH1ymuZgg Follow us TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thelemonadecast Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thelemonadecast/ Twitter - https://x.com/LemonadeCast The C-suite Aiden - https://x.com/aidencalvin Atrioc - https://x.com/Atrioc DougDoug - https://x.com/DougDougFood Edited by Aedish - https://x.com/aedishedits Thumbnail by Cheyenne DeWolf - https://x.com/cheyedewolf Produced by Perry - https://x.com/perry_jh Segments 0:00 Intro 4:14 Why They Matter 11:01 Alaska Senate Race 14:36 The other Dan Sullivan 20:34 What's Happening in Texas? 28:08 Dark Money in Elections 34:33 Michigan Senate Race 48:00 Maine's Senate Race 1:00:43 Georgia's Senate Race 1:03:05 Adrienne Elrod Interview 1:08:50 Viral Moments And Messaging 1:11:31 How Elections Have Changed 1:15:39 Direct Messaging52 1:18:59How Candidates Balance Messaging 1:23:02 Candidate Has To Meet The Cultural Moment 1:25:23 The CHIPS Act 1:31:41 10% Stake in Intel 1:33:35 Adapting To The New Pace of News 1:39:22 DNC Leadership Issues 1:41:47 Outro New takes on Business, Tech, and Politics. Squeezed fresh every Wednesday. #lemonadestand #dougdoug #atrioc #aiden Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We checked the news for the last seven days. There's no business and there's no technology. Absolutely none. Except one big one, politics. It's politics week. The midterms are happening. Now, I don't know what they are, by the way. Yeah, I don't mean either. And we're going to need some sort of primer from our jet lagged fever-readed co-host. Well, thank God, Doug, because I spent all week prepping for the midterm episode. You went to the heart of it in Germany. In Germany and Poland. That's where they keep the secrets of the U.S. midterms. Yeah, they don't tell you. I didn't I didn't know that I had to travel to Krakow to get insight into the Iowa midterms race.

And you put your body on the line because you were laying on the floor sick as we prep for this episode. I did. I did prep for the... This might be my worst prepared episode of the entire show. I did put this together in what I would call a literal fever dream this morning. So if any of this is inaccurate, it's because some of the demons are ghouls. It's some... It's a ghouls related.

I see. But I... That's what we call the deep state. They don't want you to tell the truth. Yeah, I think it's a deep state thing. The deep state saw that I went to Krak out. They knew you were getting closer to the truth. They didn't want me to come back.

And they infected your ass. I did see. I did see, this is totally unrelated to the midterms. A woman on a club boat that I was out at one night who took her breast out and began breastfeeding random British men that were also at a party. So if you want any takeaways You would have

And that segues perfectly In the United States midterms I'm really important time for this country And much like those British men getting suckled Why don't you unveil Your nutrients to the audience here And let them suckle on your knowledge? Yes, absolutely

So Honestly, what do the midterms mean In simple terms? These are the elections in the U.S. that happen halfway through each presidential term. Our presidents are on four-year cycles here in the United States, and every two years, there is some midterm election that affects a bunch of different positions across the rest of the country. So that includes things like the House of Representatives, where every seat is up for re-election, a bunch of Senate seats, because

those are on six-year terms instead of four or two. And then, a variety of state legislature and governor races for the states themselves. And then also, of course, you have like little things, you know, for your, for your area, for your city, for your state, like props, laws, judges, a variety of positions that pertain to your local area, right? We're going to go through every single judge. Comptroller, every election in the entire country. This is a 48-hour episode. We've been looking into you, viewer, into where you live. locally what's going on. We want to see, does your community, your address

is going to be affected by this? You have every address in America in the timestamps, find yours. Just go to your zip cone in the chapters. And it's crazy, we got them for the Nordics, too. We're going to go through what we consider to be some of the most important elections today and talk about how this might affect the overall outcome of the Democrats or Republicans

ending up winning, either the House or the Senate. Yeah, do you have the seat math on this? So as you can see, I know this off the top of my head. The Republicans right now are looking about 218 seats in the House and 21012 are going to the Democrats. Now, I believe, and maybe Aden, I don't want to cut off you that it seems from prediction markets, from the news that likely the House of Representatives is going to go to the Democrats. Is that the vibe? Yeah, that is likely.

And something interesting when I was looking into this this morning was I didn't realize, I knew that in midterm elections, generally the party, Opposite to the president is the one that increases their share in the House. I didn't know, this is crazy. Did you know that since every midterm, since 1842, with only three exceptions, this has been the case. Every single one. 42 is a wild year.

Let me tell you. That was a crazy one. And the only times it hasn't happened were in 1934, 1998, and 2002. But those are the only exceptions to the streak since then. You're saying where it's always going to go against the incumbent president. Yes. Wow. 98 no two, huh?

So if we were to follow this pattern, it means that the Democrats are expected to gain positions in the House in this upcoming election. And I think just to briefly give people some idea of why this really matters, because historic turnout for midterms is way lower. If you look at like percentage of available voters that vote in like presidential election, this century averages out to like 63%ish. And then for midterm elections, it's like 47. It's way lower. And they're all old. And they're older.

And so the people. Both. But the people are, it's an older voting base for midterms than it is for presidential. So to maybe incentivize you, you know, depending on you live in the U.S. or not, so like why midterms matter so much. In the U.S., it right now, the Republicans control, all three branches of government. You know, we're only voting on something

that affects one. But that means the passing of big pieces of legislation, like the big, beautiful bill. This is something that affects that very directly. It affects things like government shutdowns. Even if you live abroad, right? American's foreign policy is heavily dictated

by who is in the House and Senate at a given time. Things like tariffs, especially with the more recent Supreme Court ruling that we got. These are things that are supposed to be established by those bodies.

And you might be thinking to this, well, this has been an executive power craze. The past year and a half. This guy's using executive orders left and right to make decisions rather than pushing through traditional legislation. That is what I'm thinking.

But even though that is the case, with executive orders, you can't spend money that Congress did not budget or appropriate, which is why things like the big beautiful bill matter so much. the legislation can be levied to delay or block executive orders to combat things that the executive is doing. And even though executive orders can be made, you know, they're more legally fragile.

Even in this time where Trump has kind of stacked the Supreme Court and we have a heavily Republican-leaning Supreme Court, there has been decisions in executive orders he's made that have been challenged by that court still. I mean. So that's, you know, just to give some groundwork as to like why these things are important, especially if you're in the U.S. and you're tentative about voting. But I would say just for the executive orders, like the reason ostensibly he's been able to do it

just by fiat and writing it out is because no one in Congress in the House has challenged him. But if they did, it would be a whole different. Even the Iran war. Like Congress can pass a thing that this needs to stop, right? There's supposed to be a limit. Like, as a reminder, the way it's supposed to work is that Congress authorizes war, not the president. Right.

But the president can go and kick off a war. Oh, it's not a war, Doug. You're right. A, uh, like a special military action. Yeah. And not even that. It's over, by the way. It's already won.

Like, so it's weird to even bring it up. It's weird. It's weird that he keeps bringing it up. Yeah, he keeps bringing it up. But you are supposed to wrap it up in 60 days if you don't have Congress's approval. You know, I haven't, uh, checked recently on whether Congress has explicitly approved extending the war. But like, that's what's supposed to work.

So if Congress decided, uh, hey, what if it were a war? And if it were. Doug, Doug, what if you're like inventing fictional things to be mad about? We're just saying hypothetically the importance of midterms for some point in the future,

not right now. What, what, what's the legal perspective on if it was basically over by 60 days? Bonnie followers never thought of that one, where it's like we basically won. We're like basically, we're like,

we're still spending money and fighting, but like it's basically one. If a fight's over and there's residual like resentment. That's not a war. I'm not at war with my girlfriend right now. I didn't do the dishes last week the entire time. Okay. We did want to take a look at five different states

and the specifics of what their midterms look like. And Alaska was the first one on the docket. Wait, wait, wait, wait, before we move on, I just want to, I got some numbers here because I want to use these numbers. Because we're focusing mostly on the Senate for these breakdowns. Yeah, we're going to oversimplify and say,

let's assume the House goes to the Democrats. Listen, we only have some of much time in this episode. We have an interview at the end of it. We want to get to the key raises you might be important. The House betting markets, which are the most important source of truth in this world, but also polling have Democrats winning like 80% plus. Like, like you said, this happens every cycle. The president counterparty wins big.

So the Senate, though, the math is usually pretty bad for Democrats. But this is where a lot of the power is. So if they won, this would be a big fucking deal. And it's possible. They have to flip. I mean, I don't know how to the exact. They need a net gain of four seats. Yes, and you can see the numbers here,

but the point obviously is for each seat that you flip, the Republicans go down by one. So there only needs to be four that are flipped. So yeah, a net gain of four. And it can't be three, which would be a tie because then J.D. Vance is the tie-breaking vote and they could still pass the legislation. So they need a net gain of four.

And previously it was thought to be impossible. But, you know, Trump's polling has been pretty bad. And the numbers have been ticking up. And now it's like a 50-50. I mean, it's a real razor-thin margin in both polling and betting markets. Nobody else how it's going to break. And it's hugely important. And it's down a very few number of races.

So we've got the races up here. And we're going to go through some of the key ones point by point. I think you want to start with us. And what's cool is we got a chance to talk with Adrian Elrod is someone who is a campaign consultant and worked on like multiple presidential campaign. So the second half of this podcast episode is going to be, Brandon, my interview with Adrian. And that was really interesting to largely hear about like the mechanics of, how these campaigns are run and what's going on and what people are doing and how that has changed over time.

I thought it was really interesting. So we thought it would be fun to pair that with, okay, let's take a look at some of the key Senate races because this is really starting to kick off right now. And what you're thinking? Me and Doug couldn't find a guest. We made up Adrian and it's just Aiden and a little. That's actually not true.

This is actually a different person. Aiden was not available this day. I just want people to know because they think that we have a real. So, okay, Alaska. As part of our conversation with Adrian, later. We sort of highlighted a couple states. We thought were interesting. So the first is Alaska. Alaska, as a reminder, on this map, it looks like it's about the size of, I don't know, Utah or something. But as a reminder, Alaska is the size of our entire country. It is gigantic.

However, not a lot of people there. There's only 750,000 people. So if we go over to the Alaska race, we are seeing a heated back and forth. The current incumbent senator from Alaska is named Dan Sullivan. He has been there since 2015. And Alaska, traditionally, is a very red state. Trump won Alaska in the last presidential election by 13%. Okay. So Dan Sullivan, been there for a while,

running for re-election. And the way this works is anybody can run in the primaries, which just happened, and the top four move on to the general election. So the basically top four. But really, as you would expect, there's like the main Democratic candidate and the main Republican candidate. And the main Democratic candidate is doing shockingly well right now.

So her name is Mary Polota. And Perry, if you pull up her website, she is like Alaskan, dude. She is just Alaska. Her tagline is fish, family, and freedom. Her mom is from the indigenous Yupik tribe. I don't know how to pronounce that. I apologize if I got that wrong.

She for decades worked in the fishing industry, like fished at local rivers and then worked in local Alaskan politics for like two decades. One, Alaska's only, they only have one Congress seat, won the only Congress seat in 2022. She did then lose in 2024, but that was like, you know,

this huge red wave in that 24 election. Yeah, yeah. And she's like a real genuine Alaskan, first Alaskan native to ever go to Congress. So, which is super interesting. And you can click on some of her, like, priorities or salmon run.

It's a lot about fish. So she's a more moderate Democrat. Salmon run? Salmon run is a small game to basically talk about the fishing policies that she thinks are important. She's really all on fish, huh? Yeah, there's a lot on fish.

I think generally the vibe is sort of a focusing on Alaskan industries and reorienting them so they're really going to benefit Alaskans and not letting outside parties come in and sort of take over and destroy things. For example, trawling, which is a very destructive way of doing fishing where outside companies are coming into Alaska. So a lot of like sustainability about fishing, focusing on expanding the energy industry, but doing it in a way that is not just, again, outside corporations coming in. A lot of a focus on affordability, stopping corruption in D.C., getting more money to low-income Alaskans, cutting taxes for low-income Alaskans. So it's fairly like moderate Democrat, but with this real, like, strong Alaska vibe. Her opponent is Dan Sullivan. Dan Sullivan, again, this is the incumbent senator, and he is the traditional conservative, all right?

But he grew up in Ohio. He went to Harvard and Georgetown. He spent 30 years on the Marines and then only moved to Alaska in the 90s. in the 90s. He was working for a judge. And then he became attorney general and then joined the Senate in 2015. It has been there since. Okay. His policies are very like pro-industry, very pro-Trump. It's like, we need to keep developing more oil and natural resources. We've got to lower taxes, supports Trump's tariffs and supports the Iran war pretty vocally. Okay. Something I thought was interesting here is Mary Polota, the, you know, the challenger has all of these policies list on our

website. Dan doesn't really have anything. It's just kind of like, I'm a hardworking American representing the country. And here's how you can donate, which I thought was a story. So this is Dan Sullivan, who is the Republican incumbent, and this is the battle. And there's a third candidate,

Dan Sullivan. There is another guy named Daniel J. Sullivan with legally the same name. You can go down on this Alaska like Tribune page. This is the only picture I could find of him. There's no website that he has. There's no platform.

This is respectfully a totally unknown guy who's just done a bunch of blue collar work for decades. He's like a retired teacher and worked in the Forest Service. And this is Dan. Oh, there you. Okay. Dan and Dan Sullivan.

And he decided to join the race as a Republican. He said that he swapped and registered as a Republican like right before. But he has to be an independent now, right? Am I crazy? Because there's a primary. No, so the primary is just the top four regardless of party go through. So it doesn't really matter. Really?

But the thing is, this Dan Sullivan, this retired teacher, blue collar guy, is on the ballot as Republican Dan Sullivan next to the incumbent senator, Republican Dan Sullivan. Again, I can't find any real platform for this person other than he says he's upset at tariffs, apparently. This must be. Yeah. It's intentional. Like, this is, he's like, I'm just fucking around. He's trying to fuck with him a little bit. Yeah. So he has said, no, this is genuine. I'm just really frustrated with Dan Sullivan, the other one, and his position on tariffs. And I feel like it's driving up costs. So here's what happened next. This is according to Routers, but a lot of people have reported on this. Yeah. Do you say it like that on purpose? No, re-outers.

Re-outers. Thank you. Finally. People have been begging you for you. You say re-outers. I just wanted to check. Hit me with a nuclear right now. According to readers. I want people to know that every time. you complain about me saying nuclear, it feeds my soul. And then I can't wait to say it wrong again in the future. I think I saw one of those threads and I was like, guy who gets really upset when they hear Carmel instead of caramel. Well, people like that should be shot. We have strong opinions on some misprudence agents, but constantly mispronels things on purpose. That's a good guy. All right. So, uh, Roters said the Republican Party when this, this happened months ago that Dan Sullivan technically is, we talked about it a little bit on like a

Yeah, he like joined in. He joined. This is Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. against Daniel S. Sullivan. So when Daniel J. Sullivan joined, the Republican Party representing Daniel S. Sullivan complained and said, he shouldn't be on the ballot. This is clearly some sort of like ruse. He was removed from the ballot by the Alaska division of elections. So this like got to that and they said, yeah, this doesn't, this is, this is clearly some sort of scam. But then in mid June, a superior court judge in Alaska added him back onto the ballot and said, look, we've looked into it. This appears to be good faith. This guy's just running. Wow. So they asked him, like the Republicans asked, could you just put your name as Sullivan, comma, Daniel James Jr.,

parentheses, non-incumbent? And he said no. So the primary happened. Okay, so this guy gets, the primary is anybody can enter, but we get down to our top four. In first place, Mary Polona, with 48% of the vote.

In second place, Dan Sullivan, the senator, with 43%. This is like Alaska unique, though, right? This is not how primaries are done in other states. Well, it depends, right, but Alaska is unique. Yeah, okay. And in third place, Dan Sullivan, that guy at 2.4%. He got 2.5% of the vote.

Dude, that's so. And then fourth place was David Leslie, who's a Democratic socialist, who I believe is dropping out or is not really super focusing on this. That's up 2%. Based on what you're showing me here, even if all of the Daniel J. Sullivan votes were put over to Dan Sullivan, he would still have been slightly less in the primary. Yeah, yeah. So another way to put this is Mary Polota won the primary by, or is, was number one in the primary by 5%. So now it's going into the general election.

Dan, the, I don't want to call him fake. He is Dan Sullivan. Both Dan Sullivan are staying in the race. But, uh, you know, Dan Sullivan, like literally Trump was like tweeting out, do not fall for the fake Dan Sullivan, like check your results. Like the Republicans are freaking out. Yeah, Daniel S. Sullivan. They're trying to like change the names to make it easy, but then you still see two Dan Sullivan's on the thing. Yeah. Man, that's what you might not remember. It would be so funny if the absolute craziest outcome is that Dan Sullivan would win this thing and then it all goes to the wrong day. It goes to their wrong team. Yeah, yeah. Daniel J. Sullivan wins the whole damn thing. So this midterm election, this senator seat, it would be crazy.

if Mary Polota takes it and swaps it. And that's very possible right now. She won by 5% in the primary, but ultimately comes down to who gets the most votes in the general election. It's ranked choice voting. So if the teacher Dan Sullivan loses, his votes would go to his voters next choice,

which probably is the other Dan Sullivan, but maybe not, who knows? And as of two weeks ago, the Department of Justice is now investigating Dan Sullivan Jr., saying he might have entered the race to confuse voters. So there's now a federal investigation going into Dan Sullivan.

Dude, it's so fun. The idea of going into the ballot box being confused and putting one next to one Dan Sullivan that you feel more sure about. And two next to the Dan Sullivan. He's like, well, at least I get it. Either way, Dan Sullivan. I'll get Dan.

So if we imagine a world where Dan Sullivan, the incumbent loses, Oops, and Dan Sullivan or Mary. No, we don't want Dan Sullivan to the other one. Mary Polota wins that it would go. It would flip one. I think it's Paltoa, but maybe I'm reading it wrong. Have I been saying it wrong this entire time? I think so, but you all said Reuters wrong. Maybe it's all part of a grand bit, you know?

Oh my God, I've been reading it wrong this entire time. Excuse me, Pelota, not Polota. Yeah. Okay. Well, why don't we mosey on over to Texas? The Texas. And I want you to explain this to me, Atiote because I feel like every, I feel like for my entire life, whether I'm in some sort of like social studies or civics class or I'm,

I'm reading or listening to the news. I'm hearing about how Texas is going to, Texas is about to flip. Blue Texas. Blue Texas is coming. And they've been saying it for years, Atriot. They have been saying it for years. Do you know when the last time a Democrat won the presidential race in Texas? Would be Clinton?

92? 1876 Jimmy Carter Who? Jimmy Carter won Texas That's the last time Texas was blue In the 70s The last time any Democrat

Won a statewide election at all And this is like governor This is Senate This is anything Was 94 So it has been a solid Solid Red state

With both Senate seats Have been blue for Have been red Or sorry red for like 30 years I'm very dyslexic today For like 30 years Yeah yes Since 94

So this would be quite the flip for James Talarico versus Ken Paxton, but there's a few things that make this a unique race. Normally, we would have couple people get hyped, all Blue Texas, and then you'd look at the math and you'd say it's done, it's cooked. However, Ken Paxton is a uniquely

bad candidate. And I'm saying it's not even a partisan way, I want to tell you, Ken Paxton is a guy that was impeached when he was in the state legislature of this, of Texas by a body of entirely Republicans.

Oh, this is a political move, though. They said he was embezzling funds. They said, he's been accused of a lot of things. He also, like, his wife was a state senator for Texas, and she recused herself from the trial where she could have given one of the votes to help get him off, and they got divorced over it because she didn't want to. He, like, wanted her.

So, like, there's, like, a long history. Anyway, he's got business dealings that have gone wrong, He's got people accusing him of... He's a guy that really has a long history of baggage that has caused him to pull under basically every other Republican running currently in this election. For example, Governor Abbott of Texas is polling like five to six points higher than Ken Paxon is.

So among the same Republicans, they are choosing there's a lot of suburban Republicans who are not interested in Ken Paxon. And the reason he's the nominee is because he was losing to... This is John Cornran's seats. Can you look at it up? I want to make sure I say his name right. He got a...

He got a weird last name. No, no, no. Just send it completely with whatever comes to bring. John Cornran is the current senator of Texas, and he's had the seat for a while. It's his seat. However, in the primary this time around, he didn't get enough to guarantee it.

He won the primary. He had more votes than Ken Baxter, but it went to a runoff vote. And then the runoff vote, Donald Trump stepped in and said, Ken Paxon is my guy. He stepped in and endorsed them. Now, everyone else in the Republican legislature of Texas,

in Republicans in the Senate in the House, they endorsed John Corcoran, but it didn't matter Trump had the fucking push. Was there anything like specific that Trump was saying, or is it just this guy is Maga? It was, this is my guy. That Ken Paxton is a true Maga ally. He's a Trump ally in Texas.

He's the guy he should vote for. And Trump has been doing this throughout all of the primaries, the Republican primaries, in this cycle. He has gone through one by one to find loyalists and has one by one gotten them. He's almost at a 100% success rate. Like, for example, he did with the guy, Ed Galerine that beat Thomas Massey.

Thomas Massey, a big, you know, Republican, but not Trump supporter. He got him kicked out. So John Corner was another victim of this. He got kicked out. And now there's like probably the weakest Senate candidate, the Republicans have had in Texas in a long time. So I want to show you guys this clip

because I saw this without being able to hear the sound. And then I watched it with sound. disagree with this politics all you want but obviously this guy has it I haven't felt this way since Obama I didn't know this was sarcastic until I watched the clip. Play the clip. But the future of our state

and the future of our country rights on this race. So I'm out fighting but he just has you know the vibe from Texas Republicans is this guy has no charisma, no social media presence, not a really good fundraising

game and not a lot of allies. So he's kind of just pulling based on the Trump brand recognition alone, which again, polling is not too great on him. So because he's running that far under Abbott, it's possible. At the same time, his opponent, James Tolerico, a former school teacher who has a huge social media presence and is pretty young, energetic has like the, I don't want to say mom don't know, he has,

but like this idea of like digital native campaigning that is like pretty, anyway, he's doing pretty well. And he has a, you know, this strong faith forward messaging that resonates in Texas. So he's like a pretty good candidate, like a better than average someone Democrat guys could put up. And so because this mismatch is so big,

Texas is looking like a possible flip. Now, I don't want to say that he's 37. So he's a relatively young guy. He could be on this podcast. Instead, he's running first. So that up Texas, that's the big issue is that like this guy, and by the way, I think he's outraising him,

it's like 40 million. and small donations for Talarico, maybe $8 million total donations for Paxton. So it's like a three to one fundraising gap. And so all of this combined is like giving people hope where it's more serious than it usually. Oh, Blue Texas. Like this looks pretty close.

All the polling has it, though razor thin. Because you have to understand Texas is still a red state. It just is people primarily will vote red. And I have to say, if I was giving you a betting man's guess, like whether we flip this, I almost think we don't. I think if we're being honest, the lemonade stand prediction, I would love,

I think it'd be cool. It'd be awesome. I think people should get out there and vote, but I, they've been telling me to dream about blue Texas my whole goddamn life. But ultimately, I think Brandon's saying,

don't bother. It's probably not going to happen anyway. Yeah, my message is don't show up, never vote. Don't dream. No, I just like,

one vote's not going to make a difference, guys. A perspective, a perspective, Democratic voter in Texas, it's basically already over. Yeah. Not what I'm saying. But I have to give a prediction. I looked at the math today and I just don't think,

I don't think, I think it's going to be so close. And maybe if Paxton says something really stupid, they might be able to get them, but I think people are going to lockstep with their party. It is, oh, I mean, wow. As of today, the betting market is at 5149. So it's a real, it's a real tight race. For Tolerica.

And would be a, would be a huge coup for the Democrats going into the sun. This would be a previously unthinkable flip for a sentence seat. That's sort of, I don't even any more questions on Texas, but that's like the main thing.

It's like, this guy's, uh, let's just imagine a world. Let's imagine a world where it happens. Okay. So, Ben, did I do that right? Dude, something that's wrong in my brain.

You're out of it this week. He's the sick one. He must have infected you, bro. I literally looked at the number. number two and went, did that get higher or lower? Than one. More for this show comes from Lisa. A good night's sleep sets you up for success.

And, you know, it even says, what's it like working with each other when one of you is sleep deprived? And so, Aiden, I thought it would be an awesome segue. You as somebody with a Lisa mattress, hold on, just spent a week going around in hotels. And I'm going to say it, you don't look nearly as rested

or put together as normal. I don't, I'll be very much. I don't feel as rested. I feel as rested. And I really want to have a size. Do not look as rested. Audio listeners. Haggard is the word I would use.

Haggard? Haggard? I love my Lisa mattress. I've been using it for like a month and out. I sleep great on it. I, and it's true. I look haggard

and I haven't slept on it in about a week. I got to sleep on it for the first time in a week last night. Video listeners. you don't want to look like this. Disease for the eyes. Because you need to get a Lisa because you look like way better

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I do want to take a little pit stop on our journey through the states. Okay. And touch on an article that I had seen called millions of dollars in secret spending could upend the 2026 midterms from the New York Times. And it is an exploration of the quantity of dark money involved in our elections now. and specifically the 26 midterms right now. And for those who don't know,

Dark Money, the term that is used to describe political spending by groups that hide the names of their donors, primarily through non-profit groups that aren't obligated to disclose their donors that then send that money to Super PACs or PACs that then donate it to actual political campaigns. Sounds like it's like a really good for the political process. It is awesome.

And the reason this really stuck out to me is not only the money that is involved now, but because for an episode like a month ago, I started to look into the difference in campaign funding since Citizens United. Okay. That gets talked about a lot. It's like Citizens United was this pivotal ruling in 2010

that allowed corporations to spend as much as they want on elections. And which interesting is in this art, it mentions that when that was determined at the time, the majority opinion written by one of the justices mentioned that the transparency of how money is spent will be the self-regulating thing around why this is okay. And the idea that money is a representation of speech and it's protected by the First Amendment is the downsides of that money on our elections is protected because you'll be able to see

who the campaign contributors and donators are. That was the argument that was being made at the time. But it's interesting because as time has passed that has not come to be at all. And I have this crazy... This was just this crazy graph. This is just a graph I made in Clawed just to represent the...

amount of spending on elections since that ruling and the way that it has grown over time. And you see this gigantic increase, particularly for presidential elections, but also for midterm elections now. With the most recent midterm election in 2024 nearing, I think almost a billion in spending. And then already, this is without us actually getting to November and all the way through 2026. There's already... Real quick, you said a billion. This shows two billion. Sorry, the, the two billion... Sorry, that's... The two billion is total...

Yeah, total spending. So, two billion in... Wait. No, the red is dark money. Yeah. And 20... You said 20... Oh, midterm. I'm sorry. I was looking at the P one. I'm sorry, sorry. No, all good. Oh, I see. So the most recent midterm election, you'll see that the dark money spending, that we can't see where it comes from, was nearing a billion dollars. It was over the... And then the, uh, the, uh, the total spending for that year was a little over two billion. And already dark money spending as reported to the New York Times by the New York Times in this article is over a billion. And we, for this cycle and we are months away.

That's wild. That's primaries alone, basically. From, from this ending still. Uh, and it is this incredible, uh, arms race since the ruling of this one thing. Like we, we are seeing an incredible amount of money being dumped into these campaigns, even in non-presidential years, which is insane. I think if you have the time to read all of this, it's a really, really great article, but it's amazing to see the way this is like charted out just in the span of like 15 years. We've gone from like, you know, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars to now billions in a relatively short period of time. So do you think the corporations have had more speech? I mean, like if they felt more represented. If each

dollar is an opinion, they're way, it's, they're winning way in way more than they used to. Uh, I think the, and I think something interesting that the article also touches on is the like scale, like dark money is becoming a larger and larger percentage of the total spending. It's not just a raw increase on both sides. It's like people are realizing that, oh, we can just continue to funnel unlabeled money into elections in this way with little consequence. And there's a lot of structure within campaigning to collect this money. It's a win-win. If I want a corporation, I would like to donate to a politician so they do things for me. But I don't want to get blowback for it. Yeah. That's a pain. I don't want people to know about it. Yeah. So just a super pack I get

donate to. It would be awesome. Well, you know what's kind of stupid too is obviously this is such a huge problem. And I feel like when you talk to people, it's such a bipartisan thing right now, no one I've ever talked to is like, it's so awesome. There's all this corporate money involved in politics. No, no person has ever said that to me. Do you know what I mean? And then, and then to top it off, it's these donors are only anonymous to us, the public. Like, if you're the person running, you know, you know where the money comes from. Like, you get to know. But, we don't. There should be some perks to being in office, Aiden. There should be things you get to know about that not everyone the fucking Tom Dick and Harry gets to know about. But it, the article also

mentioned that this has started backfiring sometimes. So in certain races, the party or between the two candidates that are running, uh, the one that gets way more corporate donations can flounder a bit because it's just used against them in marketing. And Michigan is one of the state Senate races where in the primary, this was felt to be the case. And now you wanted to take a look at the Michigan general election. Yeah. So that leads very nicely into what happened with Michigan recently. So this is a very highly publicized Senate race or excuse me, primary race for Senate happened recently in Michigan. And it was between Abdul al-Said and Haley Stevens. So this was running for the Democratic nomination, right? Um,

probably you're aware, Abdul El-Sayed ended up winning, but this ended up being like a pretty iconic race and a very high-profile race because El-Sahed is farther left, right? He's perceived to represent the far-left side of the Democratic Party and this sort of insurgency that is may or may not be having a bigger and bigger influence on the party versus the more establishment democratic liberal. So El-Sahad, I mean, he's like this like wickedly smart dude who's a physician and studied at Oxford and Columbia. shred it. That's what I noticed about him. I'm a guy. I'm a real physique guy, you know, because I've been working out so much. So, like, we have a thing in common. So you see a Chad. I see a Chad. I'm like, oh, wait. I see me. Yeah. By his own admission short. I don't know how tall Abdul Al-Said is. Oh, really? You said he mentioned that. So, but I get it. You, deep connection with him. So the primary was really notable between El-Said and Haley Stevens. Because, again, again, he said, it was highly representative of this sort of the more standard liberal Democrat versus the more far left.

So he is explicitly not part of the DSA. He was not endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America explicitly, but he has campaigned with people who are either associated with it or have similar policies like Bernie Sanders or AOC. So, you know, the kind of mainstream media has very much just lumped him together with this group and said this is a far left candidate. And he does have, while a lot of his policies are just popular like affordability, corporate money out of politics, tax billionaires. He's got the, in quotes, extreme ones like Medicare for all or abolishing ice or cutting support to Israel. Very vocally, like, no more support to Israel. We do not want to support this type of like military action for the government. And then Haley Stevens

on the other side is, you know, Congresswoman since 2019, a lot of, again, like Democratic opposing tariffs, promoting clean manufacturing, which is important to Michigan, industrial expansion via chips, all this type of stuff. That's Stevens? I was Haley Stevens, yeah. But again, the real notable thing here was sort of establishment Democrat versus far left. So Haley Stevens was endorsed by the outgoing senator, was endorsed by the current governor, Governor Whitmer, and by Chuck Schumer, right? And this was actually a quote from Fox News that I thought was interesting by Liz Peake. Michigan, quote, Michigan can stop the socialist fever rage or watch it swallow the Senate. This race is a choice between normal and crazy. El Sayad, who wants to abolish ice, eliminate oil and gas, ban school choice,

deny armed shipments to U.S. ally Israel, sharply raised taxes, provide tuition-free four-year college degrees, and establish a wealth tax will likely win the primary. Stevens, in contrast, is a normal liberal Democrat. So that's like Fox News talking about it. So then getting the donations, which was a very interesting story. El-Sahad, in total, raised about $15 million from direct contributions. Haley Stevens raised like 12 from direct contributions, but then 60 from Super PACs. Yeah. I saw a number, different numbers, about exactly how much was raised. But, uh, What is pretty clear is that $30 million was from APEC, which is the American group that represents interests for Israel. Isn't it like the most, the most money APEC has ever spent on a race or something?

I think $60 million on the fucking Ed Galerine, uh, Massey one. Am I crazy? The, the sources I saw, which I believe was from Reouter's was largest investment ever in a single primary. Okay. I'm seeing 37 million when I was 60, but wait, wait, wait. Yeah, 37 million was spent on Kentucky's Massey Galerine. Was it by Apex specifically? Maybe they were just part of that. You're right. Maybe it was 12 million.

They spent 12 million. So there's go. So this is the most they've spent. Wow. So that was only 12. Wow. So this is a gargantuan amount of money from Apex spent to try to stop Elsaid and basically just flood the whole campaign with attack ads.

This is for a Democratic primary. This is not even like the general election, right? And so this became El Sayad, his like one of his calling things is he's like extremely sharp and just like strongly worded and just use this as an attack. He said things like, I don't take money from the corporations jacking up your prices in the in the first place. Freedom from these donors will allow me to enforce antitrust policy, tax billionaires and vote to keep money in Michigan, rather than sending that money, quote, somewhere else to drop bombs on kids. Like just hit the line directly. And on August 4th, El-Sayed won the primary, 48% to 47%. It was a one-point margin.

It was extremely close. It was extremely close. So Elsaid is now going into the general election versus the other big dog on campus, Mike Rogers. Mike Rogers is the very kind of traditional conservative guy. It's more the manufacturing in America. Let's, you know, expand energy productions. Pro life, conservative on social issues, you know, some basic affordability stuff, but is he strongly pro-Israel.

Is he the incumbent or did he win the primary against the economy? Like is he... I don't think he's the incumbent. Gary Peters is the incumbent. He's retiring. So this seat is up for grabs. This is, for audio listeners,

the picture we were looking at of Mike Rogers, it's like if you designed, if you told an AI, make up a Republican senator. And the picture we were looking at before, this one, this one is,

I feel like, like, generic Republican senator. This is what I imagine in my head. I think it's specifically because the way the photo is, He's like stylized to. Mike Rogers is like a very,

yeah. I mean that's part of the, he was in the US Army. Okay. He was an FBI off agent. Okay. You know, Michigan State Senate. He was a former congressman for 14 years.

So, um, but yeah, so a notable thing about this race now at this point, right? It's, part of it's like progressive. The whole question is like, okay, progressives are winning some of these primaries versus Democratic candidates.

Can they win in the general election? And right now this is up for grabs. Abdul seems to be doing well, but this is flipping constantly. Really interesting piece to this. this, Mike Rogers is very openly for supporting Israel and Ukraine and Taiwan, very pro-like military support. But per Axios, allies of Mike Rogers have asked APEC not to advertise on their behalf because they are worried that APEC's involvement is actually going to tank Mike Rogers'

ability to win. APEC has become so toxic and unlikable that he is specifically, APEC came to them and said, we're ready to spend tens of millions of more. millions of dollars and says you guys are a public liar you are a liability um even though he is staunchly pro israel apparently mike rogers team was like look how about instead of you guys running all these ads that you're that you're paying for and you promote you know you go you attack i'll say it you just send money to our super pack we'll kind of use the money how we want maybe you guys are like a consultant i was literally just said as a joke i was going to say why don't they just make another separate pack and

then have apec funnel the no but apac doesn't want that this is the quote from axios the group wanted a visible role in defeating El Sayed. So this is now for A-PAC, this like the most money they've spent on a primary. Dude, I know. The grid is insane. I always can't believe that. You already want to influence the election,

but now you want to get credit. We want them to know. We want the muscle men to know. That's crazy, bro. Yeah. And one thing I found just crazy, a recent Fox News poll found 55% of Michigan voters opposed

continued U.S. aid to Israel. At this point, it is a losing issue, and Mike Rogers is trying to distance himself from APEC. Crazy. I guess it is really interesting, right? Because you have this time where Israel wants to maintain its political support within the U.S.

And now candidates, even if they support Israel, have to navigate the fact that support from constituents is just so dramatically different. now. So we need to play this like weird game to like. They've become the data centers of countries, bro. Every power politics has to back away because it's it's politically toxic. It's like unfathomable that 10 years ago you'd be like don't even be involved with this. We want nothing to do with you. Not taking the money is a pretty crazy line in American politics.

Yeah. That's a mean something. And I will say his primary is is one of the, like you were saying, one of the big counter examples of, um, um, outside money spent and correlation to victory. Yeah. Which is like, but it's happened. I don't have the other examples on me, but he's not the only one. This cycle has been one where the line is breaking a little bit, where it's like the candidate with more money usually wins.

Like just the way it works. But now it's been a little different because of the outsized impact of social media where a message can get millions of views if it resonates the right way. Yeah. You really don't need more money. You need like the right money can help. Obviously, there's a lot of boomers that vote. You need TV ads.

But like, it's changed things, the internet. And so it's like starting to break down. And yeah, like, this is a crazy update. I have an example. I've watched a number of Abdul El-Sayed clips. And I heard, I saw him described somewhere as kind of like, he's like, Zoran Mamdani. Like Zahar-Mondani, when asked a controversial question about Israel or something,

will be like, smile and just bring it back to how he wants to make New York more affordable. And he loves the community. And then El-Said is like, I'm gonna fuck your mom. If you bring that up again, like, he's just like, No, it's not like that aggressive, but he's like Zoron and that he goes into hostile environments and handles it. Perry, if you bring this up. He keeps going on Fox News and talking to, what's his name? Jesse Waters.

So guess what you think this question is about? It comes to football. Look, I know you guys like to think I don't like football, but I'm happy to line up against anybody who thinks that I don't like football. And I'll just tell you, the bigger issue that we have for football right now is, I looked at ticket prices to try and go and see a game with my family. It's astronomical through the roof. Now, I think football used to be the kind of thing that you could enjoy with people.

It's gone for too many people. I want to talk about football. I want to talk about access to football. I asked you if you thought the NFL was racist because you said the NFL was racist and now you're talking about ticket presses. No, I'm just telling you the NFL. You want to be honest? Yeah, I get what you mean.

He's like the more like the more macho version of let's get it back on message. Yeah. Let's talk about affordability of the tickets. This one's less aggressive. ones where he's just like combat it and it's pretty fun because he's extremely eloquent but yeah no it's like he goes on Fox News and they're just like so why do you hate all of Israel and all of religion and he's like I just want mission genders mission ganders to be able to afford houses and it's like this

just ridiculous dynamic back and forth yeah I saw him he did something about uh was either one where they asked him some question about um kids being abused or whatever and he brought it back to Trump and the Epstein father am I crazy on that I went super viral, but I'm going to be getting wrong. Anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so, yeah, this is a, what's the polling at, though? Like, what is, because I think this is an important one. Obviously, it's, if you're like, uh, on the DSA side, it's an important, like, can you win a general election? But it's also one where it's like, I think it needs to flip in order to do for the math to be right on getting a number of seats or it has to be pretty close. Um, there was discussion.

I, I saw a Bernie clip where he talked about this. Apparently there's, the rumors, going around that there are some in their grader party who would prefer to lose this race, even if it meant they wouldn't get the Senate. But I think what Bernie said is that if those people exist, it's still a massive majority, even with a minority, I mean, between, even within like a hardcore Democrats, because I think most people want control of the Senate more than anything else. Yeah. So according to prediction market, Abdul, I said it is at 65% chance to win.

I will give the caveat that he was leading in the primary voting polls substantially going into the election and then he only won by 1%. So right now maybe has a lead, but as we all know, these things can be highly inaccurate. Yeah, this is crazy. 65 to 36 is insane to me. I mean, it's just people putting their money where they think it is. I feel like that must have to do with media though, right?

Like he has just an insane media presence right now, so people who are online enough to bet on this are probably just more likely to vote on him. I will say not their money behind him. I mean, they've been fairly accurate. I'm not, I'm not glazy. I hate these websites, to be honest. I'm not glazy.

I'm just saying they've been, the polling, uh, the polling so far in this cycle, I think has been more inaccurate than the prediction market. I think putting your money up makes you a little more likely to be honest. But I'm not, this is not an endorsement. I just, uh,

yeah, anyway, interesting race. Well, I know, but much like Michigan and every other race, Maine also touched by dark money. and I am wondering

what is going on over there. Okay, let's talk about Maine. Maine is interesting because it has gone through some candidates, bro. This is the state where Graham Platner, maybe you heard of him, the oyster farmer with some tattoos. Tattoos of what?

It's contentious. It's a contentious subject. He won the primary, had a ton of grassroots support, ton of fundraising, a lot of energy, and then was credibly accused of rape and had to drop out on June 9th. He denies it, but the pressure from it was getting intense

and certainly was dragging down the campaign. So he stepped down and the Democratic Party had two weeks to do like a flurry convention to try and figure I was going to replace him. They came up with Troy Jackson, who is a fifth generation logger and former Maine Senate president. He won unanimously after his rivals dropped out.

So here's what's interesting about Maine. Maine in 2020 went for Biden, like by like eight points, like a pretty blue state. And in 2020, this woman, Susan Collins, won by like nine points for Republican Senate. And it was the only state. It's one of the only states in the past like 20 years

to have such a big break between the president. presidential polling and Senate polling. Most states fall in line. I mean, most states vote blue or vote red. And if they do break, it's usually pretty rare. So for whatever reason, Susan Collins, who's now on her, I don't know, that's like a fifth term. It's like, she's, she's been in this seat since like the 90s.

Because we get the fact check on that. I don't want to make sure I'm not crazy. But she has an iron grip on getting Mainers to vote more red than they normally do for this Senate seat. It's, I can't explain it. I don't know the answer, but she's done, she's outperformed. Now, will this hold up? I don't know.

It was trending pretty bad against her, but now Troy Jackson is this guy who doesn't really have the same level of enthusiasm and ground game and voter support. That's a grand plan. By the way, a little grand planner story. I'm going to throw it in here. I made a video when he first came on the scene, kind of excited about him. And then through our connections that we've got us some interviews, there was a connection to get me an interview with that guy.

Yeah. And then last second, not him, but his campaign manager said, I would be too controversial. You. It was just funny to me. It was just funny to me that that worked out that way, Graham Platner's campaign managers, who then later like resigned from the job.

So back to Susan Collins. Susan Collins has served five terms in this role. This is a blue state. And she keeps winning. And again, the 2020 result is one of the most anomalous results in like polling history between the gap. So she's found something. If we go by the normal math

of how Maine is looking, how the country's training, how polling is trending, this should be kind of a wipeout even with anyone in this seat. Troy Jackson, notwithstanding. He seems like a fine guy. I don't know,

actually knows too much about him. He only just come into this position. But she has some magic sauce. So that's the big question in Maine is whether this will go the way people expect, which should be leaning blue or not, where Susan Collins pulls it out yet again. By the way,

you know, we've complained about, you know, boomers in government, people holding on to power a little bit too long. She is 73 and again, has been in this role since the 90s. A lot of experience. Crazy. Too much experience at this point. At this point, I think too much experience. But, um.

So it's Troy Jackson versus Susan Collins and her magical potions. Her magical potion. You know what? I think I'm going to be a little more honest about her magical potions. Yeah. She's on some committees in, in Congress that have unique, like, appropriations committee that are uniquely beneficial, I think, to some main businesses, maybe.

And Troy Jackson would not be on those committees if you won. So she's, like, giving a little bit of, like, an edge to Maine by being in these key committees. Yeah, the appropriation committees. She's the chairman of it. And this is, like, I think of values, maybe the main business community kind of likes her more than they would otherwise. I can't put it to them to go on it. But that's what we're down to.

Yeah, I think that's the main thing. Is it's looking like a bit of a toss-up. Actually, it's looking like he should win. I haven't been this inspired by Susan Collins since Obama. Yeah. She's just got it. She's got it. She's got something.

Yeah, the prediction markets have Troy Jackson at 70%. Do you have any sense of why this would be the election that breaks the Collins back? Like what is so different about it if she's ripped this hard for, what, five terms? And now it looks like, again, just according to prediction market data that she's way behind. Is it just the backlash of Trump maybe? Or the fact that she is 73? Yeah. I mean, again, I think there's been a rising tide against or towards more youthful candidates,

although Troy Jackson is not as youthful as Grand Planner was. And I do think it's a lot of Trump backlash. Listen, all I'm saying, you look at this number and you look at the polling, it looks like a slam dunk. But all I'm telling you is that in 2020, it looked like a slam dunk too. And she pulled it out. And no one else did that in any other state. So she's got something that makes this more contentious than normal. I think realistically, though, we can flip this one.

Okay. Based on how things are going and based on, based on Trump's popularity. I don't know. You've lost the ability to count. I'm confused. No, he's having a tough time flipping it. I'm the average voter. What are we that?

There's going to be some candidate watching this to be like, oh no, oh no, I've got to convince this guy. Okay, so that is, let's just assume, even though pretty big lead on prediction markets, Abdul El-Sayed does not pull it out, with just those three being flipped out of the four that we've discussed so far, that would be 48, that would be 48 Senate, excuse me, Democrats and 50 Republicans, you need one more. So, Aidan, what's happening over in Iowa? Well, in Iowa, I did. So the two people in the Senate race are Josh Turrick and Ashley Hinson. And they are racing for the position held by Joni Ernst, who is retiring.

Johnny Ernst, someone you might not recognize by her name, but you might recognize by this clip that I found very funny. This clip is Joni Ernst, the current senator at like a town hall. I believe earlier this year? So when you are arguing, when you are arguing about illegals that are receiving Medicaid benefits, 1.4 million,

1.4 million. They're not, they are not eligible. So they will be coming on. So people are not, well, we all are going to die. Which is, maybe. A stunning campaign message. A tear down from the Peter Thiel interview

where he just won't say that he cares about the continuation of humanity. Dude, it was, someone asked him, are you the antichrist? And he doesn't say, you're like, well, he pauses. You can't pause on that question. Yeah, pause.

And Johnny Ernst, that's her retiring this year. And going to be replaced by one of these two new candidates, Josh Turk, the Democrat, and Ashley Henson, the Republican. Turk seems pretty moderate. He, like, as an example, he wants expansion and security of the Affordable Care Act instead of fighting for like a Medicare for all platform or something similar to that. And then on Hinson's end, she seems, she was endorsed by Trump, you know, in her campaign messaging. She says she's very in line with Trump, proud to like work with him to make America

great again. For a clip I did recently, I looked at like a bunch of people's websites. Yeah. So it's almost like, as a diehard Trump fan, it's kind of cool to see her ride or die with her big dog. Because a lot of people in a Republican Party have been kind of distancing themselves to the website. They're not right or die.

They've been taking his photo off the website and saying like independent leadership, I can work with because of the bad polling that he's had in the wave. Especially if you have like a more Latino voter base or a younger voter base, people who really rode for Trump in 24 that have backed away.

People are kind of like follow it. It's like data centers. It's like flipping to the, I think something interesting because I took a look at the governor race they have going on as well. And in the Republican primary, Trump endorsed Randy Feinstra. But one of the other candidate, I think there was like five people running. Zach Lawn won over the guy that Trump endorsed. So there's not always this automatic, you know, there's this shift in, you know,

Trump endorsing somebody doesn't mean this automatic win all the time like it used to. even though it still seems to like wind up in his favor most of the time. Also, something interesting is they have these like, three congressional district races right now. And one of the races is between Miller Meeks and Bohanan. And they, this is a rematch.

So they ran against each other in like the previous term. And last time in 24, Miller Meeks only won by 800 votes. At a time when like, the wind was blowing in Republican favor. So it looks very poised to like blow in the opposite direction. And with the Senate race, the big change here is,

I think it's like Cook polling, adjusted the way they call, are calling this race. So it was Republican favored or like leaning Republican, and they just changed it to toss up, implying that there's been a shakeup in like, you know, in the polling and who they expect to win now.

Right. So that could be, our other card to flip. Yeah, I mean, between the Michigan one, which seems like more likely probably than the Iowa one, or? Nope, wrong direction. Yeah, and that's 49 to 60 now.

And so the Republicans are still going to take it by 11. This is impossible to use. So how they gained. By the end of a lemonade stand episode, we've added seats to the center, which I don't. All for Republicans. So it's going to end of weird.

This. We got rid of seats? Somewhere around. There's less seats. No, J.D. Vance is the last one, I think. That's not. Jayd. Vance is the last seat.

That doesn't make sense. With what you've shown. No, you're like, we're like 11 seats long. Wait, wait, wait. Maybe this is an idea we should explore. Every Senate term, they do, they, they like coin flip. A new state that only gets to have one senator. Okay.

And then the vice president. it is always the hundred votes. And then in ties, I hadn't thought that far, but I'm sure we'll figure it out. Are you a pet owner? Every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill over $1,000. Always an unwelcome surprise. That's where Fetch comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance for dogs and cats, according to consumer advocate.

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and draft the work product ready for your review. So you delegate the work and on the judgment. Trusted by more than 60% of the Amlaw 100 and leading Fortune 500 legal teams, Harvey is the AI operating system designed specifically for legal work. Harvey, AI, tailored for law. Learn more at harvey.aI. I can do one more on Georgia. Yeah, okay.

Well, you better hope because right now the Democrats are crushing it. 99 to 1? Well, it's too much power. We were picking states ahead of this episode. I picked Iowa in a fever dream. You came into the studio today and said, do any of us have Georgia? So you seemed particularly excited about it.

Yeah, I want to know why. Georgia's already blue. John Ossoff is the Democratic senator from Georgia. He is defending this position. But Georgia is a purple state. It is a state that went for Biden in 20. Trump in 16, Trump in 24. Like it's flipped back and forth.

It's had both Republican and Democratic senators. So it's a contentious one. And John Awesome needs to defend it. Now, if you look at the polling and the prediction markets, he's crushing and likely will. They're calling him the white Obama. I don't know if you've seen it.

They can't be calling him that. People have called John Ossoff the white Obama. They can be calling him that. They need to stop doing that. I've heard it said, and I do think I'm not going to knock the guy. I think he's going to do well in this thing. He seems like a guy who watched Obama species in the mirror and practiced. He's got the cadence down.

Anyway, John Ossoff, 94 to 6 with Mike Collins here, and seemingly will defend this state. But we have to understand why I'm bringing this up is that the Democrats, because they are numerically disadvantaged in the Senate, they not only have to flip a lot of seats, They have to defend every single one. If either, you know, if any of these contentious seats flip to Republican side, it's over. That being said, so if anybody, you know, if anybody loses a Senate seat between these two midterm elections,

right. So special election. And so far, every special election between Trump's election and now that has flipped, has flipped one way. 31 to zero have flipped red to blue. none have flipped blue to red. So Trump has been a unique, I mean, that's rare. That doesn't happen to Republicans since 2010.

So it does seem like Trump, on a broad scale, since he's been elected, has been a huge tailwind, or headwind, I guess, to Republicans' chances in contentious seats. We don't, this is a good,

the Senate's going to be really the cider because it's going to have way more voters than anything I've talked about. Special elections don't have a big of turnout. But like, the odds are decent, that it'll go this way. That's why I thought George was interesting.

And one more interesting note about John Ossif in particular. Also on prediction markets, the Democratic presidential nominee for 2028, which we brought up a couple times, has historically been Gavin Newsom, at least in the entire time we've done this show, with AOC usually being second. John Ossif has shot up. It is now, currently it is AOC number one, John Osoff number two, Gavin Newsom number three. And they're all kind of clustered together. So I didn't realize how much.

momentum he has for the presidential candidate. White Obama, they've said. There's a lot of people have been saying that. It's been getting out. Well, sort of person. I've heard you say it. Well, I'm a conduit for for they. For they. And fourth is Kamala Harris, who I guess also

has jumped up. I didn't know about that. You know, Gavin Newsom was doing a lot better in those polls when he was on the lemonade stand. In the lemonade state circuit, awfully interesting. That being said, Pete Buttigieg has gone down in the rankings. Wait, no, maybe up.

No, maybe up. I mean, I don't want to say but Pete Poojajaj was on an episode where Aiden was there. Oh, you know what? Mark Kelly is now up in the top, top seven. Look at that.

Okay. That's eliminate the king makers. We can't count the number of Senate seats, but we can absolutely get you a presidential run. Okay, you two did an interview while I was gone. Very upsetting.

Very upsetting. But tell me a little more about what is about. Going into this, like I mentioned earlier, Adrian Elrod has been involved with a number of campaigns. I've been in politics for decades, working for various administrations, including the last like four or five Democratic. Yeah, she was like Clinton. Clinton, like Bill Clinton, then Hillary Clinton, then Biden, then Kamala Harris. I think she got like all the...

Been involved in all these ways. And so we got to chat with her about like what her thoughts are on how campaigns are actually run, what's going on, and sort of how that ties into what people are doing in these elections. And we talked about James Tala Rico specifically in terms of how that particular campaign is going. So we hope you guys enjoy this interesting interview. I just want to give a quick caveat because I think you hear that background and you want to talk about,

we didn't bring her on to discuss like who she wants to win. It was that she has like 20 years of like seeing the mechanics of running a campaign change to get more digital and more targeted. And we really got in the weeds on like how they think about that, how they're planning for this.

She's not on this cycle. She's watching as a third party, I guess. So it was good. It was an interesting interview to get her thoughts on like the mechanics behind running these campaigns and what they think about the art of it. So check it out. Well, you have an open mind. Hello, Adrienne Elrod. Welcome to the lemonade stand.

Thank you so much for joining us. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. When we got connected with you, I was really excited to hear about the mechanics of how big political campaigns actually work. And you have an enormous amount of experience in these over the years with four different presidential candidates. I know that for me, as we're coming up to the midterms, I hear about these tens of millions of dollars being spent on all these campaigns, and I don't really understand what does that look like in practice? So for you as one of the few people who have been able to be on the inside of this, could you kind of walk us through? What are the core things that you're having to do maybe on a day-to-day basis in a campaign?

One of the parts that are surprising that the average person would not think about. Yeah, absolutely. It was great to be with you guys today, and I'm excited to connect with your audience. a couple of quick things. Number one, you guys have got to, you know, keep in mind my first presidential campaign was in 2007, and that was the Hillary Clinton primary in 2007. So at that point, we were very earned media focus. Our communications department was huge. Our field operation was huge. Obviously, we had robust teams in multiple states, especially Super Tuesday states. And of course, as you guys will remember, that became a very competitive primary with Barack Obama,

who ultimately won. And a lot of people went into that primary thing. thinking, oh, Hillary is for sure going to win. And then this really dynamic guy came along. And it was competitive until the end. But President Obama ultimately became the nominee and became president. And Hillary went on to become a secretary of state and everything was great. But just to think about this in terms of the way that we had the campaign structured, I want you guys to take a guess.

How many digital people do you think we had on the 2007 primary going to 2008 for Hillary Clinton? Digital. This would be MySpace era. Yeah. I assume you have a MySpace person. Myspace era. Facebook was just getting started. I want to say less than 14.

But for a national can't, I would say four. I feel like they're so underinvested maybe. Is that crazy? My guess is four and I might be too high. The answer is one. It was the digital director. He did everything.

And he was embedded in the communications team. Obviously now going forward to 2024 and then going forward to 26, 28. I mean, almost all communications is digital. You have to have, it has to be intertwined. So that's, you know, going forward to answering your question about what is, you know, spending tens of millions of dollars. What does that mean? A lot of it is paid digital. A lot of it is, you know, very specifically targeting the people you want to get out. I mean, right now on presidential, well, sorry, right now on Senate races, top tier Senate races, top tier governor's races, even top tier congressional races, the candidates and campaigns have identified who are the president. people who are going to vote for them for sure, who are the people who are going to vote

on the other side for sure. And so they want to make sure that they get those people out to vote, which means you're spending digital ads to target them. You are, you know, you're having people knock on doors and we call it push and pull where you knock on a door, do you need to ride to the polls, have you voted early, all of those things. I mean, in-person field, the in-person field operatives and strategists, those are fewer and far between now because digital has replaced so much of it because we're all living on our phones. But when people say tens of millions of dollars, it really is getting out your base, making sure that they vote, and also spending a ton of money on that very slipper of undecided voters. It could be 2%, it could be 4%,

it could be 8%. You know, we know that right now, for example, James Talarico is sitting on tons and tons of cash. And he's within two to three points ahead of his opponent. It depends on what poll you look at, he's up on Paxton, but he's generally up a couple of points. So what he will be spending his money on more than likely between Labor Day and Election Day is making sure that every persuadable voter, every undecided voter out there is persuaded to vote for him. And that costs a lot of money. Most of it's on digital. Some of it's on earned media. He'll obviously be going out and, and, you know, making his case to voters directly. But as you guys know, again, we're all living on our phones and some of the best outreach that you can have is through platforms and direct social

media content that goes directly to the people. What's the difference between like social content that you're paying to create like ads that you're promoting and like the stuff that goes viral? I think you're trying to create that is spread by word of mouth. I guess where does the money go in those two buckets? I mean, it's a great question. I mean, first of all, you always want those viral moments, right? I mean, that's really one of the reasons going back to Tallarico, why he's been so effective.

It's one of the reasons why, frankly, Barack Obama took off so quickly. He had these viral moments that these incredible soundbites when he gave speeches, when he was just talking to regular people on the stump, we call them everyday voters. He had some very compelling content that just, you know, took off on its own, became organic. Now, of course, what a lot of people will do is take that organic content that tends to go, viral on its own and boost it. I see. You know, they'll put somebody behind it.

But you do have the organic content that you can boost or that just goes viral on its own, which is really what you want. And then you complement that with the paid content. Some of the paid content looks like it's organic. A lot of it's not. Some of it is a, you know, well-polished, well-put-together ad, digital ad that you see, you know, going out across multiple platforms. But, you know, for James Hallorico, and I'm sorry that I keep going back to that.

Yeah, he's a good example. That makes sense. about how vast and huge Texas is and how this really is increasingly a seat that Democrats believe that we will flip and we will quite possibly win back the Senate, when controlled the Senate because of Texas. He has little slivers of voters, right? He's got, you know, suburban women between 35 and 55, many of whom are mothers, many of whom are disgusted with the current status quo, but many of whom have not voted for a Democrat in the last several cycles, if ever. So like he's got it, you know, tailor a very specific message to them. Then he's got older voters who are the most

reliable voting bloc in the Democratic Party, actually at large, Republicans as well, but he's got a message to them. Then he's got a message to the younger voters. And he's got a message to different demographics within those demographics. So for him, a very well-concerted digital strategy and paid media. I mean, TV still counts for something, is one that is tailored to meet all those little slivers of voters that will ultimately end up when you're losing these races. And look, I mean, a lot of races, especially right now with gerrymandering, are going to be decided by a small amount of people. Yeah.

So having more money, having more resources, especially to boost digital so that you can target and micro-target the voters that you need to get out. And the voters that you need to persuade is really how you win these things. I was going to say this is, and so you're saying this is drastically different than how it used to be. This level of precision targeting, it used to be way more broad base is what you're So yeah, so it's a funny story. So the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is the party committee that is tasked with winning or, you know, winning back house seats for, you know, for Congress. So for the House side of things. You've got the House of Representatives, you've got the U.S.

Senate. So these are the congressional seats. I work for a guy named Rahm Emanuel, who I'm sure you guys know in 2006 at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. We call it the D-Trub. And I was the only regional. cross secretary, which my job every day was to get, you know, whatever stories, whatever messages we are trying to drive on certain candidates, my job every day for the year. And when it was just me, was to get these stories out there. And I would start obviously pitching the East Coast. I would call the AP desk for, you know, Hartford, Connecticut and pitch a race. And then I'd start focusing on the Midwest by the time, you know, it was 11 a.m. Eastern. And then I'd end at the end at the

day maybe pitching, you know, the LAAP or the LA Times or, you know, the paper in Las Vegas, I'd focus that at like six or seven o'clock at night. And Rom would really literally walk by my desk every day with a Post-it note in the order of the races that he wanted me to pitch and the stories that he wanted me to pitch. Like that was the old-fashioned way. And you hoped that you would get an AP story or a story in whatever the lead local newspaper was the next morning. So I'm just, I want to make sure I'm following. You are, yeah, you are reaching out to local, like, outlets, like journalist outlets and saying, hey, please try to cover this story. And you have to just be calling all of them and sort of just throwing it out there and maybe something on the phone. Wow. Is that still done in addition to things or is that totally? Is there still like, is there one person now who's dedicated to that and everybody else is on the digital side or is that just totally gone?

They've thrown that out. There definitely is. I mean, you always want, you know, good local press. Local press is everything on a presidential campaign. on a congressional race, whatever it is. Local press is everything. But now what you can do is you get those stories and you boost it. You know, you make it, you know, you want those stories to go viral if they're good for you. And you want to make sure that you're targeting people on Facebook, on TikTok, on whatever platform they use. You're targeting that local press to them. So there's a whole digital push behind it. Whereas again, back in the olden days, it was, well, I'm getting the Columbus dispatch. I live in Columbus, Ohio. This is my local daily newspaper. And you would hope and that whatever you pitched was at least in the A section of the newspaper.

So when you say local press is everything, though, is that, are you just being not, like, people aren't reading the newspaper as much anymore, like nearly. They're not reading the newspaper as much anymore. You're right. But you still want to show that your candidate, even if they're running for president, is well attuned to the local press issues. So, I mean, local press is important when, for anything that you're doing. So if you're doing a big policy rollout on health care, if you're, you know, announcing your

immigration policy. Like you want to make sure that you have a team of people that are in certain key swing states that are driving local press that are tailoring that press around that rollout so that it's applicable to the people that you are seeking to serve in that state. So you get local validators. Maybe you get the mayor to amplify what you're saying. I see. Maybe you get a couple state reps to amplify what your policy is. You hope to get some quotes for them in the local stories, et cetera. but increasingly, yes, to your point, I mean, you know, I am from Arkansas, I like to keep tabs on what's going on. I still a couple times a week we'll read the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, but chances are I get most of my news regarding what's going on in Arkansas on my friend's Instagram's accounts or, you know, on various social media posts, sometimes even on TikTok.

But you still want to have local press, local stories that are written, you know, by local reporters that you amplify through those platforms. Man, this is so interesting. It's complex. And every presidential cycle is different. I mean, 2008 could look totally different from 2024. So if we were to use Tala Rico's campaign as an example, and let's say you were giving advice on how to, first off, I thought it was very interesting.

In my brain, a presidential campaign is trying to convince everybody in the entire country to vote for you. But of course, you're right. If a small percentage of people are what is going to swing it, of course you'd really want to focus on them. So within that, let's say, two or three percent, which are the swing voters that are going to determine the outcome ultimately. Right now in 26, how would you determine the importance of these? We just talked about local media or, you know, print media and maybe how that's lower in the totem pole. Do you feel like there's a clear,

this is the most important platform to be reaching people on? Or is that changing every day? Or do you need to hit everywhere? It all depends. It all depends. I mean, I worked with a client who did a post-campaign election analysis in terms of how different voting sectors were consuming information. And we found that men, I mean, this has now been widely reported, but at the time we were kind of like aghast. We found that men between the ages of 18 and 25, 70% of them said that they got the majority of their news, not advertising the majority of their news from like a gaming platform. Oh, damn. A gaming platform? A gaming platform? Wow. Okay. We have been in the wrong space.

We've got to move over to video news. That's funny. And then, of course, older voters said, well, we get most of our information from our local newspaper, our local news, and Facebook. You know, older voters tend to be on Facebook. You know, moms between the ages of 35 and 55, which is a key demographic for, you know, suburban moms got a lot of the, I think they said that the majority of them got their news from Instagram.

So they sort of rank it, which means you have to have a team of three. people that is extremely well-versed and attuned to all these different platforms so that they know how to reach people effectively. I mean, Trump's campaign, I will give them all the props in the world for number one, knowing how to get to younger men more effectively than we did. And number two, to going to these gaming platforms. I saw some of the, I saw some of the discrepancies in advertising placement and revenues spent by various campaigns and committees on different sides of the aisle. And I think Democrats, especially at the presidential level, because I'm not just talking about Kamala Harris's campaign or Joe Biden's campaign. I'm talking about the DNC. I'm talking about

future forward, which was the big super PAC that was spending on our behalf. Like all the other entities, we were outspent 10 to 1 by the Trump people, by MAGA Inc, by Trump's campaign, et cetera, because they knew if they could make Trump look cool and make MAGA look cool in the minds of these younger voters, many of whom were first-time voters, that could win or to lose the election for them. And it turns out that they did, you know, as we all know very well, they over-performed with young men. Now, we are starting to get some of those young men who are not necessarily party-line voters back in our category. So the 20-26 midterms, one of the major things I'll be looking for is what do young men do? Do they turn out? If they do, who are they turning out for?

my guess is they're probably going to turn out and they're going to turn out for the candidate that they identify the most with as opposed to the party that they think is the coolest. This is a question I really have is so if you're targeting all these different groups and through different platforms, they have clearly unique messages targeted each one. How do you maintain message discipline to where like if you're talking to some audience where you want to really hone in on issues that are important to them, but that issue is kind of a turn off to a different group? How do you make it so that message isn't leaking into another group and then changing their voting habit?

I feel like that is the hardest part when I'm thinking through this, what you're saying. It is a great question. It's a great question. And look, there's no easy answer. The bottom line is this. And I always advise candidates who I work for, whether you're running for president, whether you're running for Congress, whether you're running for governor, whomever it may be. Whatever message you say to one sector of voters, you need to be fine with it getting to a different sector. of voters. So like you can't go to one group of, I don't know, I'm trying to think of a good example

here, but you can't go to like seniors and say the number one issue that I'm fighting for is protecting your Social Security. There's no other issue more important in me than protecting your Social Security. And then you can't conversely go to, you know, women, I keep saying women between the ages at 35 and, you know, let's say 35 and 45 and say the number one issue to me is making sure that you have free child care. Like you can't, you have to, you have to talk about these issues holistically. And you have to say that they're all important issues. Now, you can go in front front of different groups and emphasize issues differently. Right, right, right. Say one of the most important issues to me, and I will make sure that if you elect me,

I will fight every day for you, is protecting your social security. You can go to young working moms, you know, young middle class working moms and say, I know that you're struggling to pay for child care. I know many of you cannot. go back to work because you cannot not afford child care. One of my top priorities when I go to Congress will be to provide free child care to every single American family making less than X amount of dollars a year. You can message different. You can emphasize the issues differently, but you have to stand by whatever you say to one

group. You have to stand by that with all groups that you talk to. Do you think that holds for just candidly for Republicans? I feel like sometimes they have pulled off the just saying, contrasting. things to different audiences, and it doesn't seem to hurt as much as you'd expect it to be. When you put them side by side and it's two contradicting statements, I don't know. I wonder if that's... They do it all the time.

And they, you know, the thing is, we say that they're getting away with it, but they're not getting away with it. I mean, Trump's numbers are in the toilet. Frankly, I, just to put that in perspective, I mean, I was on, I do a lot of morning Joe on MSNBC or MS now, and I was on the show yesterday talking about this new poll that came out in The Economist, which is one of my favorite publications. So you gogob poll, but they were going state by state with Trump's approval numbers on the economy, on immigration, on the war in Iran.

His numbers are worse than Bush's numbers in 2006 this time. And President Bush, you guys will, you know, I don't know how old are you guys were in 2006. But he was around. Were you born in 2006? He was coming down a very unpopular war. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Americans were struggling financially.

Corruption was like the name of the game. People thought that Washington was corrupt because it was corrupt and it still is corrupt to an extent. And they wanted to vote to restore integrity and government. Bush's numbers were worse than, I mean, I'm sorry, Trump's numbers now are worse than Bush's numbers were in 2006. In 2006, Democrats flipped 32. two House seats and we won back the Senate. I think we flipped five or six seats in the Senate to win back the majority. So like, you know, you look at precedent, which is all we have and it looks pretty good

for Democrats. As long as we don't screw it up, things are looking pretty good going into the fall. I'm curious. This gets back to kind of maybe the core of how do you run a campaign broadly, but particularly in 2026, given how just predominant digital media is. how everything's changing every day all the time. You know, if you're thinking about campaign operations or broad strategy like you were just talking about, how much of that depends on the individual candidate versus just what is going on culturally?

That's something I've always sort of wondered is the difference between this individual and what they are pushing for versus at some point we just have to respond to what our constituents want, what culturally is going on, what the other party is doing. And how do you kind of like balance that individual person? Yeah. That's a great question. I mean, look, I think my best answer on this right now is the candidate has to meet the cultural moment. Because oftentimes the cultural moment is framed by campaigns. I mean, Trump framed a lot of the cultural wars. I mean, he has effectively used, and I think in a way that is frankly disgusting, but he has used culture issues as a wedge issue to divide the American people.

So, again, if you're somebody like to go back to James Towers, Alarico, he is meeting this cultural moment because first of all, he's, you know, he's sort of Obama 2.0. He's like the modern day version of Obama. If you hear him speak, I put him in Osop in the same category, John Osop from Georgia. They are both incredibly effective and compelling speakers. James Salarico, in particular, in particular, uses his faith, which he is very well versed on, which it's not a fake thing. It is authentic to him. he uses his faith very effectively on the stump when he's talking about policy. And faith is very important to a lot of people.

It's not a culture issue, of course. But there's tingees of it that touch culture. But you have to meet the moment. And I think the most important thing being a candidate is if you can't meet the moment, if you are socially awkward and you have a team that is trying to make you seem cool and relevant and affable, it's never going to work. That didn't work, you know, 20 years ago. It didn't work 50 years ago and it's not going to work today. So it's a long way of saying if you have a good candidate who can adapt to the cultural moment, it's going to make things a lot better for you.

Okay. So we want to ask you about the Chips Act. This was an enormous bipartisan bill that came out of the Joe Biden administration. And for folks who are not aware of the exact details, largely the focus was on infrastructure broadly, but particularly on semiconductor chips and getting the production of those back into. to America. And that has been working. I mean, we're working with huge companies like Intel, Samsung, and Pringles. 52 billion went out, as well as major R&D funding boosts. So a huge thing. And then, Adrienne, could you tell us about your involvement with actually rolling that Chips Act out and what that looked like day to day? Yeah, I mean, you just talked about the historic nature of this. I mean, Congress has been trying to pass a Chips and Science Act to further incentivize the semiconductor industry to produce more domestic chips.

here or more chips domestically, I should say, as opposed to abroad. Obviously, that's important in national security. It's important to our economic security, all the things. One interesting fact is 90% of the world's leading edge chips. These are the most sophisticated chips. They go in your iPhones. They go in your laptop computers. They go in some very sophisticated military devices. 90% of them are produced at one fab, which is factory for chips in Taiwan. So I don't have to explain to you why that is a national security risk to us. If all of a sudden China comes in, and bays Taiwan, they scoop up all these chips,

we're totally screwed. So this was a very important piece of legislation that finally got passed under President Biden to further incentivize semiconductor chip production. My job in that, I ran external and government affairs, so I worked with members of Congress on the rollouts that we did in various parts of the country. I worked with a lot of the companies

to make sure that, you know, their due diligence and the data that they put forward was legit. There was a whole team that is far more sophisticated in going through a company's financials than me, but I was part of the team that helped bring in labor, bring in external-facing validators any time that we were making a major announcement about how we're tweaking the application process for semiconductor companies to apply for the funding or, you know, you know, making, you know, maybe we made like a workforce announcement on how many jobs we will require to be labor jobs versus non-labor jobs, et cetera. My team worked the, you know, worked government

leaders, worked union leaders, worked, state and local elected officials, et cetera, over to make sure the rollout was as good as possible. So it was extremely rewarding to be a part of that because it's something that like, you know, the average person is probably not paying a lot of attention to this. But if you frame it in the way of national security that if we don't produce these chips here on U.S. soil and if we don't have proprietary information and data, guardrails protected over these chips, then like in 10 years from now, China's going to have our ass. It is like the only way I can really put it. They are going to own us because they're going to have all the technology at their fingertips and we're not and we're going to be behind.

So it was important that the intels, that the microns, that the TSMs, that the TSM, sees that some of these major chip producers have the capacity and ability and the incentives to produce these ships here because, you know, frankly, in some countries, it's just a lot cheaper to produce these chips. So we needed a little bit of a government boost to make sure that production was done here. I want to dive into that, though, because some of the challenges, basically, it seems like the Washington side of the equation, you guys really did incredibly well. You got bipartisan support, you got the funding unlocked, you get tens of billion dollars authorized. But then how does that,

there was a big delay between the money being authorized and like breaking ground on a factory. And I'm wondering where you felt, I don't know, the system got gumbed up. What happened to prevent like real construction? Or I mean, do you feel the perception, you know, I assume you're, I think abundance in the book talked about this as well. And Chris, do you feel like is there a gap? Or was this, did it feel like things were moving slowly and it just takes a while to make the most complex factory that humans have ever made? I'm curious how you feel about that. Yeah, I'm so glad you raised that because I did read that part of abundance.

And I just sort of, I mean, I think Ezra Klein is one of the smartest people out there. But I, you know, if you're on the inside, look, you first of all, we were government employees, right? We are stewards of taxpayer dollars. And we really worked. I can tell you that like, especially the team that was going through the due diligence, working directly with the companies, going through the financials, making sure that everything was buttoned up before the money went out the door. Those guys were up until two, three o'clock in the morning on a regular basis because we knew that we were. racing against the clock that any extra delay from, you know, the money being awarded,

the money then going out the door, and then the fab breaking ground, was going to just delay us in terms of our competitiveness with other countries, especially regions like China. So they did the best they could. You know, some of it is also on the companies as well. You know, look, let's be honest, a lot of these companies do have the revenue to be able to build fabs here right now, but they needed a little bit of extra government incentives by, you know, not just in direct dollars given to these companies, but also tax incentives, you know, local tax, you know, local tax incentives, you know, a little tax break here and there that made it more lucrative to build a fab in this particular region. Arizona, for example, is very, very good.

There's a reason why the semiconductor industry has really invested heavily in production in Arizona because they have allowed the governor, you know, the mayor Gallego of Phoenix, they have put some strong incentives in place to try to push companies to do it. But look at the end of the day, I mean, we are still stewards of taxpayer dollars. Your taxpayer dollars went to this. My taxpayer dollars went to this. My parents, everyone we know, this is all a U.S. taxpayer-driven enterprise, and it's important that you balance the speed of getting these fabs built with, again,

being good stewards of everyone's, you know, hard-earned money. Speaking of the hard-earned money and feeling that it was well spent, I'm curious what you think about what happened with Intel. We've talked about it on our show, which, as a reminder for folks, you know, and actually correct me if I'm wrong here, but Intel was one of the recipients of a huge amount of grant money. And then rather than sort of receiving the rest of the grant money, Trump took a 10% stake in Intel.

We do not feel great about this decision personally, in our opinion. I'm curious, you know, how that lands for you, having been on the inside, rolling us out for two years and then seeing this massive change. And how that affects, like, the core fundamentals of how the chips act function. Like, is Intel going to act differently now because of this? Curious what you think. You guys are really on it. Seriously, you are on top of your game. Look, I thought it was disgusting.

I mean, like, Trump rallies against socialists and socialism and calls Democrats communists and, you know, which is all bullshit. But hopefully, by the way, I can say that on this podcast. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, yeah. No, no, no, no. You need to bleep it out. No, no, no.

I don't believe it. But, I mean, what is this? Not all is it unprecedented. It's questionable whether it's legal or not legal. And then Intel actually bent a knee and agreed to do it. I just, look, Secretary Gina Romando is my boss at Commerce. one of the best out there, incredibly smart. I can imagine us ever allowing that to even be a negotiating tactic on the table.

And yet here are so many people that just either turned a blind eye or, you know, I feel like it barely made a blip in the news. It was sort of like, oh, my God, I can't believe he's doing this. And then people just moved on. So I thought it was very ethically unacceptable. but it's what Trump does and here we are and I am just disappointed that Intel agreed to do that. Wait, that brings up a really interesting, I'll say if it's interesting or not, but a question that I want to ask. I think I'm interested in. You talked about it being a blip in the news. When you think about that,

isn't everything a blip in the news lately? Doesn't it feel like every single big story like moves and goes by so quickly? I'm wondering what you're on the pace of the job you're working at, how do you adapt to that? How have you guys adapted to the fact that it feels like not, Nothing sticks in the public consciousness more than a week. I mean, we try every week to get a thing to stick in the public consciousness. And then the next week it's all gone and it's a new thing. A new thing everyone's interested in or angry about or it seems like that pace has gone so rapid of the course of my life.

And I'm wondering how it feels from that side of the fence and how you guys adapt to that. Well, it's very frustrating is how it feels. You know, you combine, you know, look, I think Trump is very smart about throwing so much out there. seeing what sticks, seeing what doesn't stick. We wake up in the morning, we're like, oh, my God, there's so much coming out of us, whether you are, you know, a teacher living your everyday life, whether you are, and is somebody like me who works in politics for a living, whether, you know, it's you guys who are podcasts, whatever it is.

He throws so much at it. Sometimes it's just hard to keep track of everything, and he just move on. And it feels like chaos is the name of the game. He's very effective at doing that. And then on the flip side, you know, Democrats will try to get a mess. out there and we realize the only way really to ensure that Trump is not completely driving the news cycle every single day is to kind of play Trump's game. And that doesn't mean that we're always throwing stuff out there to see what sticks. But it means that we have to talk in soundbys.

It means that we have to use every available social media platform to get our message out. It means that you have to do things like Hakeem Jeffries. I don't know if you saw him. He's gotten a lot of, I think, ridiculous shit for meeting with Jared Kushner when, frankly, he's about to be the Speaker of the House and he should meet with Democrats and Republicans. And also I think to me, it was a task of acknowledgement that Jared Kushner believes that he will be a speaker. Thus, he is trying to build a relationship with him or a better relationship with him. So he stood in front of somewhere in Brooklyn with a green Yankees shirt on and a green Yankees hat and talk directly to the camera and said, let me make it clear if I meet with Jared Kushner, I'm still holding

these guys to account. This is not me working out some backroom deal. That's how you have to do those are the moments of the breakthrough when you are looking authentic when you are you know out there with the people and i think democrats are starting to do a better job of again not playing trump's game all the way but responding in a way that is not like a boring eight paragraph press release right that is a press conference that you know 25 people have to speak out for five minutes and you're bored after the first two minutes of the first person speaking like we're getting better at finding ways to respond where the message gets out to the right people in methods that they consume. It makes me wonder if charisma and content creation are going to become the most sought after

political skills, you know, and that that may usurp everything else because, like you said, those moments are what's dominating headlines for pretty much everybody. And, you know, I think I like the idea of you could talk to a presidential candidate or a senatorial candidate and they could have deep knowledge of the economic history of tariffs and explain why it's bad, but probably realistically, it's being able to make a really punchy one-minute video that gets to a lot of people. That's a little worrisome, honestly. I mean, it's not any, it's an incentive structure creating it, but it does feel like

it's pushing towards content creator presidents. Like, you're like content creators. Yeah. Brump to his credit. Great content creator. Yeah, it's a good content creator. He's an effective content creator, yeah. Listen, you guys are so spot on.

I mean, I think, about this a lot. I think about how much prep has always gone into, you know, when I was on Hillary's campaign in 2016, the Sunday shows were everything. Like, are we going to put Hillary out on Meet the press this weekend? Are we going to put her out on George Stephanopoulos? And if we are, there's going to be a lot of prep because that's, you want to be prepared. And Hillary Clinton is one of the most prepared people I've ever had a privilege of working for. She's incredible. And a lot of it is inherent because she's just so damn smart. But a lot of it is, you know, you want to make sure that you understand what are the questions that checked on at the time who was the host, are going to ask,

like what, you know, like you want to make sure that you are very well prepared. I think that we are now moving into an era, especially when we start the presidential campaign primaries in, in 2027, where if you're doing two hours of prep for like a five-minute Sunday show interview, for example, that's two hours you could be producing content. You could do this podcast. You could load up on all kinds of different social media podcast, YouTube, you name a content. And you're kind of like wasting precious time behind the scenes prepping for a five minute interview when you could be using that time to create some really compelling content. So I think some of the candidates who are going to probably do the best are the ones who do

your point are the most capable of creating this content. And, a very authentic way. And number two, the ones you can sort of do this extemporaneously off the cuff without a time prep. Now, I still would say that if you were doing a really big sit-down interview, you need to be, you need to be prepped and well-prepared. But what is even is that these days? I mean, the Sunday shows, I still watch them every Sunday, but, you know, fewer and fewer people in America are. So it's just going to be interesting to see, you know, how this all shakes out. I want to talk about a couple things going forward real quick. You did an interview on CNN where you criticized current D&C leadership

and warned that the financial and organizational problems of the DNC could be a problem in 28. I was wondering if you could talk our audience to that a little bit. What you're seeing are the issues and what they think you have to get together to fix before 28? Well, first of all, if you're the chair of the Democratic National Committee, you've got two jobs. First and foremost, you should be on TV every day punching Republicans, right?

hitting Republicans on X, Y, and C. Physically or? Sorry. Punching with your voice. You should be doing that every single day. It would be a good viral content. Yeah, that's the content creation side right there. Right.

And secondly, you should be raising money. And if you're not able to do the two of those things, then you really have no business being the DNC chair. Now, Ken Martin came in. The DNC was a little bit in depth in the 2024 campaign cycle. Not a surprise. But like, and he has raised. money that is going right out the door to some state parties. And I give them props for that because

I do think we need to invest more aggressively in the states. But it's still really hard to go into a really, really, really important election cycle in the red, meaning you're in debt. So, you know, look, this is not the right time to change the leadership of the DNC. We've got to get through the next few months. But if Ken cannot turn this ship around, you know, we probably, I would hope that the Democratic National Committee members, I'm not one. So I have been. no say in this, except for my own opinion. I would hope that they would make a change. And I also want to caveat by saying that some of the best staff, some of the best operatives, for lack of a better term, are currently sitting at the DNC. The staff there is amazing. We just got to make sure

that we are raising the money and that we're calling every single donor to get that money in the door. We do not have, this is not a personal thing. This is not, you know, a personal attack. It is we just have to win, and the only way that we can win is to get more money in the door. So I'm hoping that Ken will turn the ship around and we'll see what happens after the 2026 midterms. Awesome. This has been incredibly interesting, Adrienne. Thank you so much for joining the show. Appreciate it very much. And we're looking forward to an exciting election cycle, exciting if nothing else. So I appreciate all the insight about it. Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you guys for having me. Thank you. Have an extra jay. Bye-bye.

Sweet. That was the interview. I hope you enjoyed. Aiden, what were your thoughts? She seemed nice. Aiden actually really wanted to do this, but then had to travel because he's receiving dark money from Ludwig. Yes, funneled through Krakow. Funnaling dark money through Krakow. But this is, I thought this is really interesting.

It was super cool to be able to chat. No, it was cool. I'll be perfectly candid. We weren't sure what direction this interview would go before it happened. Because with someone like this, with this much background, this much polish and, you know, media training, you kind of think you might get a standard answer and I really like that you push it towards like how does this work?

I thought that made an interview really interesting to me. I didn't know what I would think going into it and she her answers give me insights I didn't know I had so that was cool. Yeah. So it's midterm season, baby. Yeah. It's interesting to see what happened.

I mean, this is extremely consequential and look, I know I'm not exactly somebody who knows things but I feel like that this is really fucking consequential and I would, I know we stay neutral third parties on the show, but I've lean Trump, I'll lean Trump, I'll say it. I would like the numbers end up, something like this. Okay? I'll say it. Okay, I would like some of the insanity to stop. That would be really

fucking great. So we will be watching your involvement with great interest to Tala Rico. If you want to check out an extra hour of the show, you can go to patreon.com slash lemonade stand where I'll be giving you my fever dream pitch of how to fix elections. Thank you. My fixy means rig. Thanks for watching. Thanks everybody. Bye.

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