No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Republicans caught pulling HORRIFIC stunt to hurt Biden

Episode Date: May 28, 2023

The media fails in its coverage of the threat of default. Brian interviews the communications director for Barack Obama and co-host of Pod Save America, Dan Pfeiffer, about Ron DeSantis’ campaign launch, who he’d rather have Biden run against between DeSantis and Trump, and why Democrats’ message on the debt ceiling doesn’t seem to be breaking through. And the candidate for the US Senate in Missouri, Lucas Kunce, joins to talk about Josh Hawley’s obsession with manhood, some surprising endorsements that he’s gotten in that red state, and how Missourians’ lives would change if he replaced Hawley.Support Lucas Kunce: https://lucaskunce.com/Shop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about the media's coverage of the threat of default. I interview the communications director for Barack Obama and co-host of Potsave America, Dan Pfeiffer, about Ron DeSantis' campaign launch, who he'd rather have Biden run against between DeSantis and Trump, and why Democrats' message on the debt ceiling doesn't seem to be breaking through. And I'm joined by candidate for the U.S. Senate in Missouri, Lucas Coontz, about Josh Hawley's obsession with manhood, some surprising endorsements that he's gotten in that red state,

and how Missourians' lives would change if he replaced Hawley. I'm Brian Taylor Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. Okay, so we're days away from default. According to the Treasury Secretary, the U.S. will default, will run out of money on June 5th if the debt ceiling isn't raised by then. So let me say at the top that I fully believe that the debt ceiling will be raised and that will avoid default. Like, for as dangerously incompetent as some people are in Washington,

I don't think there's a chance that even they would allow the government to default and crater our stock markets and global markets and plunge the U.S. into a recession. Like, call me naive. I don't think that we're at that much of a low point yet. Not ruling it out, but I think that there's a bare minimum acknowledgement, even from the clowns in the GOP, that that would be the single dumbest move you could possibly pull and the electoral punishment would be swift and severe. So I think the debt ceiling will be lifted if it's not already lifted by the time you listen to this. But that's not exactly what I want to talk about here. That's only part of my beef with how this all played out. My beef is with the way that the media covered this. The fact is that the only reason Republicans felt confident enough to take our own economy hostage is because they felt okay about the way that it was being portrayed in the media. And the way that it was being portrayed was as if this was some negotiation between the two sides, just business as usual, run-of-the-mill politics, which, to be clear, this wasn't. This was Republicans threatening to blow up the plane that we are all on.

I mean, hell, here's Matt Gates admitting that the hostage here was the threat of default on our own economy. So would you say that the conservatives like yourself are becoming more pessimistic about the state of negotiations that, you know, there's a bipartisan deal in sight maybe? Or how would you, like, characterize and mood among your conservative colleagues right now? I think my conservative colleagues, for the most part, support Limitsave Grove, and they don't feel like we should negotiate with our hostage. And the fact that he could come out and say this with a straight face is because he knew, full well. And his party knew full well that none of the coverage from the media was

acknowledging the fact that this was not okay. Like any normal coverage would be pre-clear-eyed about the fact that Republicans were looking to use the threat of default, meaning economic collapse, as a basis to exact concessions for themselves. They basically want to strip away most of the inflation reduction act. They want to impose work requirements on social programs, exactly the type of agenda that would never pass with popular support. And so they're trying to shoehorn it in this way. And this is something they felt comfortable doing because they knew that Democrats wouldn't let default happen because Democrats are responsible enough, not not to want to usher in financial ruin because Democrats are

fiscally responsible. And so because the left will operate in good faith to a fault and because the right has no shame and no scruples, we're now put in a situation where the GOP knows that it can engage in hostage taking, which is what they did. But worse, they knew that the media would do what it always does and come at this from both sides' perspective and pretend that the left and right are both good faith actors, and this is just normal politics, just a normal left-right feud, and that is exactly what they did. And yet at no point in all of this was our own media able to acknowledge or even recognize the fact that one side being willing to crash our own economy that we all participate in is not a negotiation. It's a holdup, right?

At one point, Kevin McCarthy was asked what he was willing to give up in these, in these quote-unquote negotiations. He said he would lift the debt ceiling. That's what he was willing to give up, not crashing the global economy. Imagine thinking that that's a negotiation. If you don't give me a billion dollars, I'll blow up this bridge. Is that a negotiation? I mean, my God, the lengths that most of the media will go to to avoid being labeled, the liberal media, is just mind-numbing. Look, it doesn't make you some rabid leftist to be able to have a bias in favor of not willfully crashing our own economy. Just like it doesn't make you a rabid leftist to be pro-democracy in a democracy. And the fact that those things seem like partisan issues now

isn't a condemnation of of the left or politics today. It's a condemnation of Republicans. I'm sorry, but you don't need to both sides this issue if only one side is suddenly willing to crash our economy for political gain. If suddenly one side is anti-democracy in a democracy. Like, the fact that the media is now both-sidesing the very concept of democracy to be able to stay in the GOP's good graces is a testament to just how far right off the cliff these people have gone.

And a testament to how unwilling the media is to meet this moment. So look, again, I do think that a deal will be struck to avoid default, if not entirely, because one party, the Democrats, won't allow default to happen. But it is a sad state of affairs when the Republicans, the party of fiscal responsibility, has decided that our own economy, our own dollar is the world's reserve currency, the prospect of a recession, was an acceptable negotiating wedge for them. And when the media effectively allowed them to do it, because as far as they're concerned, it's more about the horse race than it is about the substance. So not to make this a pitch for independent media, but the lesson that we are learning over and over is that some legacy media, not all, but some, seems solely interested in balance.

And the effects of that are obviously pretty damn dangerous. Next step is my interview with Dan Pfeiffer. Now I've got the communications director for Obama's White House and the host of POTSafe America, Dan Pfeiffer. Dan, so good to have you back. Hey, man, good to see you. So, Dan, let's start off with the stupid stuff first, and then we'll get into the more serious stuff.

There was a moment that went pretty viral where Marjorie Taylor Green called for decorum in the house. Here's that clip. The members are reminded to abide by decorum of the house. Can I have your reaction to that? Laughter. I mean, talk about a massive case of lack of self-awareness to walk right into that,

which I guess is what we kind of accept from Marcher-Tiller-Green these days. Yeah, especially like, just perfectly, perfectly placed coming from the woman who, uh, who is screaming liar at Joe Biden, not two months ago at, uh, at the state of the union. So, okay. Chasing down, uh, parkland victims to, uh, to yell at that. Yeah. I mean, decorum in etiquette embodied, Marjorie Taylor. That's right. Okay. So, uh, a big piece of news this week, Ron DeSantis made his 24 announcement on Twitter. There was a lot of talk about how the announcement itself was

bungled. And I took some momentary pleasure in watching both Elon and DeSantis sweat that out. But at the same time, that story in and of itself probably drew a lot of attention to the launch, even if only for how screwed up it was. Would you consider it a success or a failure? It is an absolute abject failure. It's probably one of the most damaging unforced errors in modern political history. The launch is supposed to be the easiest part of your campaign. You have a speech, the press cover you, they will write about your message. Even if you're a long shot, they'll take you seriously.

It's one of the easiest free passes in politics, and DeSantis screwed it up every which way possible. And it's not just the technical glitches. And like that stuff just kind of happens. Sometimes there was bad luck involved. microphone goes out as it did for Jim Scott the other day. Yeah. But even if this idea had been executed perfectly, it would have been an absolute disaster. Like to what, Ed?

Why? Why would you ever possibly want to do an audio-only announcement being interviewed by two Silicon Valley billionaires to talk about their esoteric issues? It made no sense. It is illogical. He's on the, an audio feature, on a text. platform that no one really pays attention. It's just bizarre. Totally bizarre. I mean, just ranking competence across the board. Yeah. I mean, one idea in terms of what he's trying to leverage is the popularity or the money or the power of Elon Musk. And I think Ron DeSantis's like war room,

however official that may be, released a video later that day where it was one clip of DeSantis and one clip of Elon. And it was like a two minute video just trading clips of Elon and like you would think that they were one and the same or that they weren't capable of discerning who those two people were from each other, but clearly they're trying to leverage some power, money, whatever it is in the whole Elon camp. But during that launch, Ron DeSantis was asked a few serious policy questions. And in virtually every case, he pivoted back to culture war when he was answering them. So it's basically just noun, verb, woke. That was his whole, his whole thing. Very 2008 Rudy Giuliani 9-11 vibes that we got there. But with that said, he is running in the GOP,

where really no one gives a shit about policy. It's all cultural war and identity politics. So do you think his strategy is viable to win the party's nomination? Viable-ish, I'd say. The culture war matters in the Republican primaries. It matters a lot. It's how Trump won in 2016.

It's why it's continued to dominate the primary. The real question is, how does he distinguish himself from Donald Trump on the cultural war stuff? Can he deliver that more convincingly, more with more passion, more authenticity, more charisma than Trump? Because ultimate, his argument is not thus far has been, I'm a more effective culture warrior than Trump. He talks about these things, I get it done. But there's limits to that.

And when I think he's really, really missing, and I think a lot of political observers are missing about Trump's success in the Republican primary is he is the first Republican politician to marry culture war, right-wing, racist, homophobic, bigoted culture war stuff with economic populism, that it takes the place. In some case, certainly that's some of the anti-immigration stuff, which crosses sort of bridges those two things. But opposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare, reeling about big business incorporation. Even if Trump's policy agenda does not match that in any way she performed, his rhetoric does. And so that has given him this strength. And DeSantis is trying to run on Trump's culture war agenda and Paul Ryan's economic agenda. And I don't see that working unless he changes.

Well, to that point, in what way do you think that Trump could lose to DeSantis here? Like, what would DeSantis need to do to unseat Trump as the presumptive Republican nominee? And is he doing it? He's certainly not doing it yet. His campaign has been all downhill since the moment he won his big re-election victory in Florida in 2022 and sort of was lifted up as the Trump alternative among the MAGA candidates. Yeah. I mean, I guess if you're trying to say, how is it?

possible that DeSantis wins. He does better than he is doing now. He kind of reaches stability. He reminds some of these donors and activists and political leaders of the guy they thought he was a few months ago. And largely Trump collapses under his own weight, right? And that could be, you know, at any moment, Trump could dine with Kanye again, have another neo-Nazi over for brunch, could to get indicted again this summer on another criminal case or other ones stand there we know the jack smith investigation into the mara lago documents is heating up like what does trump look like six months from now when he's facing three he's indicted on three crimes in three jurisdictions the first trial is scheduled to start six days after the florida primary when you're going

through on Super Tuesday, March 5th, there are pretrial motions, you know, all this discussion of these things. Like, does all of that add up plus the combined weight of, you know, maybe a couple hundred million dollars in ads against Trump from DeSantis's side and all the other Republicans, is that bring him down, not because Republicans are going to abandon him out of some moral outrage or policy concern or realizes a liar, just they think he can't win because of all the baggage. If DeSantis' argument is he's Trump without the baggage, does Trump get a lot more baggage between now and then? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, if you were in the Biden White House, who would you rather run against in 2024? I honestly think you can argue that one round or flat.

And I think it's very dangerous to argue it either way. The polling shows it's about exactly the same right now. And we should stipulate that any single Republican, Trump, DeSantis, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, Glenn Yonkin, anyone you pick, a cardboard cut. out with a scarlet r on their forehead yeah is going to get to within a couple points of any democrat that is just that is the nature of politics in this this era with this electoral college we should resume the election is going to be decided by less than 100 000 people spread across six states as it has been the last two times around and so maybe trump is you know Biden is beaten Trump before.

You're going to argue against Trump. You'd say Biden's beaten Trump before. Is there a single person who had voted for Biden who's going to vote for Trump this time? Is there a single person who set out the last election who's going to get involved for Donald Trump this time? Like, that would be the argument. And we know, it's a known thing. Joe Biden has beaten him. Trump has also lost every single election in which he's been a factor since he won in 2016.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, DeSantis, is DeSantis a more appealing version of Trump, or is he just Mitt Romney, right? Is he going to generate that excess turnout among working class voters in rural areas that Trump did that sort of represents the difference between Obama's performance in 2012 and Trump's performance in 2016? I don't know. He doesn't have DeSantis thus far has not demonstrated anything resembling the sort of charisma, skill. nimbleness, character that it takes to win a presidential campaign, we know Trump has won one before, and DeSantis hasn't. So it's hard to say, I don't think I'd be rooting one way or the

other. And I think people who think they know the answer of that question are kind of forgetting how history has played out over the last eight years here. Yeah. And I think to the DeSantis point also, if it, by some miracle did end up being DeSantis over Trump, then there's also the added factor of what happens to all of Trump's diehard fans. Do they just try transfer right over to Ron DeSantis, or more likely, do we see some scorched earth thing where then Trump brings his people out of the political process to kind of stick it to Ron DeSantis? So all of those are kind of, you know, remain to be seen. If 5,000 Trump voters in the state of Georgia decided not to turn out because they were mad at

Ron DeSantis, that's ballgame right though. Like that's how much this is going to be decided on the margins. The other side, if focus groups, you know, there was the Washington Post did this focus group of swing voters recently, all of them concerned about Joe Biden's age. Most of them is still pick Biden over Trump anyway. Does the age issue become more of a problem against a 40-something year old Ron DeSantis than a 76-year-old Donald Trump? Maybe, right? So you just don't know what the world looks like is going to matter more. I think the two things matter more than who the Republican nominee is. What does the world look like? What's the economy look like? And is

are a third party candidate who is getting two to five percent of the vote in the swing states, which is going to make it much easier for a Republican to win, depending on who that candidate is. Yeah. What's become obvious here is that the way that Trump and DeSantis perceive victory, respectively, is to outflank each other on the right. You know, they're moving toward all these abortions. Trump just recently took full credit for the Dobbs decision. Meanwhile, DeSantis passed his own version of a six-week abortion ban.

All the while, common sense would suggest that they're making. themselves completely unelectable in the general election, do you subscribe to that theory, or do you think that ultimately they'll run as far as they can to the right? And then for whatever reason, maybe people aren't paying attention. Maybe it just feels like a reset that they don't get punished for that in the general. I mean, the voters who are going to decide the 2024 general election are not paying a lick of attention to the Republican primary. And so theoretically, taking this with the Biden campaign, Democrats, other outside groups can hang these positions around the necks of DeSantis and Trump. But their strategic logic is you can't win the general if you

don't win the primary. So solve that problem first and then get to the next one. But if you look at 2022, what is very clear is there is a price to pay for winning a Republican primary. The positions you must take to win that Republican primary will haunt you in the general. Does that mean they're unelectable? No. Does that mean they're less electable? Probably. All right. So I want to switch gears here to default and the whole issue of the debt ceiling. I don't want to go too deep into this because I'm certain that, you know, the moment that we finished recording this, something is going to happen that will immediately render our conversation obsolete.

But I will ask this, Republicans are using the U.S. economy as the hostage here in these negotiations. Why doesn't it seem to be getting through to Americans that Republicans are basically threatening to blow up the plane that we're all flying on right now? Is it because debt ceiling stuff just writ large is boring? Is it a failure on our part to message effectively? I think it's three things. One, I think the markets, the business community, the just sort of everyone has been operating with,

what I think is a somewhat naive assumption that this is going to get fixed. We've gone down this path twice, both times we've avoided default. What generally would drive coverage on this is the market was dropping 800 points a day or 1,000 points a day over this. That has not been happening. So everyone just sort of thinks it's going to get fixed. Two, the press coverage of this has been offensively bad. It has treated this as a standard negotiation.

The press has proved, not all of the press, but much of the traditional legacy media has proven, once again, they are culturally incapable of accurately covering a dangerously radical Republican faction. Because to point out what the Republicans are doing as extortion would be seen as taking a side. They prefer to be seen as balanced than accurate. And that has affected all this. The third reason is, and this is a strategic decision from the president, is the president has, once he started negotiations with the Republicans, he largely stopped making this case publicly. I believe he has made the calculation that it is better to get a deal, to avoid default on the best

terms possible than to try to win the messaging war in the short term because winning the messaging more in the short term is going to make it harder to get a deal because any deal that he cuts is going to require some going to require a majority of Republicans to be on board because otherwise if it doesn't McCarthy cannot bring it to the floor or he will lose his speakership. So he has made a decision. I think this is probably this is maybe a little bit of chess in a world of checkers is to say I'm going to take a bunch of shit right now. Probably is going to get to kind of define the short term press coverage over it. I'm not going to score a bunch of political points, but I'm going to get a better deal through being amiable publicly than

being aggressive publicly. And we can, I don't know we can judge the accurate, the sort of the wisdom of that strategy until we see how this actually plays itself out. But up until the moment, those negotiations around a budget deal started, the president was very aggressive in making the case about the Republican position here. And then he, he stepped back in favor of this approach. And that, that may be the right choice. We just don't know yet. Yeah. Although the flip side of that is that created a vacuum that it usually creates when we don't have any anyone on the offensive. And so everything is filled with, you know, even Kevin McCarthy trying to completely flip the narrative to make it sound like the radical socialists are now trying to get in charge,

which is obviously like his play on the whole, you know, far right extremists who are dictating the terms of all of this conversation. Yeah, it's like the, you know, the House Democrats have had a bunch of press conferences. Senators are out there. People like you and the folks and my folks of Positive America. We've tried to make the case, but nothing can fill the void left by the president when the president's in church. Like, that is just the reality of it. Barack Obama was its exact same position in 2011 when he was in almost stuck in the same menu of shitty choices that Joe Biden currently has. And we'll see how it plays itself out. I am very sympathetic to the people in the White House that there is no good option here,

and they're going to, and they're just forced to choose among a bunch of things going to be pretty painful, but hopefully we'll avoid, will be an absolute catastrophe, substantively, and politically, which would be default. I believe you've spoken about this on POTS of America, but, you know, there are a lot of people asking, why not just invoke the 14th Amendment? Can you speak on that? Yeah, I am not, as a common as a shock, but I am not a lawyer. I'm not a legal expert.

All I know is when I read about the 14th Amendment, but it seems, at best case, the arguments around the 14th Amendment are a legal jumpball, right? you have not put aside like the partisan experts uh some of them believe it's right some of it believe believe it does not that the for the debt ceiling is not in conflict with the 14th amendment but practically speaking here is the problem for the Biden administration if they do this one is it lets the Republicans off the hook it's now the president's choice to to to avoid try to avoid default this way you've now taken the entire fate of global economy and you've put it in a court system filled with Trump judges, who, as we just saw in the abortion

medication case, will make insane decisions. Ultimately, that will wind its way up to the Supreme Court, which is rigged, a corrupt Supreme Court, rigged by Mitch McConnell and the Federal Society. But even from a very practical matter, the way you pay your debts is you sell funds, right? That's how we get more money. Institutional investors and foreign, like, this like investment funds, et cetera, and pension funds and foreign countries. How could you sell debt of legally questionable value? Like, who would buy that debt? Just from a pure practical matter. Yeah. And it is not as simple as just the president going out and saying, uh, I evoked the 14th Amendment as if he is like a wizard in Hogwarts. Like, it's not a magic

spell. What happens is we cross the X state. The United States sells more bonds. And, when the Republican sue, you respond in court that the reason you did it is because of the fort, you believe the debt limit statutes in conflict with the 14th Amendment, and then you put the whole thing in the hands of the court. And so there would just be a massive amount of economic turbulence. This is one of those things where I think the people who've been asserting that the president do this, which touch confidence are a little bit playing sort of the domestic political version of the game risk and not really reckoning with the real consequence. Because if you're president Biden, it's not put aside the policy.

of like who would win in a messaging moreover this. It's just, do you want millions of Americans to lose their jobs and the stock market cut in half on your watch? Like, that would take decades to unwind. You're going to do that on a legal theory that your own lawyers can agree on. So I just think it's not particularly practical, even if it seems quite appealing.

Right. And the way that it has to be done is in such a way that it would already be too late to fix it, if and when they render their verdict, make their ruling so again you know to your exact point the whole thing would just be put in the hands of a six three conservative court that probably would love nothing more than to see Biden uh biden's entire presidency fall apart so uh you know i i agree with you there dan tom carper has announced his retirement in the state of delaware as everyone knows you are one of the most well-respected

sons of delaware do you have any announcements that you would like to make uh for right here on this show yes i do in fact uh first and foremost uh i live in california uh resident of said state but more importantly is it delaware that hasn't that hasn't stopped uh that hasn't stopped uh quite a few people before but that's true that is true just as a point of fact and the point of reference i lived in northern california but second is that uh delaware has because it's a small state has one congressperson that congressperson is lisa blunt rochester who everyone expects to run for Senate in Tom Carper's place. I certainly hope she does.

If she is elected, she will become the only black woman in the United States Senate. That would be an absolute huge thing for Delaware. It would be great for the Senate. She's awesome. And so I fully endorse her candidacy that I hope will be coming very soon. All right. What I'm taking out of that is that there's a chance that you would run for Congress. Fill that void in Congress.

We'll conference my wife in. and we'll talk about this later. Dan, tell me about Crooked's new subscription community. Yes. So he created a community called Friends of the Pod. It's a really amazing program, a way to engage deeper with crooked content, to engage deeper with other crooked listeners and fans. There's a Discord server, John, John and Tommy, myself, other crooked personalities get on there.

There's a show called Terminally Online that is, quite fun that is available to for for subscribers you can go to crooked website um and check it out i highly encourage it i did that show the other day and terminally online we each pick one thing that we one piece of content that we engage with that made us question whether we're too online uh mine ended in the most recent episode with me going quite deep down a lot of rabbit holes around the banner pump rules scandal of all situation uh it's quite funny It's quite good. Lots more things coming.

It's a great way to contribute money to vote, save America, and a whole much of other things. So I encourage everyone to check it out. Yes, and I was also on Terminally Online, I believe, like a few weeks back. Super, yeah, definitely. It's a great show. Definitely recommend it.

And I'll put the link in the post description as well for anybody looking to join. And finally, Dan, as you know, I joined Tommy for our bi-weekly show on YouTube called Liberal Tiers, which it's a ranking show, so we'll rank top 10. Tommy does seem to really be leaning into it. Do you have any message for him as he seeks to dethrone you as Crooked Media's YouTube star? Well, I would say, welcome to the party, Tommy. You've, you started this company like six years ago,

and I'm glad you're finally engaging with video media, the video content. Up until now, you've basically been Rhonda Santis-esque in your exclusivity for audio. I think the show's great. i'm glad he's riding your coattails uh like to see Tommy Tommy did a show on his own before you and i would just say it did not do as well so i think we know where uh who brings the juice to the table here well i'll add nothing to that i'll just like you i'll let your words speak for themselves you will neither the other confirmed you will not agree nor disagree publicly confirmed nor deny uh although uh i'm sure i'm sure Tommy will have uh have words to throw back so i'm sure he will yes yeah we'll leave it there uh Dan thank you so much for

for taking the time. I appreciate it. And, uh, and, uh, love to have you back soon. Awesome, man. Good to see you. Now I've got candidate for the U.S. Senate in Missouri, Lucas Coons. Lucas, always great to have you on. Yeah, man. It's great to be here. So, uh, Lucas, you are running for the U.S. Senate in Missouri against Josh Hawley. Uh, Holly has just released his new book entitled Manhood. How enlightening was it to finally learn about manhood from reading this book? Oh, dude. I mean, for 2999, you can get all the secrets straight from the man himself, right? And, you know, if anyone doesn't want to actually take the time to read the book, because it is quite a chore, I can tell you that much. The secret is, unsurprisingly, to be more like him. So, you know, the guy who skittered out the back of the Capitol is going to teach us all to be manly, manly men, I guess. That's right. Oh, by the way, and if you're a woman, you need to stay out of the workplace, he says, because that's just really bringing men down these days.

Yeah, just driving us straight into the future, straight into the future with Josh Hawley. That's right. Lucas, you co-wrote an op-ed for The Daily Beast. I want to read an excerpt from what you wrote. Real family values are about providing a healthy alternative to the toxic masculinity that Holly is offering. The disconnect between men and the economy or society isn't happening because men are failing to achieve some weird idea of what it means to be a man. The core of this crisis is the fact that men without a college degree have seen their relative earnings fall by 30% since 1980. Why? Because Josh Hawley and others like him have blocked advancements for working-class Americans at every turn.

Can you speak a little bit about what you meant by that? Yeah, absolutely. And so I've seen it in the neighborhood that I grew up in. So I grew up in a working-class neighborhood in a small, medium-sized town in Missouri called Jeff City. And, you know, we, none of us had any money. Like my parents got married early, 19 and 22. It was very similar to everybody in that neighborhood. mine in particular were Catholic and so they had four kids bang bang bang bang right they were doing the right thing by the church and we were all living paycheck to paycheck and the thing was though

we could all take care of each other and so when my family when my little sister was born and she had to have open heart surgery she actually had a couple and our family went bankrupt from that we made it because there was enough slack in that community there was enough resources in that community that everyone at their churches passed the plate for us people were brought tuna casserole by the house, right? Like, everybody was able to take care of each other. And we've seen about 40 years of disinvestment from neighborhoods like that, you know, disinvestment in our public schools, taking away our opportunities, just really stripping

our communities for parts, like the one I grew up in, to the point that we don't have the ability to take care of each other anymore. And people like Josh Hawley are the exact problem. They're the people who disinvested from communities like that all across our state and all across our country. So now you go to that neighborhood, a place where, you know, I used, we all as kids used to run in and out of each other's houses, everybody could take care of each other, and it just looks desolate. The first house they ever lived in is an empty lot. You want to join the Marine Corps out of it's got no windows in it anymore. The corner store was

boarded up because it's been robbed so many times that it couldn't get insurance. And so, you know, and what's going in there now? A smoke shop, of course, because that's what goes into neighborhoods like that. And so what I, what I see the need is like, you know, he talks about, oh, there's a crisis of masculinity. No, no, there's a crisis of leadership. And the leadership we have here is leaders who make decisions based on the corporations that are funding their campaigns, rather the communities that, rather than for the communities that, you know, make our state and our country strong. And so what we are saying, what Jake Ockinclos and I, Representative Ockinclos and I are saying is we need to invest in communities. We need to invest in unions. We need to invest in

apprenticeship programs. We need to invest in paths for people to have opportunity so that they can take care of themselves and everything will work out a lot better. Now, Missouri is a red state. You'll need Republican voters to win this election. What's your pitch to Missouri voters who may identify through and through as Republicans? How do you win them over? And have you had any success in winning over, you know, those who do identify as Republicans thus far on the campaign trail? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, the thing is, first of all, like, Josh Holley, he's very unlike. I mean, the guy who writes a book on manhood is like kind of creepy just to begin with, right? The dude ran out of the back of the Capitol. So even if you liked what he did at the

first half of January 6th, they're kind of like, oh, well, actually, he's just a coward in the end anyway, right? And so he provides us a unique opportunity to contrast sort of my bio where, you know, I did 13 years from Marine Corps, deployed to Iraq in Afghanistan, really been trying to serve the country with a guy who really only cares about himself. And maybe the zillionaire who originally funded his campaign. But, you know, the fun thing here is that a lot of them have abandoned him, right? Like, so our former Senator Jack Danforth was a Republican. He made Josh Holly who he is.

He said Josh Holly's the worst mistake he ever made. The zillionaire out of Joplin, Missouri, who funded Holly, said he's not going to support him anymore. The guy's not really been able to raise a lot of money, and people here just don't like him. He's, you know, his disapproval's higher than his approval, which, you know, for you said it was a red state, but like, for a Republican in Missouri, who hasn't been having of negative ads thrown against them. Like, that's an achievement. And he achieved that just based on, you know, being himself. Just being Josh Hawley. Yeah. Just being Josh Hawley has got Missouri made

one of the most unpopular people. And the thing is that Missourians are willing to split their ticket, right? In 2016, the last time we had a Senate election at the same time as a presidential election, Donald Trump won this state by the most anyone had ever won by. It was like 17 points. And Roy Blunt, well, Jason Kander was running against Roy Blunt. Jason Kander was a veteran like me, a Democrat, and he came within 2.7% of winning. So Missourians are willing to switch their vote. We don't have to overcome as big of a gap as we used to because the craziness has just been, you know, kind of bring that party down as a whole. And we just, we got a lot of people who want what I want and enjoy that. And so examples, you ask for an example, I mean,

the State Firefighters Union just endorsed me over this last week. And, you know, they've endorsed the Republican for governor. They endorsed our current Republican. Republican Senator Eric Schmidt. They endorsed our previous Republican Senator Roy Blunt. And they're just, you know, they see Josh Hawley. They see his fakeness. They see his unwillingness to do anything for the state of the people here. And they said, you know what, we're going to endorse you instead. And so we see that not just with organizations, but with people all across the state who, you know, they're either tired with what's going on in D.C. or they're just tired of Josh Holly. Like, you know, we just don't want to kind of a creep but a faker representing us.

Have you had any success with other unions, given the fact that Republicans have such an overtly anti-union stance nationally now, have other unions come forward and said, even though, you know, we may have supported Republicans in the past that we're now moving toward you or toward Democrats? Missouri's got a real big union presence and a strong union background. And so most people don't know this, but the anti-union right to work sort of legislation in a lot of states have passed, Missouri overturned that on a ballot initiative, 68% to 32%. So like massive margin. And so far, most of the unions have consolidated behind me. Any endorsements that have been made in this race by union so far have been for my campaign. And so we do have a bunch of locals, the Kansas City

building trades and several others. And that's really the boots on the ground warriors that we can sort of start putting together now. We're going to knock these doors and, you know, can say things like, you know, I've supported ex-Republican, Y Republican before, I'm, you know, I'm not that different than you, but I'm telling you right now, Josh Holly's a scumbag, and we got a Marine veteran here who actually cares about us and knows what our lives are like, and it's going to be a difference maker for us. Yeah. And I've said this before in other interviews as well, but it's important to get this moving fast because I think what a lot of Republicans do and what they've had success with doing is trying to define their Democratic opponents before those opponents have

had the chance to define themselves. So that's the importance of, you know, if people are wondering like why already start to to you know bring candidates on to the show why start to interview them now more than a year prior to the election it's because you know this is where it matters the most this is where people are forming their opinions and we have this rare opportunity here before Josh Holly has had the chance to to go on the air with attack ads for you to come out and define yourself and to kind of dictate the terms of this conversation and for for Democrats a party that has historically not had a lot of success in dictating the terms

of the conversation and messaging well this is especially important right now. Yeah, we've been hitting him hard. I don't know if we might sell. We just did an ad with John Hamm. So John Hamm, Don Draper from Madman, is from Missouri, and we didn't add together. Just because Josh Holly's book is out, and John was like, you know, we're going to do something about this.

And, you know, they played it on Joe Scarborough, played it and a few others. And that's the way. You're absolutely right, Brian. We got to start defining this battleground. You know, I was in the military right. You want to be the person in a military engagement who picks. the battleground so that so that it's convenient or it's not convenient but it's like it's best situated for you and that's what we're doing right now getting out early and and hammering away

what do you think that voters in missouri should know about josh holly that they may not know right now is there's something that he's been able to hide about himself or just just in general who he is that voters might not know about i mean i think most people got a pretty good inkling of it you see that from his numbers uh what we need to do is just reinforce that this guy's a fraud and a coward like that's just a fraud and a coward. And when they go in the ballot box, we want people to say, oh, God, no, just can't do that guy. And Lucas Coons, he's all right. You know, he's a brain veteran. He cares about me. And Josh Holly, honestly, like, he does it all on his own. Like, like I said, like, I mean, for the guy to be that unpopular without even having any negatives

run against him, it's just he comes across is so arrogant. He comes across like he doesn't care about you. Anyone who has ever tried to reach out to his office from either side. has had no success getting a hold of them or getting anything going on. And so I think it's all out in the open already. Like there's no deep, dirty secrets that we got to roll with. The guys just, he's just, you know, he's no good. And we just need to reinforce it. And even more importantly than that, we need to make sure that my contrast is out there.

You know, the way that I grew up is very different from the way he grew up. The way I understand Missouri, my service history and the Marine Corps are all critical components. because we can't just have people be like, oh, gross, Holly, and then hold their nose and vote for them anyway. They have to feel good about voting for me and know what I've done over the years and it'll work out just like it almost did for Jason Kander. Well, to that point, how would Missourians' lives actually change if you were their senator? Like, I know that we've spoken about your past and contrast that with that of Josh Hawley, but what about what you would be able to do for Missourians if you are elected and to the Senate and able to serve? Well, sure. One big thing for me was

You know, we passed the PACT Act recently in the House and Senate and Joe Biden signed it. And so this was protecting veterans from exposed to toxic burn pit waste. Josh Holly voted against that when he had the opportunity to. And obviously, I stand with veterans being one myself. I was exposed to toxic burn waste in Iraq. I still have some symptoms from it. And, you know, Missouri's got a huge percentage of veterans. And taking care of veterans is important to me.

And it's not something that matters to him. You know, everybody has sort of seen the Norfolk Southern train crash where all the chemicals were spilled. When Josh Hawley was Attorney General, he got rid of Missouri's laws in our enforcement division that would protect Missouri citizens from something like that. And then he took a bunch of money from Norfolk Southern. Me, I'm not taking any money from corporate packs. I'm not taking money from federal lobbyists. I'm not taking it from big fossil fuels, big pharma execs. And so I'm going to be in a uniquely situated spot where I'm not going to make the compromises and I'm not going to sell out.

out the way that he's sold out over and over again. Like I can actually stand up and protect people. I don't think that members of Congress should own personal stocks. I'm going to move to make it so that they won't be able to make decisions based on their stock portfolios, which a lot of them have been doing for a long time. There are a lot of ways, you know, he hasn't brought any money back to the state. I want to use my leverage in a close Senate to bring money back to the state and invest. I think we can build out the next generation of energy technology right here in the heartlands. You know, right now what you see is, um, a lot of war is caused by fossil fuels and energy right now. I mean, the war in Ukraine is funded

by Russian gas purchases. And I think that if we built out the next generation of energy here in the Midwest and made that investment, then we would export energy and we could reduce the likelihood of war in the future over basically anything. And so there are a lot of visionary things that I'd like to do and put out there. And, you know, Josh Hawley's not interested in having vision. He's interested in getting up there, squawking a little bit, and then parroting around what great things he's done on Fox News and have someone who will actually bring money to the state, focus on the state, and meet with constituents. It's sad because that should basically, that should be the baseline that you do no matter which party you are. You know, Roy Blunt used

to do that. He'd meet with people and try to help them out no matter where they came from, and he does none of that. So I think the difference is going to be absolutely extreme. Lucas, Gen Z and millennial voters are now the biggest voting block in the United States. what's your pitch to young people who may not have voted before? Well, I am millennial, so I guess that helps a little bit on that front. But it's just, this is critical, right? If we want to protect our future, we're the only ones that can do it. We are the only ones that know our issues.

We're the only ones who, frankly, care. And none of the things that the boomers and before had are going to be there for us if we don't protect it for each other. And so, you know, Josh Hawley was asked the other day, hey what do you think about the debt ceiling doesn't it make sense that you'd want veterans to get their benefits doesn't it make sense you want people on social security to get what they need wouldn't you want the school funding to go through and uh and he said and i quote I don't think it's in my best interest to push for that it's like well what is your interest

man and so uh the thing the thing that we need to do um with people my age and maybe a little bit younger is we got to get into their spaces. We got to talk to people where they're at. You know, I do a lot of YouTube shows. I go on Twitch because really right now, it's the exposure. And a lot of people my age and younger, we don't watch the same sort of media. I mean, well, you know this. I'm just preaching the choir here. But like, there's a lot of other media out there that we need to engage in so that we can meet people where they're at. And the lucky thing is that that's what I consume too. So it's a pretty easy, it's a pretty easy breach for me. With that said, How can we help?

You follow us on Twitter, Lucas Coontz, M-O. It's K-U-N-C-E, Lucas Coontz, M-O. Go to our website, LucasCoCoomst.com, donate, volunteer. Tell your friends, if you know, anybody here in Missouri, tell them you heard us here. You know, go watch our John Hamm ad and like it on whatever the medium is. It really is right now. It's about getting buzz because when people see a sort of ground,

like when reporters, mainstream media types see a groundswell, they get engaged. They want to report on it. They want to cover it. It's happening for us right now. And we just need to keep that going because I'm telling you, we are on the front lines in the fight for democracy here in Missouri. This is it. This is the front lines. Up until 2017, almost every single statewide seat in Missouri, governor, secretary of state, down the line was held by Democrats. We lost our last statewide Democrat this year in 2023, my friend Nicole Galloway. And people here are willing to vote for both sides if we give them the opportunity. and we got a weak candidate on the other side. We have both of those things. It's absolutely critical with the way the Senate map is drawn this year that we have some offensive targets. And I mean, Missouri is what you got, right? It's Missouri, Texas, and Florida.

And so, you know, just tell your friends, spread the word. Let's get out there because next summer, we're going to need every single resource behind us in order to knock out what may be the single most evil senator in the entire United States Senate. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, just last week I interviewed Colin Allred, who's running as a candidate in Texas,

and that would be against Ted Cruz. Now, I've got you running against Josh Hawley here. So, you know, two senators who are instrumental in making sure that the events of January 6th happened and making themselves front and center in terms of working to overturn the election results. So, you know, these are great offensive targets, make the Republicans spend their money in these states.

And if we have the chance to win in seats like this in Missouri and get rid of someone like Josh Hawley, who's very clearly only out for himself, that would be the best thing for democracy. So with that said, Lucas, thank you for taking the time, and I'll definitely have you back soon. Awesome. Thanks, Brian. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks again to Lucas. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie,

interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera, and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review. And check out Brian. Ryan Tyler Cohen.com for links to all of my other channels.