Pod Save America - Donald J. Plump

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

As the Trump administration launches economic wars against Iran and Canada, the Washington Post reports on Trump's war with a third adversary: his weight. Jon, Tommy, and Lovett calculate Trump's BMI and then break down Scott Bessent invoking World War II when announcing new Iranian sanctions and Trump's new 50% tariffs on Canadian imports. They then turn to the midterms to discuss Susan Collins skipping out on a campaign event with JD Vance, Mike Rogers' attempt to distance himself from AIPAC, and Democrats' growing chances to flip Ohio blue. Then, Congressman Seth Moulton talks to Jon about the Massachusetts Senate primary and why he's decided to challenge Senator Ed Markey.

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them know we sent you. Don't forget, there's no safe like SimpliSafe. Every big story starts with a question. did this happen? Who's behind it and what happens next? That's three questions. Consider this from NPR. They answer those questions every weekday by going beyond the headlines with the reporting contacts and analysis that help you make sense of the biggest story of the day. The news doesn't stop it. What Happened? Get the full story. Listen to consider this from NPR wherever you get your podcast. If you miss some of your favorite crooked pods this week,

don't worry. You can now catch up on the week's best moments on MS Now on Saturday nights. MS Now is streaming an episode of highlights from your favorite crooked pods, packing as much analysis, funny moments, and 100% correct opinions into 40 minutes as humanly possible. Crooked on MS Now airs every Saturday at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Fabro. I'm John Lennett. I'm Tommy Detour. On today's show, we'll talk about Trump declaring economic D-Day against Iran, but also maybe against Canada and the American people. We'll also cover J.D. Vance's return to the campaign trail, completely. with mentions of his pawpaw, shiriyala, and his friendship with Susan Collins. We got a quick midterm update that includes the weird meeting between Hakeem Jeffries and Jared Kushner.

The long-awaited Duffy Family Reality Show finally hits the airwaves. I've been desperate for this to pop up on YouTube, as have most Americans. Need someone to watch for a Salt Lake comes back. And later you'll hear my interview with Congressman Seth Moulton, who faces off against Senator Ed Markey next week in the last big primary contest before the midterms. But first, we have some big news. The newest podcast joining the Crooked Media family is called Still Counting, hosted by Nate Silver, Claire Malone, and Galen Drook. You might remember this crew from the 538 pod, which we always thought was one of the smartest, most entertaining shows about politics out there before 538 was shut down by the corporate media last year.

Some big corporate mouse. who will remain nameless. Right. But now, Nate, Claire, and Galen wanted to get back on the air ahead of the midterms, and we are thrilled that they've chosen Crooked as their new home. Damn right. So each week on the pod, they're going to dig into the latest in politics and polling to break down what's happening and why.

But they're also going to cover everything from elections to betting markets to AI with their trademark rigorous analysis and plenty of hot takes. You can hear the trailer right now by subscribing to Still Counting wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube at Still Counting Podcast. Great for the audience. Huge get for us. Huge get. I look, Dan's Polar Coaster is fantastic and I will continue to listen to it all the time.

But I need a little more of a polling junkie fix. Wow. I need the still counting in my life. I just need more. I thought it was going to be a yes and, not a butt there. It was a yes and. It was a yes and. It was literally exactly a yes.

This is a pod is like, is basically for, for, for, for, for, for, for a butt there. of America host is like selling drugs outside of school. You know, the first hits free kind of thing. Tommy, I like keeping Dan on his toes. I should hear this and be a little like... Hey, hey, Dan, you know, prove us wrong. Prove us wrong, Dan. All right.

It's not, it's not a no, but it's not a yes. We're not a full hard yes on Dan. Despite the yes-wee-Dan merch that's everywhere. New episodes of Still Counting drop September 9th. And yeah, we're very excited. I'm excited to have Nate Claire and Galen. Subscribe right away. Join in the fam.

All right, let's start here with the news. Donald Trump continues to bankrupt America by waging war against two of our greatest adversaries, Iran and Canada. We'll get to that in a second. But first, we should talk about breaking news. About a third war Trump is losing against another longtime adversary he's been personally obsessed with for years. Let's listen. Let's go with the fat drug, the fat drug. tea for fat people.

Anybody use it in the table, don't ask. And a friend of mine who's very fat told me. And I want to tell you, you know, he could be a famous guy, he's begging me not to release this day. He's a very highly neurotic, very fat. Sort of a fat slob, I would call him. I bought the fat drug. I said, I didn't know you use it because it's not working. And the governor is

a big fat slob. Jesus. We can't do that, sir. You can't do that, sir. You can't call J.B. Pritzker a fat pig, please. You know, some people say, never use the fat word, and I don't. I would never call anybody fat. I have my own problems. Well, he sure does, because here's Sunday's headline from the Washington Post. Doctors say Trump's weight poses a significant health risk. The president has gained about 20 pounds since his campaign, according to his statements and those of AIDS. So back in June, the White House had to publicly refute speculation that Trump was on an experimental new weight loss drug after stat news reported

that a 79-year-old man with government connections got early access to the drugs, I guess the White House was telling the truth. Yes, it turns out that Trump is not like reckless gay guys in West Hollywood buying compound versions of this drug from China. Is that happening? Yeah, I think so. I just want to say for the record that Favro and I wanted to lead with Canada and love it, locked the door of our production meeting until we agreed to start with the GLPL. I just start with fat. I said dessert. Hey, it's August.

Let's have dessert for dinner. All right. It's pancakes for the fucking table. Trump clearly has been. Yeah, he's eating well. He's eaten well called. I love the moments in those videos where he hesitates, where he goes, and this person, they're fat.

I want you to know, I put that super cut together myself. There was like 10 more clips of him just saying fat, fat, fat, slob. He tells the story. about the friend, like 50 times? One other thing to note, too, is this is the figures that they're telling us. I feel like they've been slowly trying to get the number back to a real number. So he may not have gained as much as they're saying. On the other hand, based on the weight and height they've released, his BMI is 29.7,

which means if his weight was one pound more, he would be technically obese, which I'm sure he would not like. And so for all we know, they've kind of brought that number down. a pound or two. Yeah, they may have been telling the truth about him not being on this experimental GLP1, or he could just be eaten through it. It has happened before. Your power threat. My favorite part of these stories, though, is as they track his weight, they cite when he was arrested in Georgia, when he was booked. They released that he was 6-3-215, which was John Elway's playing weight when he won two Super Bowls in NFL MVP. Isn't it amazing, by the way? Well, muscle is heavier.

Isn't it amazing, by the way, that we're just kind of, you can just say something like, Oh, you remember when he was arrested in Georgia? Because of his mugshot, because the president is a convicted criminal. But also, gain 20 pounds since 2024 is an 80-year-old, almost obese man. I don't know what even what to say. Oh, what's he going to? He's going to turn over a new leaf right now. Yeah.

Yeah, he's one to really make a lot of resolutions and try to keep them. No well-done burger today, just the steamed fish. Also, their response to this story was to attack Joe Biden, is currently recovering from cancer. So that's a classy move, as always, from the White House. Did you see the video of Trump's workout that was on Twitter over the weekend? No. Oh, this is actually really good.

You should roll this thing. Thank you. Everybody. This is, that is the clip. I showed my children this morning when I was laughing. And I was like, he's tired of like, why are you watching that? I was like, it's a work thing. He's like, what is it at work?

And I was like, well, sometimes we watch clips of robots falling and then people laugh at the, and then we laugh at it and then people watch us laugh at the videos. And Charlie's like, oh, I want to do that job. It's a good job. Can I just a point of personal privilege about the robot Olympia that's going on in China? The world humanoid robot games in Beijing. So they keep saying things like, oh, this is the fastest robot. This is the fastest robot.

And it's like, okay. But like, we have lots of robots. that can go very fast already. I guess they just don't have human legs. They have to have a human leg to them. Is that what makes it different? I think so, yeah. Like you're saying like a WAMO is a way.

A WAMO is great. Yeah, we got lots of fast shit. You know? Yeah, I think it's a humanoid. Oh, it's got to be humanoid. Oh, it's got to be humanoid. Yeah. It's got to seem like it's coming to kill you.

There's also like weird dogs and shit getting paraded around. There was a guy riding a giant dog. Yeah, that was, that was nightmare fuel. That's really bad. No, I think it's great that we should give them thumbs. And also that open eye every once in a while. I was like, yeah, we lost a couple. We think they're in the pacemakers now.

It's like, well, sorry, everybody. We're gonna, we've realized the error of our ways again. And now we got to, we put a, just a, here's the thing. We put a lock on the door, but the one of our guys fell in love with the robot and unlocked it. And so we got to figure out to make them less sexually charming. But we're not sure how to do that. But you know what?

There's only so much we can do because China. Yeah. Right, right. And the rest of the ones who cut to China. Yeah. They're doing karate kicks. They're drop kicking like six-year-olds. So what do you want us to do?

If we have a few escape the sandbox, what I mean? Sorry. You got to crack, crack a couple eggs. I'm supposed to not IPO? Right. Make an omelet. Anyway, there aren't, we do have some more consequential, but no less absurd Trump stories. Soybean farmer Scott Besant announced Operation Economic Outcast on Monday, a series of new sanctions against Iran and the threat of much larger sanctions down the road that he likened.

to the most significant military invasion of the 20th century. But there seemed to be a bit of a gap between Besson's framing and the reality. Let's listen. In the Second World War, D-Day marked the historic beginning of a campaign with our allies to target and drive the enemy from its positions, including those in third countries. Today, in that same spirit, we are launching an economic onslaught against the enemy from the onslaught against Iran's financial connections around the globe. Around the globe.

You described this as an economic D-Day, but D-Day wasn't a threat of an invasion, and the U.S. didn't give a timeline to Germany. So why not impose the sanctions today? Well, we are giving everyone the opportunity to remedy bad behavior. Why would I want to blow up the global financial system? extraordinary sentence extraordinary sentence crazy that is that I like saw that as like what what an absolute fucking doof because it's like what first of all is that what you're threatening why are you the good you're supposed to be the good guys yeah and then also if you're suggesting that the thing you're

going to impose is basically a global economic crisis it does signal to the people you're threatening that you're deeply concerned about the risk you'd be taking which you've consistently shown yourself willing to back off of when you get close to the line because they know that you can back off right before you go through your various threats. Those mules must be terrified, huh? 2,500 Americans died on D-Day, so, you know, some downsides that do. Yeah, the, the, the, the, the, pissy cadaver calling, that's what I call Scott Besson, calling this economic DDA is so funny, because I cannot overstate how mundane this sanctions announcement actually was. This is just like stuff they roll out all the time. For example, they try to make it sound like they're sanctioning all these new

sectors. They mentioned gold in the aviation sector. But if you look at U.S. sanctions over the years, we've been sanctioning gold, the sort of gold industry since 2011 and the aviation sector since 2008. So this announcement today is not going to make the Iranian regime, the RGC, kind of give up. I think it's a lot of bluster. It's a lot of rhetoric. It's a lot of them trying to figure out what they do to get through the midterms. The scary thing is I think the Axios report on the sanctions today mentioned that they're considering restarting the war after the midterms are over. So you love when the wars are timed with the midterms. That's always...

Yeah, I saw that too. Well, in the blowing up of the global... So I had to dig into this because basically there were two things today. There were like sanctions against 60 Iran-linked people, entities, vessels that, like you said, are pretty mundane, very, like a typical day of treasury. Right. And then there's the threat of major sanctions that would blow up the global economic system, which is sanctioning any country that does business with. Iran, China, for example, which he would not take off the table, but would also not mention. The only thing that would matter is secondary sanctions on China to a lesser extent, India,

maybe Russia, maybe Turkey. But there's no way that they're going to do a bunch of secondary sanctions on Chinese banks, for example, in advance of the Xi Jinping visit. Nor do I think they would do them, period, because the Chinese will retaliate against us, then the Iranians will retaliate against us, and then it'll be a big dust up again. Which leads you back to Love its original point, right? which is, so it's just bluster or else, if it's not bluster, it's blowing up the global economic financial system, which I guess they don't want to do until after the midterms, or maybe they'll

just bomb after the midterms. Well, the other part of just the threat in Axios about how we're going to maybe resume the military campaign after the election, which by the way, as I think in part, like, I hope it's not true. I hope they're doing politics with their own neocons that they're trying to keep in line, because this is sort of they're not doing the retaliation that a lot of these people want. They're doing sort of mid-tee, they're doing sort of these sort of threats of future economic sanctions.

But if it is a real threat, and I assume Iran would have to take it as a real threat, then they are telling you in advance, hey, we should conflate economic activity with military activity. If Iran is going to potentially retaliate against economic sanctions with military force, one argument against it would be that it would be escalating the war. But the U.S. is promising to escalate the war potentially after the election anyway. The other part of it, too. So did I just in the best in op-ed where he announced all this in a Written like like he asked

A large language model to write like a Victorian with a head injury is just like over the top Ridiculous thing but in and he said refers to something called Pascal's wager and basically he says People working that was gonna be triggering for you people working with the Ron should be careful because of Pascal's wager which basically says you can't know for sure if God is real, so act as if God is real, because if it is, boy, you'll wish you believed, which is, you know, philosophically confusing, but whatever. And so he seems to be suggesting that countries may want to do a deal with Iran because in the short term it's quite beneficial to them, but they should be careful that even though partnering with the U.S., per Besson's argument,

has no benefits whatsoever to the point where you can't even tell if the United States exists, we could exist. And if we do, boy, will be mad. That's sort of what he's, that's sort of the position he's trying to direct, I guess, not just to, by the way, also to Korea, to other countries that are desperate to try to figure out how to get out of this sort of block day. The UAE is the one who most recently cut a deal seemingly with the Iranians to avoid getting fired at all the time. Did you guys see that Barry McCaffrey tweeted, quote, in my judgment, U.S. Armed Forces have probably permanently lost access to 15 Persian Gulf bases. Iran now poised to control access to the Gulf states. U.S. will have to negotiate new access in Western Saudi Arabia,

Israel, Southern Europe. It's like an entire recalibration of our security architecture in the Middle East because we have lost this war. Just sort of by accident. Yeah. And in case you're wondering how seriously the rest of the world

and the markets took this today, oil went down 2.5%. Not a blip. So it's crazy. I don't think anyone's too worried or take Scott Besson seriously and it seems like with good reason. Pod Save America is brought to you by article.

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Through modern sustainable management methods, Working Forest have become an integral part of the effort to mitigate the most harmful impacts of wildfires and ultimately reduce wildfire risk more broadly. Learn more about what America's Working Forests are doing for all of us at working force initiative.com. So the Trump administration did save the more serious action for the far more dangerous adversary, Canada. The president has announced 50% tariffs on all Canadian cars, trucks, auto parts, and steel. starting January 1st, again, after the midterms, because he believes the country has been, quote,

ripping off the United States for years. He also announced that, quote, Canada will be treated like a state no longer and threatened, quote, someone should get these clowns to fall in line or the consequences for Canada will be far worse. This all comes after trade negotiations with our once closest ally fell apart Friday night, which led to Trump slapping 50% tariffs on $20 billion of Canadian exports, Prime Minister Mark Carney's response was that the U.S. attacked his country and is now at war with Canada. He promised to retaliate dollar for dollar on September 8th. J.D. Vance was asked by a reporter in Maine on Monday what he'd say to Americans worried about the new tariffs. And here's what Vance said.

We have to remember, Canada is a state, sorry, Freudian Slip. That was actually an accident. Canada is a country that has underinvested in its military that quite literally would get in invaded by a foreign country, were it not for the umbrella of protection provided by the United States of America? Do you think you got that joke from Rubio, the big, the jokester in the administration? That was so canned. Forreanian slip.

Canada is a country, not. It's really, it's, it's, it's, it, like, politics can be confusing and complicated. The president, someone who comes out of a presidential campaign usually doesn't make you uncomfortable every single second you see him on screen. Just every time he is speaking, you're just like a little bit. I'm just uncomfortable. I'm uncomfortable. Four-hand. Everybody, secret weapon. Unleashed. They finally unleashed J.D. Vance in the campaign trail again. Yeah, let J.D. B.J.D. They wrote on a napkin. So for reference, Canada is our second biggest trading partner, which means a lot more products are about to become a lot more expensive for Americans and Canadians. Anyone care to explain why the president may have just

blown up the relationship with our closest ally and made life more expensive for everyone? I can try. If Trump is mad that Canada has been ripping us off for years, he is mad at his own team's deal that they cut the USMCA, so that's what we're operating under. I've heard a couple of different theories for why the talks blew up. The first theory you hear is that the U.S. try to insert some 11th hour provisions into the deal that were just a bridge too far for Mark Carney, the prime minister. Some of the specifically, it's like they wanted to exclude medium and light trucks from the reduction in tariffs the U.S. did, which would have made it under profitable to produce like the Ford F-150 in Canada. The deal could have weakened some French language

protections that are very important in Quebec. This is a thing. This is like a third rail, like you do not fuck with this stuff in Quebec. But also, why did we ask for that? It's not of our fucking business. With the bilingual labels. I'm sure like certain companies hate having to print stuff in French on the side of a pill bottle. Look, I know. It's stupid. If you want to sell in Quebec, you got to put in the French. You have to put in the French. have to. And if Carney messes around with this, Quebec will secede from Canada. So it's a big deal. And then there were some provisions that would have impeded Canada's ability to cut trade deals with other countries. I don't really understand that one. There's also kind of a personnel argument that you

hear. There's also the big one was also they wanted exclusive access. We wanted exclusive access to their critical minerals. Yeah. And Carney was like Canada would never give that to anyone. It's great. Yeah. We're keeping it open. Yeah. We're keeping an open relationship with our critical with our tungsten. There was also reports that the U.S. trade rap Jameson Greer was like professional and, you know, he speaks French. Like he's like a pro to work on. And then Lutnik came in at the end, the Commerce Secretary.

Best, you speak gay. What's he saying? And Lutnik got involved in negotiations. They went to shit. And then there's the politics of it all, which, which the political reality at this point for Mark Carney is the politics of fighting Trump are so much better than cutting a deal that requires you to make concessions and then going to and having to explain to explain that because voters in Canada, remember the whole 51st state thing, they don't think it's funny.

They haven't forgotten J.D. Vance and they don't trust Trump. They think that he's going to tear up any trade deal that they sign in a year. And the Canadian nationalism has been kicked up in a way that's been really durable. Like a friend of mine was in Canada the other day watching TV and the commercials would be like, lays potato chips with potatoes grown proudly in Canada. It was like, you know, it's like an ongoing thing. And so the other thing for Carney is like, all the reasons Canadians might oppose this deal vary by region. So like in Ontario, it's the auto industry. In Quebec, it's the cultural stuff about the French language. In other parts of the country, it's like lumber provisions. And like stitching that all together is a pain in the ass. So for him,

he's like, you made it easy for me. Now I get to punch you in the face with my 60% approval rating, you being weak, Donald Trump and going into your midterms where you're likely to lose. Like I think Carney thinks it's worth the risk. Well, I mean, he's he's not asking. to reopen the talks, Courtney, probably for those political reasons. Well, also because he gave a speech where he said, I am outlining a new approach for countries that are kind of in between these sort of great powers that are battling, and it is that we can find a way to stitch together these other kinds of arrangements without conceding, without giving up.

And if he means that, and I do that, I do, he means it's in Syria. I don't think it's just politics. He has to prove it in his own negotiations. He can't signal to Europe that they need to stand up to Donald Trump. And then when he's faced with that himself, he capitulates. And the Canadian reciprocal tariffs, I think, go into place September 8th. Trump was like, ours will go into place in January, which is already him kind of, you know, caving. Well, that – or at least blinking.

Yeah, well, we just talked about Iran, right? And so that is the Axiostory, right? Like they might restart the war after the midterms or, you know, the sanctions for the trading partners with Iran or anyone doing business with Iran is we're threatening that, you know, past the midterms, right? And now we're doing the Canadian tariffs past the midterms, at least on the auto parts. So it is going to set up an interesting dynamic, which is, it seems right now like the White House is like, okay, well, we don't want to, at least some people in the White House, we don't want to fuck ourselves for the midterms too hard. So maybe we can delay this stuff till after the midterms. But if they, it sounds like whether

they lose or do better than expected in the midterms, they still want to do all this damage after the midterms, which will set up an interesting dynamic for the 2028 prime. in which J.D. Vance, who we just heard from, presumably is going to want to run for president, or maybe Mark or Rubio or whoever else, and now have to deal with the fucking bigger mess that the administration seems like they're planning to cause. Yeah, I also, before you get to 2028, take Trump at his word. Like, there are a lot of people running. We're going to get to Susan Collins. Donald Trump is saying, I am going to put in place a giant tax increase on January 1st on

Americans because Congress will not pull back the authority it is vested in Trump to do tariffs without congressional approval. Congress has the power to prevent those taxes increases from going into effect. That seems to me a pretty big issue that people could be talking about about what happens. I mean, obviously Trump has the ability to veto, but it would be nice to get people on record about where they stand on him doing this. I think they're all going to run on it. I mean, in Michigan, obviously, the auto industry is like the biggest fight they're going to have.

So I'm sure Abdul is all. I know Abdul is all over this. In Iowa, it'll impact John Deere, which is an important industry there, but also farmers who sell ag products into Canada in Maine. It's all about lumber. And I think there's a bigger question of like, we know Trump loves tariffs, but we don't really know why. You know, like James and Greer seems to want to kind of reorder the manufacturing business and bring it all back to the U.S. from China. And I think a lot of people support that. Scott Besson seems to think that tariffs are a way to collect revenue and just make money for the guys.

government. Then there's another group that just seems to think they're a way to bully other countries and get them to do whatever you want about whatever issue. And that's kind of, it seems like where Trump kind of lands on this. Like I think, I assume he is more interested in looking tough and looking like he beat up Mark Carney than he is in getting some extra milk into, you know, a Canadian province. There's one more. But there's one, the other, I think, and Vance has sometimes flirted with this, is that you accept lower growth. and the cost of tariffs because you reorder the economy around old school manufacturing, which were the jobs for men.

And even though you give up service jobs growth, you give up all the benefits of a modern globalized economy, it creates a, it's more about the kind of old school values of a kind of work we used to about. We used as a society view is important. But even all that aside, it is hard to overestimate what a dumb fucking political move that says the number one issue for voters across the political spectrum is the cost of living. Everything's too expensive. And they don't just think it's a bad economy. They know they blame Trump for it.

And specifically, they blame Trump's tariffs for it. Like it is maybe his one of his most unpopular policies, certainly his most unpopular economic policy over the last several years. And now he is doubling down on it, if not in fact, in a third. threat at least before the midterms. So there are going to be headlines about tariffs before the midterms. And of course, he's already levied tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. So that's going to, you know, that'll have an effect on things. So people are still pissed at the tariffs that he's slapped on everything before this. Now there's headlines about more tariffs.

And we are 60-something days out from the midterms. It's fucking nuts. Yeah, it's not smart. Okay. So let's talk midterms. One person noticeably absent from Vance's event in Maine was Susan Collins. This is the second time she skipped out on advance event in Maine this year, though I'm sure she was thrilled that the vice president told the crowd in that speech that Susan Collins is a quote, dear friend who has been to his house, quote, probably a half dozen times. That's not a dear friend. Sorry. Collins has been trying to convince voters that she hasn't become a rubber stamp for Trump, despite voting with him 95% of the time. The latest move was a statement asking the president to, quote, consider the negative impacts his trade war with Canada would have on Mainers. On the Democratic side, things have been relatively quiet since Troy Jackson locked up the nomination to replace Graham Platner on the

November ballot. But Jackson's campaign is beginning to heat up, finally getting on TV this weekend with this great 30-second spot featuring Jackson's mother. Troy was born to two teenage parents, and we struggled a lot. He didn't use that as an excuse. He used that as fuel to make things better for other people. Troy never talks about what he's done, but somebody will come up to me in the grocery store or someplace in town, and they'll say, Troy helped me get a sewer. Troy helped me, help me get my mother into a nursing home. If you need help, he's going to be there for you. That's, that's who he is. I'm Troy Jackson. This is my mom, and I approve this message. What do you guys make of the Jackson campaign so far? And do you think he's doing enough to

nationalize the race so that it is about a vote for Trump? versus a check on Trump. So there was this ad. There was another ad or video he filmed just sort of sitting on a stoop talking about Elon Musk dumping money in the state. There's another... The crotchmog shot. Yeah, yeah, it was very shot from below for sure.

I didn't notice that, Tommy noticed that. I thought it was innovative. It was good. It was good. I mean, we've used that technique here at Pate America. But sometimes against, without our consent, we look at a video. be like, hey guys, that's three crotches. But, and then.

Alternative name for the podcast. Yeah. And then there's others where he'd sort of say, like, according to our enemies, but I say, let our haters be our motivators. But the, and that's what Troy Jackson said as well on that ad. But he also is doing a lot of like, like kind of, the accent is the accent. And he's like, look, I don't care. I don't give a damn if you're, I'm not going to do the accent.

But Democrat or Republican, like, I just, we just want to get these good things done for people. So there is a war right now because he is. He's coming into the campaign late, kind of introducing himself. And as he's doing that, right, like as much as they'd want to nationalize the race, Republican groups are dumping millions of dollars into May calling him like a dirty politician and kind of trying to define him negatively. So I don't know what the mix should be. I think he's trying to fight a word to define himself because he came in so late.

Part of it is all the attention, like the national media should probably help nationalize this race a bit because people, boy, a lot of people stopped caring about Maine once it stopped being about Democrat on Democrat and started being about a Democrat versus Susan Collins. Yeah, I mean, that ad was good as a good bio spot, but it's definitely a older version of politics, a more parochial version of politics. It's like he helped me get a sewer in my community. That's not nationalizing it. That's not making it about rubber stamping the Donald Trump agenda. I'm nervous about this race. I mean, like, shout out to the main Democratic Party and Troy Jackson for like turning this thing from Platner to his race so quickly. That's genuinely impressive. I think

it was like literally a month ago, right, where he accepted the nomination. Feels longer. I do think they need to go on offense every day. I mean, J.D. Vance Visiting Nain is a gift to the Jackson campaign. I saw that he was highlighting Vance calling Collins, his dear friend on his Twitter feed. I hope they're doing more with that. The Canada Trade War is a huge opportunity for Troy Jackson. Troy Jackson's political career started because he led a group of loggers to the border of Canada and blockaded the road to protect main loggers from getting their

job stolen from them. Where he's from, he's, he's, he's from Arusta County, which is like the border county between Maine and Canada. He should, he could go there today. And speaking of nationalizing the race and explain what a 50% tariff does to a logging town. Right. Some Canadian premieres were talking about blocking electricity to America from, from Canada. If that happened to Maine, it would hurt them a lot. They get a lot of electricity from Maine. People love electricity in Maine. I don't know. I've I haven't seen a lot of polling on it, but my sense of it in Maine is that they're just fans of electricity. Data center's bad. Electricity, good.

You know what? You'd think it'd be 100 to zero, but I think it's probably 955 because everything is. But yeah, they're pretty pro-electricity up there. Iran, ongoing disaster. Collins does not do anything to stop the war. ICE is hugely controversial. Susan Collins gave a terrible interview the other day where she was asked, she was asked by someone, she got like door stopped at the elevator and the Senate and was like, why did you vote to send 70 billion to ICE?

And she was like, it was for body cameras that's like that they never turn on. when they're killing American. So there's a lot of opportunity there for Troy Daxon to make the campaign about Collins as a rubber stamp for Trump. There's also this concerning report that Elon Musk is preparing to spend $100 million on the midterms. And a lot of that will be focused on Maine. So we don't know where that's going to go. But maybe you could jujitsu that back on Collins. We'll see.

We'll see. I'd like to see a little more. You know, we've got to be aggressive. We've got to make it about her. Especially in this race. Because like you look at all the polling and this has been true since Platter was in the race. is still true today. Maine does not like Donald Trump. Maine is not happy with Donald Trump. Majorities of voters, if they were going to go to the polls, they would vote against Donald Trump.

And they did in 2024. They voted for Kamala Harris. And so the way Susan Collins gets elected here is, and it's a little different from the other races. They're going to try to disqualify Troy Jackson. But the real emphasis and why the White House is going to let her criticize them is showing that Susan Collins is some kind of an independent voice. Right. And so she wins if enough voters are like, I really don't like what Trump's doing, but I don't really know him. And she's actually delivered for Maine. And she's kind of like an independent voice. And she came out against these tariffs. I just heard her say that, you know. And so like the only way to win this race is to tie her to Donald Trump as closely as possible and make and nationalize this race in every way possible. And I think Troy Jackson like has to do that. And that was, look, that was the criticism of Platner. one of many, like after he wrapped up the nomination, as people were like, oh, he's going after Susan Collins too hard on being corrupt and everything else and being part of an establishment in Washington. And he's not tying her to Donald Trump enough. And that was fair criticism, but like that's now that's what Troy Jackson has to do as well. He has to tie her to Donald Trump.

Yeah, I just, I'm just, I am, you have to do that while part of their strategy is to try to define Troy Jackson as unacceptable or corrupt or worse in some way. way and he's unknown and part and you know I'm sure people have in the back of their minds that democrats went through this bruising primary with sort of these uh uh like unsavory figure in the end and like that he's tarred with that so I'm sure it's like a difficult balance of trying to figure out how to just get people over the line of like knowing who you are that you're okay to vote instead of you know stable reliable Susan Collins so like that's i i'm sure that's part of what we're seeing in the ads and the question is how do you make moments when there's a

national when jd vance is there when there's a tariff thing well also understanding he probably has to do some work to counteract what will be a day lose about him. I do think that 95% number she voted with Trump 95% of the time. It sort of reminds me of what we did to McCain in 08, right? There's a senator who was seen as more independent, a maverick, and all we did for the three, four months of the general election was be like, this guy voted for George, voted with George Bush 90 something percent of the time. I can't remember now. Yeah, JD vats tried to get ahead of that by being like, and sometimes she annoys me by being so independent. It's like, what a subtle line, Jane. I know, I know. It's also like, it's like, it's just like.

Very obvious. What's he doing in Maine? You know, he's like, he's campaigning for her again. She can't show up. And she can't show up. It's all a little bit like, it's the Vance show. Only Lepage showed up the Republican nominee for the Maine second district. Not even the gubernatorial nominee showed up on the Republican side for J.D. Vance.

So he's popular. Positive America is brought to you by Helix. I don't know about you, but sleep is the most important thing in my life besides my family. They're connected. It's a really good chance that they are very connected. Thank you, John, for seeing me. If I get a good night's sleep, having a great day. If I got a bad night's sleep, I am almost guaranteed to have a rough day.

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Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter, get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash crooked. That's ZipRecruiter. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. Speaking of him, he also recently weighed in on the Michigan Senate race during a visit to his hometown in Ohio. Here's what he had to say about Democratic candidate Abdul El-Said. Now, El-Sayed, this guy running for Senate in Michigan, he once argued, not too long ago, that criticisms of Sharia law were rooted in white supremacy. I'd love to go back in time and tell my papal that there's a man who claims to stand, for working people who says not only should we have Sharia law, but if you criticize it,

you're a white supremacist. That's not my papaw's Democrat Party, my friends. That's not my papas, Democrat Party, my friends. Just a just a collection of real authentic people in there. Also, you notice how he just kind of got in there. Not only is he think we should have Sharia law. Like what? What are you talking about? I know. It's also like, he makes Abdul's name sound weird. He's like, El-Sah, yeah. And he's like, my piece. Pah, me ma'am, papaw. I was like, fuck off, man. Yeah, sorry.

I think I said pa-paw earlier. People are a lot of different names. Yeah. So, Abdul responded on MS now by pointing out that Vance was cherry-picking who gets to be defined as American and distracting from the issues. What do you think of that response? And in general, like, what is the best way for Abdul to handle all of these Islamophobic attacks from people like Vance, from people like Mike Rogers?

I've seen a lot of them are just like, not even, like, thinly veiled lies, like, very obvious lies. Like, he just loves Sharia law. He loves Sharia law. It's, it's funny. Like, this is where Vance to. It's, he kind of performs as, like, the sophisticated version of Trump. And there's, like, a way in which you take his rhetoric and you can find some shred that they can call it the truth somehow.

But then he'll go back to their eating the cats and they're eating the dogs or he'll go there. He's like, he wants Sharia law, which is just, just a lie, just just lying to people. I think he's doing, like, I don't know what a more defiant or direct version of what he's already been saying. sounds like, but you can just say what this is. If this election is a referendum on Trump's policies and whether people want in the Senate a rubber stamp for what Trump will do, then Mike Rogers will lose. And everything about what the Republicans are doing is going to be to try to hide that or muddy that or make noise around that. And if this is an election about health care, about jobs, about someone looking out for the middle class in Michigan, about someone who will actually kind of go to the Senate to advocate on behalf of people in Michigan as opposed to for Donald Trump or whatever that, or kind of siding with the corporations that are trying to kind of cut their taxes even more deregulate.

That's what the race is about, then Abdul will win. They know that. Paw-pa versus Sharia. Yeah. Yeah, his response to J.D. was like, called him boring, which I like, just unequivocally true. He made a line about Peter Thiel, which I don't know that most people get. Like MS now viewers probably get it because we're all political junkies, but most folks don't. And then he went into this thing about how, well, you know, do you think J.D. Vance looks at his wife's parents in the eye and tells them that are not real Americans referencing Ushavans.

And again, it's like it's a good point that I'm not totally sure everyone would understand. It's also a point you could make about Donald Trump and Melania, by the way, because her parents were not born in the United States. I did, like, there's the, this is a distraction thing. I think that is true and it's valuable. I did wonder if it's missing a beat that just kind of like undercuts the suggestion that he's an extremist. It's like, J.D., I played fucking college lacrosse. That's not the most like Sharia compliant activity or something that just get that. Like, I love America.

I'm an American. I grew up playing high school football. I'm from Michigan. My name's Abdul. I'm a doctor. I'm a union member. Like enough of this fearmongering crap. And he does that.

He says like I'm Abdul from I've always been Abdul for Michigan. It's also, yeah. Distraction is sort of the right ballpark, but you got to kind of put a finer point on it by being like, like every answer has to go back to Mike Rogers at this point. And like Mike Rogers and J.D. Vance and all these people, they're saying all this shit because they have nothing to say about why everything's so expensive in Michigan. They have nothing to say about what a disaster Donald Trump has been for Michigan over the last four years. And like they're so they're just going to make this entire race about Sharia law and Hassan Piker and all this other bullshit because they have nothing else to say. say about anything that you care about, you know? And I think that like he's and Mike, and they may know that it's a pretty weak argument that Mike Rogers is just going to go to the

fucking Senate and have another another two years of doing whatever Donald Trump tells him to do. Yeah. The thing about the Usha point is like, so he's a hypocrite. Right. And like, it's like it's just, this is sometimes like it's just like, hey, like start you're not going to win on points. It's like, that's a logical argument about how you should, like, you should, Like what? He's racist towards you, but not towards his wife. Like, I don't, like, it's sort of, it's, it is beside the point. And just sort of done with sort of hypocrisy arguments are kind of, well, what about this, you know? Well, it's luring.

And their goal is to sort of lure you into an argument about identity and culture and race, right? This is like, you know, Bernie tweeted today too, like, well, you know, you talk about us on Piker, but, you know, Jake Lang is in Michigan, the January 6th rioter. And he's got a connection to Mike Rogers, which is true, you know. And then Mike Rogers is like, well, I'll disavow him. I'll disavow Jake Lane. But also, will Abdul disavowpike her? And now we're like in a back and forth about, you know. Disavow off?

I know. Man. The classic disavow off. I think Lamer is like a mayor's bet on a sports game. Yeah, there is something about the like, I. Those are pretty lame. The other side of it, right, is. I'll wear this.

I'll wear a cheese head. These cheese steaks from Chicago, Philly, whatever. I wasn't listening. I was waiting for my turn to talk. What's no. So rare. What I was trying to, what I was going to say is, yes, there's like the tit for tat for how you respond to these things, right? And then there's sort of the proactive rhetoric, whether it's in responding to the Osama Piker thing, which he did, right?

He's not just ignoring it. He was responding to it. And then what you're doing proactively to address those kinds of things. And I will say, like, I read the statement he put out in response to the backlash to a comment from Hassan Piker from his fucking stream. Because we've all decided that Hassan Piker is the main character in American politics. You have Fox News on these there. It's every third figure. It's Hassan, Trump, and then just a socialist, that choice in at random, basically.

Maybe a trans swimmer will get in there. But that's it. That's what's on Fox News. And so, like, his response. Well, it's also in the third way and some other Democrats and DSA people, right? Like, a lot of people are invested in making Hassan the main character of the bin terms. But if you look at that statement, it, like, I think all the sentiment inside of the statement is good. but it's very like, it's very careful, right?

It's very careful statement and not, like, that there needs to be, if he's going, like, if he's trying to prove to the Jewish voters in Michigan that he would like to come home despite having had $30 or $60 million, $60 million worth of ads dumped on his head, then like the same language that he would use the defiant language about saying, this is why we need Medicare for all or like this is why we need to take on the corporations, like that level of defiance is certainly welcome in describing anti-Semitism, right? Right? Like, it's a very kind of careful language as opposed to something that's just like, it's just more in the style that he's using on every other issue. That's all. There's also some interesting news about Rogers over the weekend.

Axios reported that allies of Rogers asked APAC to rethink their involvement in the Michigan general election, urging the group to, quote, get involved without putting the group's name front and center. The New York Times followed up with reporting of their own, noting that, quote, APAC leaders have privately voiced unease with a plan that makes APAC appear as if it is high. none of this has stopped Rogers from fundraising with APEC. He attended three APEC fundraisers in L.A. Over the weekend and a fourth on Monday. What do you guys make of the request from the Rogers camp? I mean, I think it tells you a lot about how toxic the APEC brand has become politically.

I think ultimately what they're doing there is saying, just don't spend on your own behalf, funnel your money to some other SuperPack and have them spend it for you, which is what APEC will probably do. Although it does make APEC look incredibly weak if they can't even run ads. although they normally don't run ads in a general election. They usually just screw around in Democratic primaries taking out progressives. So this is new for them, but it's a punch in the gut. But also, APEC has run tons of ads under the names of other organizations.

And their ads during this primary had nothing to do with Israel at all. They were about sort of accusing him of being anti-woman and other things like that. So like they already are running a campaign, which at least for most people, they're trying to kind of make it about other issues and not about APEC. Seems like they wanted the headline, the Rogers campaign. They wanted a headline out there to say that they are resisting APEC because they know that it's toxic, right? Like that, I think that, I'm sure they're the ones that leaked it. That is, I guess.

Like, the politics are a little simpler for a Republican than a Democrat, right? Like, I don't totally understand why he wouldn't want. I think that it has become so toxic that it is not just toxic in a Democratic primary now, but APEC is toxic in a general election. Right, right. I guess what I want to understand is who. Who are the voters? I guess there are some Republican voters who might just stay home, right? Because any right that are like... Independence, swing voters.

APEC is extremely unpopular with independent voters. But I think it's a, I think, you know, the important thing is he's still doing fundraisers with them. Like, he's talking... It's a double hit because he is still allied with APEC and doing fundraisers, but he's also talking about both sides of his mouth. He just wants them to hide the spending. I mean, he wants the... He wants the ads. He wants the UDP to cut a $30 million.

check to name your fake, you know, like the crypto, like, fair shake, it's a crypto fund or whatever it is. Yeah. And have them run the ads. The Times had another piece this weekend with the headline, angry Ohio voters could turn their state purple again, which details how Ohioans frustrations over data centers, rising prices, the war in Iran, could put not just the Senate seat, but the governor's race and a series of house races in play for Democrats. Nan Whaley, a former Dayton mayor who ran for governor in 22, told the Times, I've just not seen. people this pissed. What do you guys think? Too good to be true? Returned Ohio blue. I mean, I was surprised at how bullish Nate Silver was on Ohio. We talked about this the last episode. I mean, look, Jim Murnachi, the former congressman, posted something on the social media where he said,

you can get mad to me for posting this, but I'm just delivering the message. The biggest issues for independents are Iran War, gas prices, food prices, utility bills, rent. Okay, so today, Trump is further dragging out the Iran War, maybe indefinitely. That keeps gas. prices up, that impacts food prices because of fertilizer costs. He started a trade war with Canada, which is going to jack up food and maybe utility costs. And then Trump threatened to veto his only accomplishment on housing. So that wasn't his finest moment. Also, Dan Whaley had another quote in that piece. She said, you know, it comes down to you hate everything. You can't be mad at the Democrats because they don't control anything. Yeah. It's like, honestly, that is, that's what might get us

over the line. It's like at some point, you know, there's there's no one left to blame, but the Republicans that have had complete control over most of Ohio and now the country. So, last but not least on the House side, the Times had another story that raised eyebrows. The private meeting between House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Jared Kushner, where the two discussed, quote, potential areas of common ground. This comes as Democrats reportedly prepared to launch numerous investigations into the Trump administration should they win back the House in November. What did you guys think about Jared and Hakeem meeting? What kind of common ground? I think maybe in the West Bank.

I mean, yeah. Look, this triggered me deeply because I obviously am not a big chaird Kushner fan. Look, my fear, big picture is that, and this is not really about Hakeem Jeffries, but he's a part of this. The Democrats will, once they get the gavel and have oversight authorities, waste time with like sternly worded letters and requests for things instead of just subpoenas right out of the gate. And those demands for documents and oversight have to include the Trump family and the Kushner family in Jared's firm. And Kushner is going to have very powerful allies calling around to Democrats. Maybe there are people that he's friends with who are rich people in New York or Miami who are also donors to Democrats in saying, go easy on Jared. He's a moderating force.

He's one of the good guys. Look at what he did with the Abraham Accords, which we all have seen have brought peace to the Middle East ever since they were put into place. And remember, Corey Booker voted to confirm Charles Kushner, Jared's dad, as ambassador to France because of their preexisting relationship. So I think that's why those reports were triggering on a substantive level. And on just a political level, it's like, why would you take this meeting now? It just doesn't make any sense. There's nothing you're going to work on. Absolutely nothing.

Yeah. My reaction was like, what is the common ground with Jared Kushner? He's not a housing policy expert. He has no government job. He's no government job. He's just a private citizen with a lot of interests. If you want to talk with the White House about finding common ground on cost of living, go talk to someone in the domestic policy council.

Talk to the president. You're going to be speaker of the house. Go talk to the president, right? And maybe Jeffries is, you know, and the White House, I guess through Jared, is pricing in that, you know, Democrats are going to take the house. And Jeffries wants a channel to the White House that is in Trump, which is like, that's fine. But again, that's not Jared Kushner. He doesn't have a government job.

And you can't take a meeting like that quietly and then be surprised when the reaction is, you know, a signal about how confrontational that you're going to be over the next two years. It's just like, what do you think you're going to do that and quiet me with Jared? And then everyone's going to just assume the best intentions. Well, this is, I think, the deeper problem, which is, and Dan wrote a good message box about why there's so much consternation around this. And it is, to Tommy's point, that people are. afraid that as speaker he won't be standing up to Trump enough that he'll be too conciliatory.

But like I don't under what is your theory of power in a second in a in the if you're the Speaker of the House you have the Senate, you don't have the Senate. Is it about launching investigations? Is it about a publicly defiant posture? But you're your back channeling with the administration. Are you going to be drawing lines like if you do what I think certainly Democratic voters want to see from a Democratic House majority, there will be no successful working relationship with the Trump administration. You will be doing subpoenas, you will be doing investigations, you will be trying every day to get to the bottom of deeply embarrassing stories about corruption, ties to the Epstein files, failures, chaos, abuses of power.

Like that is what every day will be about. Trump will hate you. Trump will want to destroy you. Trump will be saying you should be in jail. He will be putting the DOJ on you. So what exactly is Jared, who we already did a version of this in the first term, ineffective, ineffective, ineffective, feckless, careless, Jared going to do for you? What is your back channel with this guy who didn't preserve the Paris Accords, really didn't do much of anything, going to get you, certainly before the election, let alone after? And now he spends his time spending billions of Saudi dollars on God knows what. He's trying to colonize an island off of the coast of Albania.

That's not going very well. he's constantly meeting with a Russian oligarch who is this economic sort of channeled to Putin like everything Jared's doing in Trump 2.0 is really, really sketchy and not something you want to be affiliated with in any way, shape, or form. It's something that demands a lot of scrutiny, a lot of scrutiny. Chuck Schumer's probably pretty happy about the meeting.

It's not him. Yeah. He's like, I didn't do this one. He's like, tiptoe and run. All right. The other Cushner is buying the Lakers, probably. Oh, that's right. Yeah, with Bob, Bob Hiker.

All right, one last thing before my interview with Seth Moulton. After months of delays, the Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, finally released his YouTube series, The Great American Road Trip. All six episodes are out now. Each opens with a disclaimer that no tax dollars were used to fund the show. Instead, there are several corporate sponsors, many of which share a theme, if you can pick up on it. Boeing, Toyota, Shell, United Airlines, Royal Caribbean, Enterprise, rent a car, lift, and the U.S. Travel Association. The team put together some lowlights for you to enjoy,

so you don't have to watch the rest. Here they are. And as I say, I've been carrying her luggage ever since. I carry your babies, and you carry my luggage. If I do get it, I feel like you can't say no. To Harvard? Yeah. Well, me and mom can say no.

They have professionalized, figuring out how they can take good, young girls like you, and I think corrupt their minds. I went to an extremely conservative school in high school, and I'm part of a extremely conservative family. And that if I go to a liberal setting, that's a way more rounded education than if I go to a conservative high school

and then go to a conservative college. That's just being kind of one-sided anyway. Like they're so good at it, you'll see young people go to a conservative school with a conservative family, and they get perverted and contorted. And now I control the trains, Montana. Who have thought?

Not me. The house was set up for the two of us to room together. We had a long world though. It was fun. It was good. You called her a bitch. I did not. I did.

We got it. Dancing, even poorly, is really enjoyable. Maybe we all have a little dance in our human heart. Here in Rockstar for doing this road trip. Thank you. It would be fun. Oh, boy. Oh.

Oh, boy. Dude. I had not watched that yet. That was troubling. I really, um, it's so funny this idea. idea that like there's a kind of this idea in the kind of whatever the conservative gen x boomer mind that the reason their kids turned against them is because they went to colleges where they were as if like young girls had their minds perverted meanwhile meanwhile you look at the discourse

around college are like hey we got this problem our professors don't seem to be reading anything that's submitted to them anymore uh also the kids are using chat chbtbt in the classrooms no one seems to be doing any of the work anymore it just seems like i don't know that they're very good indoctrinating us to believe in anything, let alone specific liberal ideas. It was like Alex Jones, they turned the frogs gay with the water kind of stuff. First of all, this poor kid doesn't want to be having this conversation on camera for it to be released to a total of a total of 16,000 viewers so far on YouTube's going great for Sean Duffy. What? What a weird.

Well, also it's like it's not even like she's saying I want to rebel against my conservative upbringing. She's basically just like, I'd love sort of a well-rounded point of view. You know, I've got the conservative point of view. and I had high school. And now I'd like to, you know, a well-rounded liberal point of YouTube. He's like, no, absolutely not. Me and Mom will say no. It's the answer, like there's just, um,

then I'm going to slap mom on the ass. And the end is infantilization. Like there's a like, uh, there's like, oh, would you like, you, you will be, like, why do you think your kids don't have the ability to hear an opposing idea? Like what, what do you, what did this, like, should be an adult, you know, young adults, like, person going to college, a time where people, by the way, it's time, you are able to serve in the military. You're allowed to do all kinds of things in a vote. And you don't believe they can handle a college professor telling you something liberal.

Like what, how little respect do you have for people? Dude, you did road rules. What are you lecturing your child about their learning environment? You want real world road rules, the challenge. It's how you and mom met. It's okay to go out and live your life and be around people who are different than you. Maybe you'll learn something. What a potential next White House press secretary, Rachel Campos Duffy. Yeah. I don't know about that.

Is Scott Jennings coming on a little too strong? I don't know. Trump said something nice about him last week when he was asked about it. Yeah, but it was very like cursory. He's good. It's funny because there was the Scott Jennings is in the running. He had a dinner with Susie Wiles sort of news cycle, which was immediately followed by the Scott Jennings is overdoing it.

He's terrible. The White House hates him news cycle. So you can see a lot of posturing in the media. It's not at all clear to me where Trump is heading. We'll see. Up next, my interview with Congressman Seth Moulton, and also we are currently out to Ed Markey's team as well, hoping to get him on ahead of the primary. That's up next. Today's show is sponsored by Strawberry.Me.

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have already done. Go to strawberry.comme slash crooked and claim 50% off your first coaching session. that's strawberry.me slash crooked. If you miss some of your favorite crooked pods this week, don't worry, you can now catch up on the week's best moments on MS Now on Saturday nights. MS Now is streaming an episode of highlights from your favorite crooked pods, packing as much analysis, funny moments, and 100% correct opinions into 40 minutes as humanly possible. Crooked on MS Now airs every Saturday at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific. Seth Moulton, welcome back to Pazave America. It's always an honor to be on the pod, so thank you very much for having me back, John. Of course. So your primary against Senator Ed Markey is in a week. The only three polls taken

in August have you down 28, 15, 33 in the most recent poll. Do you think the public polling is all wrong, or do you think you can make up a lot of ground by next Tuesday? What is your internal polling show? Internal polls have this very, very close. I think the polling has been wildly off in just about every primary across the country. And the energy that we're hearing on the ground, the numbers that we're seeing on the doors, is incredibly positive. People want change.

But at the end of the day, this will be about who turns out for this election and we have a great turnout operation that will help us win. Your central argument is about the need for generational change, which has already worked in several Democratic primaries this cycle, though usually it's been a young progressive defeating an old or old

moderate. I know you called yourself progressive in the last debate, but do you think it's fair to say, would you call yourself more moderate than Ed Markey? No, I wouldn't. I think there are two progressives in this race. And if you look at our policies, I mean, first of all, Senator Markey and I pretty much agree on policies. There's really very little where we disagree fundamentally. Some of my policies are actually more aggressive and progressive than his, like my affordability agenda, for example. But, you know, there's no policy change that I've made in this race. This is always who I've been. It, you know, takes some time for people to get to know you. And as I've been doing town halls all across the state, I mean, I think people have seen how committed I am to change.

Because it's not progressive without progress. And at the end of the day, Senator Markey has been advocating for a lot of things that he's advocated for a very long time. And yet, fundamentally, there are a lot of problems that are just getting worse. Housing costs keep going up. Energy bills are twice a national average here in Massachusetts. And it's just people admit that the status quo approach is not working. And so I've proposed some transformative ideas to address these things. And I think that's what voters want right now. Just to look at one policy difference, like Markey's for a Medicare for all single payer version of care for all. You're for a public option that lets people keep employer coverage. There's a good amount

of evidence out there that even a robust public option is the more popular, more achievable option, even though it's more moderate. Why isn't your argument that your positions, some of your positions may be more moderate, but they're also more likely to win and pass and easily achieved? Look, I think that achievable is absolutely part of the argument. In fact, there was an op-ed in the Boston Globe today that said that Moulton's policies are achievable and Marquis are not. I mean, he was re-elected in 2020 on a promise to pass Medicare for all in six years. He also promised to pass the Green New Deal and yet voted present on it himself when it came before the Senate. It's got fewer co-sponsors today than it did when he first introduced it.

So, again, it's not progressive without actual progress. And on this, you know, the question of health care for all. We both support universal health care. In fact, I've gone so far as to say it should be a human right, not even debatable, whether you're a citizen, an immigrant, you know, homeless on the street. It absolutely is a human right. I think that's good for everybody in America, but I actually want to get it done. And that's why I stand with President Obama, which just says, yes, you can have Medicare if you want it. Literally everybody can have Medicare if they want it. But if you're a union that's fought for years to get a great health care plan that you really enjoy, you can keep it. And I made a commitment to keep going to the VA from our health care when I was elected because we know the VA's got problems and I wanted to see them firsthand. There are a lot of vets who want to continue being able to go to the VA as well. What's your specific argument as to why Markey's age matters? Is it that he specifically isn't up to the job because of his age or that 50 years is just too long for anyone regardless of age? I think it's three things. I mean, first of all, it's not personal.

You know, I mean, it's kind of against the idea, this establishment idea that one person ought to be able to hang on to a seat in Congress for 50 years, even if the world is, you know, passing him by. So it's kind of this like establishment idea that personal power is more important than public service that as a vet, I really resent. The second point, though, is that if we win the Senate, John, it will almost certainly be by just one vote. And we cannot afford to have someone miss a vote due to a medical issue or anything else and potentially have that turn into another conservative Trump appointed Supreme Court justice. The stakes are just too high. And we should learn the lessons of Dianne Feinstein and Joe Biden and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And of course, on the other side of the aisle, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and recognize that there's just simply a risk when you reelect somewhat at 80.

He'd be closer to 90 at the end of his next term than 80. But the third reason, which I think is really resonating right now, is that you've got to have a new generation of leaders to take on a new generation of challenges and opportunities. And in the last debate, we were asked about AI. And Senator Markey explained to Massachusetts that he can't tell the apps on his phone or iPad apart. He doesn't know which ones use AI and which ones don't.

And that's tough. you know, after the debate, he tried to clean it up by comparing AI to an automobile and saying we ought to regulate it the way we regulate seatbelts. I mean, how are we going to make this technology safe if the senators don't even understand what it does? What specific regulations do you favor for AI? Well, first of all, we ought to learn from all the lessons of messing up the regulations for social media. And actually, Senator Markey talked about how he, He's been the architect of some of those regulations. His 1996 telecom deregulation bill opened the door for big tech to come in, make billions and billions of dollars, but have absolutely no accountability for things on the Internet.

Now, he's tried to walk back some of that, but we all know the Internet is unsafe. I mean, I've got a five-year-old and seven-year-old at home. I dread the time when they get on social media, and we know that their suicide risk goes up, that the harm that can happen just from being on social media is very, very good. very real, and Congress has totally failed to regulate it. So number one, we've got to make AI safe, and that means holding the AI companies actually accountable. Number two, we do have to win the AI race against China because we don't want to have zero accountability here in the United States because everyone starts using models from overseas. And then the third thing I'd say is that there will be job displacement. Now, we don't know exactly when it will happen or what it will be. So rather

than try to anticipate where that's going. Like, remember a few years ago and Democrats said, oh, we'll just retrain the coal miners to be computer programmers and then they'll be fine. I mean, even if that was realistic back then, these are like the first jobs that are getting automated out of existence by AI. So I think we have to have almost a FEMA-like disaster fund approach to dealing with job loss, a federal fund to say, look, if every paralegal in their country loses their job within a month, we're going to help.

We're going to bail them out until they can find new jobs. I think that's going to be critical as well. You mentioned China. I feel like this constant tension with the development of AI is someone proposes regulation, someone proposes slowing it down. The counter argument is, well, yes, we want safeguards and we want regulations, but we can't let China beat us. So it's used as an argument to just keep pushing ahead.

Like, what is the balance between, you know, making sure that we're not all using, you know, Chinese AI models or even if we do nothing about AI, even if we stopped AI tomorrow here for some reason in the U.S., obviously it's still going to be with us. The rest of the world is going to move ahead. So, like, how do you regulate AI without, you know, letting China win this race? I think it's a great question, John. And this really is the administration's argument, right? They basically say, we shouldn't have any rules.

In fact, we should just do exactly what all the AI executives tell us to do because they're the experts and they're going to win this race against China. I do not think these two things are mutually exclusive at all. I mean, no one wants to fundamentally use a model at the end of the day that is unsafe. In fact, there's a good chance that governments will just shut things down that are unsafe. So there's no reason why the winning model shouldn't also be the safe model. I also think that the wrong way to do it is for the federal government to say, okay, we're going to just make all the rules. because we all know we're not going to keep up. Like, we're not going to keep up with the technology.

That's why I talk about accountability. I think the big problem with social media and big tech companies is that there's just no accountability whatsoever. If I were just starting to see big tech care because there have been successful lawsuits for the first time against them for the things that show up on their platforms, we've got to make it clear from the very beginning that these AI companies are actually liable. And that will force the kind of self-regulation that we've never. seen appropriately with social media, but also importantly, we'll be able to keep up and therefore

stay competitive with China and other countries around the world. Bernie Sanders recently wrote a letter to AI leaders like Sam Altman, Dario Amadei, and Mark Zuckerberg following the news that their companies lost control of their AI models. First, it was OpenAI, and then Clod and then Anthropic and Meta said the same thing. So the letter said, quote, in the interest of humanity, stand by your words, pause AI development. It is not too late to avoid disaster. Stop building machines that humans cannot control. Do you agree with Bernie that these companies should pause AI development? I mean, no, John, as you said, like the world is going to continue developing AI.

I mean, China may only be a few months behind us, depending on who you talk to. So just pausing it is not smart for the United States for, I mean, look, do you trust at the end of the of the day, the United States of America or Communist China to make AI safe. I certainly trust the United States of America as many problems as we have back here. But again, we have to make big tech accountable. And so fundamentally, I agree with Bernie that they are not doing enough to make model safe and to show accountability for their behavior right now. But the answer is not pretending that this is not going to happen. Bernie's also got a bill for a moratorium on data centers, what do you think about that? Would you support a moratorium on building data centers for a

year or longer until, until, you know, we can figure this out and people in more local communities and states can have more of a say in where these data centers are going? I think it should be up to local control. Like, I think that, you know, people in communities that are going to be impacted by data centers, both negatively and positively, you know, should make these decisions. And there are some communities that want data centers because of the tax revenue. There are a lot of communities right here in Massachusetts that are really nervous about them jacking up electricity prices when electric bills are already way too high here in Massachusetts. There are a lot of people who are worried about pollution, you know, for good reason. So my view is that this should be,

this should be local control. These should be local communities making decisions. The federal government should not be forcing data centers down everybody, that anybody's throat. But at the end of the day, when there are local communities that say, no, we want this business, we want this here, we want the construction jobs. A lot of unions are very in favor of these data centers because all the jobs that they bring. Then it's a good thing for our data to sit in data centers in the United States and not in data centers overseas in China. We know that they do not respect privacy. They don't have proper controls over intellectual property. I think it's already a problem that big tech companies and AI companies use our data without our permission or any benefit coming back to us.

But it could get even worse if there's absolutely no control over our data because it sits overseas. There was another odd moment in an earlier August debate that I wanted to ask you about. At one point, you asked Markey why he'd take a meeting with a lobbyist on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein. This was based on a 2015 email in the Epstein files where a colleague of a lobbyist, named Bob Crow said he'd had an initial briefing with Marky about getting the son of a former Senegalese president out of prison. Epstein paid for that lobbying, but both Marky and Crow say the meeting never happened. Three independent fact checks found the claim mostly false or unsupported. There's no evidence that the briefing with Marky took place or that Marky had any idea

Epstein was involved. You also took $2,000 from Bob Crow, which you later returned. But considering all that, like, do you still think it was fair to suggest that Marky, took the meeting and did a favor for one of Epstein's pals? Well, look, I mean, if you look at the email, the meeting happened. And it's not a surprise that Senator Markey would sadly not tell the truth about this because he's been lying a lot in this campaign. I mean, he said that he does not take corporate PAC money, and he does. He said that he does not take fossil fuel lobbyist money.

And he does, the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald have documented these things. So unfortunately, he's been lying to his supporters. throughout this campaign, and it's not a surprise that he would be dishonest about, you know, a meeting that emails clearly documented occurred. But my question was actually very simple. It was simply just why would you take a meeting? Because this actually does go to the heart of an issue that I'm hearing all across Massachusetts, which is that they don't, people don't see the senator.

I've done over 50 town halls across the state where anyone can come, it was like hundreds of individual events, but any. can come to over 50 public town halls and ask me any question that they want. And I often hear we never see the senator. I've never been able to get a meeting with him. I've never been able to ask a question. So this simple question I asked is, why would you take this meeting on behalf of a lobbyist working for Epstein and not take meetings with constituents?

And that is representative of things that I'm hearing on the trail. But it's possible that it was just a call between this lobbyist or a colleague of the lobbyists and Markey's staff and Markey had nothing to do with it or had no knowledge of them. The email didn't say it briefed his staff. I mean, I've worked in the congressional office for 10 years. A big difference between, oh, we briefed molten staff or we briefed molten, right? I mean, it's pretty clear. But, you know, look, he could at least return the money. I mean, look, the point is a lot of voters ask, like, why can't we get access to our senator? And this just goes to the heart of that question. Like, the wealthy and the well-connected, even if they're connected to a convicted felon, seem to be able to get meetings or briefings or whatever you want to call it with senators,

and yet ordinary people in Massachusetts can't. And that's a change that I would like to bring if I'm elected senator. We've actually won as many democracy awards from the Congressional Management Foundation as I think any other office on Capitol Hill, including ones for transparency and constituent services. I mean, literally the best office in the country for constituent services. And that means people can come to us at all times for anything. In fact, we do get a lot of constituent services requests from other congressional districts because they say, I can't get an answer from that congressman or that senator. or so we're coming to you. And I think that's the kind of service and the kind of access that people in Massachusetts want and deserve. Yeah, I was going to ask because obviously,

like, corruption is a huge issue thanks to the administration and Donald Trump, but also it's just you can tell people are sort of fed up with some of the things that you're talking about just broadly with Congress and Washington in general. It sort of reminds me of 2006 and when Democrats took the House and it was an anti-corruption method. You know, back then there was sort of a series of proposed reforms if Democrats took back Congress, what they could do on ethics and lobbying. I remember when I first started working for then Senator Obama, you know, he spearheaded some of those as well. Have you thought about legislation, ethics reforms, lobbying reforms, anti-corruption legislation that you'd like to

pass if you're senator? And additionally, even if there are things that you can't pass, legislation, you can't pass just sort of rules for your own office that you want to put into place as Senator. Yes, absolutely. So first of all, I was the first office on Capitol Hill, House or Senate, to ban prediction market trading for me or my staff. And that's set an example that other offices have followed. But that's a great example of something that we've already done internally. And those bans should, of course, be passed into law. I also think that we need campaign finance for finance. And we've tried for years to get it. As you've said, people have proposed this for a long time.

It's been difficult with the Supreme Court. A novel approach that I've been pursuing is to tie campaign finance reform to term limits. And the reason why this is an interesting combination is that campaign finance reform tends to be more popular with Democrats. Term limits tend to be more popular with Republicans in Congress. And yet both are wildly popular with the American public. So we could make a compromise. Each side could eat a little crow.

And we could do something that would, I think, be fundamentally good for Congress and raise our esteem in the minds of the general public. But it's been proven difficult to pass without some sort of grand bargain like that. I've also co-sponsored three congressional stock trading bans. And, you know, I think that I've also disclosed my whole family's taxes in this race, which Senator Markey has not. I think that kind of transparency is just helpful. And, of course, some of these were unwritten rules. Like we had disclosure of taxes amongst all presidential candidates until Trump came along and just refused to do it. I think one of the biggest lessons that Democrats have to learn after the second Trump administration that we clearly didn't learn well enough after the first,

is it just pretending we can go back to normal isn't enough? We need these kinds of fundamental reforms so that the next person like Donald Trump doesn't come and just completely abuse the system once again. You had a line in one of the last debates that said, if you're happy with your electricity, bill tonight, vote for the senator. Expand on that argument a little bit for me. What is the thing Massachusetts doesn't have because Ed Markey has held this seat? It's just innovation and change and an urgency to get these problems fixed because electric bills are not a new problem. And we've had high electricity rates, high, high gas prices for a long time in Massachusetts. And they haven't been addressed. And in the last debate, Senator Markey, you know, was, he thought,

felt rather indignant, and he trotted out a list of things that he's done on this issue. And I said, look, Senator, I respect your work on this. I really do. In fact, I've supported many of those measures by self. But we've just got to admit that it's not enough. When our electric bills are twice the national average, it clearly hasn't gotten that done. On housing, for example, there are a lot of tweaks in the system that have been proposed and worked on for a while, but housing prices are skyrocketing in Massachusetts. And one out of three people here, in this state thought about leaving just last year because it's unaffordable to live here. So I've proposed a totally transformative initiative to make it faster than driving to get around

Massachusetts by turning our commuter rail system into a fast regional rail system like they have throughout Europe. It would finally connect north and south stations, so every train from the north would flow through the south and west. I mean, I'm down on the Cape right now. It took like two and a half hours to get down here. That trip would be from Salem in like 45. minutes, right? Now, this has been shown by a recent Harvard study to take 155 million cars off the road and spur hundreds of thousands of units of new housing. In fact, this is one of the things that the Globe recently cited as a really achievable project that we just need next generation leadership to get done. And Senator Markey has proposed improving rail service to Western Massachusetts.

His proposal would have rail service in two and a half hours, which is actually slower than the same trains applied the route in 1950. That's just not the change that we need to address these problems. Yeah. So, like, I mean, you know, you've said that a lot of your policy views and an ideology are similar to Markey. There's obviously a generational argument there. But, like, specifically, what do you think a Senator Moulton actually delivers in the next six years that a Senator Markey does not or would not. Like where would you guys differ in terms of, okay, a vote comes in the Senate and you'd vote one way and Markey would vote another way?

Yeah, great question, because we really do agree on most policies. Like, for example, we were just talking about housing. I mean, we obviously both agree that we need to bring housing costs down. I just admit that what we've been trying hasn't worked and we need to do something much more transformative like this regional rail initiative. I don't think that really translates into a different vote in the United States. Senate. But I'll tell you something that does. And that is voting for Chuck Schumer. When I started this campaign, I said from day one, I'm not going to vote for Chuck Schumer. I'm not going to run on a

platform of next generation leadership here in Massachusetts and then go to Washington and support Senator Schumer. Senator Markey not only supports Senator Schumer, but just took $62,000 from the Senator out of the Senate Victory Fund, the fund that's supposed to flip seats from red to blue in Michigan and Ohio and Alaska and Maine and other states across the country where we need to flip seats to win back the majority. Senator Markey took that money out of the victory fund. The Democrats across the country have contributed to it to bail out his own campaign. And so that's a huge difference in approach. I think you know, John, I've been working for years to do the opposite, to actually use my platform in Massachusetts to raise millions of dollars

for candidates across the country through my serve America initiative that's recruited, mentored, and supported amazing leaders like Mikey Cheryl, who the governor of New Jersey, who just endorsed my campaign, Andy Kim, Alyssa Lachin in the Senate, Governor Spamberger, and real leaders in the House like Lauren Underwood, Johanna Hayes, Chrissy Hulahan, Pat Ryan. You know, these are people who all flipped seats. And I think that a senator in a safe blue seat like Massachusetts should really be invested in winning majorities across the country, not taking money out of the fund to win majorities across the country to cling to power for another six years.

Last question for you, set Markey aside. You spent a couple of years arguing that this party is broken. Democrats are heading into a midterm environment that's very good for the party, but the brand is still underwater. If you had to name the single thing the Democrats are getting wrong right now that has nothing to do with anyone's age, what is it? It's that people know one thing about the Democratic Party, and it's that we're opposed to Trump, and that's it. They don't know what we actually stand for. And that's opposition, but it's not leadership. And I think when people are scared and hurting, as so many are across the country today, with cost skyrocketing, MAGA controlling everything in Washington, and Trump just completely,

completely reckless and disgusting, frankly, as this racist president. People don't want just opposition. They want leadership. And it's an interesting way that I've sort of illustrated this in my town halls where I'll say, okay, ask everyone here, several hundred people, whatever it is, how many of you are opposed to Trump's immigration enforcement? And, of course, every hand in the room goes up, right? But then I say, how many of you can tell me what Democrats

immigration policy is. I've asked this question of thousands of people and you don't get a single hand. And this isn't some idle or esoteric issue. I mean, this is the number one issue today with ICE terrorizing blue communities all across the country. It was one of the top two issues in the 24 election that we lost across the board. And yet for Democrats not be able to say what our immigration policy is. Now, people are going to ask, okay, Seth, what's your immigration policy?

Three quick points. Prosecute ICE. Yes, it should be abolish. the institution is completely broken. Immigration enforcement should go back into the Department of Justice. But it's not enough just to say, poof, you go away. We need to hold these people accountable. Again, that's a big mistake we made not doing enough of that accountability

after the first Trump administration. Number two, create an immigration system that actually incentivizes people to come here legally, not illegally, because for many people, they find it just easier to walk across the border than actually go through the bureaucracy to become a citizen. And then number three, we need to be a citizen. a pathway to citizenship for families and kids who are already here and part of our communities. Now, those are three broad points. We could spend, you know, 45 minutes debating the details. But the point is, there you go. Like, that's my immigration policy. And, you know, my experience is you

get a lot of nodding heads. But when most Democrats can't even articulate how we're going to fix this problem, it leaves a lot of people feeling that the party is out of touch. And I think we just got to get back in touch. You know, last thing I'll say is, I ran for Congress. Congress because I saw the consequences of failed leadership in Washington serving in the war on the ground in Iraq, a war that Senator Markey voted for. There were a lot of people making decisions in Washington that were totally out of touch with those of us who were fighting in the sand and the mud in that war of choice. And I think there are a lot of people across America who feel the same way today, that Washington

and these establishment people who've been there forever are really out of touch with the everyday struggles of America. And the party that can better demonstrate that we're listening, we are hearing, we are responding with real leadership to fix those problems on the ground, that's the party that's going to win. I'm confident that Democrats can get there, but I'm not sure we're there completely. And that's why I've been willing to challenge the party establishment as I'm doing in this race. Seth Moulton, thank you, as always, for joining Pod Save America. Enjoy the Cape.

If you pass through North Reading, tell people I said hi. Thanks again. It's been an honor to work for your family and friends in North Reading. That's very much of my district. Yes. All right. Take care. Take care. Thanks again. Thanks to Congressman Moulton for joining. Dan and I will be back on Friday. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Ferris Safari with Reed Jirlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroote, Ben Heffcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Carol Peloviv, David Tolls, Mia Kellman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is

proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. If you miss some of your favorite crooked pods this week, don't worry. You can now catch up on the week's best moments on MS Now on Saturday nights. MS Now is streaming an episode of highlights from your favorite crooked pods, packing as much analysis, funny moments, and 100% correct opinions into 40 minutes as humanly possible. Crooked on MS now airs every Saturday at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific.