Lovett or Leave It - Coup-y with a Chance of Meatballs

Episode Date: July 16, 2022

Lovett or Leave It stops by the North State to visit the Mary Kate to Minneapolis’s Ashley, Saint Paul! Mayor Melvin Carter stops by to explain all the moves, literal and figurative, his fair city is making. Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan explains what it means to be a good neighbor (providing abortion services to other  states, for starters.) Ashley Ray is fearless in the face of lutefisk, and we spin the Rant Wheel to let out our frustration at inferior bagels, sartorial critics, and, of course, the ocean. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

Hello! St. Paul. Thank you, thank you. Thank you. That is the correct level. I appreciate it. The last time I was in the Twin Cities, the weather was a few degrees colder. Was there anyone here who made it out?

Thank you. Say hello to your fair weather friends. Welcome to Love It or Leave It Live or Else. At the Fitzgerald Theater, we have got a great show for you tonight. Your mayor, Melvin Carter, and your lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan, are here. Ashley Ray joins to sample some local delicacies We ask you in the land of Twin Cities to pick a twin We spin the rant wheel

Because Minnesota Nice is no match for America Furious And then we'll hear your high notes tonight Live and in person. But first, let's get into it. What a week. California doctor Meg Autry proposed a floating abortion clinic in the Gulf of Mexico as a way to maintain access for people in southern states. The abortions and food are free, but the drinks are not, and that's where they get you. Manuel Oliver, the father of a Parkland shooting victim, heckled President Biden during Monday's

signing of the bipartisan gun bill, saying, we have to do more than that. And in a snap, the Democratic midterm message was born. The Democrats, we have to do more than that. And in a snap, the Democratic midterm message was born. The Democrats. We have to do more than that. Dr. Jill Biden apologized after comparing Latinos to breakfast tacos during a speech she made in San Antonio. I am so sorry, Dr. Biden said. I wish I could wrap you all up in an apology like a burrito, but I would love nothing more than to add the salsa of regret to the chilaquiles of my offense. I think she made it worse. Steve Bannon reversed course on his perfect plan to ignore a subpoena from the January 6th committee and agreed to testify. Unfortunately, that still won't get him out of a criminal trial

for contempt of Congress. Your Honor, I'm sorry, but I'm starting to get the impression that there are going to be what I believe are called consequences. Consequences. Consequences. I don't know how you say it. It's not a word we use in my world. Hopefully, while he's under oath, they can get Bannon to finally reveal his skin care regime. What's his secret? After Judge Carl Nichols struck down several potential defenses ahead of Bannon's trial,

Bannon's lawyer, David Schoen, asked out loud in court, what is the point of going to trial here if there are no defenses? The judge agreed and suggested Bannon and his lawyer consider that fact. Your Honor, the prosecution has an unfair advantage in that my client is guilty as hell. The guy wears two polos at the same time. He can't be defended. I only took this case because his previous lawyer, Saul Goodman, said it couldn't be done. Ms. Cheney kicked off Tuesday's January 6th hearing by reminding everyone that, despite what you might believe in this partisan world of ours, Donald Trump is a fucking adult man.

President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child. Just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices. As our investigation has shown, Donald Trump had access to more detailed and specific information showing that the election was not actually stolen than almost any other American. And he was told this over and over again. One quibble. Based on Liz's claim as to when life begins, he is 77. Cheney continued, don't be fooled by Trump's spry athleticism and boyish charm. My fellow Americans, he's old as shit. I will go back to a theory I've raised before on this show. We can't say for certain that Trump isn't a tween narcissist who came across Zoltar at the carnival.

This may be a real-world big scenario. Don't seize the voting machine, Sidney. Seize the carnival embiggening machines. Stupid. This week's January 6th hearing focused in part on a tense Decembercember 18th 2020 meeting at the white house between president trump's lawyers and his squad of outsider internet adult goons including sydney powell rudy giuliani and mike flynn how off the rails was this december

18th meeting i'll let white house lawyer eric herschman explain at one point uh general flynn General Flynn took out a diagram that supposedly showed IP addresses all over the world and who was communicating with whom via the machines and some comment about like Nest thermostats being hooked up to the internet Look While it remains shocking just how little work they put into their dumb conspiracy theory as a paper thin fig leaf over the pulsing tiny dick that was Trump's coup attempt?

I am with Flynn on not trusting Nets thermostats or any smart appliance. Why do you want your toaster connected to the internet? Are you running out of ways to burn down your house? You need a remote option? Stupid.

Oh, no, my toaster's not working. I need to download an update. What a world. The conclave between Trump, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Flynn, and Overstock.com former CEO Patrick Byrne was, in fact, a surprise to White House counsel. Said Powell, if Pat Cipollone's rushed to break up the meeting, I bet Pat Cipollone set a new land speed record.

Cipollone in those final days was like a Tesla. Incredible acceleration, constantly on the verge of an explosion. Things got so heated at the meeting, in fact, Hirschman and Rudy Giuliani got into a screaming match in which Rudy accused Hirschman and the more hesitant Trump allies of being pussies. You guys are not tough enough. Or maybe I put it another way, you're a bunch of pussies. Excuse the expression. And I don't mean the good kind, like one belonging to a sexy cousin. What? His life's a shambles. They also didn't really know who the overstock guy was.

Let's roll the next clip. Well, first of all, the overstock person, I don't know who this guy was. Actually, the first thing I did, I walked in, I looked at him, and I said, who are you? He said to me, I'm in cabinets. And I was like, you're not in the cabinet. And he said, there's not just one cabinet. And I said, like hell there isn't, and you're not in it. Anyway, we went around like this for a while. Meanwhile, Sidney Powell testified that she believed she would have been appointed to special counsel and would receive top secret clearance.

that she believed she would have been appointed to special counsel and would receive top secret clearance, Cipollone refused to specify what Trump said about Powell's appointment, but pointed out that no paperwork was ever filed to make the appointment official. Trump's White House lawyers have one thing in common with Merrick Garland, and that's an unshakable belief that if you ignore something hard enough, it's like it never happened. What are they doing over there? happened. What are they doing over there? Why is the Department of Justice and all of us being updated at the same time by the television? Also, it is amazing how many times during the kind of denouement of Trump's first term involved people just ignoring what he was saying, because if you took it seriously, it was like a calamity.

The reason Cipollone is not saying what Trump said is it's pretty clear Trump did make Sidney Powell special counsel, and they all decided if they just pretended he didn't, it wouldn't happen because Trump is such a fucking boob, he couldn't, like, execute by going around them. So they just pretended it didn't happen like a toddler asking for a Minions backpack at Universal.

Waiting three hours and hopefully he just fell asleep. Take me to the Capitol. No. They're not allowed to tell him no. The power does flow from him as the elected president of the United States. I mean, elected, air quotes all over, but they all just decided not to do what he said,

and because he's so incompetent, he couldn't execute. But if he wanted to go to the Capitol that day, he should have been able to go because the Secret Service doesn't run the country. He does. I'm glad they didn't take him, but everybody was playing pretty fast and loose with the Constitution, including these lawyers

who were like, nope, pretending he didn't say it, moving on. And I'm glad they did. Like, this guy Hirschman, like, he's so great in these hearings. The reason he works at the White House is because he was Trump's lawyer for the first impeachment. It's turtles all the way down with these people. Former Oath Keepers spokesman Jason Van Tottenhove said the moment he realized he had to leave the Oath Keepers was when he heard his fellow Oath Keepers declare the Holocaust wasn't real while visiting a grocery store.

The straw that broke the camel's back really came when I walked into a grocery store. There was a group of core members of the group, the Oath Keepers and some associates, and they were having a conversation at that public area where they were talking about how the Holocaust was not real. And that was, for me, something I just could not abide. Wow. This fucking guy. He's like, I found my bottom. It's crazy.

Meanwhile, Capitol rioter and former Trump supporter Stephen Ayers, who pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct for entering the Capitol, also testified about the impact social media had on his decision to take part in the insurrection. Said heirs of the Stop the Steal lie, I felt like I had, you know, like horse blinders on. I was locked in the whole time. Biggest thing for me is take the blinders off, make sure you step back and see what's going on before it's too late. In response... In response... Wow.

Literally the best laugh. For those listening at home, there was a Jamie Raskin reaction shot that absolutely crushed. In response, Facebook issued the following statement. We here at Facebook believe that digital horse blinders for human beings can obviously be misused, but remain a valuable tool

for helping impressionable, angry, broken people only see the kind of information that confirms their worst impulses. That's just another word for community. And we love that. We're proud of that. And in the metaverse, you can now buy virtual horse blinders

from some of your favorite brands. Liz Cheney closed the hearing by revealing that Trump himself had attempted to contact an upcoming January 6th witness, saying about his clear attempt to tamper, we will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously. I think he was probably just calling for a friendly chat about their grandkids, where they live, what schools they go to, how quickly they could be snatched into an unmarked van, just like grandpa stuff.

Later in the week, an anonymous source told the Washington Post that Trump served Swedish meatballs at the December 18th meeting, and in their words, Patrick Byrne, the overstock guy, was nonstop housing meatballs. He ate so many meatballs. Fortunately, Trump had smeared lingonberry jam on the walls in the Oval Office Willy Wonka style because he was being, you know, thoughtful

First of all, I'm glad to see that stress eating meatballs in public is a power move as I thought Also imagine how many meatballs this man had to eat for it to be a memorable detail from the most memorable and

bonkers day in any of these people's lives. Yeah, I was on the Titanic. Of course I remember the day it sank. This guy at my table was just pounding the chicken mayonnaise. And even worse mental images, reports say that former House Speaker Paul Ryan was sobbing when he watched the January 6th attack unfold on TV. Explain, Ryan, I just couldn't figure out how to turn off motion smoothing. A pregnant Texas woman who was pulled over

for driving in the carpool lane is fighting the citation in court, arguing that her unborn fetus should count as a passenger given current abortion law. Perfect argument. No notes. But it's all fun and games until this is what Alito and Thomas used to make

contraception illegal. I took it too far down. It was a fun story. It was a light story. We liked it. Make it a good point. Fucking these people. Then I took it too far down. It was a fun story. It was a light story. We liked it. Taking it, you know, make it a good point. Fucking these people. Then I took it back to reality, you know. Took us up. I took us down.

An upstate New York news anchor was suspended after slurring incoherently through an evening broadcast. The anchors later said she was sleep deprived and exhausted. All right. So, well, hello. Good afternoon. Like, I was telling you this morning, if you watched us this morning, starting at 6 a.m., 7 a.m., I told you, you know what, today,

what a beautiful day outside. It is just amazing. And so, a great time for outdoor music. Look, if someone is going through it, I don't think that's funny. But I do think that's the best news anchoring I've ever seen. And some good fortune tonight. Firefighters were able to extinguish the blaze relatively quickly,

preventing any damage to the surrounding apartment complex. Back to you, Janet. Thanks, babe. In other news, hey, the fair's in town. I'm gonna have a beef. The BA5 variant has been responsible for a wave of COVID reinfections this summer. It is now the dominant strain in the United States.

I hate COVID, but I am a sucker for a dom. Sadly, so is America. Former Glee actress Lea Michele will be replacing Beanie Feldstein in Funny Girl on Broadway. After Feldstein received negative reviews for her turn as Fanny Bryce, it's a dream come true, said Lea Michele,

holding an upside-down playbill that she signed with a big X. Steps away from the door to the cellar where she conducted the cursed ritual that doomed Beanie's performance. So there's this conspiracy theory online that has demonstrated, quotes all over it, that Lea Michele, technically speaking, can't read.

And it's pretty persuasive. There's a lot of times where there could definitely be sheet music on her music stand, and there isn't. It does sound like she has a British accent because she learns by listening. It's pretty persuasive. And if you wanted to prove you can read, it's easy. And like reading three lines next to Jonathan Groff, your best friend who easily could be in on it with you because he's like a good ride or die sort. You can tell, you know, you can tell that like Jonathan Groff, you call him and say, I need you to pretend I can read. He'll come over and do it. And that's why we love him. And that's why we were even willing to suspend disbelief when he played straight on Mindhunter. Where am I taking this?

We got to keep moving. In a recent interview, Natalie Portman revealed that Chris Hemsworth did not eat meat leading up to their on-screen kiss because she's a vegan. Chris, I think I'm up next. No dairy, please. I shouldn't have dairy, but they're like, I'm skipping dairy. Natalie went on to say this.

You know, like, the day we had a kiss scene, he didn't eat meat that morning because I'm vegan. Oh, that's so cute. And he eats meat, like, every half hour. Yeah, he does. Like, that was so thoughtful. Kissing a man in his brief respite

halfway through a steak is straight culture. through a steak is straight culture. After the existence of his 10th and 11th children surfaced, Elon Musk tweeted, doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis, a collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far. When Elon was trying to buy Twitter, he said the biggest danger the world faced was TikTok. Last year, Musk said the biggest danger was wokeness. Before that, when he was hyping Neuralink, he said it was super intelligent AI. The pattern is clear.

Musk is addicted to telling us that the shit he wants to do anyway is in fact heroic. If you went out to dinner with him, he'd say, the most terrifying threat to human life is a lack of french fries for the table. Which is true. life is a lack of french fries for the table which is true president biden on monday unveiled the first full-color image from nasa's james webb space telescope this was even more exciting than when biden unveiled the first full-color image he's old we got him. Nailed. It's fucking old. And finally, last week photos circulated of Armie Hammer working

at a hotel in the Cayman Islands. The photos were originally debunked, but this week additional reports confirmed that he is indeed selling timeshares at a hotel. Nothing like an honest day's labor to work up an appetite. Coming up next, a word from our sponsor. Delightful mix-ups and misunderstandings.

Minnesota, you've made them famous. From the plot lines of fully six dozen Mary Tyler Moore episodes to the GOP-controlled Minnesota Senate inadvertently legalizing the perfect amount of THC in edibles and beverages. Hell yeah. It's a mistake that prompted Republican Senator Jim Abler to ask, after the vote already happened, seemingly as a joke, that doesn't legalize marijuana, we didn't just do that. And Democratic Senator Tina Liebling replied, oh, are you kidding? Of course you have. Now, I've made no secret of enjoying an edible now and again. Why else would a 39-year-old host think the perfect pop culture references for a comedy podcast in 2022, our local news producer Mary

Richards, and later in the show, Green Acres. That's coming. I'll tell you how. Because he watched sitcoms while stoned so often during the pandemic, Hulu cut out the middleman and started sending pizzas. But of course, as we all know, once a drug is legalized at the state level, capitalism is sure to follow. And so tonight we're partnering with some brand new homegrown companies. Now that your fair state is being blanketed with a gentle five milligrams of legal THC. First up, this episode of Love It or Leave It is brought to you by St. Paul's Own All Organic Chronic Curds. Wisconsin thinks it owns dairy? Those fucks. We know a thing or two about cheese here in Minnesota,

and when we say organic, we mean it. No additives. I know what you must be thinking. Oh, you add the THC, the milk, right out of the udder. No, that's wrong. That would be good, but what we do is better. To make our THC-infused cheese curds, we make THC-infused dairy cows.

That's right, our cows are so stoned their milk can get you high. It's easy. You simply dump vast quantities of marijuana into the feed and then turn on Too Hot to Handle for our gals and come back to the barn every once in a while to tell Netflix, yes, these milking short horns can't stop laughing through their half-closed bloodshot tiny little cow eyes. St. Paul's all-organic chronic curds. The cows are high, but our prices are low. When we come back, Mayor Melvin Carter.

And we're back. And we're back. As soon as I landed yesterday, I said to myself, St. Paul is a city on the cusp. Can you feel it in the air, the cuspiness of it all? Here to talk about it, please welcome back to the show your very own Mayor Melvin Carter. Hi. So good to see you. Thanks for having me back on.

So good to see you. First of all, the last time you were on the show, you were here for our Blizzard show. That's right. And you made it. Thank you. Absolutely. I appreciated that. It was a great show. Now you're back. In November of 2020, you announced the formation of St. Paul's Community First Public Safety Commission. One of the focuses was to reimagine emergency response. What does that look

like on the ground in the two years since? God, I feel terrible. We're taking from the jokes to the real serious really fast. We'll get real serious really fast. We'll get lighter in a bit. There's ranges. This is the world we live in. I don't know what else to do. That works. Look, we'll lighten it up.

Are you watching? No. What do you think about? Do you like weed? Look, we'll lighten it up. All right. Are you watching? No. Nope. What do you think about? Do you like weed? We can do it while talking. I just got to do 10 minutes of substance. That's right. Whatever you want.

That's right. I'm a fan of those St. Paul companies you just said. Anything to add jobs. We've been sold a lie. Public safety, we've been told forever that if we just lock more people up, build bigger prisons, add more police officers, add tougher prosecutors to fill our prisons, that our neighbors will be safer. Nobody I know would argue that that works. And the reason is pretty obvious. We have, I think, mistaken public safety for emergency response. My father's in this space. He's a retired police officer. It's a sacred profession, and we need police officers. We need firefighters. We need paramedics. But to mistake that for a

comprehensive, complex public safety system is a fatal mistake. Thank you. I have children. We have a two-and-a-half-year-old at home. And when it comes to keeping her safe, it's not just about what happens after something terrible happens. It's not just about finding somebody, chasing them down, and sending somebody to prison after something terrible happens to her. It's about finding the plastic plugs and putting them in the outlets and safeguarding our home so that we can reduce the likelihood that anything can be a fall in the first place. That's what we need as a community. That's what our public safety framework is about. That's what our community is demanding, and that's what we're doing in St. Paul. Obviously, it's a huge undertaking and involves bringing together a lot of disparate groups,

a lot of disparate interests, including the police, as you mentioned. What have you learned about that effort to keep people with a bunch of different equities kind of as part of the conversation? The intriguing thing is everybody knows that our public safety system has been failing us. Everybody knows it needs to be fundamentally different. Any police officer who walked in here would tell you, like, this isn't working for us in this way. One of the crazy parts about my life is just it's full of people who want things to be better but not different. crazy parts about my life is just it's full of people who want things to be better, but not different. And I don't know how to do that. Right. And so one of the things that we've done is just say we can bring people to the same table, have real honest conversations. We also always tell

people the rent that you pay to be an advisor to the mayor is to listen to other people around the table the same way as you want me to listen to you. And when we do that, we find we can find some pretty amazing agreement on a lot of things. We've talked a lot about public transit and infrastructure on this show, on this comedy show of ours. In cities across the country, leaders were trying to invest in transit, but they're dealing with massive obstacles to getting projects off the ground, cost, bureaucracy, but also fear and a lack of imagination after decades of infrastructure and road infrastructure for cars being seen as synonymous. Can you talk a little bit about this project that has to do with the Rondo neighborhood and I-94 and what you're trying

to do there? Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's really a fundamental shift. Our goal, and my team hears me say this all the time, we can't just do different things. We have to do things differently. And it's about just looking at what a city government can be and the way City Hall can be relevant in the people's lives differently. We've looked, as you just mentioned, we've looked at streets forever. We've looked at our infrastructure forever as just places for cars. And in doing so, we have wasted millions of acres of public space across our country and lots of space across our city that could be used to bring people together. So this approach to just say it's space for cars calls for us to create spaces that separate people. The reason I became a city council member in the first place was because we were building a billion dollar light rail in our neighborhood that literally was going to reduce transit access for the people who lived

closest to where I grew up. That's the psychology that we have that's about stuff, and it's never about people. And so this is about people. The neighborhood that my father grew up in, the neighborhood that my grandfather grew up in, was this neighborhood called Rondo in St. Paul, which when my father was growing up was the center of our thriving African-American community in St. Paul. It was uprooted. It was decimated to build the freeway. And in today's dollars, I've seen studies that suggest that over a hundred million dollars of wealth was stolen from our African- American community just through that freeway. Now this story, you have to know, played out in cities all across America. And so if the St. Paul number in the 50s was over 100 million, St. Paul wasn't the blackest city in the 50s.

And so you have to imagine how enormous the national number would be when that's concerned. All I have to say is, as we're thinking about the freeway, our goal is to build a cap over the freeway to literally help reconnect some of those spaces. My grandfather used to say, if you get land, you keep it because that's the one thing they're not building more of. We're literally building more land so that we can create wealth for people in our community. Yeah, I think it's exciting. I think it's interesting because you're seeing projects like this pop up all over the country, which is basically saying, hey, 75 years ago, a group of people who are long dead decided, based on financial interest and with a complete disregard for black communities, to put highways that just destroyed neighborhoods. They cut right through

them. That's right. You're seeing in towns, leaders take on these projects of, okay, we're going to take this four-lane road where people scream by, no one parks, no one stops, and we're going to take this four lane road where people scream by, no one parks, no one stops, and we're going to turn the middle into a promenade, or we're going to try to cap the highway and make a kind of park in the middle. And I think it's just really exciting. And I hope it is. What are the prospects of it actually getting done? It's a moonshot for us, but we have a great community of folks who are never going to stop pushing for it until it gets here. We have legislative leaders who are supportive. And so we think we can get it done. So St. Paul is also expanding its guaranteed income program. You've talked about the value of direct cash payments. You know, we've talked about the

national child tax credit that kept 3.7 million children out of poverty at the end of 2021. Can you talk a little bit about St. Paul's program and how it works? Yeah, absolutely. We're really excited about it. We launched a guaranteed income pilot, I think, fall of 2020, which identified 150 families, low income families with very young children. They're all a subset of our college bound St. Paul initiative through which we start every child born in our city with $50 in a college savings account. I love telling parents, thank you. I always tell parents, if you have a baby in St. Paul and you don't want your baby to have a college savings account, there's paperwork to fill out, which is true. And so these 150 families received for a period of 18 months, a $500 monthly benefit, unconditional

cash transfer. You know, a lot of times in our kind of anti-poverty suite of programs in America, we look at a program like that and we say, well, here's some money, but you can only spend it on food, or you can only spend this on child care, you can only spend this. And that's not the way families work. That's not the way our family budgets work. The way our family budgets work is some of us need child care help, and some of us need health care help. And some of us who might need food this month might have a truck breakdown next month and need to fix it up to get to work. And so I became really passionate about this because when my older daughter was born, we were on WIC. And if you know anything about WIC, you can walk

out of the grocery store every couple of weeks with as much peanut butter, as much milk, as much cheese, as many eggs as you can possibly figure out what to do with. My daughter was born severely allergic to peanuts and with an allergy to milk and dairy, soy, et cetera, et cetera. So we would go to the grocery store and we could get unlimited quantities of the cow's milk that she couldn't drink and none of the almond milk that she could drink. Unlimited quantities of the peanut butter that would cause a life-threatening reaction for her, no almond butter, et cetera, et cetera butter etc etc etc and that's what happens when we decide from city hall or from the state capitol or from the nation's capitol we know better what families need than they do so the goal is to invest directly in low-income families and see what happens when we do that and

the exciting thing and this is important because believe it or not there are some politicians who don't support this and one of the things that we're doing because we don't and this is public safety too we don't apply independent evaluation through the lens of the policy that we do and so in public safety my staff hears me say all the time if an article doesn't include the word standard deviation, don't send it to me. Because this is about independent evaluation. This is about things that are proven to be successful. And so where this is concerned, to battle all these racist tropes, there's all these racist tropes about what those people will do if you give them money. And they're all racist, they're all classist, and they're all inaccurate. And we're able to prove that because we launched the Center for Guaranteed Income Research with this organization called Mayors for Guaranteed Income that I'm one

of the national co-chairs of. We've got over 80 mayors right now and over a couple of dozen pilots going. And we launched the Center for Guaranteed Income Research. And what we're finding out, it's the craziest thing. When those people get money, they buy groceries, they pay the rent, they buy their children bicycles. They do all the same type of stuff. they buy their children bicycles they do all the same type of stuff they do all the same type of stuff that we would do with it and I think what we're proving is there was never them in the first place

there's just one big OE yeah it is it does seem like this is part of this sort of effort to take a look at some of the ways in which we have built these Byzantine bureaucracies, the administration of which costs a ton of money. We spend billions and billions of dollars to stop people from doing the wrong thing with direct payments, right? We waste huge, huge

amounts of budget because conservatives and some Democrats have spent a long time making people afraid of what happens if people misuse public resources, but you're not seeing that. Because we don't trust the people who we tell every four years, we believe in you. We don't trust them to take care of their families in the way that they do. And so we hear people say things like, oh, we're disincentivizing work. Why would anybody work anymore? I've never heard anybody say that who could quit their day job for $500 a month. Right. I want to tell you two things. I want to tell you two things. One is one of the things that we're finding through, again, independent academic research is that people who participate

in this program gain employment and increase their employment at rates much higher than people who don't. And one of the things that we're realizing, it sounds crazy until you ask them why, and they say, oh, I put my child in child care. Oh, I took some time off of that part-time job to interview for a full-time job, all of these types of things. But then the other thing that I wanted to tell you is one of the biggest knocks that we get on our work is how are you going to keep these families from losing their kind of federal programs or losing access to their kind of state programs. And the response that I always give people is really important because we have seen some people who said, I don't want to participate in this because I don't want to lose my federal benefits. We also see people who say, I don't want to take this job, or I don't want to take this promotion, or I don't want to take this raise because I don't want to lose my

federal benefits. And the problem isn't that we're helping families feed their children. The problem is that we've created these Byzantine federal eligibility criteria that disincentivize families from upward financial mobility. That is systemic inequity. I'm glad. I'm also glad you're making this argument that, hey, it's something we're finding everywhere, right? Like cash payments work. People use it to help themselves and help their families and build better lives everywhere. We're 60 years into a war on poverty, and we just thought of giving money to poor people. And people get cash, they fix their roof. Like, people use the money really, of course they do.

That's right. But I also think it's important to, in a vast program, there'll be people who use it in ways that would be fodder for Fox News. Except for PPP, of course. Except for PPP. Right. Well, that's the point. That's the point I'm making, which is it is amazing what kinds of misuse of dollars we will care about as a society.

Like wage theft on a vast scale, not interesting, doesn't get people's attention. But I guarantee if we did any kind of federal program that did direct payments, you can bet that there would be endless local news and national news coverage of any examples they could find to make it look like a waste to sort of rile people up. And I don't know how you deal with that. Some of it, you just do what you do. And I'm blessed to be in a city like St. Paul that

supports, that understands the need for some of this stuff and pushes us to do more. It's crazy that what we're trying to do, and I sort of have learned this from our residents, that the traditional approach to city building is this approach to public safety that's like borrowed from the wild west we're going to root out the bad guys and get them out of town right um and our approach to economic development is quite the opposite it's all about spending money to lure people here lure businesses here lure workers here and our approach is to take that and flip it because that approach always makes us search inside search our city search our own community for the bad,

and only look for potential and promise outside of our community. And as we end up betting against ourselves over and over again. And so the tie that binds, the tie that binds everything that we're trying to do from raising the minimum wage to college savings accounts we talked about, to investments in affordable housing and everything that we're trying to do is just saying we're going to build the future of this city on betting on us, betting on our children, betting on our families, betting on our businesses, and we're just going to keep on doing it. Do you have any hobbies? Yes. Yes. My wife's backstage laughing. When I became mayor, completely out of the blue, I've never admitted this out loud. You guys don't tell anybody. I completely out of the blue developed a very obsessive woodworking hobby.

Every time she wants something new, she like rolls her eyes at me because I go, what do you want? A coffee table? I can build that. We need a bed for the kids. Oh, I can build that. Wow. And I do. You do? You're making a coffee table.

What do you do? Oak? Pine? That's the thing. It's been pine. I've graduated to... Pine. My wife was like,

next time do like an oak or something. So I've graduated to the more expensive material. Nice. You're not going to waste the oak. We'll find out. You can play with pine

but you're not going to waste oak. We won't waste oak. You don't want to waste oak. Not in this economy. Well, thank you so much for being here. Now, Mayor Carter's agreed to stick around.

We're in the Twin Cities, so it seems only right... I'm sorry, we're in St. Paul. We're in St. Paul, of course. I want you to know something. Thank you for doing that. I promise, I promise, I'm going to pander so hard about this topic, like, in a few minutes.

Literally the next segment. You'll be delighted. We're in St. Paul, which is connected to, you know, another city. You know, St. Paul is the Arnold Schwarzenegger to the Danny DeVito. That is Minneapolis.

Oh, I forgot that we let people from Minneapolis come. There's nothing wrong with any other cities. There's nothing wrong with other cities. There's nothing wrong with any other cities. We've always said that. But we're in St. Paul. But we're in St. Paul. That's right.

And to everyone from Minneapolis who booed, I'd obviously just say the opposite when I was in Minneapolis. But I'm not. The point is, we're tweaking our classic beloved Queen for a Day segment into Twin Queens for a Day, which is really Twin Queens for two days,

or Tweens for a Day for some reason. Anyway, it doesn't matter. It's a podcast. The stakes are very low. Please welcome to the stage tonight to join us our other queen, Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan. Thank you for being here.

Welcome back. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us. Lieutenant Governor has graciously agreed to join for Queen for a Day as two queens for two days, whatever the fuck. And then we'll stick around and have a conversation. But I'm going to start with these questions. The idea is you're a queen for a day. Let queens for two days, whatever the fuck. And then we'll stick around and have a conversation.

But I'm going to start with these questions. The idea is you're a queen for a day. Let's see what you do. All right, first question. If you had unlimited funds, presumably via some kind of monkey's paw situation, where are you spending your day at the Mall of America? What do you think, Lieutenant Governor? Are there visiting guests?

Sure. Okay, because that's the only way I go to the Mall of America. So I think I have a nine-year-old who is like a super fan of Nickelodeon Universe. And we would spend just endless amounts of time on the SpongeBob coaster. Because I'd be like mom of the year. Just loop after loop. Just loop after loop until we throw up. I think we'd spend a lot of time in the Nickelodeon universe as well.

I think we'd probably spend a lot of time in the, there's like the little virtual reality place. I can't remember what it's called, but our family gets there, our fair share. I'm trying to figure out golf as a new hobby. So, you know,

there's a little mini-golf upstairs. And then I think I'd have money for a bus fare to get back to St. Paul. Great. Perfect. Next question. If you had the superpower to switch Minnesota weather to the weather of any other state,

which state would it be? Things to keep in mind. You don't have to lie to me. I'd switch to the North Star state. Which is Minnesota. He won't take it. He won't take it. I would switch to Minnesota

Makoche, which is the original name of Minnesota in Dakota. All right. Wow. The pandering is so thick you can see it. It's like a blue color floating in the air. The correct answer is California.

Nope, let me tell you this. No, it's not. It's not? It's not. That extreme heat, I went to college in Florida, and then I came straight back as fast as I could. That extreme heat out there is actually more, it's more

restrictive than the cold is here. It's worse. People hate the weather being the same every day. Listen, it's never too cold. It's never too cold to put on a coat and some boots and go out and have a good time in the north. In the south, it gets too hot. That's right. But let's remember,

let's remember what Prince said. Minnesota is so cold, it keeps the bad people out. Next question. Speaking of Prince, what Prince song would you want to magically play every time you enter a room? Every time?

Every time. It's a bit of a Midas touch situation. It's every time. Weddings, funerals, sexual encounters. Every time. 100% of the time.

No exceptions. Well, usually I'm with my wife, so the most beautiful girl in the world. Wow. Wow. Boom. Wow, he's crushing it.

I mean, your wife is a babe. Let's be... She is. Oh my gosh. I love Prince so much. This is like Sophie's choice. I would say the stakes are a skosh lower.

But like, we're in Minnesota, so just like a skosh lower but like we're in minnesota so just like in minnesota yeah um i would say oh man controversy oh deep stacks i mean right because like it's an anthem when that comes on your shoulders go back, your confidence increases. It's a jam. The correct answer is Party Man. Which is what the Joker enters to in 1989's Batman. When the darkest thing they could conceive of in the 80s was messing with some paintings. But it's a cool scene. Speaking of Prince,

both the purple one and Bob Dylan are sons of Minnesota. I'm not saying I want this to happen, but it couldn't happen. I'm thinking about the phrasing of this question in hindsight. The point is, obviously this can't happen, but if it could, who would win in a fight?

Bob Dylan or Prince? There's no rules. They're in the octagon. There's one right answer, and it's Prince. That's right. I think that's correct. I think that's correct. I think he has the athleticism. Prince would definitely assemble his crew

and win. Okay. Okay. I mean, no offense to Bob Dylan, but like Who's gonna win in a fight? Prince I guess that was offensive to Bob Dylan Here's my impression of Prince punching Bob Dylan That's the sound Bob Dylan makes when Prince punches him. The Minnesota State Fair announced 22 new food items at this year's State Fair.

We've narrowed it down to three that we personally thought looked good. If you had to pick one to eat for every meal for the rest of your life, and you do, which of these three would it be? Are you ready? A, the pickled pizza from Rick's Pizza, which is a hand-tossed homemade pizza dough topped with homemade specialty dill ranch sauce, fresh mozzarella, and crunchy dill pickles, and finished with dill weed seasoning. B, the concha burger from Aldo's, which contains an all-beef patty with raspberry aioli, lettuce, pepper jack cheese, pickled jalapenos, and bacon, served on a concha, a traditional Mexican sweetbread roll, or C, the tot dog

from Lulu's Public House. It's an all-beef hot dog dipped in corn dog batter, rolled in a mixture of minced tater tots, cheddar cheese, onions, and then deep fried. Is it the raspberry burger or the pickled pizza? Or the hot dog with everything that God would allow?

Or D, those amazing waffle sandwiches that come with every single thing you can imagine in them. You can get one for breakfast with eggs and bacon and stuff like that. You can get one for lunch with some ham or whatever you want. Of course. You can get one for dinner. Those are the ones. Obviously, if you could pick. You're going with the Tater Tot hot dog, which I think is smart.

You got your protein. You got your, you got all your food groups. I would go with the pickled pizza. Because I'm actually looking forward to that one. Let her see. Would make me hate myself. Yeah, that's part of it. Right?

Yeah. That's part of it. But so good. Right? Yeah. That's part of it. But so good. Right. I mean, it'd be worth it, like, for the first five or six days, I guess. Right? Look, here's the thing. Here's the thing.

The truth is, we don't know. You're eating your hot dog dipped in tater tots. You're eating pickle pizza. You got so much salt running through your bloodstream. You basically float, like, three inches above the bath. I think that's how the Dead Sea works. You've both won the game. Thank you.

Give it up for Mayor Melvin Carter, everybody. Thank you so much. So good to see you. He'll be back for the rant wheel. The Lieutenant Governor will stick around. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. And we're back. Thank you so much for being here.

So California and New York have already started preparing to become sanctuary states for people seeking abortions and reproductive care if they're unable to do so in their own states. Minnesota is in a unique position in this part of the country. How are you and the governor approaching this? It's been an interesting few weeks. And I use, you're in Minnesota, so I use interesting in the most Minnesotan way possible, which is, oh my God, I hate it so much. But, you know, it is incredibly important that Minnesotans know that we will do everything we can to protect access to abortion in Minnesota, but also for our neighbors.

We are Minnesotans. We're good neighbors. And so if you move into a community, we will bring you a hot dish. If it snows, we will shovel your driveway. a hot dish. If it snows, we will shovel your driveway. And if you need to come have an abortion in Minnesota,

we will make sure that you are protected. And that is how we're being good neighbors here. Are all Minnesotans good neighbors? What about Adina? Oh yeah. I do the research so i grew up i grew up in a little community called st louis park and if you're from minnesota that's all you need to know about edina so the last time you appeared in this show in 2019 you gave this incredible

scathing rant on missing and murdered indigenous relatives. Since then, Minnesota opened up an office focused on this issue, first of its kind. Can you talk about the work that you've been doing on this and sort of what's happened in the years since? Sure. So, you know, in the world of policy, you know, things move really, really slowly. But when it came to missing and murdered Indigenous women, missing and murdered Indigenous relatives, this is something that's moved quite quickly. So in our first term at office, we passed the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women's Task Force.

That task force then came up with recommendations. And one of the most important recommendations that came out of that work was our Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Office, which was just established. A woman named Julie Rudy, who's a complete powerhouse, is now leading that work. We have already heard that this office is helping with the response. And here's the thing. We know that if you are an indigenous person, if you are an indigenous woman, a member of the two-spirit community, that you are at higher risk and that if you go missing, if you experience violence, the response is not the same as other communities.

So the fact that we've opened this office here means a tremendous amount that we are seen and heard and valued and protected and believed as Native people. And I'm super proud of this accomplishment. But this is because of all of the aunties and all of the grandmas who told their stories, who shared their trauma, and talked about the incredible loss that they have experienced to move, you know, things that people said couldn't be done. One of the most powerful things in this moment is that we don't need to put our trauma on display anymore. that we don't need to put our trauma on display anymore. That we moved it and it mattered which butts were in the seats.

We had Native women in the House, in the Senate, and in the Lieutenant Governor's office. And it turns out that it matters when people who are directly impacted are at the table. So I'm really proud of this work. Thank you for asking about it. One last question. Did the legalization of THC gummies bring, put a smile on your face? What did you make of this accidental development? Development. So, it's pretty fun news. Huh? One of the things that I learned when I was a legislator is that you actually read the bills that you vote on.

So, the governor and I also review the bills before he signs them. Smart. Yeah, I know, really. That's a good idea. We're detail guys. And so we knew that was in there, but one of the things that we also know that we have to do is, in our budget that we proposed this year, we want to make sure that Minnesota becomes a state

where we have the full legalization of adult use cannabis and expungement for records so uh this is a fun uh appetizer if you will and you may and you may yep and. And we do. Yep. But only five milligrams. It's time. And so I'm sorry that our Senate Republican colleagues didn't read the bill and that this was a surprise. But I think, you know, it's a good thing for Minnesota. Ironically, not reading things you're supposed to and then pretending you did is uh one of the side effects of five milligrams of edible marijuana i mean that's right and i do want to just name since

you brought her up i look a little bit like leah michelle i mean not this new version of leah michelle i see it i see you know what i mean okay, but like, I can read. And so, and I just proved that, right, when we read the bill before the governor signed it. That's exactly, yes. Look, there's also a moment on Watch What Happens Live where this comes up and you're like, it's so ridiculous, it's so crazy. And then someone kind of shows her a card and says,

yeah, you can read what that card says. And she goes, of course I can. Moving on. I think she probably can read. And on that note, thank you, Lieutenant Governor Maggie Flanagan. Thank you so much. Lieutenant Governor will be back for the rant wheel. Thank you so much. Good to see you. One more time. This episode of Love It or Leave It

is brought to you by St. Cloud Cannabis' special scotcharoos. Just like the dessert bars your mom used to make, but with enough THC to get you through the potluck.

One scotcharoo and you won't be saying, oh, but let me sneak right I pastured her for the rest of the night, because you're deep in the couch, you're looking at pictures from your Aunt Linda's latest trip to Mall of America, and you're riveted. St. Cloud cannabis, you betcha it's strong enough to calm Amy Klobuchar from a nine to a three. When we come back, you twin some, you lose some. And we're back. It's not easy being a twin, sharing infrastructure projects and Christmas presents,

especially when you carry your twin while they act like you're their intern. When your sibling is a full-fledged malignant narcissist, it's like, hello, you think you're Ava, Minneapolis? Sorry, dear, you're Zsa Zsa. Minneapolis may draw the headlines, but St. Paul does the work. Minneapolis may have slapped a cop for pulling over their Rolls Royce in Beverly Hills. St. Paul was in the Aristocats. The Rescuers. And Green Acres.

Did anyone come with me on that? Okay. The point is, today we're testing your knowledge of your fellow celebrity twins in the game we're calling The Twinner Takes It All. The twinner takes it all. Hold on a second. Let's do it again. Let's do it again. The twinner takes it all. The twinner takes it all. That's not the melody. He's not getting it, right? not, that's not the melody. He's not getting it, right? And by the way, we were supposed to record this in advance and he said, no, no, I'm going to do it live.

Do you know the song? No. Sorry, let me get back on script. Great work, Brian. We're going to go around the horn here, so raise your hand if you'd like to answer a question producer Kendra I believe she's in the where are you? I'm up here Kendra is in the balcony

do you see Kendra up there? if you'd like to answer a question raise your hand go to the twins you got to go to them hello twins hi are you identical or the other kind? to the twins. You got to go to them. Hello, twins. Hi. Are you identical or the other kind? We're identical. The good kind. The good kind. Okay.

It's better to be one embryo that's split. That's actually right. First question. In the intro of this game, I referenced Ava and Zsa Zsa. They were in fact not twins, but sisters, and there were three. What is the full name of the third sister?

Ava, Zsa Zsa. Yeah. And? Dada. Nope. We were looking for Magda Gabor. Let's have that. They can do one more. That was too hard.

The rest aren't as hard. Maybe. Which Olsen twin thoughtfully put out bowls of cigarettes for guests at her 2015 wedding to French banker

Olivier Sarkozy? Mary-Kate. That's correct. Let's go to somebody else. Hi, what's your name? Hi, I'm Evelyn. Hi, Evelyn. Which Bush twin

came out publicly in support of gay marriage in 2011? Oh, God. I didn't start paying attention until like four years ago. I respect the hell out of that. The correct answer is Barbara Bush. It is.

It's not even a joke. It is Barbara Bush, the one on the left. The Yale one. Hi, what's your name? Hi, I'm Susan. Hi, Susan. Which Sprouse twin is this? Somebody tell me.

I have no idea. I'm sorry. Wow. Reflect on yourselves. Next question. Which star of Sister, Sister grew up and married a Fox News correspondent? I have no idea. Tamara did. It was Tamara?

Yep. But Tia has a song about her. Okay. Next question. Which NFL twin made his Broadway debut as Don in the Tony-winning musical Kinky Boots? I also have no idea. Anybody know? Tiki.

Yeah, Tiki Barber, former running back for the New York Giants. All right, next question. Whose twin is this? Hi. Is it Chris Evans? No. Take another guess. It's ScarJo.

You got it. You were about to say, were you about to say ScarJo? I was, yes. What's it. I... You were about to say... Were you about to say ScarJo? I was. Yes. What's your name? Julia. I'm giving you the point.

You did it. Thank you. Who are these twins making an absolute mess of Don't Stop Believin' in the following video? Some will win. Some will lose.

Some are to see the blues. Who's the movie that the rest Get us out. It's the Winklevoss twins. You bet. You bet it is. For a bonus point for you, which Winklevoss is singing and wearing a chain wallet at age 40, Tyler or Cameron?

Tyler. Correct. Match the twins of Good Charlotte to their famous wives, Joel Madden, Benji Madden, Cameron Diaz, Nicole Richie. Benji is married to Cameron. Correct. Nicole. And by process elimination, Joel is married to Nicole Richie.

Next up, which twin is this? You can say either the character or the actor What do you think? George You got it, it's George Weasley Oliver Phelps Next up Are the Ozen twins identical or fraternal?

They're identical No Get out of here They're sororal That says it on the card fraternal. They're identical. No. Get out of here. They're sororal. That says it on the card. The feminine version of fraternal, because why on earth, why do we even have a gendered word

for it? Mary-Kate is an inch taller and left-handed, while Ashley is right-handed and filled with a unique inner darkness. Last question. Which twin is this? Zooey Deschanel or Vanessa Deschanel? Vanessa.

No. It's Katy Perry. And that's Twinner Takes It All. You want to get one more? Brian, one more go at it? The twinner takes it all. It's so high.

Why is he so high? Because the girl sings it. What? I watched the first five seconds of the music video. She did it. His mid-year review is next week. His what? I've lost control of the program.

You've got to articulate, Kendra. I'll articulate for you. Your mid-year review is next week. I'll articulate for you, your mid-year review is next week. When we come back, we're going to sample some local delicacies. Don't go anywhere. This is Love It or Leave It, and there's more on the way. And we're back.

Look, as you all know, I'm a coastal sophisticate. I've eaten at some of the finest cheesecake factories in the world. I don't even roll down my window for a Michelin one star. When Gavin Newsom ate a French laundry during the pandemic, my first reaction was, are people still going there? But in my heart, in my bones, when it comes to food, I have the soul of a Midwesterner. And sure, like any good Ashkenazi Jew, I process dairy the way the Biden administration processes leaked Supreme Court decisions. Even though I should have seen it coming, I'm still sitting there for like two weeks,

unable to make anything happen. Nevertheless, I persist. And eating whatever unholy concoction you people throw at me. And that continues tonight. Here to help us put the queasy in cuisine, please welcome to the stage the hilarious Ashley Ray. Hi.

Thank you so much for being here. I am so happy to be here as a proud daughter of the Midwest. Oh, come on. As a proud daughter of the Midwest, what are your overall feelings about Midwestern food? It's the best food. People overlook it. They don't know. We're cold all the time. All we do is stay home and learn how to cook good food. Hell yeah. If you had to pick one favorite Midwestern food, one dish, what would it be?

I'm going to go Swedish pancakes. Thank you. Often overlooked, they're different from crepes. They're different. They're different, famously. They're different. And they're different than pancakes, because you have your pancakes. Oh, yeah.

You have your crepes. Crepes. And then right there in the middle, right there in the middle, is a Swedish pancake. Yeah. I'm from Rockford, Illinois. Okay. Yes. Thank you. If anyone from my high school is here, that's cool. But we're the home of the Swedish pancakes. Are you ready to sample some cuisine? I am. All right. Let's get into it. Our first Minnesota delicacy, I don't know how I'm going to do this, is a very cheesy burger called a Juicy Lucy. This is one for you. Let's open these up.

Oh, my goodness. All right, now, I am aware that both the 5A Club and Matt's Bat claim to have invented the Juicy Lucy. It's Matt's Bar. So it says Bat here. That's just a typo. So it's Matt's Bar. So it says bat here. That's just a typo. So it's Matt's Bar.

I kid you not. I was downstairs. I saw this. I said, is it for Matt's? There you go. There you go. That's what I did. Because I know, I know. Matt's, it's a wonderful little bar. These Juicy Lucy's are from exactly where you want them to be from. Yes! Alright, should we try these burgers? Absolutely. Upon biting one in 1954, someone exclaimed, ooh, that's one Juicy Lucy. Something I hope I say. Oh my god.

Yep. Yep. That's a juicy Lucy. That's a juicy Lucy. Oh, yeah. Obviously, I'm a daughter of the Midwest because I knew how to bite my juicy Lucy. Napkins flying in from the wings. That's cool.

It's like a gusher, but for meat. That's cool. It's like a gusher, but for meat. That was good. It's so good. The juicy lucy, one of the best things you have here. I see. I see. It's like a pita beef stuffed with cheese. You're geniuses.

Yes. Okay. They don't have this in Wisconsin. Come on. Who cares if you don't see this in Wisconsin come on who cares if you don't see the sun three months a year who needs it hell yeah you can't get this in LA

no this would be outlawed in LA I fully love that that's five stars it's the best next up we have a dish that feels like I might have invented it while stoned one night. Wandering the grocery store. That's right.

It's Minnesota's infamous tater tot hot dish. There's your plate. There's Juicy Lucy all over his plate. It exploded. A little bit got on yours. There's Juicy Lucy everywhere. I'll put the tater tot hot dish on the part of the plate where I didn't explode food. There's your hot dish.

Ah, yes. Oh my goodness. So now, this looks like I see beef, I see cheese, I see tater tots. Yes, those are the three food ingredients of the Midwest. Potato, meat, cheese. That's what we like.

This is good. And this has corn. If you get corn in it, that's an extra plus. Hell yeah. Yeah. And cream of mushroom soup. This is good. And this one, this has corn. If you get corn in it, that's an extra plus. Hell yeah. Yeah. And cream of mushroom soup. That makes sense. I love it. Right? What?

That's getting you ready to go work on your farm. Like, we're all hardy people. Yeah. I could ice fish after eating this. Yeah. Come on. We need enough calories to be able to, like, you know, shovel a driveway. I love this, too. Wait, what I'm about to read is crossed out. And, of course, it wouldn't be a trip to Minnesota without a nod to the area's Norwegian cuisine,

which is why I am being forced to have us eat lutefisk, a preserved white fish that was clearly created only out of raw necessity to help your great-great parents survive those harsh Norwegian winters. Now, that is crossed out, and written in handwriting above, it says, the lutefisk was raw. But on the table is a hot, steaming bowl of what looks like microwaved fish. hot steaming bowl of what looks like microwaved fish. As someone from Rockford, Illinois, which at one point had a higher Swedish population than, you know, Stockholm,

I have had lutefisk before, and it is a horrible fish. It is like a white fish mixed with lye and bleach. I'll do it. We're doing it. We're doing it. That's too much. That's how I remember it. Just like somebody

left some white fish in a lot of bleach. Yeah. It tastes like God forgot he put a fish behind your fridge. Yeah.

You have to change up the water and then it tastes good. No, no. Okay. That's too much work to make an item taste good. I got to clear this out with a taste of time. Yeah, I'm going back to my potatoes. I'm going to have another Juicy Lucy.

Yeah. We're in the Midwest. We don't do fish well, okay? Meat as in beef and pork. I just like the idea that they're like, oh, the Chicago show was canceled because we got sick. Oh, and probably COVID. No, no.

I ate microwaved, smoked dirt fish as a bit. Yeah. It doesn't even look like fish in this bowl. Like, I don't know what has happened here. Maybe I just got a bad... Maybe I just got a bad Maybe I just got a bad bite

I'm covered They're all bad bites We'll cover it back up Ashley Ray, thank you so much for being here Ashley will be back for the rant We'll give it up for Ashley When we come back Take that, take that

Listen, I'm finishing this after the show. We come back. We have one final word from our sponsors. This episode of Love It or Leave It is supported by Weed of the Swedes. Minnesota's finest purveyor of smoked fish that gets you silly, who are proud to announce their new line

of THC-infused grovlocks and lutefisk. You think your ancestors managed to stay here through Minnesota winter after Minnesota winter without being ripped out of their minds? Your grandma deserves to relax, too, and hey, whoever invented tater tot hot dish was a little stoned already. When you're eating that

horrible fish, wouldn't it be nice if it was also drugs? Weed of the Swedes. Oofta, throw some breadcrumbs on this clam because I'm baked. Also, Pod Save America has some great tour dates coming up with shows in Seattle, Portland, Nashville, and Atlanta this summer. Tickets are selling fast, and it's a tour you don't want to miss, so get them now by visiting at crooked.com slash events.

We have fun on the road. When we come back, the rant wheel. And we're back! Please welcome back to the stage your Lieutenant Governor, Mayor Melvin Carter and Ashley Ray. Thanks for sticking around.

Do you smell fish? Now it's time for the rant wheel. You know how it works. We spin the wheel wherever it lands. We rant about the topic. This week on the wheel, we have LA's bagels and pastries, inventing Anna's Emmy nomination,

Minnesota should be an early voting state, dance recitals, professional clothing expectations for women, do not disturb signs, airplane bathrooms, and the ocean. Let's spin the wheel. Let's spin the wheel.

To the elected leaders who have lended some credibility to this show, we replaced the ticking sound of our wheel with the sound of a woman screaming. Of course. Given the news. Yes. Accurate. It has landed on airplane bathrooms. I believe this was suggested by Mayor Carter. That's true. So I just want to say this, and I don't have a long rant about this. I just want

to say that I feel like in a post 9-11 world, everybody who works on every airplane should have something more important to do with their time than protect the first class bathrooms from working class P. And it just makes me very angry when they make the announcement, but it makes me even more angry when they try to enforce the rule by like snapping that little clear like curtain to row 12. And I just think that if there's 200 of us on the plane or 300 of us on the plane, then that should be like one bathroom for every 50 people. And for you to try to take half of the bathrooms on the whole airplane and reserve them for like the front 12 people is like totally the patriarchy. I don't think it's acceptable. But flight attendants are amazing people.

And if they made the rules, that wouldn't be one of them. Flight attendants are amazing people, and if they made the rules, that wouldn't be one of them. And so I just want to say to the airline executives in the room that we know that those little plastic curtains are the new glass ceiling, and we're not going to take it anymore. Yeah, and if I finish that lutefisk, I'll be shitting all the way from Minneapolis to Los Angeles. Did you change out the water in the bathroom? Ew. Let's spin it again. It's funny every time.

It has landed on do not disturb signs. Oh, I suggested this. First of all, I would try to stay in a fair number of hotels on the road. The do not disturb signs themselves are getting more and more baroque. They no longer say do not disturb on one side. They now, you will get to a hotel and one side will say no problem and the other side will say you got this. It's like, I don't know. I don't fucking know. I just don't. What's the one that means no knocking?

So that's confusing. Everyone's coming up with a new slogan. Do not disturb. It works. Don't mess with what's not broken. First of all, that's that problem. Second issue, we've long left the classic doorknob behind. I don't know when we decided doorknobs were no longer of the moment, but now door handles aren't knobs. They're levers. They're all levers. Oh, ADA. Is that why? Yeah. And I'm for it. I didn't know why. And it's a great decision. Now I get it.

I didn't know that. Thank you for telling me. I'm learning. I'm growing in real time. Leave it in. Edit it out. Edit it out. Look, as we all know,

doorknobs were replaced by levers because of the ADA, famously. However, there's one side effect of this, which is when you open the hotel door and you put the thing on and then you close the hotel door, it spins, it falls, you don't know what you're doing. And sometimes because one side says, do not disturb, and the other side says, get in here. Sometimes it lands on the wrong fucking sign, which brings me to the conclusion of this very important rant, which is every hotel on earth has these signs. Why is it not a switch on the door?

Why is it an extra thing they buy after we're done? It's a hotel. It's going to be a hotel. Everyone knows it's going to be a hotel. When they're bringing in the 5,000 pieces of the identical fucking boat on a wall, when they're bringing in the lamps that only exist in hotels, when they're figuring out how to plug in the TVs that have an impenetrable operating system for no reason. When that is all happening, somebody sticks something to the front of the door

where you move a little thing down and it says, do not disturb. Why are we fucking around with bookmarks in 2022? Thank you. Let's spin it again. Every time. Inventing Anna's Emmy nomination, it's got to be Ashley. Yes, of course that's me.

Ashley Ray, your TV queen. Anna's Emmy nomination, it's gotta be Ashley. Yes, of course that's me. Ashley Ray, your TV queen. I, obviously this was a big week for me with the Emmy announcements and the thing that made me so mad was inventing Anna getting an Emmy nomination. Now if you're familiar, this is a show on Netflix

that is basically something you watch when you are folding laundry. Like, it is the nonsensical story of Anna Delvey, a very real woman, but then they were like, let's make a show about her, but literally make nothing real. They just created a soap opera. Everything is fake. There's a

whole warning at the beginning of each episode that's like, this story was kind of boring, so we just made a bunch of things up. That's what they say. And you watch all the episodes because you're bored. You don't have anything else to do. There's nothing else out. It was quarantine when this came out. We were all just looking for any sort of television. And we watched it. We played into Netflix's game. And now this horrible show has an Emmy nomination. And I'm so, so upset. I don't even remember the name of the girl who's in it. I don't know. She's a girl from Ozarks. She puts on the worst accent you've ever heard.

She's literally just like, the check is coming. Why are you so worried? The hotel will be paid for. And that is the show for eight hours. And then it got an Emmy nomination over Station Eleven, over Midnight Mass. It angered me. The Emmys aren't real. They don't matter anymore. All because of Inventing Anna. And that's that.

Station Eleven, on the other hand, asked the question, what would happen to theater kids after the world ended? And as a theater kid, that was so important to me. I was like, yeah, people would be like, we need food, water, and I'd be like, but what about Romeo and Juliet? That feeds the soul.

Let's spin it again. It has landed on professional clothing expectations for women suggested by Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan. I have some thoughts. So occasionally, I get some feedback on the way that I dress. Usually it's someone like Bob from Fridley. And Bob from Fridley, commenting, giving me helpful advice from his mother's basement, likes to say, you should dress more like a lieutenant governor. What's that mean? It's interesting. So here's what I know. For men who are elected officials, they have a blue suit,

a gray suit, a blue suit, and like some shirts and ties and like you could wear Mayor Carter like the same suit like three days in a row and like nobody would know, right? Dudes can dress like it's granimals. You know? Unless it is Barack Obama's tan suit and he was a snack, let's clear but so for women right for women

who are elected officials and in particular for women of color and indigenous women who are elected officials there are certain expectations that people have we must shatter them That is our job. And here's the deal. The size of my earrings is proportional to the amount of power I will assert at a table. It's like Madeleine Albright, RIP, and her brooches, which she called her political arsenal. And for me, when I go into negotiations with the Senate GOP, after they haven't read the bill, I will wear my weasel tail earrings. Legit weasel tails. And I send a message. But here's the thing. Every single time my daughter sees an elected official, her reality has changed. Auntie Jamie, who's a Leech Lake descendant, is the chair of the House Judiciary Committee in Minnesota, and she rocks heartberry earrings. My sister, MMA Fighter, and one of two Native American women elected to Congress, Charisse Davids, wears beaded ho-chunk earrings on the floor of the United States Congress.

And Auntie Deb. Auntie Deb Holland, our Secretary of the Interior, marches into work and she rocks her moccasins like a baddie. And I get to walk into the Capitol, which is right down the street, wearing a ribbon skirt, blazer, and the biggest earrings you've ever seen in your life. And let's be honest, Bob, the idea of how I need to dress as an elected official, it's not that you want me to wear a blazer. It's not that you want me to wear a power suit. By the way, my power suit has elk teeth on it.

It's that you are uncomfortable with women of color and indigenous women holding positions of power no matter what we wear. and indigenous women holding positions of power no matter what we wear. So Bob, hon, from Fridley, this is what a lieutenant governor dresses like. Thank you. That was great.

Can I say very quickly, I am inspired like I just saw Lea Michele sing Don't Rain on My Parade. That was beautiful. That was beautiful. That's a level. That's a level. Thank you.

I feel so much better. Thank you. That's what this is all about. Let's spin it again. L.A. bagels and pastries. It's got to be Ashley Rae. Yeah, that's me. I left my beautiful Midwest home about three years ago to chase my dreams in L.A., a place where people told me food is good, food is great.

What they didn't tell me is that there's something wrong with the water out there. They're just like, our water is broken, so you'll never eat a good piece of bread again. That is what L.A. is like. You go there, and people say to you, oh no, this is the best cinnamon roll you'll ever have in your life. And it's garbage. It is always garbage. Okay. They barely even eat carbs out there. So they don't even know what bread is. Okay. I haven't had a good slice of pizza in three years. Yeah. It's everything. Okay. The pizza crust, the bagels, English muffins. It is disgusting.

That's why they're so miserable out there. Okay? That's why they're so miserable. Because they don't know the joy and the love of just like eating a delicious, delicious cinnamon roll. Or a delicious croissant. Everything is a disappointment. I'm sick of it. Let's spin it again.

That's it. On the sixth spin, we ran out of juice with the yelling. Minnesota should be an early vote stain. This is going to be a Minnesota rant. Okay? A little less in your face with the last one, Bob, but stick with me here. Stick with it, Bob. Get your head out of your ass and pay attention. Bob from Frizzdale? Fridley.

Fridley. Should be from Frizzdale. Bob from Fridley, your lieutenant governor speaking. So here's what we know about Minnesota. We have the highest voter turnout in the country every single year. We also look forward to filling out the census every 10 years like it is Christmas morning. years like it is Christmas morning. We have an urban core with the incredible city of St. Paul. We have rural communities. We share geography with 11 tribal nations in Minnesota. We have one of the highest populations of LGBTQ plus folks in the Midwest. We are the home of Prince. We are the home of hot dish, not casserole. The Juicy Lucy. And 10,000 lakes. It's actually more, but 10,000 is just such a solid number.

And it fits nicely on our license plates. But here's the deal. There are all these things that we have to offer. A way that we could help America pick a better presidential candidate. And traditionally, the DNC has gone with Iowa. And all I will say is that is an interesting choice. Yes. It is interesting. I like where your head's at.

Let's spin it again. Dance recitals. That's me. That's me. And it's not just dance recitals. It's what they represent. Because when you're a parent, no, no, seriously, stick with me. And it's not just dance recitals. That's what they represent. Because when you're a parent, no, no, seriously, stick with me. When you're a parent, you have to pay for people to teach your kids stuff, right?

You have to pay to teach dance and piano and gymnastics and sports and whatever. Parkour. Parkour, taekwondo. What they don't tell you is they're going to charge you again to come in and see your kid do the thing that you paid them to teach your kid to do. They charge tickets. Oh yeah. For child children's dance recitals. And they can like Congress should regulate it because they can charge you. No, they can charge you anything they want. And they know that your kid is going to think, then he doesn't love me if he doesn't

pay $40 for the school play. And then there's all these rules. So you get in there, for example, like a volleyball tournament, right? You could be at a volleyball tournament and the scorekeeper accidentally forgets to tally one of your kid's points, right? And you shout to the referee and no, not yell at the referee. So like you share important information in a friendly and loud way, right? Yeah, absolutely. And so the referee stops the game, checks, realizes that you were right, changes it, and, like, everybody goes on their way and there's nothing wrong. But then they send your kid across to tell you that you're not supposed to yell at referees.

And I was like, no, I shouted to him. But then the next day, because I learned from my mistakes, so the next day, the scorekeepers forgot to give a point to the other team and I didn't say a word because I learned the lesson. That's growth. That's how change happens.

That's growth. That's important. One life at a time, John. Exactly. And if you can change a volleyball tournament, and then all kinds of good stuff. Let's spin it one a time. Exactly. And if you can change a volleyball tournament, and then all kinds of good stuff. Let's spin it one more time. It has landed on oceans. Yuck. There is nothing good you get from an ocean

you can't get from a lake and there's nothing bad from the ocean you get in a lake. Hey, you know what? Let's take a lake. Let's make it so you can't drink it and it's filled with sharks and jellyfish. You know what that's called?

It's called a fucking ocean. Hey, you want to go walk around the ocean? You can't. You physically can't. You want to do go walk around the ocean? You can't. You physically can't. You want to do water sports in the ocean? You take your life in your hands. You ever heard of riptide? The ocean.

I say yuck to the ocean. We've invented a better way. It's called lakes. I've said it once. I've said it a thousand times. The oceans are too big. They go on forever. There's far more ocean than any of us need for a vacation.

A lake is the right amount of water, right? Some of them pretty deep, deep enough. Some of them are big, big enough to go around a little boat. More flat, more pristine, more placid. So you can put on, you know, little skis from the water. Get pulled out. Go around a little boat. More flat, more pristine, more placid. So you can put on, you know, little skis from the water. Get pulled out. Don't stand up.

Let the boat pull you up. That's something important about water skiing on a lake. The thing about water skiing on an ocean is, step one, don't do it. Water skiing on the ocean, that's Johnny Knoxville firing people out of a cannon in a supermarket cart things. Water skiing on the ocean with the barges and the tides. No, on a lake, on a beautiful morning, you let the boat pull you up, now you're up. You do it long enough, you don't even need both skis. And they don't tell you that at first, but eventually you're just on one ski.

Now you've saved yourself. You can get twice as many people out there. Because it lakes. You get good enough at it. This is wild. You don't even need the skis. There are people out there water skiing. don't even need the skis. There are people out there water skiing. They don't need the skis. They're using the bottoms of their feet as skis. What makes that possible?

Not the ocean. Lakes. Thank you. When we come back, we'll end on a high note. All right, we've gone long. We're going to do a couple high notes. Brian is out there. Kendra's going to be on this side. We'll do two high notes per side. If you've got a high note, something that gave you hope,

line up with Kendra, with Brian. We'll hear a couple. Hi, what's your high note? Hi, my name is Molly. My high note is this kind of June, July, pride month, summer. I've been in the really slow, long process of coming out as bisexual for the first time in my life. Thank you. My husband is over there in the Bi-Wife Energy shirt. He has been my number one supporter every step of the way. And so I'm just really grateful to everyone in my life, including you, who has taught me that even if I'm in a straight passing relationship and all these other things, this matters and I can be who I need to be. Well, thank you for sharing that. That's great. Hi, what's your name?

What's your high note? Hi, my name's Tabitha. And what happened is that yesterday I got a photo outside of my work where there was a little shaved cat boy just sitting outside in the construction area all sad and alone, and I went, oh no, come here, little boy. And he was very sweet, and my wonderful husband James helped me take care of him. We tried to find his owner, and eventually we did find the owners. We found out his name was Mr. Bigglesworth. He was a very sweet boy. I loved him so much and I miss that shaved little boy. And I think that's lovely. Do you always gender cats from afar? I do. Okay, thank you. Hi. Hi. What's your name? What's your high note? My name is Shelby and my high

note is that I teach at Wellstone Elementary in St. Paul Public Schools. So thank you. Great. Hi, last one. What's your name? What's your high note? Sure, so my name is Bree,

and I work for the Senate, so I actually get to work with all the DFLers running for Senate this year. They all can read, and they promise to read the bills. But my high note this week is that one of our top candidates just knocked her 2,000th door,

which was really, really big for her. Thank you for sharing that. And if you want to sign up to volunteer in Minnesota or throughout the country, you can join the Midwest team at votesaveamerica.com slash midtermmadness. We've got four regions. You've got to sign up if you haven't signed up yet.

Thank you for sharing that. Thanks to everybody who gave us a high note tonight. If you want to leave us a message about something that gave you hope, call us at 213-262-4427. That is our show. Thank you so much to Ashley Ray, Mayor Carter, Lieutenant Governor Flanagan, everybody who shared a high note. There are 122 days until the midterm elections.

St. Paul, you are amazing. Thank you so much. I love coming here. Have a great night. Love It or Leave It is a Crooked Media production. It is written and produced by me, John Lovett, and Lee Eisenberg. Kendra James is our senior producer, and Brian Semel is our producer. Hallie Keeper is our head writer,

and Jocelyn Kaufman, Pallavi Gunalan, and Peter Miller are the writers. Bill Lance is our editor, and Brian Semmel is our producer. Hallie Keeper is our head writer and Jocelyn Kaufman, Pallavi Gunalan and Peter Miller are the writers. Bill Lance is our editor and Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Our theme song is written and performed by Sure Sure. Thanks to our designers, Jesse McClain and Caroline Haywood for creating and running all of our visuals, which you can't see because this is a podcast. And to our digital producers, Norma Elkonian, Milo Kim, Mia Kelman and Matt DeGroote for filming and editing video each week so you can.