Pod Save America - Beardos, Weirdos, and Donald Trump

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

Pete Hegseth, in an unconventional speech, announces that beardos, weirdos, and wimps are no longer welcome at the Department of War as his boss officially hit the road to campaign for Senate Republicans — whether they want him to or not. Jon and Dan react to Trump's event with Ken Paxton in Texas, Trump proclaiming his love for data centers in a wide-ranging interview with TIME, and Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt's embarrassing mix-up in a Judiciary Committee hearing with former Special Counsel Jack Smith. Then, Rev. Adam Hamilton, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Kansas, talks to Dan about what it'll take to elect the state's first Democratic senator in nearly 100 years, and why he considers himself both a liberal and a conservative.Get your tickets to Crooked Con 2026 at crookedcon.com!Hate listening to ads? Become a Friends of the Pod subscriber for ad-free episodes of Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett or Leave It, Runaway Country, Offline with Jon Favreau, and more—plus exclusive content, including bonus episodes of Pod Save America. Subscribe now at crooked.com/friends, on Apple Podcasts, or through the Pod Save America YouTube channel.You can request a transcript by emailing [e-mail]. Include the podcast name, episode title, and air date. Please allow 48 hours for delivery.

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SimplySafe. Ahead of Crime in real time. U.S. voters abroad. Have you got your ballot yet? All states are now sending ballots to overseas voters. So if you want to vote this year, you should request your ballot right away. Go to vote fromabroad.org and click request my ballot. asked to receive it by email.

Questions? Ask our support team directly. Don't miss this gins to shape the future. Don't delay. Vote fromabroad.org. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favra. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, we'll talk about Trump finally hitting the campaign trail, whether Republicans like it or not, and many of them do not. His morally binding completely voluntary agreement with our AI overlords.

Senator Eric Schmidt's national humiliation. Pete Higgseth's National Humiliation. and why neither of them think what they did was humiliating because shame no longer exists. Then Dan talks with Reverend Adam Hamilton, who's mounting a very serious challenge against Senator Roger Marshall in Kansas. Dan, the buzz around the office

is that it was a fantastic interview and that Adam Hamilton's awesome. He is awesome. I encourage everyone to listen. I encourage everyone to support him. I really was very impressed by him in a way and I've been impressed by a politician in a while. That's exciting.

All right, everyone. Well, stay. Stay tuned after we blab on about the news for Dan's interview. All right, with 32 days left until the midterms, Donald Trump has finally hit the campaign trail in his so far successful effort to make the election about him and his 38% approval rating. The Republicans who are actually on the ballot

don't seem as enthused about this strategy, but as one Republican operative told Politico, quote, these guys are in a pickle. They may not want Trump to come to the district, but there are still things Trump can do to help. another GOP strategist working on midterm races was asked what would happen if Trump campaigned in their battleground states and said, quote, I suspect my candidates would come down with COVID. But one candidate who was seemingly COVID-free on Thursday, Ken Paxton, who campaigned with Trump in Texas just a few days after audio leaked of Paxton telling donors what he really thought about Trump's midterm convention in Dallas.

Here's the audio from the New York Times. But do you feel like to use a little bit of drag? So, to be honest with you, when we did that convention, the Trump members, everybody's going to drop. Right now, yeah, not good. Not good.

Yeah, yeah, not good. That was Paxson saying that, yeah, someone asked him if Trump's been a drag, and he said, yeah, Trump's been a drag, and that after that convention in Dallas, everyone's numbers dropped. a little bit. In Paxton,

not this is not the point here, but it's just truly unbelievable that someone, like most incredibly corrupt politicians who succeed have incredible charisma. Trump as an example, right? In Paxton, like, what is Paxton bringing to the table

that allows people to just go along with this corruption? He's the personality of a snail. People who, you know, analyze Texas politics for living and do Texas politics for living have made the point that he has gotten as far as he has, because of his corruption. And so, like, because he has been so corrupt and gotten so much,

so many people who are really wealthy in Texas politics to spend so much money getting him elected, he really hasn't had, like, a super competitive race, especially in, like, in a primary, where he's had to rely on his charisma and talent campaigning. All he's had to do is just be the guy who a bunch of, you know, well, he special interests poured a bunch of money into making sure got elected so that he could pay them back. Guys, we really can't lose to this guy. We cannot lose him. So here's Trump in Texas on Thursday proving that he's definitely not a drag. Ken Paxton was up my side more than anybody. And I have to always remember that because he could be a pain of the ass sometimes. I'll be honest.

Is he here, by the way? Oh, there he is. Good. I didn't even know if he's. year, I don't care. You think that's what Paxton was looking for? He's like, well, he didn't call me ugly this time. Now, we don't think that the event's not over. Yeah, so it's possible he closes with the ugly thing, the bad dressing thing. There's so much in this remarks. Like, yes, is it helpful to Ken Paxson for Donald Trump to take his very poor approval

rating, even in Texas, and just be like, see Ken Pxton? He's always by my side. My stink is definitely on him in case you're wondering. There's my snake is on him. But also earlier in those remarks, he spent the, before he gets to the acknowledging Ken Passing's existence, he spends like 10 minutes at the top just saying how amazing the economy is and how we have numbers like no one's ever seen before. And the only reason people don't know it is because the fake news won't tell people. He also admitted yesterday, Wednesday, Trump said that he's done a quote, very bad job of explaining his economic record. Did you catch that quote?

Yeah. Rare sort of self-awareness. from Donald Trump. Although I wouldn't say it's self-awareness because there's not much of an economic record to explain. Yes, there is that problem, yes. But I was surprised that he said that. So, you know, right as we started recording, too, Fox News has another poll 51-49. Telerico. Tala riko over Paxton. So take that for what you will. We can get into the polls a little bit later. So this obviously depends on the specific race, but what do you make of the argument that was in that Politico story?

that in certain red states and districts, Trump showing up could be a net positive because he will turn out his hardcore MAGA fans who otherwise wouldn't have voted. This is the bet for the midterms, at least in the White House, for putting Trump out there at all. This is not a strategy that a bunch of people have come up

and put on a whiteboard based on data. It is based on the fact that Donald Trump will not shut up, will not stop saying unhelpful things. And so the best thing, they can do in their estimation is to have him say those things in rooms with lots of Republicans in swing states on this, you know, this like, Hail Mary idea that it will turn out Republican voters. Now, there are two problems with this.

The first is there isn't a lot of evidence in the statistical data that Trump will turn out Republicans the way he has before. There are two measures of this. One is what Trump's secret sauce has been in 2016, 2020, and 2020, particularly in 2024, is he is turning out lesser engaged voters. people who don't participate in politics, some first-time voters. All the data we've seen and the focus groups is quantitative and qualitative data, says that those are the first people off the Trump train.

They made a bet on Trump about costs. He did not deliver costs. They are out. The other thing is that he doesn't even have the same sway with his base that he used to. His, I think the best sort of statistical proxy to understand what that is is strong approval among Republicans. His strong approval among Republicans is now under 50. It was close to 70 on Election Day.

and even as obviously 2024, but in 2018 as well, where people forget, Democratic turnout was through the roof, but Republican turnout was quite high there. And there's just not the same suggestion that Trump is going to have that effect. And then you've put on the fact that those things don't happen in a silo. A president comes to a state, particularly a, you know, if it comes to like a Kansas or an Iowa, that's going to get a ton of attention. It's going to be seen by all the independent voters.

It's going to force the... Especially in Texas. Yes, especially in Texas. They're going to have to ask the question. All the candidates on ballot are going to ask. to ask the question like the Ashley Hinsons of the world, are they with, are they going to come to the rally? And if they don't come to the rally,

that doesn't seem to be good either because it makes them like political and calculating. If they go to the rally, it just seems bad. He's putting him in a bad position, and we should be grateful for it. And we are actually paying for this travel with our taxpayer money. So win-win for us. I mean, even at that event that we just heard the clip from, he was like, is Paxton here somewhere? I believe, like, I think he's doing another event with Paxton or did another event with

Paxton. Yeah. I think it's a fundraiser. I think it's a fundraiser tonight. Right. So Ken Paxton, unbelievably unpopular and corrupt, still had the wherewithal to think that he shouldn't be, like, standing next to Donald Trump at the event? Well, I had a lot of questions about this event. Is this an official event?

Yeah, because it's at some kind of a truck. It's at a Peterbilt truck factory. And then I know the hatch act doesn't really count. And it's like a fake law, at least with Donald Trump's president. But it really is he specifically. the one thing you cannot do in an official event is actually tell people to vote for certain people. And he tells them like seven times to vote for Paxton and vote against Tala Rico. Yeah, RIP, the hatchack.

So Trump's also been doing White House events, hyping economic wins for key candidates. So we talked on Tuesday about the future Iowa steel plant he announced with Ashley Hinson standing behind him in the Oval Office coming to an Iowa town near you in 2030. He also announced a pledge this week from South Korea to invest in a natural gas pipeline in Alaska with Dan Sullivan standing next to him, though it turns out that project is not only not finalized, but apparently South Korea afterwards said no investment decision has actually been made. The project still has to pass commercial legal reviews, and the Korean industry minister told Reuters he complained that the White House announcement went beyond what had been agreed.

What a surprise? What are the, what, John, come on. Who are you going to believe? The Koreans are Trump. So, like, my instinct is that none of this shit moves the needle. But Tommy made the point on Tuesday's pod that, you know, the Iowa steel plant was the kind of thing that got a ton of local press in Iowa. I don't know.

What do you think? I think that there's a way in which Trump could do these things that would be helpful. And he's doing the opposite of that, which is he's not, when you go to these, you watch these events, He's not saying like, you know, we didn't know what we're going to do. And Ashley Hinson would not stop calling me. She was like, you must deliver for Iowa. You must deliver for Iowa.

We need steel plants. All my advisors were saying, we can't do this. Ashley Hinson, she was up my ass every day doing it. And he doesn't do that or he does the same thing with Dan Sullivan. He takes credit for the whole thing and then makes the candidate stand there why he says fucking insane things. Like the greatest economy of all time is what he said with Ashley Hinson standing behind him. No, so yes, it may be in the local newspapers. Tommy is correct about that, that, you know, like new steel plant coming.

Like, we all remember, you guys talked this on Tuesday, the Foxcon plant, like what a big deal that was in Wisconsin Press. Obviously, that local press stuff matters a lot less than it did before, but it matters more to state like Iowa. But what he's delivering there is not, I don't think it is helpful to Ashley Hinson or Dan Sullivan any way she performed. Also, how does it feel to read the headline about the new steel plant that's coming in 2030 while you're at the gas station, filling of your car with gas. It's so far down the line. It's never been more expensive as long as you can remember. So there is that problem, too.

So polls seem good, maybe too good. This wasn't in our outline, but I thought I would bring it up anyway because you wrote a message box this week. I did. It really captured the vibe of all my group chats, not just the ones that you're... Well, the ones because I'm in a lot of them. I was going to say, not just the ones that you're in, which is most of them. And it's called Are the Polls Too Good to Be True?

Like, here's where I am. I could see a scenario where the polls are broadly correct. Democrats win National House vote by eight, nine, maybe even more than nine, win the House. But then, like, narrowly lose the Senate because of a pretty small polling error. Like, doesn't have to be a huge one. It's not even an error, right? Yeah. It's just all these polls in the key Senate races, other than North Carolina and Georgia, are within the

margin of error. So it is... And the thing that's got everyone, you know, talking on Twitter is Harry Enten pointed out on CNN this week that in 18, 20, and 24, polls specifically in the states of Iowa, Michigan, and Ohio, the same states where there's always polling error, all underestimated Republicans by more than five points. So that, like, you know, if we're within the margin and it's Abdul and Sherrod and Josh Turik, by the way, the same Fox had that Texas poll right as we started recording that has Tel Rico up 5149, also has Josh Turrick up 5149 in Iowa. But yeah, that like those states, you know, that would cost us the Senate. Yeah, I mean, that's all on the table.

It isn't always true that every polling error is bad for Democrats, good for Republicans. Right. In fact, in 2025, there is a, the polls particularly in New Jersey, dramatically overstated the Republican vote share. And so it could be. And there are other examples of other years where the polls overstated. Republic of 2012 was a year where the polls overstated the Republicans. And so there are a couple things I'd say about this.

And I also, I would mention because this is very important. I also, while I want everyone to subscribe to the message box, I also discuss this on Polarcoaster, which you can get along with ad-free episodes of some of your favorite podcast and the amazing newsletters like OpenTabs at kirk.com slash friends. So, I mean, it's a great, it's a great offer, and you get to be supporting pro-democracy, independent media, one of the last best independent media outlets left in America. Especially now that CNN's under the thumb of the Ellisons, this is, it's us, right? That's what we got. All right.

So in the, so a couple of points I would make here. One, the, there is, polling errors are always possible. That is very true. Now, there are, there is evidence outside of polls, which suggests a very, good Democratic year. I'll give you a couple of those. One, Democrats have outvoted Republicans in primaries, which shows high turnout on our part. Special elections have been very favorable to Democrats. Now, you probably listen to us all 2023 and 2024 saying special elections are not predictive, and they are not necessarily predictive. But they are much more predictive in midterm elections

than presidential election years. Because as these concentric circles of less engaged voters go out, become less predictive, but there's less of that in the midterms. And in 2018, special-act results were actually quite predictive, as a point Amy Walter has made before. And then you just look at all what's happening in the world, high gas prices, inflation, housing costs, all of those things, low consumer confidence, mortgage rates being high, all of those things have historically correlated with very bad years for the incumbent party. So are the polls right or wrong?

We don't really know. We don't know they're necessarily wrong. As you know, you and I've discussed about before, some of the states that we need are the ones where the polling errors are the greatest. But even at, let's take the Latino vote, right? Like, that's the point that has been made before about how the polls have in the past overrepresented the Democratic share of the Latino vote, which is given, is a big thing. Given people an impression of Democrats could win to places they don't win.

It's why we thought Florida was close many times and ended up not being. But here's the thing. thing. It's not just polls that tell us that Latinos have shifted to Democrats. There are real actual voting results in 2025. Huge swings, 20, 30 percent swings to Democrats in heavily Latino precincts in New Jersey. In that special election that was won in Texas, huge swing among heavy Latino precincts. In the primary, I think this is like a fascinating thing, in the primary, Texas primary. Now, it's a primary, but James Teller Rico got more. more votes in those heavily Latino counties along the rear Grand Valley than Kamala Harris did in the general election.

That's crazy. Yeah. And so there is evidence. That's not a percentage. That's votes. That's actual raw votes. And so that's, so all of that is to say, I don't know if the polls are right or wrong. We should not assume the polling air is necessarily bad for Democrats.

But there is lots of evidence. And then today, for the first time in like many, many years, Democrats outregistered Republicans in Florida. It's a very notable thing. So there is evidence for Democratic momentum. Democratic enthusiasm and swing voters swinging to Democrats. Is that going to be enough to take the Senate? We don't know the answer to that. Yeah, and I would just tell everyone in the last month, too, like, I feel like in the last,

you know, maybe not this week, but like the week before earlier this week, too, you're getting some polls where it's like, you know, D plus 13, 14, 15. Like, there is a scenario, right, where Democrats do have, like there is a blue wave, and Democrats do do quite well and take the House and win the national, like I said, win the national popular vote by like eight, nine points. And it's just really, really close in a lot of Senate states where, you know, those are red states that Trump won by double digits. And it's like, you just need to get over that hump if you're the Democratic candidate.

And like, hopefully we get there and all of them if the wave is big enough. But it's that that's where the election is fought. It's just, it is credible to believe that the Democratic National Popular vote in 26 with $4.20 a gallon with $7. diesel, that the Democratic share of the national popular vote could be a couple points higher than it was in 2018 when Trump was in the mid-40s, when the economy was much better, when majorities of voters approved Trump standing in the economy. Like, why couldn't it be a couple points better at least than it was then?

Yeah, I agree. Today's show is brought to you by Into the Mix, a Ben and Jerry's podcast about joy and justice. You'd think challenging the publishing industry would take the combined efforts of writers, publishers, and activists. instead, one 10-year-old helped spark the conversation. Marley Diaz was 10 when she noticed something about the book she was being assigned in school. Too many kids weren't getting to see themselves at the center of the stories they read. Instead of waiting for somebody else to change that, Marley launched hashtag 1,000 Black Girl Books.

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Republican candidates everywhere. A few weeks after Election Day, the crypto company that runs Trump's mean coin says, as Trump will be the featured speaker at what they're calling the most exclusive dinner in the world for the top 185 buyers of Trump coin. Jeff Stein at the Washington Sun, who broke the story, estimates that buying a million dollars worth of Trump coin should do it. That should land you on the top 185 based on the current leaderboard. Trump, who, of course, earns money every time one of the coins changes hands, has already

made $635 million from this Trump coin, while the people who actually bought the fucking things have lost close to $4 billion. Also, you've got to see the AI art on the announcement page because it's Trump if he was like, you know, 100 pounds lighter and 30 years younger. Do you feel like Democrats in midterm races are making the most of Trump's insane corrupt?

Just a thought I had reading that. Are they making the most of it? I think you can never make too much of it. But I think you are seeing a lot of Democrats, and this is a very, very refreshing, I think, making political corruption be a huge part of their message. Now, in some cases, you have very, very corrupt candidates like Ken Paxton. You have a bunch of other candidates who, I've seen a bunch of Democratic ads about these Republican members who've come into Congress, voted against all these.

things and also like, you know, quadruple their net worth while they were in Congress. You know, you see a lot about stock trading. They're not really making it about Trump, but that's okay because what Trump is doing is by being so obviously corrupt. He is making it more believable that all of his minions in Congress are corrupt. And what I think is really, really, really impressive about the message. And James Salarico has an ad out today where he's sitting in a restaurant. And he talks about how Ken Pacton's corruption has cost Texas taxpayers $12 million.

And then you have to pay the bill. It's a restaurant. It's a great. Got it. It's very well done. But there was a navigator poll. I thought this was super fascinating from a few weeks ago, Navigator research, some of the smarter people doing polling on our side of the aisle.

And in it, they talked about how now voters consider political corruption to be one of the leading reasons why costs are going up. And so you're seeing all these Democrats connect political corruption to their costs going up. And so Trump's like this overlay on top of it that makes all. all these other Republican candidates more vulnerable these attacks. In the September New York Times-Syana poll was a finding that I think didn't get enough attention. Voters find Republicans to be more likely to be corrupt than Democrats by 14 points. It's 48.34. And that didn't used to be the case.

No, it was just almost always been split. Yeah. I think that, you know, if you're a House candidate or a Senate candidate who's just running against a regular Republican, you know, you don't just want to talk about Trump because you're running against the Republican, but I do. you think corruption is a great issue to tie that Republican to Trump because the Republican Congress has done abs of fucking looting nothing about this corruption. And so if people are thinking, as they should, that like it's crazy for the President of the United States to make more money than he's ever made in his lifetime while they are paying more for like basic necessities than they've ever paid in their lifetime.

And the Republican has done nothing about it that they're running against. I think that's a pretty good, pretty good ad, pretty good story to tell, pretty good moment to have it at a debate. You know, everyone says that Asaf does great because of his, like, you know, lighting in the events and he's hit in corruption. But the way he hits the corruption, I think, is effective because he tells a story about it. And that Tellerico ad tells a story about it. Like, it's not just enough to just, you know, hit the, oh, he's getting rich off, whatever, but, like, tell the whole story about it. Speaking of stories, in the story that Jeff Stein wrote here, just this great part.

They talked to a 26-year-old, a crypto guy who's lost 400. hundred thousand dollars so far on trump coin and he was disappointed by last year's dinner because trump only went for 20 minutes didn't take any photos and the steak was small and terrible and then then the kid says if it was an option he could see himself voting for trump again we'll go to this year's dinner and said quote i hope the food is better this time really just like sums up the entire the entire trump experience for trumping supporters over two terms. Yes, yes.

I hope the food is better this time. That's what they said when they went to the polls in 2024. Alas, my friend, I'm going to suggest it probably will not be. By the way, we do have a much better event for you to attend after the midterms that won't cost you a million dollars in Trump coin, Dan. How much crooked coin do you have to buy? It's CrookedCon in Washington, D.C. We got a live Pod Save America show, a live, love it or leave it,

conversations and debates with all your favorite host, strategist, creators, Democratic politician, it's going to be lively, it's going to be fun. We're going to kick off the debate about how to win back the White House in 28 with some of the people who might end up on that primary debate stage. And we'd love to see you. It's going to be November 5th through 7th in D.C. You can go to crookedcon.com for tickets, and you get a discount if you're a friend of the pod subscriber and all those other benefits that we just mentioned earlier.

So you can go to crooked.com slash friends to people. Become a subscriber and cricketcon.com to get your tickets while they're still available for CricketCon in D.C. This is kind of my pitch for people. Yeah. If you work in politics at any level, in any way, shape, or form, and you should be CricketCon because it is the place where you're going to meet the most people, you can network, you're going to hear from some of the smartest people.

You're going to find, if you're looking for the 2028 campaign you might work on or what you're going to do next or where things are going in politics, the people who have the answer those questions are all going to be at CricketCon. Plus, it's going to be a shit little fun. So much fun. All right. One issue I'm sure Republican candidates wish Trump would shut the fuck up about is AI and specifically data centers, where he's wildly out of step with public opinion, including Republican voters.

But alas, he just can't help himself, Dan. No, it's not. Here he is answering a question from a reporter about data centers at the White House on Tuesday. The data centers are incredible. And by the way, I'm very good at real estate. Some of those buildings are absolutely beautiful. They're big and they're, you know, big, strong, powerful buildings, but they're beautiful. And they add greatly to a community.

That's what people, they often describe the architecture of data centers. I think he has never seen a data center. No, he has no idea what they are. There's never been a data center that is not ugly. No. Have you seen these things? Yeah, it's a gigantic. They're huge.

Some of them are like 20 acres. It's like, it's terrible. Yes. Yeah, I mean, he truly has no idea what he's talking. about in any way or shape or form. He then elaborated on this point to Time Magazine in a 75-minute interview that just publish, because what else does he have to do but then sit down with Time Magazine for 75 minutes. He said, quote, I would like to have data centers. It doesn't mean I want them right next to my house, but certainly I like them in my county. Our NIMBY

King. Donald Trump. He also repeated his line about how people who don't want data centers. He also repeated his line about how people who don't want data centers next to their homes must want to be poor and live in, quote, crime-infested squalor. So a lot of Republican candidates are running ads right now, trying to pretend that they are now against data centers. They've always been against data centers. Republicans in Congress just failed to pass their completely toothless bill that would have asked companies to consider paying for higher electricity costs associated with data centers. Do you think all that could help neutralize the issue, even though Trump continues to step on the Republican message on this issue? I do not, John.

I think that having the leader of the Republican Party, the person with the largest megaphone in the party, the person who all of these candidates have lashed themselves to his hip this all time, stand in front of a collection of current and soon-to-be trillionaires from the least trusted industry in the world to basically say that AI will not be regulated and we should have data centers everywhere is not going to be seen as helpful to Republican candidates. That's just my one man's take.

This is another one where, like, I have followed this. I followed all the polling. You see Republicans running ads on it, so you know they must be nervous. But just a little preview this weekend's offline. Oh, please do. I'm sitting down with Aaron Brockovich. Oh.

Who has taken up the cause of data centers because people just, like one day she woke up and people started sending her emails about data centers in their community because they know about her past and what she's done and now she's fought for consumers. And so I've like really been digging into the issue.

Like people are so fucking angry. And like people in rural areas and Republicans and it is like a cross-party line. It's like one of those issues that I don't know if politicians, even the politicians who are appropriately skeptical of the way data centers have been built so far. I don't think anyone truly understands the, like, grassroots rage over this issue.

Yeah, it is, those data centers are a manifestation of everything that people hate about our unfair economy and their fear and anxiety about the future of the economy under AI where they could lose their jobs, not to mention all the worries in the last couple weeks about AI ending the planet. Right. It's like no one really, like what data centers are, there's like an actual, so much of the, you know, what's wrong with our economy is just sort of like out there in the world. It's like, what are you really mad at?

Like, you're mad at a lot of things. But now you have a physical thing that people are trying to put in your community and you have the ability to possibly stop it. And it is, people are incredibly, incredibly fired up about it. And a lot of the pro data center people are like, well, yeah, but, you know, if you do it the right way, they pay taxes and they take care of the electricity bill and there's a way to design them now that they don't use as much water. And like, all that stuff is true.

But some of these people, like, they drop. down a massive data center in your community. And you've got people living nearby who can't sleep at night because it's so noisy and because it's like so bright that like you can see in their houses like the lights coming into their houses and like 2 a.m. Like it's just fuck. And all these deals get done without any kind of local input. And so there's like NDAs. The AI companies come in. They build the data center. Local officials don't do anything about it. And then people just get fucked and have like this gigantic data center next to them instead of like farmland or forest. It's wild.

Anyway. In Michigan, Abdul has a new ad that is the actual real sound of a data center playing for 30 seconds. Oh, that's awesome. Then with words talking about the data centers, all the money that my credit is taken from pro data center interests, et cetera. That's good because you really have to listen to the sound of it. Yeah, it's so loud. Yeah. So again, that time interview was 75 minutes.

What else jumped out at you in that interview? So there are two things here. The first is, why did Donald Trump do an interview with a magazine that? doesn't really exist anymore. Or at least time exists, but the value of time for a politician was being on the cover. And then that cover sat on newsstands at airports, everywhere people saw it. Right? Even they never picked the magazine.

They saw you. The reason Donald Trump did this is he's an old man, but also this interview put him on the cover, which made it put him on his 56 cover, I believe, which makes him now the person who's been on the cover the most. Now, you may say, John, who is number two on that list? it is Richard Nixon, which should tell you the value. Well, that it's not always a positive to be on the cover. It's not like 56 times.

You can be on it for plenty of bad reasons, yes. He's Donald Trump. As Maggie Haberman always has pointed out, he's frozen in the 1980s. He thinks Time Magazine's a big deal. He thinks it's so important. He's on the cover. He's now got the record.

That's all that matters. Yeah. It's so embarrassing. But they're in the interview. there's two things. I mean, one, the whole thing, it is hard to read because it's so fucking incoherent. Like, like reading Trump is so much worse than listening to Trump because it's really hard. You kind of understand his verbal tics when you're listening to him, we've been doing it for so long,

and you kind of, you go along for the weave. But when you have to read it and the direct question is answered and he asked and he's still answering the question from before and you don't really know what he's talking about. But, like, it is, you truly cannot be more detached from reality. than he is in this, where he keeps talking about, obviously he talks about how wonderful the economy, it says his thing, but he, like, insisting the straight can not be more open than it is right now.

He also, he also says, like they ask him, are you going to ramp up bombing after the midterms or Iran? And he said, yeah, possible. I might annihilate Iran because by annihilating them, we've created peace in the world. Yeah.

Yeah. So just think about the logical, I know we've done this at the last times, but the straight is completely open. We've won, but also our next move maybe to annihilate a run. Now, at the end is I think a truly perfect little thing that just shows what Trump's priorities are and what his fears are. He says there, it's kind of hard to understand because it's so incoherent, but I'm pretty sure what he's saying is that he has been bothering Susie Wiles to get her to declare, to find someone who can declare the Oval Office in its current form to be historical landmark.

So the next president can't come in and take down all the gold. is it, first of all, is if that's going to stop them. Because clearly that would have stopped Trump, right? Yes, a man with a passionate adherence to building codes and historical preservation, Donald Trump, who demolished the east wing of the White House. Oh, yeah, so the Iran thing stuck out to me. And then also there was a Wall Street Journal headline today, U.S. sending third aircraft carrier up to 10,000 more troops to the Middle East.

So the whole after the midterms resuming the bombing thing, that's that's real um he says that nominating uh gors he regrets nominating gorsuch cavanaugh and barrett and that he wants loyalty uh in a supreme court justice so if you if you weren't psyched to take the senate back before this there's another reason to work hard to take the senate back because he's you know going to appoint some eileen cannon uh if he gets the shot um says he could use the insurrection act a lot of people had told him have told him he should use it around the midterms around elections, so that's fine. But he's never thought of sitting ice to the plumbing places.

Never thought of that. Never once thought of that, I'm sure not. But the Insurrection Act, a lot of people are telling me you should use it, which there's been reporting that they are. He, of course, floats preemptive pardons for all of his staff. He said, here's his answer to why he changed artificial intelligence to super intelligence, which all of those fucking douchebag AI tech people have gone along with, and now are saying that themselves because they have no shame either.

He said, quote, it's not artificial intelligence because artificial intelligence is like CNN. It's fake. This is truly, truly this. I mean, you can't say anything is the stupidest thing Trump has done, but he's so fixated on this in ways I can't understand. And maybe it's because he likes making these fucking beta corrupt tech oligarchs just adopt his language. You're like, huh, I made him change Lake Ontario to Lake America on Apple Maps the other day. Ha ha, ha. See what I can do here.

Next week is going to be like, Dario, tell him what your name is now. It's Mario now. Yes. Hey, hey, Samantha Altman. Hey, Mark, Mark, Mark. What if you change the name of your company to a technology you would later abandon? Called the Metaver. Oh, wait, you did that already.

No, I did that one. I still laugh about that every single time. And we were all going to be in the Metaverse. Yeah. He also, he says basically like the last 15 minutes of the interview. He is like forcing Time magazine to appreciate like his molding. And he's, he's, he says that the White House is in better condition now than when it was built. And then he said everything I do is ahead of schedule, which is like a normal thing to say about an 18th century building.

Yes. been renovating for over a year. And then, oh, first of all, he also flipped out at the end. While he's talking about the White House and renovations, they said something about, like, have you seen Mitch McConnell lately? And he was like, you haven't asked me one fucking positive question in all this in 75 minutes. So that was, he was really upset by the end there. And then just one more thing on AI.

Have you heard about him using? Grock. Did you see this part? I read this, and I find it to be both disturbing and thoroughly unsurprising. Very disturbing. So Elon introduced him to Grock. And at the time, this is from the Time magazine story about the interview, at the time Trump was ordering missile strikes against Venezuelan boats, he alleged were smuggling drugs into the U.S. He asked Grock how Venezuelans would react if the U.S. captured Maduro, and according to the official who was present, the chatbot responded that Maduro was a repressive and deeply unpopular dictator and that many

Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall. After Trump ordered the mission to seize Maduro the following month, celebrations broke out in the streets. Trump, according to officials, came away thinking Grock was ingenious. We are so cooked. It's so cooked. Not great. So that data center clip we played came from Trump's press avail with America's AI overlords, where they all announced what Trump called a morally binding accord, calling on every lab to, quote, implement robust internal controls to monitor the capabilities and alignment of their models, work with unspecified outside monitors,

and create independent committees of their board members to monitor safety. They very explicitly punted on the consideration of any actual laws or federal regulations. because why would they talk about that with the President of the United States at the White House? Thoughts on this one, substantively and politically? Substantively, I feel worse about AI than I felt before this meeting

because there's, not that we ever thought Trump would take this seriously, but now this is this fake, morally binding document, morally binding because it's not legally binding, is a now, so this sort of fig leaf that will give Republicans an excuse not to respond.

respond to the very real dangerous of AI and the public pressure to regulate I. They can just point to this fake thing and say it. The shit-eating grins of some of the people who don't want AI regulation because they got what they want here, which is just totally fake. We are no safer. In fact, we're less safe than we were before. We're continuing on the same dangerous path. And this was one of those things where everyone lost.

Trump looked like a moron. It was bad for him politically. All of the tech companies, even the ones who had. earned respect by speaking out, you know, first REO from Anthropic and then all the others, even Elon who spoke out about the need for regulation and slowdowns and all the above, all just look ridiculous as they stand there with shit-eating grins on their face as Trump just blabbed about nothing. The country lost. I mean, just the whole thing was so stupid. Also, the entire frontier industry has now publicly conceded that advanced models pose risk

serious enough to require some kind of independent testing and oversight, but we are supposed to trust that this testing and oversight will happen internally on the up and up based only on the word of Donald Trump and these tech billionaires. That's what we got to go on. Donald Trump, who's chief tech, chief AI advisor is someone who wants no regulation in data sex. And who, along with Donald Trump and some of these folks, called the whole, originally called Dario's concerns about safety, a hoax. It was all fake. It's all a hoax, blah, blah, blah.

And now they're saying, oh, yeah, there's serious risks, but we're going to take care of it. There is that funny part in the interview where he tells them about the rogue AI agents breaking into the government. He's like, who did that? Who's rogue? Because we've got to get those people. Who's this rogue guy? Yes. Pod Save America is brought you by Mint Mobile.

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Let them know it was Pod Save America. It's the best way to support the show. So Congress is now out of session until after the midterms, and while the Republican majority left town without accomplishing anything they wanted to, they were able to step on one final rake. Missouri Senator Eric Schmidt, who woke up on Tuesday to an Axios piece, heralding the alleged buzz he's been drawing as a possible 2008 VP pick for J.D. Vance, humiliated himself while questioning former Trump Special Counsel Jack Smith,

during a Senate judiciary hearing. This is a hard one to follow, but Schmidt was in the midst of spinning up a wild conspiracy that back in 2024, Jack Smith had secretly met with Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis in Atlanta based on a series of unvetted text messages that, according to Schmidt, supposedly proved that Smith had attended an Atlanta Hawks NBA game.

But then this happened. Did you go to an NBA game between the, Golden State Warriors in the Atlanta Hawks on February 3rd, 2024. What city would that be in? Atlanta. No. What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warrior Hawks game on February 3rd, 2024, the day after Willison Wade

announced their affair? I recall going to a University of Maryland basketball game where Caitlin Clark was playing. Right around that time, and the Marshal Service was there with me, you could check if that was the exact date. It was Maryland playing Iowa. Could it then be that University of Iowa is the Hawkeyes? Did you have the team's wrong, sir? I fucking love Amy Klobuchar.

You have to wash the look on her face where she knows that she is just fucking drilled Eric Schmidt and called him out to be such a dumb ass. It's so good. The whole thing is so good. Well, so, you know, afterwards Schmidt, of course, acknowledge his mistake and was deeply apologetic in an interview with TMZ. Let's look. So no heads are going to roll up this sort of thing. Like, whoever gave you that information isn't like their jobs in jeopardy?

No, I asked him a question. Like, were you in Atlanta? He answered no. He's lied before. So I guess we'll take him in his word that he wasn't in Atlanta? I don't know. So that wasn't like an embarrassing moment or something from where you're standing? No, ask questions. I asked questions and we'll see if he answers truthfully. He's not answered truthfully before. So people can decide if that's the truth or not. I suppose that the Department of Justice can ask him really, where? where he was that night. I don't know. I asked him. The Hawkeye game. What's that? The Hawkeye game, wasn't he? That's what he says. Oh, no, no. We can see in the audience that he's in that

section. That's what he said. That's great. Well, then he was at the Hawking game. I just asked who he was in Atlanta. That's great. That's great. That's great. Apparently, Schmidt's general counsel, who was the guy holding up the poster board with the text messages on it, was supposed to be moving over to the White House to take a role in the staff secretary's office. But Politico is now reporting the job offer is in danger of being rescinded. The thing is even dumber than it seems. Yeah. Because I watched this clip pretty cold because all I saw was someone who would just quote tweeted as holy shit.

And so I did know any, like I got to experience the whole journey, like the game, the Hawkeyes, Eric Schmidt being embarrassed, Eric Schmidt calling me a dirtbag, watching Jack Smith. figure it out in real time. It was beautiful. But then you realize, like, yes, he fucked this up. But even if he had to secretly discover that he'd been to an NBA game, I thought there was going to be some evidence that Fannie Willis was at the game. But he's just proving that he was trying to prove he was in the same city,

one of America's largest cities and also an airport that you must fly through to go on almost anywhere in the South. He's just proving that he was in a city that Fannie Willis lives in. I don't care if he had dinner with Fonnie Willis. What the fuck would that prove? What are you trying to, like, what is the allegation here that she brought a case against Donald Trump that was very public, that she tried in a court of law and that he also brought a case against Donald Trump? Like, are you trying, like, what, the allegation of like random collusion was stupid in the first place. Also, have you, I am now bought into the theory that it wasn't actually a mix up between the Hawkeyes and.

the Atlanta Hawks. Oh, interesting. Because nowhere on that poster board did it say, like, that they were, the text messages said nothing about the Hawks game. It just said a game. What they, what Schmidt staff is saying is the only men's basketball game that was scheduled for that night was the Atlanta Hawks game. And so the fact that they knew he went to a game, no one thought that it could have been a women's basketball game. Or a men's college basketball game. Apparently there was no men's basketball. It's impossible. That is not true.

That is not true. There was a men's college basketball game on every single night somewhere in the country. People were saying that there was no men. At that time, because I guess they had the time or the game. They said that at that time, for some reason, there was no men's or NBA, men's college or NBA game scheduled and that the women's Hawkeyes game in Maryland was the only one that was scheduled. And so he went to see Caitlin Clark. I mean, it's just, it's so fucking.

stupid. I do think that like, I mean, it was funny to watch and to see him be humiliated, but I was also like sort of angry that he isn't humiliated and he's not humiliated on the right. Like, have you seen any of the right wing media cover this? No. So some of them are just ignoring it, which is like what you'd expect from them. He appeared on Turning Point USA on the old Charlie Kirk podcast afterwards. and the exchanges on this podcast are like insane. So like the interviewer is like, you know, you called him out, by the way.

You caught him on this NBA game in Atlanta. And then Schmidt's like, yeah, I did. He's like, got to give you your flowers. You know, you had text messages from his team confirming he was going to the Hawks game. He sat there acting dumbfounded, completely clueless. And then and then Schmidt was like, yeah, well, he later claimed it was another game. but here's my thing. My job's to ask questions.

So they just acted, not like it just didn't happen, but that the whole thing did happen, but that he got him. Yeah. I mean, he looks like a moron. He knows it looks like a moron.

You can see it in his face in that TMZ clip. Like, he can say all the words he wants. He can bless or he can pretend. He knows he looks like a fucking jackass in front of the world. And his,

like his politic, that ends his political career, but this will follow him for a very long time. I hope so. I hope so. The Axios piece I mentioned claims that Vance C. Schmidt as, quote, trustworthy, intelligent, articulate, and a deft political operator. Who do we think, who do we think gave Jim Vanda High that idea for that Axios piece?

Because it was very short, and all it said is we hear, we hear that Vance sees him this way. Yeah, that whole, that is a very very important. very interesting story because it's like it had Jim Van de Huy's byline, right? Yep. And there was no, it didn't say like, it didn't say someone close to the vice president, someone close to Schmidt, it just said, we here. Yeah, that was very, that was the sourcing. Interesting.

And you know what? If you're going to publish rumors like that, I'm glad they blew up in your face the next day. Not even the next day, three hours later. Three hours later. Yeah. Does Vance think that this fucking moron is a deaf political operator? Probably does. He probably does.

Reality check. He's a fucking moron. Yes. Here's why it matters. He sucks. Speaking of being intelligent and articulate, on Wednesday, Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, delivered what he called his State of the Force address, which, to be clear, is not a thing. Yes, very important to understand.

That's not a thing. Hegzeth announced a new drone command and office of religious affairs reporting directly to him, so that's wonderful, a 20% reduction in generals and admirals, and something called Project Meridian, which is an effort to study the future of warfare that will be led by next generation leaders like Elon Musk and Newt Gingrich. When I think next generation, I think, a guy who led the Republicans to the 1994 majority. Future of Warfare.

Got to get Newt Gingrich on that. All that was pretty tame, though, all those announcement compared to what he actually said in the speech. Let's listen. No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors. The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in with testosterone testing on top.

Our so-called press makes Iranian state media look reasonable. A free press is, of course, important, but partisan activism that intentionally smears the troops and the historic mission that they're undertaking is fundamentally anti-American. It's sick. It's a national betrayal. It's treason.

Our department is, you might say, putting on the full armor of God. Because while we wage physical war, we all know the real battle is spiritual. God is good. Evil is not. Got him there. And America's military must understand the difference. Send me to fight the red coats. Send me to fight the communists.

Send me to fight the Islamists. Send me. Pete Higgs-F. Evil's not good. You heard it here first. God is good, evil, not good. What'd you think of royd rage Dr. Seuss there? What's he doing?

Like, what is... What is he doing? Who writes this stuff? Why does he think that this, like, weird fucking, like, roided out, beat poetry is, like, something that people are going to like? I don't... Like, no trannies, no fatties, no weirdos. No beards.

No beards. No beards. Take that, Jane. No beardos. No beardos. No weirdos. First shot of the 2028 Republican primary. No beardos.

No weirdos except the guy I tapped to run Project Meridian, Elon Musk. I mean, it's such like he is a walking Saturday live skit. Like at all times. Yeah, I know. I was thinking I'm like, this will be a good, Colin Jost will have a good time with us this weekend. They'll probably have to do the Schmidt thing too. Maybe they'll do both. It's just a lot of good material.

Yeah, it's a big week, big week for sketch comedy. Yeah, it's hard to, it's hard to even, like, mock that. It's just like, you just play it. That guy is, I cannot fucking believe he is in charge of the United States military. John, he is in charge of the United States military, and we are stuck in a quagmire in the Middle East that was poorly planned and poorly executed. And he's, like, bragging about, like, no weirdos, no trans, no this, no that. And it's like, you're losing a fucking war, dude. Yeah.

You are in charge of the least popular war since Vietnam. And he's successful. It's like unbelievable. Yeah, just. Congrats, Pete Heggseth. What do you think? Hegsth, America, John. Hegsth, 2028?

I mean, maybe. Hegsteth, Schmidt. The content gods are not that benevolent. No, I think that's right. All right, Dan. When we come back, we'll hear Dan's interview with Kansas. the Senate candidate, Reverend Adam Hamilton. Pots of America is brought to you by Cook Unity.

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make fresh, small-batched meals just for you. Go to cookunity.com slash crooked or enter code crooked before checkout to get 50% off your first order. That's 50% off your first order by using code crooked or going to cookunity.com slash crooked. U.S. voters abroad. Have you got your ballot yet? All states are now sending ballots to overseas voters. So if you want to vote this year, you should request your ballot right away.

Go to vote from abroad.org and click request my ballot, ask to receive it by email. Questions? Ask our support team directly. Don't miss this gins to shape the future. Don't delay. Vote fromabroad.org. Join me now is Adam Hamilton, the Democratic Senate nominee in Kansas. Welcome to Potsave America. Hey, Dan. Thank you for having me.

Very excited to have you. I've been wanting to have this conversation for a long time. I was in Chicago for the library opening. And Kathleen Sibelius, the former governor of your state and the Secretary of HHS for Barack Obama pulled me aside and said, you have to check out our new candidate in Kansas. And I was like, Kansas. Come on, Kathleen. And she's like, no, trust me. And here we are a month before the election. Your race is now on the map.

We're talking. And so I'm excited to get through all of this with you. But I want to start with, you know, you have an unusual background for a Democratic candidate these days. You were, you know, founded a large megachurch in Kansas. You were a former Republican. How did you find yourself running for Senate as a Democrat in 2026? Yeah, well, I've been a Democrat. I've been an independent.

I've been a Republican. I was a Republican a lot of the time, but I was a Democrat during Obama's administration. I actually preached his second inauguration at the National Cathedral the day after the inauguration. I served in his administration for two years, the last two years of his second term. It was a presidential appointment working for how faith communities and the administration could work together to solve problems in communities, and I was really honored to do that. So, you know, I've been all of those things, but yes, I am a United Methodist pastor. I started a church 36 years ago with my wife and I and our two kids. And we started from scratch.

And today we're a church of 24,000 people. We have about 25,000 people on a given Sunday in person, online and on TV. And on the High Holy Days, you know, our Easter and Christmas for us, we'll have 100,000 plus people who join us for worship. And I'm very proud to be a Democrat and believe that the things that Democrats, you know, at our best that we believe, aligned very closely with things that were important to Jesus and what we find in the Gospels. How have you found sort of the day-to-day grind of politics and running for office

and how that differs from your day job? Yeah. So this is now my day job. For the last four months, I've taken a leave of absence from my church. I still show up and do a few little things and I preached once during that time. I really have loved this. I was teaching a conference of a thousand pastors and church leaders last night and, you know, speaking to them. And I just, I really love this because for 38 years as a pastor, 36 years where I'm at

and two years before that, you know, I have, I work in the church and I send people to go out into the world. And of course, I, you know, go out in the world too. But I, I send it their day-to-day jobs to live out their faith. And now I'm that guy who's going to my day-to-day job that's not in the church, but it's actually meeting with people, caring for people. And I've actually found it not that different, you know, and being a good pastor is about listening. It's about caring for people. It's about noticing, paying attention, trying to encourage and inspire people. And as a candidate, that's what I'm trying to do. I, you know, every group I meet with, I'm, you know, I'm looking to, I try to, you know, touch every person, connect with every person. I try to listen to stories.

And I try to figure out how can I inspire and encourage them. And, you know, it's interesting, I carry. So, you know, here's my daily routine just in the mornings. And it always has been, I wake up in the morning. I get on my knees first thing. And I just lift up my hands, you know, and I'd say, God, here I am. Please use me to bless other people to help them. encourage them, help me to pay attention. And I've always prayed, help me to be, Jesus said in the sermon on the mouth, you were the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

Salt is meant to make everything better that it touches, you know, and that's kind of how I see what I'm trying to do every day. And I carry a piece of a rock salt with me in my pocket wherever I go. And just, you know, I reach in my pocket, you know, and I just say, God, please help me to be a blessing to the people I talk to. And that's what I'm still doing on the campaign trail. So it has been a lot of fun. I've met people I would have never met otherwise.

get to do things like this with you and have conversations I might have never had otherwise. And what's really fun is a lot of the people I talk to, you know, not people who go to church. There are people who have been sometimes alienated or hurt by church people. And I get to have a chance to have meaningful conversations with them. So it's actually been really rewarding. It's been a pretty terrific thing. That's great. That's actually really great to hear.

Not the actually the answer I expect. Because a lot of times you talk to people who have done all these other things in their life. And the day-to-day of campaigning is sort of drudgery. to that, right? Like, it's a meet, they want to serve, right? They want to help people, but this is the means to an end. The fact you're finding joy in it is really fascinating. It is hard, though. I will tell you, if I've known, it's the kind of things like having children. Dan, do you have kids? I do. I have two kids. Yeah, if your parents told you how hard being a parent was, you might never have them. Right, right, right. You're glad you did when you do it. And that's a little

how I feel about campaigning. Like, you know, there are many weeks. You'll work seven days a week. I mean, you know, 75 hours a week, 80 hours a week as a candidate. And I've been used to 36 years of working six days a week and 60 hours a week, but I've not been working 75 hours a week. And I'm, you know, I'm 62 years old. It's like, I'm exhausted when I go to bed at night. But also, I'm grateful that I get to do it. You had, there was this clip of yours from a recent event that went viral where you were sort of taking

on the question whether you were liberal or conservative, and you said, yes, both. Talk to me about what? you meant by that. Yeah. Well, people ask me that all the time. You know, there's, I can't figure you out. Are you liberal or conservative? And my answer is yes, of course.

And when they say, no, no, which one is it? And I'm like, I don't think you have to pick. To be liberal means to be generous of spirit. It means to be open minded. It means to be willing to reform or change how you see things. And I think we all need to be liberal in that sense. And then on the other side, to be conservative is conserving values, things, traditions, things that are important.

And I think, our best, we conserve and we're liberal. We are willing to reform and see things with new eyes, willing to be generous of spirit and generous with our resources, and at the same time to conserve things that are important and should be conserved. And I tell people, everybody, Dan, you, me, we're all liberal compared to somebody else and we're all conservative compared to somebody else. There are people further to the left than you are, and there are people to the right of where you are, and the same is true with me. And I think if you can actually, you know, if we can look at liberals and conservatives, you know, whatever we mean by those terms, and we can listen and try to bring

people together. We might actually be better off than if we just go to our corners or our sides and fail to listen to the people on the other side. And so that's something I'm running on is, look, I've spent 36 years pastoring a church where 35% of our members are Republicans, 35% are Democrats, 30% are independents, and we're better together than we are apart. You know, we might argue and disagree about some things, but I always find when I'm talking with somebody who is a reasonable and thoughtful person who's more conservative than I am, I'm going to be, my position is going to be better, my understanding of things are going to be better because I listen to them and not just the people in my own, you know, in my own circles.

And I've come to know that, you know, I'm called to love people wherever they are on that, on that spectrum. We can strongly disagree with each other, but not hate each other. And I think we need more of that today in our country. We need more people coming together saying, look, we have more in common than what divides us. And let's figure out how we can work better together rather than what our politicians tend to do, and that is to divide us, to polarize us. You're on MS now recently, and you said that you pledged to serve only two terms, and that you were not going to Washington to hold trials on, you know, hold Trump's trials for Trump. Talk to me about the decision to self-term limit and what it is, like, what are you trying to

avoid by not doing Trump trials? Like, what are you going for? Sure. So first of all, when it comes to term limits, I believe that we should have a maximum of three term. Well, I'm going to say 18 years. So if you're in the Senate, that's three term limits. And to me, that's a combination of service in the House and the Senate. I think there needs to be age limits. And I think 80s seems like a good age. And I'll say that we've we've all known people who are in their 80s who are sharp as attack. But we also know that we have seen people wheeled into Congress in their wheelchairs and their aides trying to tell them how to vote. And that's the, not serving the American people. That is just not okay. We've got to do better. And as a pastor, my denomination requires me to retire at age 72. So I think, you know, setting 80 is a pretty generous limit. Like, it's time to have new blood and fresh ideas coming in to the Senate. So I, and I think that's true, you know, it's true in the White House in terms of an age limit. It's true on the Supreme Court and also terms. I think 18 years would be a pretty good maximum in the Supreme Court. So, and when it comes to, what was your second question? I don't remember what you said.

You talked about trials for Trump. Oh, yeah, yeah. You're going to watch him for trials for Trump. So, you know, clearly if I'm in the Senate and articles of impeachment are passed in the House, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to consider those just like anybody else. I mean, that's your job. But the idea that we should spend the next, so I'm looking at this and thinking, I've got six years if I get elected. I have six years. I don't want to spend the next two years, you know, focused on impeachment and, you know, and what I want to focus on, one of the things I want to focus on, one of the things I want to focus on,

is solving the problems we're facing right now in our country, the problems that are hurting for Kansas farmers and small businesses and school teachers. And we got some really urgent things going on. And we got some really big issues related to Social Security and healthcare and immigration reform and the national debt. If I spent the next two years focused on impeachment trials and not focused on solving those big problems, what a waste of my time. Somebody else could have done that. I really want to solve some big problems.

So that's the first thing. And the second is that I think all we're going to do. So let's put up guardrails to make sure that the abuses that have happened in the last two years don't happen again. There are things that have happened that are corrupt. There are things that have happened that are not American. They're not consistent with our Constitution or our values. Let's make sure that we do everything we can so that this is not repeated. But I think if we go in and think, this is, look, if we take the House and the Senate or one or both of those and we're going to start having these trials,

I think what that's going to mean is we're going to further divide America as opposed to trying to figure out how do we solve for the future? I understand the feelings behind wanting to do those things. I just think for me, you know, and I'll, and I'll do them if that's what comes before the Senate. But I want to focus on how do we heal our country and how do we put up guardrails to make sure that the abuses that have happened don't happen in the future. So it has been nearly a hundred years since Kansas has elected a Democrat to the Senate. 1932, I believe, was the last time. You know, Kansas is obviously a very Republican state. It's a state that Trump won by a lot. By all measures, it seems like you have made this race quite competitive.

I keep seeing the electoral analysis move it to, you know, from safe Republican to lean Republican. I see polls that show it close. Our own votes of America has added your race into our Senate raising fund, and we try to only focus on the races where Democrats have a real shot to win. Why is Kansas on the map this cycle in a way? It hasn't been for many, many, many decades. Yeah. Well, and I'll say one of those ratings, now has this as a toss-up. So I'm very glad for that. And if you travel across Kansas, you see this.

There are people who voted for Trump three times. And they never really liked, you know, his, you know, his many things about him, but they thought, you know, well, he was a Republican or they thought he was standing up for them in certain ways. But there are people who are saying now the, the decisions that are made, the chaos, the erratic nature of things, like the tariffs, 55 tariff changes, or maybe 56 now in the last year and a half. It hurts farmers. It hurts ranchers. It hurts small. It hurts, all businesses and large businesses. It hurts jobs. I mean, as an example, you know, a couple of weeks ago when the president announced that Bombardier makes crummy airplanes and we shouldn't sell them in America. And he imposed a 50% tariff on certain Canadian goods. Well, Bombardier's U.S. headquarters are in

Kansas. We have 1,500 employees, you know, good paying jobs. And there are people now wondering, what's going to be the future of my job when the president calls our employer a crummy airplane builder. I mean, that's just not okay with people. And, you know, that's, you know, that's, you know, That's one example, but there are so many others where people are just saying, this is hurting us, and we're tired of being hurt and disappointed. You know, a president who's not, who's betrayed them. I think they feel betrayed by the president. They certainly feel betrayed by Roger Marshall, their senator.

So it's one thing if your president's going to do certain things, you know he's erratic, he's chaotic. You don't know what he's going to do. But you expect your senator to stand up and say, Mr. President, this is hurting my people. Stop. But our president or our sitting senator seems to act like the, you know, the lap, you know, the lap, of the president. He seems to he's a yes, man. He says whatever the president wants him to say. He comes back and tries to make the case. You know, tariffs are working, but the people in Kansas know they're

not, you know, or the war. We need the war, but they know they're paying record prices for diesel and have spent $700 million more on fuel this year than they did last year. Or that 63,000 people no longer have health insurance that had it a year and a half ago. One in 50 people in Kansas lost their health insurance this last year. I mean, people feel it and they know, and they say, we need a senator who's going to speak up. They're not hired by the White House to be their spokesperson. They were hired by us to be our champion. And so that's why, and I'll tell you, when I travel across the state, Dan, it's really interesting to hear the number of Republicans come up to me and say, I've never voted for a Democrat before, but I'm voting for you. We have two former Republican governors who are

endorsing me. We have a former leader of the Kansas Senate who is endorsing me. a former leader of the Kansas House endorsing me. I mean, these are Republicans, these are all Republicans who are saying we have to go, you know, Adam Hamilton's values and his character align more closely with ours than Roger Marshall, the Republican sitting senator. You know, obviously, you know, you mentioned a whole bunch of things that Trump has specifically done, costs in general, whether it's health care costs, fuel costs, housing costs are up and hurting people. If you're elected to the Senate, there's some specific things that you want to do some policy solutions that you're going to focus on that will actually help address costs for Kansas,

Kansas residents, Kansas farmers, et cetera? Yeah, well, immediately. So there's certain things we have to do immediately. And I think among those are we need to wind down the war in Iran. We need to wind it down quickly. And I don't know exactly what that looks like yet. I just know that we got to work on this. Unfortunately, in the State Department, many of our, you know, our best statespeople were, you know, dismissed from the State Department. So, you know, this is a problem, you know, the President has inflicted on us, but we got to figure that out. We got to get out of the war as quickly as possible. It's going to take months once we get out to see the fuel prices come down, fertilizer prices come down, but sooner, not later. I think when it comes to health care, we need to look at how

do we reinstate people who are taken off of Medicaid? And by the way, it's interesting. The Republican Senate, Roger Marshall and others, voted to eliminate a trillion dollars from Medicaid over the next 10 years. The president offered to... bribe Americans, $5,000 a person if they would elect Republicans, it was going to cost a trillion dollars. And I thought, where are you getting that trillion dollars? I mean, you cut a trillion dollars from the budget off the backs of poor people. And now you're going to take a trillion dollars to buy people's votes in the United States. I mean, this is just, this is immoral, it's indecent. It's laughable, except for it's not, really. It's just sad. And so I'm going to say,

we're going to focus on those things that we have to reverse and fix immediately. Then we got to Oh, and then I would say when it comes to the tariffs, there's a bill, a piece of legislation that's out there that says, because there's a place for tariffs, but there's a piece of legislation that says before the president can impose a tariff, the president needs to make the case to Congress. This is why we need it. It can't just be because he's irritated with another country at two in the morning. It's got to be, here's the need. Here's why it matters. Here's the cost to American consumers. And here's the ultimate impact of it. And that's Congress clawing back some authority that's slowly given to the president over a period of. years. So that's the starting point. Then you go into, we got to work Republicans and Democrats to solve the really big problems. And so, you know, one of the big topics in this race has been your opponent, Roger Marshall's conduct in his previous job as a, and when he was in medical practice, there was a New York Times story that showed that he had sued hundreds and hundreds of his patients. Your campaign is running a truly excellent, if I do say so myself, in devastating political ad about a woman who was arrested because she did not pay a very small,

bill to Roger Marshall. Can you talk a little bit about how that's playing in the race, what it says about Marshall and how voters are maybe consuming some of this information now that it's out there? Yeah. You know, it's interesting. Before this, there weren't a whole lot of people who were, you know, largely passionate for Roger Marshall. I've not met very many.

You know, he just happened to be the Republican senator in the race and we always elect Republicans and so we elected him. But this has been, I mean, this is a very serious issue. And a lot of folks have felt before, like he doesn't listen. He doesn't seem to care about the people. people of Kansas. But when they heard that he'd sued 700 of his former patients for, you know, for bills ranging from $100 to several thousand dollars. And, you know, it's not that he turned it over to a collection agency and the collection, it's his own personal lawyers who sued. And then

had 81 of them arrested. And then there were something like somewhere between, well, at least at least 10, probably more than that, who spent time in jail for unpaid medical debt. And or actually, the charges were, you know, something other than that, but they were related to his, what he was doing. You look at this and just go, I mean, I've talked to a dozen doctors who've said, this is not normal. This is not how we do it. You know, when we have somebody who's poor and they're struggling, we're going to figure out, you know, how to either work with them or we're going to write off the, right off the debt. We're not going to have them arrested. And this story of Misha, who you're mentioning, she reached out to our campaign. And she described, you know, the fact that

she was, she missed a $50 payment. And she, they, they, uh, they, uh, they, uh, they came to arrest her for, I don't know, not appearing in court or whatever it was, but it was all tied to the same thing. And, you know, she's asking, she's eight months pregnant, she's saying, please don't handcuff me in front of my children. Like, people hear this and they just go, this, everybody across the state of Kansas, if you hear it, you just got to go, that's not okay. That's not, that's not normal. But here's the part that really gets me. So people can judge that as however they want. I'm going to say, you go to Washington, D.C., and then you vote to cut out 63,000 Kansas off of health insurance, not renewing the subsidies, taking people off of Medicaid.

I mean, how do you justify that? Now you're taking people who were at least had some kind of insurance they could pay you, and you've taken away insurance from them. And then when they can't pay their doctors, because they're still going to go to have a baby or go to the emergency room, now are you going to suggest that the doctors sue them and, you know, have them arrested if they don't pay? I mean, this is just messed up. Last question for you here. And really, as always It's always our last question. It's always the hardest. Don't be prepared.

For people who, you know, you're being outspent, Republicans are putting money in here. The fact that Roger Marshall is running ads against you in September and October, tells you that he really believes this is real race. If you're going to win, you need help. If folks have been inspired by this conversation, they want to flip the Kansas presidency for the first time in nearly 100 years, how can they help your campaign?

I love you for asking that. Nobody asks that question. Here's the thing. I've staffed a lot of politicians in my life, and I've watched them try to awkwardly jam in the website for donations into their answers. And so it is my duty to them to make them not have to do that. So I'm here to help. My comms person is across me going, yes, yes. Yeah, they're always told me, please get the website in there. Yes, yes. It's so hard to do. Yes. I love you for asking.

So it's Hamiltonforcansas.com. All spelled out, Hamilton for Kansas one word.com. And, you know, people can, I love it when people reach out to friends who live in Kansas to say, I heard this guy, you know, pass on the podcast to other people. Send them the link to have them watch it if you know somebody in Kansas. We need, you know, so if you happen to live in Kansas, volunteer. We need volunteers. But we also need people who will financially contribute. So we have a chance to win this race.

But I was told this last week that the Republican Party is looking at pouring $12 million into this race. Roger Marshall, so just to give you some idea, since the first of the year, I'm not sure, but I'm guessing he's raised about $4 million. And since the first year, we've outraised him like three to one. And Ann, we only got in, you know, five months ago. But we've outraised him, you know, like three to one. His donors, just to give you some idea, his donors, the last quarter that was reported, he had 27 named donors from Kansas who donated to his campaign. Everything else came from corporate PAC money and people.

He had more people in Florida donating than he had in Kansas. We have thousands and thousands and thousands of people from every county in Kansas, but we still need help from people all across the country. And if people believe that having another Democrat, a decent Democrat who cares deeply about people and who will work across the aisle, if they think that's needed in the Senate, we have a chance to win, I need their help. And I'll just say this. I love this idea.

I mention this everywhere I go, if you can imagine on November 3rd, and you're watching the news, and you're seeing what's going on, and you see at 10 o'clock at night, you know, Kansas is elected a Democrat for the first time in 94 years. I mean, that's a history-making event.

And I'd love for your listeners and viewers to be able to say, I help make that happen. That's my guy and help make it happen. So if you can, please help us. We'd love all the help we can get. And Dan, I really appreciate what you guys do and grateful for you having me on today. Well, absolutely. Thank you for joining us.

Good luck down the stretch. We'll be rooting for you. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Thank you. That's our show for today. Thanks to Adam Hamilton for coming on. Love it. We'll be back in the feet on Sunday with a conversation with best-selling writer, Michael Lewis. Have a good weekend. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Cricket Media production.

Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Michael Goldsmith, with Reed, Erlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Heffcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte, Candace, Kenny Moffat, Adam Lippert, Joseph Dutra, Desmond Taylor, Dan Farrow. David Tolls, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.