Pod Save America - Bernie vs. the Robots

Episode Date: May 3, 2026

Lovett sits down with Senator Bernie Sanders about what we need to do rein in AI, getting super PAC money out of Democratic politics, and building support for stopping weapons sales to Israel. Then, Lovett speaks with Puck Political writer Peter Hamby to talk about his reporting on the embrace of political violence and conspiracy theories in certain corners of the political left, the big news in the Maine Senate race and the latest in the California governor's race.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast, episode title, and episode date.

Welcome to Ponce of America. I'm John Lovett. Today on the show, I had a great conversation with Senator Bernie Sanders on AI Super PACs and his journey from a kid on a kibbutz in Israel to a senator trying to prevent weapon sales to Netanyahu and trying to save humanity from robots at the same time. And then you'll hear my conversation with our friend and journalist Peter Hamby, founding partner of Puck News and host of the Powers That Be podcast on the Democratic shakeup in Maine, the governor's race in California, some news on the DNC, and how the left ought to confront political violence. But first, here's my conversation with Bernie. Senator Sanders, welcome back to the show. Good to be with you, John. So I watched your panel

last night on the existential risks of AI. You had researchers from North America and China. It was a bracing experience. Just for people that may not have caught at MIT's Max, Tegmark says, will be like animals in a zoo. And then another researcher named David Kruger says, zoos, most of us won't be so lucky. What did you take away? Why did you want to do this conversation? Thank you, John, for asking me about that. I am not a tech guy.

But I'm sitting around and I read and I listen to people. And it is clear to me that AI and robotics are the most revolutionary technologies in the history of humanity. They are going to transform life for every man, woman, and child, certainly in our country and around the world. How the hell do we ignore that reality? Why is there not massive discussion about the impact of AI? For example, all right?

Who is pushing AI right now? Who's pushing AI in robotics? The richest guys in the world. Basque, Bezos, Ellison, Zuckerberg. What do you think they want? Do you think they're staying up nights worrying about your family? I doubt it. Number two, there are economists all over the place who estimate me.

No one knows exactly. Tens and tens of millions of jobs are going to be lost. What happens to the people who lose the jobs? They'll automatically go out and get another job. That does not appear to be the case. We got kids hooked to AI bots for emotional support, becoming increasingly isolated. Should we worry about that?

Yeah, we should. Politically, I won't get to what it will mean to our democracy and politics in America. It's a big deal. But what last night was about is having very knowledgeable people talking about the real possibility that AI will escape human control, become independent, do its own thing, and the likelihood that that could lead to catastrophic implications, including extinction. So my job is not the fearmonger, but it says, wait a second, you got Nobel Prize winners. Jeffrey Hinton saying this, do you think we might want to take a deep breath and think about where we go from here?

Yeah, there's this strange fatalism about it. And I think about when we've gone through other big technological changes, you know, it wasn't assembly lines that put kids in factories. It was people that own the factories that made that decision. It's not, you know, it's not the technology itself that's being unleashed and hitting our kids and affecting our, you know, our media. It's the people who own those tools that are distributing them and profiting off of them. How do we, you know, there's this way in which this technology, it seems like magic and we kind of lose our senses. And one of the things that came out of your discussion last night is treat these, treat what this company's product like you would, a Toyota or a toy or a tortilla chip. So, like, what kind of regulations would you like to see if we sort of got our heads out of our asses here?

What Tegmore, Dr. Tegmar from MIT said, look, you go to a sandwich shop, right? You know what? It is regulated. The health department comes in to make sure the food you're eating is edible and a non-shop is clean. And yet the AI guys want to go forward with this revolutionary technology with no regulation. there is an enormous amount of work that has to be done. But John, the first thing that has to be done is that we have got to say, slow it down. Let us get our hands around it.

The AI safety element about AI becoming independent of human control, you, what do you do? Clearly, you bring people from all over the world last night. As you know, we had scientists from China. Bring them together to sit down, to advise governments around the world about how we slow this down so we don't lose control of the technology. In terms of economics, if millions and millions of workers lose their jobs, what do we do? Well, you know what?

Extending unemployment ain't going to be good enough. We're going to have to be thinking about a whole new social contract, et cetera, et cetera. This is all that I'm saying here, this is a big, big deal. Congress is way behind where it should be. We need some serious discussions. So you had Chinese voices as part of this conversation. Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, posted a criticism of you saying that the real threat is letting any nation other than the United States set the global standard. What's your response to that criticism?

Right. Mr. Bessett, the billionaire and the Trump administration billionaires working with Elon Musk, Mark Zuggabich, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, and a host of other billionaires who dominate AI. They're not a threat. Hey, we should all trust them because they have the betterment of the American people at all. Well, forgive me, I don't accept that at all. So I think in China, they are smart enough. Look, this gets me thinking about the nuclear arms race.

You know, you had a conservative Republican named Ronald Reagan sitting down, with Gorbachev, then the premier of the Soviet Union, talking about the reality that a nuclear war would not be good for the Soviet Union, not be good for the United States. They work together on a nuclear arms treaty. You know what? The world, human race losing control over AI ain't good for China, ain't good for America, ain't good for the world.

Of course, we've got to work together. So as part of this you put forward, you propose a moratorium on new data centers until we have these kinds of safeguards in place. Your colleague, Senator Mark Warner, who's a pretty, I think, a mild-mannered guy called it idiocy because he's worried about losing this race to China. And I don't think he is, you know, he's not, he's not Trump. He's not Zuckerberg. What do you say to that criticism for people who both agree.

there might need to, that there do need to be safeguards, but also as much as we worry about these billionaires having so much sway, it would be worse if control of this technology by China surpassed us. This is not a race with China. This is a question of scientists sitting down and figuring out how we can prevent this technology from escaping human control with calamitous impact. I cannot believe that any sane person would be against that. That's my view. So this is not, you know, we got to compete with China all you want, but we have got to do everything that we can to prevent what some scientists think is a very dangerous situation. Yeah, I guess I agree with that, but it's almost like these are two separate questions, right? Because, because like, because

if we were to slow down and China didn't slow down, it's not preventing this, this, this is The moratorium is not the end. All that I want from the moratorium is to give up. You know, maybe I'm crazy, John. Maybe I am. I know one of two people have told me about, including my wife. If scientists who are Nobel Prize winners, guys who've gotten the Turing Award, which is the major award given to people in computer science, if they say to you that humanity is in danger,

do you think you might want to do something about it? Or am I missing something? You tell me. So, no, the percentages are also someone's, oh, there's only a 10% chance humanity is destroyed. It's like, well, I don't like those odds. Only a 10% chance. John. I know.

I'm with you. This is the point. The point is that what, again, either I'm nuts or a 10% chance. Yeah, that the whole world might be destroyed. Yeah, I think we might want to get to work to prevent that. And this is preventable, by the way. It's nothing to do with competing against China. It's coming together to prevent what might be a catastrophe.

Right. It seems like that, like, you know, you mentioned this in the past and last night, you know, President Trump and the leader of China-Gee, they're going to meet and AI may be part of what they're discussing. What do you hope would come out of that kind of conversation? I was glad to see that. The Wall Street Journal reported that that will be part of their agenda. And that's a very positive thing.

And I hope that they sit down and say, look, your scientists in the United States, scientists in China agree. This is a danger. It works to nobody's advantage to allow this to happen. Okay? Not China, not the United States. Bring together the scientific community to develop some protocols to prevent that. You don't want a technology that can escape human control. Can we bring that about?

We can. But you're going to have to have people from China, the United States, other countries. countries working on something, which would eventually then, I suspect, and a little bit over my head here, you know, becomes something like an international treaty. Right. And then in between that, right, there's, so there's the kind of broader threat of this technology escaping our control, but in between there and now there's the ways in which kids are getting sucked into this technology.

There's the ways it's affecting our media. And it does seem as though the industry would benefit from a set of regulations. that allow them to compete on non-evil aspects of the technology and continue to develop and grow and improve the technology in ways that are beneficial to people rather than these sort of toxic and parasitic implications. Let's get to another issue and to ask, you know, this is not because members of Congress are dumb or don't know what's going on. This has a lot to do with the power and the financial resources of AI and their super PACs. We're talking about many, many, many hundreds of millions of dollars coming into the midterm elections right now.

So you're running for Congress, okay? And you got a kid and you're worried about the impact of AI. You think you're going to stand up and say, well, you know, I think we need some sensible regulations here. And then the AI industry says, really? Well, guess what? I got a $10 million check going in to negative ads against you. Which takes us, John, from the dangers of AI to a corrupt campaign. finance system, which is undermining American democracy. So I talked to Senator Chris Murphy

about this recently, and he's worried about this, too, that Democrats won't draw an effective contrast with Republicans. You know, Trump and the Republicans, they forget sensible regulations. They even try to prevent state regulations. So they tried to take us in the other direction, but what Murphy was worried about is because there's this sort of Damocles of all this cash hanging over Democrats' heads that people will not take a strong stand. What do you say to Democrats who worried about that? Well, Chris, what Chris told you was right. But it speaks to the need for us to be honest about where we are is a country.

Look, all of us are concerned about Trump's pathological lying, his attempt to undermine democracy in so many ways. I think every Democrat, I'm an independent caucuses with the Democrats. But there is another threat to democracy, and that is the power of big money over the political process. And that is why I circulated a letter with a number of my colleagues saying that while we work, what we must work, to overturn this disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which allows billionaires that spends as much money as they want to buy elections, at the very least Democrats, within Democratic primaries, their presidential primaries, as well as congressional and other primaries,

got to get Super PAC money out of those primaries. Yeah, no, you sent that letter this week. It actually follows a letter you sent about a year ago. This was to Senator Schumer, to Ken Martin, the head of the DNC. Basically, you know, let's forswear super PACs inside of our own primaries. And, you know, Ken Martin responded by saying he's in. in spirit behind it, but that his hands seem to be tied. What is the reluctance, do you think, of just fully embracing this kind of, and he's

smiling? All right, John, let me throw. Tell what's happening. Tell me. It's not a very hard question to answer. What do you think the answer is? What do you think the establishment, Democratic establishment is doing right now as we speak? They're hustling this money.

Oh, they're right. That's right. Okay. You know, they're hustling money from AI industry. They're hustling money from APEC, hustling money from crypto, and from other special interests. All right, they got that money, and they use what they do with it, what they do. But this is really insidious. And I think progressives increasingly understand that that money, often, which comes, by the way, from Trumpers, Republicans,

is going to be used against progressives and decent people who are running in, primaries. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success. Squarespace provides all the tools you need to promote and get paid for your services in one platform. Whether you offer consultations, events, or other experiences, Squarespace can help you

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No minimum balance required checking accounts ranking based on a JD Power survey published October 20th, 2025. For more information on APY rates, my pay, spot me, and travel perks. Go to chime.com slash disclosures. So I wanted to go back to just, I'm glad we talked about the super PAC money from AI. But I do want to talk about the economic implications because that's the other part of this existential threat. You've talked about attacks on companies that get rid of jobs for automation or for robots. But to the point of the scale of this problem, if really 100 million jobs could potentially be at risk, to your point, we'd have to think about a much.

different social compact. Right now, if a company hires a worker, they pay payroll taxes. They are charged money for every worker on the books, right? And we've actually shifted the burden of taxes towards income and towards labor and away from corporate income. If a company buys a machine to do that job, according to our tax code, you can not only pay no taxes on it, you get a depreciation, get a credit. So any, the proposal you have is a, sort of mitigation, but the whole code is tilted against human beings. Look, I think, you know, we have not yet, although we, our main thrust right now is to say, slow it down so we can get our hands around all of this. And I just had a meeting today with

my staff to start working on what a sensible solution would be. And it ain't easy stuff because what we're dealing with is unprecedented problems. But to your point, This, in my view, goes beyond saying, oh, we got to extend unemployment benefits. Fine. Yeah, we need what's called the trade adjustment assistance. If you lose your job to AI, we'll retrain you. Fine. It goes a lot deeper than that because this technological revolution is so sweeping that what we need to be talking about is a new social contract.

It's not say, hey, you lose your job, you can get unemployment, great. We need to go a lot deeper than that because you may never get another. the job. You're a 50-year-old truck driver today and you're replaced by a driverless vehicle. Where are you going to go out and get a job? It sounds like you can walk down the street and get another job. That job may not be there. So we need to think really in new ways as to how we address these crises. Yeah, you know, I'm talking to you in California. And we live in a kind of signal example of this because we are in what, the fifth, fourth largest economy in the world driven primarily from, you know, half dozen companies in Silicon Valley that are growing exponentially,

but don't hire, you know, they're not hiring at a rate to match the scale of their growth. And if we have a tax code in which we've lowered the corporate rate, right, we basically have said, our tax code says we would rather a company be gigantic and employ no one than be kind of profitable while employing hundreds of thousands of people. That is what our tax code currently prefers. Let me throw something else out to you here. And again, the truth is nobody knows exactly what is going to happen. Honest people have differences of opinion.

It's the nature of the job loss, how quickly it will occur, et cetera. But if, underlined if, tens of millions of people lose their jobs, they're not paying any taxes at all, aren't they? How are you going to sustain programs like social? security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc., etc. How are you going to sustain government? So, you know, these are profound questions that we've got to adjust. But bottom line is, I think we're talking about a new social compact. How do we make sure this revolutionary technology improves human life economically, socially, psychologically, and of course prevents any kind of catastrophe?

Switching gears, in April of last year, only 15 Democrats voted with your resolution to block weapon sales to Israel. Now, two weeks ago, 40 Democrats joined you. There is a profound shift happening. Obviously, that is driven by the ways in which Israel has conducted its military campaign in Gaza, the way it has been expanding settlements, its incursion into Lebanon. What are you observing about this shift in democratic politics among your colleagues? And what does it tell you about where we're heading? What it tells me, and by the way, it is not just Democrats, it's Republicans as well. And I think you're going to see movement in the direction you described among Republicans in the not too distant future.

Look, we have an economy with 60% of our people live in paycheck to paycheck. people are hurting, can't afford health care, housing, educating their kids, child care, et cetera. Then they look up and they see that President Trump wants to provide billions of dollars of military aid to the extremist Netanyahu government in Israel. And they look and they say, really, well, what is this government done? And we all know the Hamas is a terrorist organization that attacked Israel in a horrible way, killing 1,200 people, Israel had a right to respond. But they did not have a right to go to war

against the entire Palestinian people. 2.2 million people in the area killed 72,000 of them, mostly women, children, and the elderly, injured something like 170,000. That's more than 10% of the population killed or wounded, wiped out almost the entire infrastructure. And what people, including myself, I think, have concluded. This is a genocide. attack. So people are looking, then they say, well, that's bad. Why are we giving money to a government that's that? And then we wake up a few months ago, and Israel has gotten Netanyahu, after 40 years of effort, Netanyahu, who finally found a president who was willing to go to war against Iran, tax Iran in the middle of the night. Great. We're off in another war. Price of gas is now

going up. We're killing school children in Iran. Israel now is in Lebanon, displacing over a million people killing bombing civilian neighborhoods. As you indicated in the West Bank, like vigilantes now killing Palestinians, destroying farms, destroying homes. Who in their right mind wants to continue to fund a government that does that? And the polls tell us that, and Democrats look at the polls and they say, I go home, I hold the town meeting. Everybody says, why the hell are you funding Netanyahu's government? So they're beginning to catch on. And as you indicated, more and more. Now we have 40 out of 47 members of the caucus who are saying no more. Yeah, I mean, this has been an issue in primaries across the country right now that are playing out today.

Janet Mill suspended her campaign, which means that Graham Platner will be the nominee. He's somebody that's been outspoken about this. Did you have any reaction to what happened in Maine? Yeah, I do. And I got to tell you, John, you know, I've been all over the country. And you have to trust me on this. But whenever I talk about what was going on in Gaza, just people would stand up and, you know, really express their feelings. This is a very emotional issue for people all of this country who do not want to be complicit in killing women and children

and destroying all of Gaza. So I think, you know, what Platner is doing, he has run a brilliant campaign to my mind, Not dissimilar. Maine is obviously a very rural state, but not radically dissimilar from what Mamdani did in New York City, which is clearly the largest city in America. What do they do? They both have taken, brought forth an agenda that is prepared to take on the oligarchs and the big money interest. Nobody, or very few people in America think that it's okay that the top 1% now owns more wealth than the bottom, 93%, or that Elon Musk himself owns more wealth than the

bottom 53% of American households. So I think something sense. So Mondani talked about it. That's what Platner is talking about. And they have an agenda that speaks to the needs of working people. Healthcare for all, education, for all, et cetera, et cetera. So I see that happening not just in New York City and Maine. I see it happening in communities all over this country.

Tomorrow, as a matter of fact, tomorrow night, I will be in Ohio. Then I'll be in Minnesota. Then I'll be in Detroit with... Abdul al-Haid in Detroit, Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota, Mr. Point Dexter, Brian Poindexter in Ohio. People now are raising these issues. Working class people are sick and tired of the greed of the big money interest. They want a government that represents all of us, not just a few. So you spent time in Israel as a young man on a kibbutz.

You've talked about being part of the Jewish tradition of social justice. A few years ago, you wrote. about this, you said your pride and admiration for Israel lives alongside your support for Palestinian freedom and independence. What do you say to people, especially younger Jewish people, who find it impossible to feel any pride or admiration for an Israel that does not uphold Jewish values? Well, look, right now you have, you know, when you talk about what I don't like, and Netanyahu pushes this all of the time, that if you are critical of the horrific policies of the Yahoo government, you are somehow an anti-Semite, and that is totally absurd. As that happens, my father's

family was kind of wiped out in Poland by Hitler. I am not an anti-Semite. And in fact, anti-Semitism is a growing and serious problem all over the world. What has gone on, for whatever reason that I am not the most knowledgeable guy in the world on, Israel over the last number of years has become gone from being a moderate, liberal type country to a right-wing extremist country in which, by the way, Netanyahu is not even the worst. I mean, you're talking about guys there really kind of racist guys who really want expansionism. So we have got to oppose that government, and hopefully the day will come when Israel will elect people who understand that we need to, they need to be working with their neighbors and not just simply trying to

dominate them in terrible ways. What do you say to, to younger people, especially younger Jews who now feel, you know, they, they grew up seeing in Israel led by Netanyahu. They've watched these atrocities unfold over the last few years. And it's led them to believe the problem just isn't Benjamin Netanyahu that there's something fundamentally wrong about the project of Israel. I don't have a magical answer to that right now. But right now, what I am trying to do is to make sure that the United States government is not complicit in the horrific acts of the Netanyahu government. We can talk about, you know, where we go from there. But that's where I am right now.

What do you think if you saw that 20-something Bernie Sanders on a kibbutz and you said, hey, 60 years from now, I'm going to be fighting. in the Senate against the robots. Well, it's kind of, and by the way, I would tell you when I was, you know, I don't know how much you know about the history of the Kibb would seem formed by, you know, Jews who left the anti-Semitism of Europe. When I was, these were very, very progressive entities. Women, you know, it was democratically owned and controlled. Women had rights that they didn't have in the United States.

It were leaders in a way that was not true. older people playing an active role. It was an interesting and novel model, which I happened to believe it. But obviously, that is not what Israel is about today. And going from where I was as a kid to being a United States senator, it's been a long journey to say to least, yeah. Senator Sanders, thanks for your time. Good to talk to you. Thank you, John. Thanks to Senator Sanders for joining us. When we come back, I talk to Peter Hamby. Positive America is brought to you by Willys Remedy.

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All right. So I want to start with your piece on political violence. You wrote, Democratic elected and other party leaders vehemently condemn political violence all the time, but many on the left have become too comfortable celebrating violence or bad luck that befalls their Trumpian enemies. They are too loose with their language, too cozy with conspiracies that can lead to a dark place. Now, you're very clear in this piece, which you wrote after the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondent Center, very clear about the ways in which the right looks past Trump's calls to violence, exploits tragedies to target the left. Thank you for saying that. But even still, I am sure there are people hearing this and thinking the most powerful person on the

earth, encouraged an insurrection, seeks to jail as enemies, celebrates the deaths of people like Robert Mueller and Rob Reiner, and you're talking about random people on the internet. So what are you seeing and why do you think it's important? I think the phrase random people on the internet actually matters, first of all. And I do want to say thank you for saying that, acknowledging that part of the piece, because I felt like I wrote 10 paragraphs about Caroline Levitt mischaracterizing or lying about how various people, Hakeem Jeffries, used terms like warfare, quote-unquote, to refer to redistricting. The redistricting wars. I mean, We've both been in politics for a long time.

People use terms like combat or murder suicide or just violent martial terms. This comes up in sports commentary all the time. Shakespeare was familiar with metaphor as well, I think. Yes, yeah. And I consider he Kim Jeffries, the Shakespeare of people that do the alphabet. Yeah, I do too. I consider Rana. Of people who do the alphabet.

He would like that reference. I think that the random people on the Internet thing matters. And I thought about this with John, Favreau, other John, who after Charlie Kirk was killed, noticed, yes, random people on the internet, random TikTokers celebrating his death. And even as I was walking in here, Taylor Lorenz posted a tweet, or maybe not a tweet, maybe a blue sky or a thread, that people are using the sound of Charlie Kirk getting shot, the gunshot, to do quick cut edits of outfit changes. And that just, again, diminishes, I think.

I didn't know that. What happened? And like you don't have to like Charlie Kirk. I don't, this is our thing, John. I know coming in here, like this is a founding principle of crooked media. And I feel like this came from John Lovett Brain, which is the DC media's tendency to both sides thing. That is not me. And for the people listening, I'm not that journalist. But I was there in the ballroom. And part of it, too, is I've read polls, right? Like, in the first Trump term, obviously in the Obama years, you know, people blamed Trump. and Republicans for the crazy, for the conspiracy theories. Voters did. NPR had a poll, I think, in 2017 saying 70% of voters blamed Trump and Republicans for the toxicity in our politics. And, you know, there was a moral and intellectual high ground, I think, in the Democratic Party. There hasn't been widespread political violence coming from the left since the 70s with the weather underground, Black Panthers, et cetera. There's obviously been anti-government violence. You've got like black block Antifa types and whatever.

But there has been an uptick in partisan motivated, not just violence, but plots. There was somebody who showed up at the Capitol last year wanting to kill Pete Hegseff. That person was arrested. There's obviously two of the three assassins, attempted assassins on Donald Trump, sounded like they had left-leaning political views. And again, back to the random people on the internet thing. It's not coming from Democratic politicians. It's not.

It's really not. Now, there's like Jasmine Crockett posted conspiracy theory the other day that the attack on the Washington Hilton might have been a false flag or whatever. The problem is the diminishing power of people like me in the mainstream press and the diminishing ability of normy politicians to, you know, get out there in the information ecosystem and have people hear them. That stuff is being replaced just by noise and slop on the internet. And it does seem like to me. And I think the evidence in the polling bears us out that, you know, liberals and progressives. And by the way, some of these people might just be fake bots. They might be, you know, J.D. Vance likes to totally and the right completely exploit, you know,

even the fringiest thing that you found in the Internet and pretend it's like the mainstream view of the Democratic Party. And I make clear on the piece, as you read, Democrats aren't the one saying this. It is, though, kind of ambient on the Internet. And I think I actually wanted to ask you about this. The Michelle Obama, they, you know, when they go low, we go high thing. That's, that feels dead and gone and like millennial cringe at this point. And the second Trump term, there has, it has been celebrated that like, we're going to fight dirty. It's, and I'm not, I'm not trying to be civility police either, dude, at all.

But like, people just feel like, okay, we're going to play on their terms, get in their sandbox. We're going to throw punches, call names. And then, you know, then maybe, maybe. you end up with a guy who's got a screw loose who hears all the stuff on the internet and thinks I've got to go kill the rapist, fascist, pedophile in the White House. I just think that it's easier to hear the crazy stuff that the algorithms have poured gasoline on than it ever was. And you just hear it more on the left than I think you used to. Yeah, it's like there's so many parts that you have to tease out, right?

And there's a big distinction. It isn't coming from the vast majority of Democratic. politicians, right? And there is just a distinction between how responsible elected Republicans are, including the president, versus how responsible elected Democrats are. Even this week, we saw what is obviously a ridiculous prosecution of James Comey, the number of Republicans refusing to criticize that or openly embracing that. People go, members of Congress saying, well, look at all the other bad things Jim Comey did, right? It is distinct from political violence, but embracing the jailing of your political enemies on specious reasons is adjacent to. a politics in which people can celebrate political violence. But the challenge is most Americans

deplore political violence, all the mainstream politicians on the left can deplore political violence. Ninety-five percent of people say the right thing. Then the next day, 100 percent of people spend the day talking about what the five percent said and how heinous it is and how it's actually justified in all the rest. You know, we at Crooked Media, I feel like we take, we take some flack from all directions for this, but we obviously denounce Republicans when they try to exploit political violence. We also try to go after what we see people when we see people justifying it. John, as you mentioned, did that as well in the piece. But if everybody but a few are doing the right thing, but we end up talking about what the wrong thing is. Like I don't know what

the right thing. How do you respond in a media environment like that? in which we try to model best behavior. The Democrats say the right thing, but you have Republicans that are going to pull out the worst comments from the Internet. You have an algorithm that's going to elevate the most exciting and morally depraved comments. Like, what do we do? What do we do? Okay, I agree. There's a problem.

What do we do? Yeah. Well, that's getting you to say that. I know, I mean, you're a sophisticated thinker about this stuff. So it is important to say that there was a problem. And I want to say, this isn't just my feelings. This is me being a hack political journalist. I should point out also in the piece,

the Center for Strategic and International Stuff. which did it, has measured this and has kept track of incidents, um, 2025 was the first year ever that left wing violence and plots and or plots surpass right wing violence and or plots. Say it's only eight plots. That's only eight plots. And this is another thing I need to say. Um, again, like the left was there was no violence, no plots for like 30 years.

Most of the actual deaths from political violence in this country over the last 30 years have come from right wing political. violence. And we're talking like in the hundreds. Okay. And so yes, the baseline for Democrats and the left, whatever the coalition is, was very low. It just has ticked up. And I think you're though right, John. I remember when I worked at CNN back when you were in the White House in the 2010s, there was this like, do you remember watching like cable news in that era and CNN where I worked or whatever? Like a random Republican state legislator in Missouri. would say something loony about abortion or something racist about Obama.

And we would all elevate it. You'd be like, this is an example of the Republican Party being nuts. And while the Republican Party does have a tendency to accommodate, and by the way, this is just history, you know, the birchers and the conspiracy theorists and whatever, you need to hear from someone on Capitol Hill, like someone from like John Thune's office. Like, why the fuck are you talking about this random guy in Missouri? And so that is a absolute attentional problem that the press has and kind of always has. By the way, since then, that random state senator in Missouri is now like probably on Capitol Hill and the mainstream of the Republican Party. I just think it is what you guys do. It's that you have to call it out and say there's no room for it.

And the other thing we're talking about isn't just violence. It is the conspiracy theorizing. And those two are not the same, but they are connected. You know, the people who, I think, tend to commit acts of violence in the name of politics, like, seize on conspiracy theories. They do. And I noticed this on Snapchat. When I work at Snap and, like, posted on Snap, I had a bunch of people in my comments being, like, fake, stage, whatever. Well, it's not, we don't know that those people are even Democrats.

They could just be some teenager, like, sitting in their basement somewhere. But this has been happening. Again, this gets to the higher intellectual standard that I think Democrats used to hold themselves to. In Obama's term at some point, some press conference in the Tansuit era, it might have been like Ed Henry. It was like in the White House briefing room. And there was the latest outrage of the day, whatever somebody wanted Obama to be outraged about. I think it was at Henry. He said, you know, Mr. President, why am I more outrage?

And I tried to look this up before coming in, I couldn't find it. Someone listening, please find it. It's probably in Fabro's encyclopedic brain. But Obama looks at him and goes, because I haven't read the briefs. And that was Obama being a lawyer. But it was also just a smart person who hewed closely to facts and didn't want to, like, spout off on something where he didn't, like, know the baseline information. And we've come a long way on the Internet. since then. Like social media has rampantly changed how people's, uh, instincts when it comes to

responding, gathering facts. And, you know, I think that's hurt everybody. It's hurt everybody across the board. And, um, you know, I just think that, uh, you see it more now on the left than you used to. I, I sting out that article with a quote from Isaac Asimov, who was a, became a big Democrat later in his life, hated Nixon, like just a raging Democrat. And he said like the anti-intellectual strain in this country was always on the right and liberals would fight ignorance with knowledge and conservatives would fight knowledge with ignorance. There's a lot more ignorance out there, man, on the left now. I'm sorry, there just is. And like maybe I'm just being idealistic about, you know, the great thinkers of the American

left and what they cared about compared to the right. But it just feels like the fever swamps of the internet are just grabbing otherwise normal people and yanking them in and it's depressing to me yeah there i i don't know it's hard not you know you know to be nostalgic for how we used to have information i i i do i look i see it too and i do think it's more than just a few random people there is something that has happened uh and it isn't coming from the politicians i do think there's a bigger shift and i think it's important as you pointed out there political violence in our country still is very, very rare. And so I feel like there's these two ideas you have to have in your mind at the same time,

one being that we can't allow acts of violence by individuals who are united, regardless of ideology, by a willingness to do violence, right? That's the most important thing about a mass shooter, about the person that shot Charlie Kirk, this person, the person that shot at Gabby Giffords, right, that they are willing to go to this extreme and do violence. And sometimes their rationales are cogent. Sometimes their rationales are nonsense. It's the act of violence that unites them. And there's something rising, whether it's people willing to shoot up a school, people wanting to go out a blaze of glory. And we cannot arrange our society around that. We can't allow that to warp our politics too much because it is so

rare in our society. But at the same time, like, it does seem to be like an emergent property of the amount of vitriol, hate, lack of empathy, cruelty on the internet, and beyond, I think that Trump is both a cause of and a symptom of. And I struggle with how you think about those two things, but the comfort that people have, right, whether it's the shooting of the United Healthcare CEO or the killing of Charlie Kirk,

that is morally wrong before you even get to whether it will encourage future violence. It said something really ugly about our politics and our culture and I do think that that is real. So that's the thing I struggle with. There's something else interesting.

This is an obvious thought, but I just thought about it. When you think about Luigi, you think about the butler shooter, we don't know his politics, and the guy from the Hilton, all these people and the Charlie Kirk shooter are young.

And like, obviously there's the idea of the school shooter and the serial killer and the lone wolf killer out there. You tend to be white men. But all of these examples are people who grew up online. We grew up online. But, like, in middle school and high school, I just had AOL. But these people grew up with phones in their pockets.

And so they have so many more touch points to dark places on the internet. But I'm in dark places. sort of what I'm talking about. It's that, you know, like Jennifer Welch on the I've had a podcast the other day was entertaining these conspiracy theories about how Trump was like this was a false flag so he could develop ballroom. I'm saying she's spreading hate speech. But like that's one of the ascendant podcasters on the left. Like I just, there aren't any real epistemological boundaries to feel like at this point. And, you know, you can be a liberal in this and Jennifer Welch or this or go on a Twitch. stream or whatever. But all of those young people, like you said, I'm not being nostalgic for an old media time necessarily. I'm just like, I call myself a student of media history. But they don't know a time of like monoculture, Walter Karnkeye, anything. There's no shared facts. And like all, you know, it just. That depresses me. Yeah. Like the conspiracy theory embrace that we

see across the board. I do think there's something about. Some people think it's just fun, by the way. Like, I had friends who are like, conspiracy theories are fun. Yeah, there's something about the way in which the internet encourages you that we're all being encouraged to embrace easy and quick comfort across our lives. And social media does that, right? Like, you don't have to have any discipline of attention whatsoever. You can just get a jolt of something fun, something funny, something outrageous, whatever. Get a quick, like, hit of an endorphin or an emotion. You don't have to leave the house to see a movie.

can just stay in bed, whatever, you can have food come to your house. Like we have, we're very, we're easy, easy to satisfy discomfort, uncomfortable with any kind of discomfort. And when there's something horrible that happens like the killing of Charlie Kirk in which you, I think, morally are called to denounce the killing of someone you found reprehensible, that tiny bit of friction, that tiny bit of discomfort, the whole, there's a whole algorithm that's telling you, you don't have to feel that anymore. And the same thing with someone trying to to assassinate Donald Trump because of views you might agree with. Wouldn't it be nice if there were a way you didn't have to sit with that for even a moment? Well, guess what there is? Because it turns out maybe

it was staged. And we live in a crazy world in which there were legitimate news stories that in Hungary Trump's ally. There was a plan to stage an assassination attempt to help Victor Orban in the final days of the election. That is real reporting about something real that very well could have happened in the world. There's also a conspiracy theory

that Trump wouldn't leave office if you lost. Of course. Of course. And there was a conspiracy theory that a powerful cabal of abusers were protecting Jeffrey Epstein. A lot of people have come to believe that

conspiracy theories had some merit. And the truth is, the great conspiracy theories always do begin with a kernel of truth in them, or a lot of the great ones do. So I understand, like, where that impulse comes from, and I understand how the internet feeds it. Yeah. I just think that it is incumbent upon democratic politicians to try so hard to keep the, what was Ernie in the trash can, like whatever just like push push it down like Mark Kelly came out with the Oscar was the Groucherney Or Bernie or Bert NERA they're just a happy gay couple Yeah sorry no offense the happy gay couple

Mark Kelly put out I mean who cares what Mark Kelly thinks but like a substack I care sure I care what Mark Kelly thinks I care and I think you said the other day on this podcast referencing Chris Murphy talking after the United Health Care murder I forget the anecdote why did they this come up? I think like Nate Silver wrote about it, that he sort of said, like, I acknowledge why people, like, hate insurance companies. What, what did Chris? I don't, I don't remember. I was referencing people who had, I was referencing that someone, I think, like, a prominent conservative had said that the shooter at the White House correspondent's dinner, his rhetoric is indistinguishable from that of Chris Murphy,

as if that's an indictment of Chris Murphy. That's what I was referred to, I believe. I think, I don't want to pair, like, Ms. Cass what Chris Murphy said. He's probably listening. But again, the press certainly has less power than we used to. And, and, you know, maybe wrongly the press was the arbiter of common decency for many decades in this country. But, you know, politicians are akin to where people get a lot of news now, influencers, creators. They're famous people on the internet. That's who they are. And they have a responsibility to call it out when it happens. It's just really hard. Like, again, this is in a leaderless party. You know what, like, attention matters, getting attention matters.

This is one of my beats. Like, Roe Kana can call it out. Chuck Schumer can call it out. Alyssa can call it out. But, you know, which random Normie in Ohio is listening to any of those people? Well, look, I think sometimes in our politics, we treat Democrats like the protagonist with agency and Republicans are the villains who will do what villains do. I sometimes think we do the same thing with people on the internet now that, of course, Democratic politicians. are going to say the same thing,

but there's nothing we can do about the influencers. But influencers have responsibility. And I think part of this is, I think, as... There are some insane YouTube tiles out there, man. There are some lack of doodle. But the... I don't know. I think sometimes we have to...

If the people who are going to be helping to shape what people view as the kind of bounds of appropriate political discourse, if that's not going to be coming from politicians or mainstream meetings, if it's going to become from people on the internet, then that comes with responsibility. You know, like in, in 2024,

I think a lot of people felt like you had people in the kind of manosphere, the kind of independent, kind of right-adjacent podcast world, embracing their power, but not their responsibility, right? Their power to influence, their power to get big people on, their power to reach tens of millions of people, but not their responsibility to... Yeah, they're just an unfrozen caveman lawyer.

They don't know what's... Right, yeah, yeah. I'm just a big chicken. You know, I'm just a big chicken. But you know what's funny about that? I have some data on this this week. The AP came out of a poll about media habits. And it's a really interesting poll because they also poll teenagers.

But all the elite sort of things that we do as former DCers and political junkies, listen to podcasts, subscribe to news. I'm trying to think of some other ones. Oh, subscribe to news. Vast majorities of Americans don't do those things. They really don't. And by the way, podcasts are a little different because they'll also watch it on YouTube or whatever. But the one thing that has really popped is influencers and creators. For a long time in these polls, could be Pew, could be AP, that asked people how they get their news.

Social media was just sort of an umbrella term. That could be Snap. It could be YouTube. It could be meta, whatever. Could be clips of mainstream content, by the way, as well. Totally. But they actually asked specifically about influencers and creators. And near majorities of Americans say they get, news from influencers and creators now. And that's a huge shift in just a few years. And so that gets to what you're saying about responsibility. Influencers and creators are now on par on par with,

according to this poll, local TV news, radio, terrestrial radio still matters, search engines, still matter, way more than like AI. And like television. And so like that's just really, really taken off. And I agree with you. And you've seen that with the Ovan and Andrew Schultz after the election when, you know, they're deporting, rounding up and deporting people and separating mothers from their children or whatever, Doge. I didn't vote for this because I was just playing the humble, unfrozen caveman lawyer. But they have to, I think they're becoming more responsible, actually, at least in terms of acknowledging their power. These people were at the inauguration for the President of the United States. And I do think that we're due for a similar turn on the left of people with people.

big platforms who reach a big audience viewing a responsibility. And, like, you know, we're here and we try to have honest conversations. But part of being having, I think part of what being responsible it is is you try to be honest, critical where you think it's helpful. Critical maybe where you think it's unhelpful but needs to be said at times. But view what you're trying to do as more than just saying what you happen to think or feel in that moment, right? Like, that's what I think the differences between what Obama did in that press conference you're talking about and what a lot of members of Congress do every time a camera comes in front of their faces, which is just take a moment and say, you know what, I'm going to take a beat and make sure that I'm sharing good information

or like interrogating a bias for one moment. Or knowing that even if I feel something in the moment that I believe is true, I know that I have a responsibility to my audience to not become a tool of the right. Yeah. I also think I really want to pay you guys a sincere compliment. And I'm friends with you. We live in the same city. We socialize. I get that. I still listen to this podcast despite how knowing how personally annoying each and every one of you is because you are willing to interrogate collective assumptions on the left. You are willing to tangle with those ideas. We saw it this week with the Ken Martin interview, but you guys frequently will have people on. And I think this is a lot about a variety of left-leaning media.

You don't just tell people what they want to hear. You tell people sometimes, sometimes, maybe not as much as other news organizations, what they need to hear. And I think that's really important because I do think that maybe this is the Obama example, but like wrestling with ideas is like really good. It's really good and healthy and not there's just such blind partisanship now. And this is where I will say on both sides that, you know, the battle for ideas is hard. It's hard to inhabit not the middle, but it's hard to present nuance to people. That's why I wrote 10 paragraphs in that freaking puck article before I could get to the point because I had to say over and over again,

Trump inspired January 6th, Trump inspired mail bombers. The Trump Republican Party welcomed Nazis and liars and mainstreamed this poison. But, you know, social media has taken it to another level and other people are getting yanked into it. I think what we're talking about, and that's very nice of you to say, it's not my experience that there's a lot of blind partisanship on the left. I, my view of where we're at right now is actually. But sorry, blind negative partisan. Like negative party, that's for sure. No, I agree with that.

But what I was going to say only is I think like what we're circling, which I think relates to the conspiracy theories, the willingness to celebrate or kind of tolerate or kind of even just sort of minimize political violence. Like it's forbearance, which is just the idea of restraint and being, like kind of willing to lose and willing to take a shot to your ego at times in politics. This is why us old millennials are the best generation. We are, you know what, we are the best generation. We are the best generation because.

We were vaccinated against Republicans by George W. Bush. Continue. We had debates in our dorms, you know. At Georgetown, we had something called Red Square, which was a free speech zone. I know that sounds math now. But, like, you could have debates and interrogate things. You didn't have social media poisoning it, you know? I don't know.

Maybe that's an elite view, but... Baby boomers went to the right. Gen X is the last redoubt of Donald Trump right now. Well, boomers, by the way, boomers are... I wrote about this last year. Boomers are drenched to the left because boomers now were hippies. Boomers are our parents. So they still hold on to some, you know, pluralistic values.

Gen X is the bad one because they were Alex P. Keaton. Like, the thing that happens is, your politics and your 20s, like, that's what it generally is later in life. And so the Gen X folks, you know, put aside all the rock music and pop culture. Like, those were the Alex P. Keith. So, yeah, the Gen X has really kind of moved to the right. But then also some of the Gen Z has moved a bit to the right. And millennials are actually not moving to the right at the same degree over time as previous generations have.

The millennials are holding out greatest generation. All right. Hear that brocall? Yeah. Whatever. What happened in him? All right. Before we go to break, I want to thank everybody who has become a friend of the pod subscriber.

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It's there. It's easy. It's a great price. Give it a shot. had ours for years. Go to helixlexleep.com slash crooked for 27% offsitewide. That's helixleep.com slash crooked for 27% offsite wide. This offer is exclusive to our listeners. Make sure you enter our show name after checkouts so they know we sent you Helixleep.com slash crooked. All right, let's hit some more topics. Platner. Janet Mills out. Politicole reported yesterday and calls from

Democrats for Schumer to drop his involvement in the Iowa and Michigan primaries. What was your reaction to the Mills news and the general state of play in these primaries? Surprise but not surprised. I think Mills got in late. Platner got in what last August, September, went super vile, raised a lot of money, great vibes for the moment nationally for Democrats, you know, raging against the establishment. I am more looking forward than thinking about the surprise because he was up 33, 40 points in the most recent.

I think Emerson had him up 33 at the end of April. This is a jump ball race. Like, it's going to be very hard. And they are, Grand Plattner does have baggage. And it's not even the TotenConf tattoo or whatever. It's the Reddit post. I think we saw an article in the free beacon today, which is an op-o dump for Republicans, showing that Platner, you know, paid for his house with a loan from his wealthy father,

not the VA, like he said. I just think there's lots of stuff there. And by the way, all this is to say, he can still win. Trump's at like 33, 34% approval. I think Maine is tougher than certain states, and here's why. And again, he can win. And a lot of times you win with a pure contrast. And she's unpopular, Susan Collins.

I think her own faves are like 57%. They got to win there. They got to win Alaska. They got to win Ohio and Iowa and all these places. Maine is the oldest electorate in the country. So it's also not very partisan. soon. You've got a third of the state is independent, John. So, you know, that helps someone like Platner, I think. Like, I'm not from the system that could appeal. You've got that Maine second

congressional district, which was represented by Jared Golden for a while, who's a moderate in different, like, Platter's a lib. Golden was a moderate. Both have tattoos. But he won in Maine two, which is a district Trump has won in the last two presidential elections by being just a purebred moderate, Jared Golden. So, you know, putting on Reddit that black people don't tip that women shouldn't get so drunk that they get sexually assaulted. Honestly, I love this episode that I forget which content it was from Crooked Media, but Fyfer and Alex Wadner did a piece on this a couple weeks ago. And it was really interesting listening to Alex,

and I thought she was very sharp because I think a lot of the initial commentary supporting Platterner when jumped in the race was coming from men. And when these posts came out, not that Alex Wagner wouldn't vote for Grand Platner or Susan Collins, but I think women might be a little squeamish about this, about him in a race against a woman that, you know, has successfully won over and over and over again. Also brought some reporting to the show. I learned from some Republican pollsters that they had 12 to 13 percent of Susan,

past Susan Collins voters going for Janet Mills in this election. So that place of what Schumer was probably thinking about. Like this is an independent older state and we need someone to. safe to run against someone who's been reliably reelected. So Platner's got some work to do, I think, to reassure. He's a young millennial tattoos, a history of inflammatory Reddit post. We don't, clearly, I think Republicans are sitting on more stuff. That's why I brought up the free beacon example. And he's got to convince voters in a state. It's like an old state. And that's, it's going to be tough for him. But in this environment, Trump's Trump's approval rings are

absolute dog shit. That's why we're talking about Alaska. That's why we're talking about me. And it's why we're talking about even Ohio and Iowa. We're in the home stretch here of the California governor's race. The two highest vote getters will move on to the general. Post-small, we've seen polls that show Bacera rising. CBS poll this week said Steve Hilton, leading with 16, then Steyer at 15. Bacera at 13. Other polls have Bacera higher.

Where's your head out on this race right now? I think someone smartly framed it this way to me. And look, nationally, like, you might not care about governors. California matters. Like Gavin Newsom will set a tailpipe emission regulation and the rest of the country will follow. Like that's what California is. So yes, these candidates are underwhelming. Someone compared to the 2020 presidential primary where you've got not just Tom Steyer once again spending a lot of money,

but you've got all these candidates who fail to catch fire. They pop in certain moments and fade. Javier Bacera is just sort of emerging. The last four polls, two independent, I think, and two sort of partisan, have showed him climbing and having clear momentum. Steyer and Katie Porter are having a very hard time connecting with high information voters. Their negatives are very high. For all the money that Tom Steyer is spending, they're kind of are hitting a ceiling. But Sarah has kind of come from behind to go to the front.

I didn't quite get it either. It kind of came out of nowhere organically. He hasn't spent a lot of money on television. I believe he spent the money he has, I think he's. spent. Yeah, he went up on TV like three or four weeks ago. At a key moment when he had, he had, he had, he right. Well, I think as Swallow was dropping, before Swallowed Drop, he's up on the air. And so he's up on the air at a moment where all of a sudden there's all these Swallow voters saying, whoops. Yes. And Javier Bresera is a boring person.

Javier Brousera, I talked to someone in the Buy administration about this Saturday. Kind of aloof is HHS secretary, not incompetent, but just sort of like, he's not light in the world on fire. Okay. But he does have two things going for him right now in this governor's race, which is, but the primaries in June. There's a lot of confusion among voters. People don't like the choices, and they're just kind of falling back on him, which is sort of similar to the Biden experience in 2020, right? You can win the primary at 23% of the vote, 25% of the vote. I'm not saying it's totally the same.

And he's Latino. I mean, a third of the state is Latino. And I think the first part of that spot that went on TV about a month ago, it wasn't like Prop 50. It wasn't like Adam Schiff versus Katie Porter like, we got to stop Donald Trump. It wasn't like Swalwell. It was my parents were immigrants. And it leads with bio and then it gets into, you know, working class, affordability issues, health care, prescription drugs. And so for all of the, forgive my term, lib slop that you see in some of these TV ads and campaigns, like just,

raging against Trump and trying to go after the hardcore college-educated white MSNBC viewer voter. You know, he reaches a different kind of voter than just that. And that's the thing, like Porter, Steyer, Swalwell, there was no data suggesting they had any numbers of people of color in this state. And so Becerra is just emerging as like a safe choice right now. Steyer's going after him already. he's not a great debater. There's two debates coming up this coming week, I think CNN and NBC.

So we'll see if he can make it all the way to June. But he is the one with momentum right now, but it's sort of like boring momentum. I don't even know word for it. Yeah, I know. I watched the last debate. I didn't watch. There was another debate this week.

Oh, it was terrible. The first debate. And there's a moment where they were all asked if they would support a per mile tax for electric vehicles because California has a very high gas tax. I think it's like 60 or something. months, that's a gallon, maybe a little more now. And so there's this idea that while we switched to electric vehicles, then no one's going to be paying for the roads, even though California has

the worst roads in the country, and we pay the highest gas tax in the country. And so the question is, would you support a per mile tax for electric vehicles? And it got to Bacera, and Bacera said, well, it's definitely something we ought to perhaps take a look at. If that's something the voters are interested in, then I could get behind it. And then you go to, I think it was one of the Republicans, and they're like, you're going to make everybody log all their miles? Hell fucking know. And I was like, that makes, like, there's a, like the passion on that stage. I was, I talked to Katie Porter about this in my conversation with her that, that California is in an emergency. Yes. We are losing people. We are losing our industries. And the only people up there that seem to have fire about it were

the Republican. The right wing sheriff guy was like talking about the, the humanitarian crisis. of homeless people and like again his ideas are probably not great but like he had passion and you nailed it i was meant to say this about de sarah actually none of these people have big ideas steyer's like we'll break up the utilities pass a billionaires tax whatever like there was a question this was a moderator issue actually in the cbs debate where they said what are the first things you would do in the event of an earthquake like as governor your governor you're in that seat what are the three things you're going to do you know the thoughtful political leader would have said, well, like, let's think bigger. Like, how do we not get in that position

in the first place, whatever? But they were all very content to be like, Bacero included, well, we'll call in the first responders and I'll call the federal government and then we'll figure it out. You know, like, just that's the other thing. Beyond all the charisma and the horse race stuff that has characterized this race, nothing exciting, like, big ideas are powerful. I mean, I know Bernie's on this episode too. Like, there's, Steyer's trying to sort of be in that lane a little bit, but everyone else is just sort of like... Katie Porter is a bit too... We'll figure it out. Well, this is where I press Katie Porter on as well, because she's talking about this plan

to exempt $100,000 from... Or people making up to $100,000 from the state income tax, and she has a way to pay for it, but... And fine, like, help people. California is very unaffordable, but like the problems are so kind of upriver from that. Like, we're... Like, the reason California is unaffordable when it has the income tax rate hasn't gone up. What's gone up is the cost of housing. What's gone up is the cost of living in our state.

What's gone up is, and what's gone down is the availability of jobs in Hollywood and other industries. And, you know, I talked to Bernie. By the way, the housing conversation, at least in the CBS debate I watched, was infuriating. I mean, Matt Mayhan at least was like, here's what I did in San Jose. I want to build this many units. Tom Steyer said the same thing to build housing. But like, people just say, like Villarigosa, we need to build more housing.

No shit. Yeah. Like, I don't know. There just weren't a lot of compelling ideas there. Yeah, it's been pretty frustrating. But I had a good conversation with Porter. I hope we get to talk to Bacera. And so I think I'm going to talk to Steyer next week.

So we're going to talk to all those candidates. Last question. Why, hey, why'd they call it puck? Is it after the midsummer night's dream? Yes. Yeah, yeah. So it's a puckish. It's a puckish organization. It's a chivist literary inspiration.

Okay. But I think John Kelly, who created Puck, a very literate man and thought Puck would be an inspiration. Because we like to be a little mischievous, I guess, in what we do. You're Puckish. Please subscribe. Thank you. You as a person, I would have called you. How would you describe Puckish the adjective? How would you define that? A puck. Mischievous is a very good word for it. I would say mischievous with a joyful quality. Oh.

Is what I would say. I like that. My wife, like that. Thanks, John. You're in, you know, a little stinker, you know, kind of energy. Peter Hamby, thank you so much. Good to talk to you. Good to see you, man. And that's our show. Thank you to Senator Sanders. Thank you to Peter Hamby. We will see you with a new episode on Tuesday. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to cricket.

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