Pod Save America - Fake Polls, Real Wave?

Episode Date: October 23, 2026

Polling's gold standard, the New York Times/Siena poll, releases new data showing Democrats surging far ahead of Republicans with an 11-point lead on the generic ballot, while another popular pollster is exposed for falsifying its data. Jon and Dan react to the polls, both good and fake, and then turn to Donald Trump's campaign stop in South Carolina, where the president expanded on his love of men. They discuss Vivek Ramaswamy's disgusting ad in the Ohio gubernatorial race, JD Vance getting a cold welcome from his hometown NFL franchise, this week's Senate debates in Michigan and Kansas, and another administration scandal featuring Trump's former attorney Alina Habba. Then Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Democratic nominee for governor in Georgia, stops by the studio to talk to Lovett about her return to politics and her race against a MAGA billionaire.Hate listening to ads? Become a Friends of the Pod subscriber for ad-free episodes of Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett or Leave It, Runaway Country, Offline with Jon Favreau, and more—plus exclusive content, including bonus episodes of Pod Save America. Subscribe now at crooked.com/friends, on Apple Podcasts, or through the Pod Save America YouTube channel.You can request a transcript by emailing [e-mail]. Include the podcast name, episode title, and air date. Please allow 48 hours for delivery.

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please write in Pod Save America in the checkout survey. It lets them know we sent you and really helps to support the show. Simply Safe, ahead of crime in real time. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favre. I'm Dan. In studio. Gotta be here for the last couple of pods before the election.

Oh, man. Ben Rhodes here yesterday for Only Friends. You were here today. Great to have you. On today's show, we got more bad polls for Republicans who are now worried enough to start spending money on the Senate race in Mississippi. Wow. We'll also talk about Trump and Beebe's not-so-secret plan to prolong the Iran war with a new attack after the midterms. The president and vice president's full embrace of Vivek Ramoswamy's disgusting ad about Amy Acton that most

other Ohio Republicans are running away from. We'll also take a look at the best moments from the final Senate debates in Michigan and Kansas, and then Lovett sits down with Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Democratic nominee in the Georgia governor's race. But first, don't spend election night psychotically scrolling Twitter and refreshing election results by yourself. Okay.

Come to it with us. That was my plan. Our very own Alex Wagner will be hosting a live stream of the results on the PISA of America YouTube channel right here in Los Angeles, starting at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific. Alex will be joined by a bunch of your favorite Crooked hosts, including the four of us,

Stacey Abrams, Aaron Ryan, Kate Shaw from strict scrutiny, Aaron Haynes from Longplay, Claire Malone from still counting, and many more. Also, Friends of the Pod will get a chance to have their questions answered live on air, which is yet another reason to become a subscriber at crooked.com slash friends. And you also get ad-free episodes and your support. one of the few pro-democracy, independent media outlets left in America

that Brendan Carr cannot come after. Technically. Technically. Yes. I like to put it out there. I like to tempt fate. Come at us, Brendan Carr. Come at us and all of our Friends of the Pod who are now subscribers.

We could come and regret that. So sign up to your friend of the pod and support our legal defense fund. There you go. You should also subscribe to the Pod Save America YouTube channel. Now, that's free. And be sure to watch live on election night. then when you wake up the next morning, you'll have a bonus episode of Pod Save America waiting for you where all four of us will be going through all the results.

Can I say one more thing on this before we move on? Yes, you can. A week ago? We challenge the people to sign up. If a certain number of them signed up, they would get to, Elijah would go to D.C. Oh, right. What happened? I don't think we're there yet.

What happened, Elijah? Elijah's still sitting in North Carolina. Yeah, he's not there, so just a few more subscribers. Just a few more subscribers. and Elijah will go, oh, because he's going to go to D.C. and ask a question at the briefing. Right. At the time we were doing it, Katie Zachariah, was the press secretary. She's not that as no longer the case.

Well, and did you also say, Stephen Chung, communications director said there will be another briefing soon, but not like not before the midterms are over. There's going to be, and there's going to be no new press secretary, like for the rest of the year. Either way, the next time there was a briefing, do you want Elijah there or not? It's the question I would ask you. It's giving you guys an extra time to sign up, but you still need to sign up in order for Elijah to drive to D. Exactly. Thank you. Cricket.com slash friends.

Lots of benefits, too. All right, Dan, I keep waiting to wake up at 4 a.m. With that familiar pre-election, not in my stomach that comes from bad headlines and or bad polls. But it appears that that'll have to wait till next week or maybe after the votes are counted. Even worse. The final New York Times-Sianapole of the cycle came out Wednesday? Tuesday? Wednesday.

Wednesday. Yesterday. Has Dems leading the national house vote among likely voters by 11 points, 52 to 41, with Donald Trump's approval rating at just 36%. Silver Bulletin average has the generic ballot at around 9 to 10 points, so pretty close to the average. Little on the high end. Too many New House and Senate polls to go through,

but the latest Silver Bulletin averages have Democratic Senate candidates up by a about a point in Iowa in Kansas, two and a half points in Texas, three points in Maine and Michigan, four in Ohio and Alaska, all good, but all still close enough that an ordinary polling error could fuck us. Womp-womp.

And if you'd rather not believe the polls, you can just watch where the money's going, Republicans are pouring money into Kansas and South Carolina and are now weighing a last-minute investment in, wait for it, Mississippi, where Donald Trump will be campaigning on Monday. In the Axio story about this, a Republican strategist who likes beating metaphors to death said, The Wall has broken.

The enemy is inside the fort. We are now fighting hand to hand. Trump's SuperPack is also reportedly dumping another $25 million into house races. And the ass man himself was just in South Carolina delivering his closing argument that men are hot. As much as I can fall in love with. a man, which isn't that much. I fall in love with him, and his name happens to be Tim Scott. Darlene and her very handsome husband. It's a good-looking husband. I didn't get the Nobel Prize. I didn't get the Pulitzer. I should have gotten the Pulitzer

for writing, too. Pugh, phew, phew, phew. I only like two oceans, the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. I'm not going to put either Trump or America on any other ocean, but these two. So we seriously looked at the Atlantic Ocean, and I called Google Maps, who were really great with the lake and really great. We were going to call it the American Ocean. Baby, how good was that tonight? Was that the best?

Nobody can do it like me, baby. You see that crowd? The fake news would say, he rambled. I don't ramble. I got, I know everything I'm doing. The oil. And he knows. on the closing argument?

Perfect. No, John Hustead's ass did not make an appearance. But he found other men, wandering out. He found other... Yes. Yeah, he's just... He's all in on the men. I ask this every time.

What do you think he's trying to accomplish? Do you say, I think... I don't know. I feel like... Now they're just you, John. I think he knows it's a thing now, and so now it's just fun for him to keep doing it.

Yeah, I mean, he obviously, he's like sort of a stand-up comic in the sense that he responds to the crowd and when the crowd likes things he adjusts his routine. He's also like, you know, I think he's confident in his sexuality unlike his vice president who's like, I love you back, but not in the gay way. Yeah, that's true. Not in the James Telefrico way. It's just hard to see how any of this is helpful for anyone on the ballot in any of these states.

No. I mean, was it helpful for Darlene Graham, who we didn't have a clip of that, but she isn't that great at the rally either. What's the context in which she is great? Exactly. Well, she's got a lot of experience, which is why she's in the Senate right now making important decisions. So there is that. All right, let's talk about the polls. What are your takes on Time Sienna, since that's the one poll we allow ourselves to nerd out about on this show?

If you'd let me be in charge, we'd draw a lot of different polls, especially here and we're there. I think there's three main takeaways here. The first is Trump's always been known as sort of a low-ceiling, high-floor politician. It was never going to be as popular as some presidents, but he was never going to fall to Bush-like levels because he had this loyal MAGA base. Turns out the floor is much lower than we thought. He's now in the mid-30s. He's down three or four points from the last poll in September from the some times. And there's not real evidence that it's stopping here.

He could continue to go down. So that's one. Not with rallies like that. Not with rallies like that. What he loses in people angry about gas prices, he will gain from people who also love John Hustead's ass. The second point, I think this is the more politically consequential one, is we talked a lot about how Trump's 2024 coalition

has collapsed with Latinos and youngerers and all that. And this poll obviously reflects that as many have for the last year. But what is changing is that the original mega coalition itself is beginning to break apart. So in 2024, according to exit polls, Trump won white voters who didn't go to college, white working class voters, who've been the core of Mack from the beginning. He won them with 66 percent in the vote. In this poll, his approval rating among those voters is now 51 percent. And more, I think more, even more alarmingly for Republicans is that his strong approval is 34 percent with those voters.

And so two-thirds of white not white working class voters either have turned on Trump or just kind of met about them. And that does not bode well for the MAGA movement either here or in the long term. And then I think the third point is, and the Democratic Party brand, at least among likely voters in this midterm, has recovered. The Democrats are now more trusted in Republicans on every issue, including immigration, and now are seen as the party of the working class, the party that understands problems faced by people like you, the party that can fix the problems faced by people like you, by double digits. These are all big swings from 2024. So it seems like they're benefiting by, the party's benefiting by comparison with the Republicans. Of course, of course.

Because only 28% in the poll are satisfied with the Democratic Party. Yes, yes, yes. What had been curious to date, and alarming to Democrats to date, was there had been no seesaw effect. Yeah. Republicans went down and Democrats stayed down. And now, at least in opposition to this Republican Party,

these candidates in this moment, the Democratic Party is looking better. I am not suggesting that is that that that we've solved all of our problems far from it. I'm not suggesting that's going to extend the 2028. But in this election, as you were worried about some of these voters independent, Republican leading independence, former Trump voters who'd be unwilling to vote for the party. That seems like we have a better chance of those voters now because the party is seen better than it was a few months ago. Obviously, like the big mystery left in this election is the composition of the turnout. And I thought it was interesting in this poll.

they split it up so they so it's 11 points on the generic ballot but if they just asked voters if they went by the likelihood that someone says they're going to vote it goes up to 14 points and if they just go by predicting the likelihood of someone voting based on their past

vote history and identity etc then it goes down to nine points So it is interesting that a lot, and I think this is probably the case with a lot of these polls, is when people just tell the pollster, yeah, more likely to vote, those screens tend to make the generic ballot lead for Democrats even larger. And then, but I think pollsters are trying to weight these differently just to make sure that there's not like a big miss. Yeah. And one of the things that causes, not specifically in the Times, but other ones, is that it's not specifically in the Timesville or other ones, is if you're doing predicted vote, young voters are going to be less likely to vote based on past district

because either haven't voted before or because they're younger. And that's the big question here is, are younger voters going to turn out in the way in which you would want them to? There's some very, very early evidence in early voting that that's happening. Low-preventive voters. And young-provency young voters, but I think it's way too early to know because we're in the very beginning of early vote. But I think that's a big test and we're going to get those voters.

How real do you think this bigger, redder map is, even with these spending decisions? And would you consider the bigger redder map to be Mississippi and South Carolina? Yeah, I was going to say those are the two that, because now, well, I guess Kansas, too. Kansas is on the map. But now Kansas is really on the map. Yeah. So I think these are, we have real shots here. They're long shots, but they're real shots.

We have good candidates in both cases. They're very bad candidates on the Republican side and both of them. It doesn't cost a lot of money to invest in either of them. This is a place where these are the kind of bets you should be making as a party, because if you were to win these seats, you have them for six years. That means you have a South Carolina Democrat, a Mississippi Democrat, into hopefully the first term of the next Democratic president, increasing our likelihood of a governing trifective,

we're able to win the White House. And so I think it's very real. In both cases, you have very large portions of electorate that are black voters, made up by black voters. There's reasons to believe based on primary turnout that black turnout could be incredibly high. We've seen some of that in some early, obviously early early voting data.

But if that's the case, it's like it's very, I think this is a place to invest, that the party should invest money. It's a place that, you know, donors should invest money to help these kids. Because I think, I do think we have a shot here.

It may be a bridge too far, but it is not, this is not a fool's errand. Well, because, again, we can't, we just don't, we can't predict turnout, right? Like, you can't get from red to blue in these states with persuasion at this point. It's not like all these voters are going to do suddenly who are voting Republican in the past going

to vote Democrat. But, like, if you have an election where the Republican base really is just staying home or a lot of these voters are staying home, suddenly it just becomes more real in these states. Mississippi is either the largest or the second largest percentage of its vote that is made up by black voters. And so you just think on paper, a huge part of the vote is made up by a great part of the vote is made up by a group that is voted for Democrats north of 85% in most elections,

if those people turn out a very high level and Republicans stay home, that's the place where you have a shot. And in the last time there was a Senate race in Mississippi, the Democrat only lost by 10 points. And South Carolina is real too. And the other thing, part of thing in South Carolina is there's third party candidates.

And this is a, because Darlene Graham, and so this is why I think about that is, Jamie Harrison in 2020, which is I consider 2020 to be basically a 50-50 year. Jimmy Harrison got 44% of the vote. It was like 43.8% of the vote. So then your question is, can Annie Andrews in South Carolina get to 50? Well, if you have 5% of the vote or 3% and 5% of the vote that goes to a third-party

candidates there, which I think could be possible because Sterling Graham is such an unimpealing candidate, then she only has to get to 47.5. She only has to do 3.3 and a half points better than, Jamie Harrison in a year that is, you know, seven to ten points more Democratic against a much worse Republican candidate in Darlene Grant that Lindsay Graham, who was an incumbent, a pretty good politician. You do wonder if in 2020, it's a presidential year that Jamie Harrison benefited from high black turnout in South Carolina as well, that you would get in a presidential year specifically more than you would maybe in a midterm electorate. But on the same time,

Lindsay Grand Benefit is probably even more by higher role white turnout with Trump on the ballot. Right, right, right. This episode is brought to you by Act Blue. If you've been listening to this pod, you already know the stakes. Don't trust your campaign to amateurs. Act Blue is the platform that's been powering Democratic campaigns for over two decades, giving candidates up and down the ballot the tools they need to fundraise, organize, build websites, and win. It's built for campaigns and proven by millions of donors.

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near you like your local total wine specs, ABC or local liquor store. One more thing on the polling. The data site 50 plus one uncovered a completely fake polling operation that goes by the name of Wedgwood Polls, which was new on the scene this cycle but found its way into some of the aggregators. Once they got caught, Wedgwood announced that the whole thing was simply an experimental project, is what they called it, to show the influence that an entirely fabricated polling firm could have. Super helpful project, which has led FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to threaten the license of broadcasters who air fake polls,

which seemed like a message designed to please the guy with terrible poll numbers who gave Carr his job. On Wedgwood, candidates like Mallory McMorrow, she tweeted this the other day, that the group did real harm, like specifically to her campaign. Can you explain what happened and why Wedgwood got past so many smart people? I can't really answer that last part there because, but I think there's a few things to understander. I don't think we should take it as a given. This was some sort of like Nathan for you like social experiment?

No. Oh, I think it's, well, and even if you look into it, it's only after 50 plus one sent them, asked them for comment because they had done the investigation, that then instead of giving them a comment, Wedgwood just suddenly posted, oh, it was just fake the whole time. So 50 plus 1, which is the site that GLE and Morris, formerly a 538, and now as a subsection, the numbers is a part of.

They saw a poll from Wedgwood they thought was kind of suspicious and looked like it might be fake. They then went and used the same platform to rerun the same poll. This led them to believe that they had fake the numbers. They asked them about it. All of a sudden they put out the statement. Hard to know what they were actually trying to do. Yeah. And Nate Silver did a very good analysis of all their polling.

There's not a ton of consistency in it. They did have some of the best polls for, you know, more liberal candidates like Troy Jackson, Abdul Sidd and Francesca Hong. They also polled in some places where no one else had polled, like Mississippi early on. Some suggestion maybe that they were trying to help left-wing candidates or from the Republican side get those candidates nominated or were they, you know, betting on Kulshi or some of these other prediction markets to do it. we don't really know. It is also not sure that they weren't vetted because they had to answer questions from the New York Times and others. They lied in those questions. The two names associated with it were people who had pulling experience and had worked for established pollsters in the past. And then as soon as this happened, and this was a social experiment, you would imagine the people

who did the experiment would then talk about the results. Yeah, go out and do some press. They've disappeared. They're off the website. They're not responding to calls. So very sketchy. here. We now think there's actually a third site. SoCal Strategies, which I first known as SoCal Strategies in the run-up to the Michigan primary, when everyone was anxiously looking for results. And they were touting a poll they were going to have. And I had never heard of them. And I went to their website to see and you couldn't figure out who usually a polling, like a polling website will tell you a lot about their work, their clients, especially if they are a strategic firm, because they want more clients and more work.

This one had nothing on it. I would note for the record that neither Wedgewood nor media nor a so-called strategy's ever made it through the vigorous vetting processes of either message box or pull a coaster. So just saying that in New York Times. On the Mallory Memorial Point, you know, as you know, I supported her in the primary. Consider her a friend. I sort of watched this in real time. And that poll was very damaging. It sort of submitted this narrative that she was out of the race that she had lost, that it had now become a two-person

race between Hayley Stevens and Abdul said, I know that her polling showed something different, that it was much closer than this poll suggested. It caused donors to leave political support to sort of abandon her. I'm not saying she would have won without this poll. Like, there are all kinds of structural challenges in that three-way race for a candidate like her. However, there's no question that this fake poll, damage her campaign and kind of kicked off a death spiral that forced her to leave the race. It led to people calling for her to drop out of the race

because there was this real fear in the political establishment that Abdul could not win. And so all the people who sort of moved immediately to Haley Stevens thinking if we're going to stop Abdul, for whatever reasons they wanted to stop, with me, their pure electability or other reasons, you had to be for Haley, not Bally. And so money moved political support.

So it did real damage to be. There's no question about that. Nate, Silver, and Claire and Galen on Still Counting. Great podcast, everyone check it out. they, you know, they were making the point that it is especially damaging to have these kind of things in a primary. Yeah. Because in a primary, the people who participate in primaries are voters who are more likely to be political junkies like us who are looking at polls. And you're trying to make a case as a candidate in the primary that you're more electable than someone else.

So like in a general election, you know, people are looking, you're throwing all the polls into a poll aggregator and it's different. But like, in a primary, it's a real problem to have. fake polling operations like this. I mean, it's a problem no matter what, but I think it's potentially much more damaging in a primary. Especially because there are so little polling data in the primary. Like we were, like, like the Wedgwood strategy poll showed Francesca Hong

beating Tom Tiffany by three points. And that became a real argument in that primary that she was no less electable than David Crowley. Same thing. There was a similar dynamic with a poll for Abdul at the same time. There was a fake poll out here for, uh, with Nithia and Karen Bavis. Medium strategies. Yeah, that showed like Bass leading by a lot.

And then like Bass's campaign was like tweeting about it and then realized that it was just fake. It's a real problem that, and I'm a little guilty. I'm guilty. We're all guilty of this because there are these bot accounts that scrape the internet for polls who then tweet them out. I have pushed notifications for all of them for professional reasons, obviously. Yeah, right. Only for Policco or nothing else. Real sick.

And but you get these polls and it does, and you see the. them like take off on Twitter because a lot of people who are on Twitter who are like political obsessives like we are see these polls if they validate their priors about who they like then they're tweeting them out it creates momentum on there and you know for all the wrong reasons every reporter and political person is still on Twitter and then that it shapes a narrative very quickly that is that I think we know our friend color Carl's audio pointing this out that the DNC in the 2028 primaries is going to have, they are going to have to come up with some criteria

about how you make a debate stage, which debate stage you're on, presuming there's as many canvests as we suspect. Obviously, you're going to need very rigorous standards for the kind of polls that influence those averages. If folks like Wedgwood can even get into the New York Times average, you're going to have to really think about that. And I think we're going to, and then folks in the media,

and folks like us who talk about politics, living are going to have to really think hard about, like, having a list of the polls that we trust and look at, like in the challenge is not going to be the like we all know who the gold standard goals are or at least the respected pollsters are it's going to be like sort of new operations that are legitimate but now are going to have to clear a higher bar because it's like are you a wedge wood are you a soCal strategy yeah and i don't yeah that's exactly right and you know and there's obviously they're going to their partisan polling firms which when they pop up we know to sort of

already take a grain assault and apply it to the analysis because we know they're a political a polling firm. But, you know, could you even, could you trust anyone you never heard? Probably if you haven't heard of the person, you should not trust. I had forgotten, Nate and his column wrote about two firms in the 2010s, Strategic Vision and Research 2000 that were fake polling firms. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And Research 2000 was incredibly sketchy because they actually got media outlets to pay them for polls, like newspapers. And so they were just making money on the side. That's a red flag right there. What do you make of the Brendan Car Threat? Just, he's just him surfing the news. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing, like, like, FCC

policy distinguishes deliberate distortion from just an inaccurate report, right? Like if there's a bunch of broadcasters knowingly broadcasting polls that they know are fake, that's one thing. But if we all got scammed and the news, these news out was just happened to report, like you can't get in trouble for that. Well, this is also the other problem, which is for 10 years now Trump has called every poll that it's not good for him fake. Fake news suppression poll, yeah.

And now we have actual fake polls, even though those polls were, none of these polls were pulling him. But like it just, it just, the whole thing is stupid and counterproductive. One type of new story that Carr probably won't be able to cancel. The new report from the Times that the Pentagon is working with the Israelis on detailed plans to launch a new military operation against Iran right after the midterms. The theory here is, and stop me if you've heard this one before, that another few days of intense bombing might push Iran's economy over the brink

and force their leaders to the negotiating table. Pete Hanks said apparently met with BB Netanyahu and Israel. Israel this week. The Times did say that Trump has not approved the plans yet. And Netanyahu, of course, faces elections of his own this coming Tuesday. I am, like, bewildered just from a political perspective, what Trump is even thinking here. Your mistake here is if you think he's thinking. Or that any of them. Yeah, no one's thinking. Look, they have to solve this problem in some way, shape, or form. They don't have what it takes to solve it diplomatically. Right. Or intellectually. And so the only, you know, you got a bunch of dumb hammers at the Pentagon, everything looks like a nail.

And so this is, I think. There's reports that they're thinking about dropping the mother of all bombs on like pickax mountain, which is where they think that's one of the, you know, the nuclear facility is. But the problem there is that it's buried deep, deep, deep underground and the mother of all bombs would not actually touch it. But also, like, play that out for a second. So let's just say they had left it on the third floor of the mountain and they could get to an instrument. destroyed, why do we think that would change the calculus of the Iranians, who as we know... You know what they want to say is...

Well, that's a different thing. What Trump was to say is, we did it, we destroyed the remaining... We took... We got rid of the dust. We destroyed the rest of the dust. The straight is open. And by open, it means it takes, you know, billions and billions of dollars and, like, how many hundreds of, like, armed forces stationed, maybe permanently, uh, Iraq.

the straight of Hormuz to escort these ships through. But we can't even do that because we're not in charge of whether it opens or not. Right. It's just, it's really stupid because the one thing that Trump has never really realized is the Iranian leadership does not give a shit about the country and the people in the country. And they don't face the will of the voters. So it's like high gas prices is not going to lead people. It's not going to increase the generic ballot in the upcoming Iranian elections.

It's like it's a very different situation. Idiots. Well, that's not the reason to get out and vote because, you know, Donald Trump thinks after the election, he's just going to go ahead and continue bombing. If we won this election by enough and we got the Senate majority and the House majority, it's not out of the question that you're at least sending, it's actually quite plausible, maybe probably you're sending a war powers resolution to us to ask and force him to veto it. Yeah, and he will and then we'll still have a war. But I think it's, you're going to have a budget that they're going to need money at some point. And if we have a big enough majority in both houses, we're going to be able to not give him the money

he needs to do the war. That'll be a whole fight. We're just right back into 2006 all over a year. I know, I know. But you know what? But with a bunch of Republicans, though, whose colleagues just lost their jobs because of this war.

And Donald Trump is on his way out, and so they may be a little more amenable to working with Democrats to end this war. I mean, there are parallels here with how Republicans are. responded to Bush's loss in 2006 in the years going forward. And if Democrats can have a great election and make real gains here, it's not just that we'll have more numbers.

It's that Trump will have less of a hold on his people on some issues. Yes. And this is likely one of them. Pod Save America is brought you by Vanta. When you run security for a company that's scaling fast, the stakes end to heighten quickly, more compliance frameworks, more vendors, more risk, and a board that wants to see it all in one place. And sometimes it's fun in these ads to find out about a very scary part of life that's not ours. I don't run security for a company. And I'm glad other people do. Too often compliance data

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And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Pod Save America. It's the best way to support the show. All right, let's get to the latest in Ohio. Good to see old friends and new. We're packed house here. Look at this tonight. We're ready to do this.

Sir, excuse me, excuse me, you're going to leave this room if you're going to be. Sir, sir, if you want it, if you want it. All right, that's the sound of Vivek Ramoswamy getting heckled at a campaign event for running the most despicable ad I think I've ever seen in politics. It's up there with the Max Cleland Osama bin Laden ad. Yeah, but this is probably, I think this is worse. I thought about that one.

I think this is worse. As you've probably read by now, the ad features the estranged mother of Vivek's opponent, Amy Acton, calling her daughter a liar and unfit for office. What the ad doesn't say is that Acton and her brother, were removed from their mother's custody after her second husband was charged with raping Amy when she was 10 years old. He then fled the state to avoid standing trial with her mother, who stayed married to him until he died. The Vake decided to put $4 million behind the ad, despite many prominent Ohio Republicans denouncing it, Governor Mike DeWine, who called on Ramoswami to pull it down,

Senator John Hustead, former Senator Rob Portman, and former Ohio Congressman Jim Renacci, who said, quote, the floor may have just fallen out from under the Republican campaign for Ohio governor, and any Republican who fails to distance themselves from this ad risks taking on water as well. Well, the most prominent Ohio Republican in the country has not only declined to distance himself from the ad, but actively defended it. Here's the vice president of the United States at a rally in Ohio on Wednesday.

And now the media and the Democrats in the state of Ohio are obsessed because guess what? Vivek Ramoswamy had the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar. On Thursday, Trump chimed in with a lengthy truth social post, fully endorsing the ad, calling it, quote, hitting pay dirt. And then later he spoke to reporters on his way to his next event and continued to defend the ad. His whole thing is, well, if it was my mother, saying something, something like saying that I was a liar, you'd all love the ad. You'd all love it. He's not getting the point here, is he? No, he doesn't. I think he has no idea. He's been a little late to this.

He seemed a little surprised when the reporter gave him the context. Yeah. He clearly did not have it. Because at first, he was like, I don't know, it seemed tough. Like he had some comment where he wasn't all in. And then clearly because J.D. Vance went all the way out on the fucking limb, by himself, really. Trump had to back him up. Yeah, I mean, obviously, Trump will always side with the abuse or not the abused. So this is his natural place. But it wasn't clear that he knew exactly what he was supporting in the beginning. I mean, obviously we all want to believe the Jim Ranachi view that this is backfiring in a huge way.

Do you think it is, or all the Republican condemnations evidence of that? Are there other indicators we can look for? Well, there hasn't been obviously any polling that's been done since this ad came out. And I think it's very possible that this will be sort of a object of fascination among the politically obsessive already made their decision in this race. But I do feel a relative amount of confidence saying that an ad this disgusting that accuses a 12-year-old of lying about rape, that even members of your own party, popular members of your own party are saying is disgusting, is not going to help the candidate whose biggest vulnerability is that everyone thinks he's an asshole. Yeah. We don't have to overcomplicate this. It is not like, is this the thing that's going to turn the election?

I don't know if enough people will know it or see it, but it's not going to help them. And generally, as a rule in politics, you don't want popular, if you're a Republican, you want popular Republicans attacking you 10 days before the election. Who, and J.D. Vance did use the word disgusting. But when he used the word disgusting, it was about Republicans complaining about this ad.

That's what he said is disgusting. Like, what do you think? Like, I know I'm biased because I hated JD Vance for a long time. But I find myself being more infuriated with him than even Vivek Ramoswamy, which is crazy because Vick Ramoswamy is a complete scum for running the ad in the first place. But J.D. Vance, that smarmy little fuck getting up there and being like, oh, everyone's complaining. And it just, it calls it like it, it calls her a liar. The ad tells it like it is. Like, the woman in this ad, the mother, is just fucking.

I mean, I don't know if she's got mental problems. I don't know if she's just pure evil. I don't know what it is. But like, I didn't realize this when we talked about it the first time. So this guy that she married, when she married him, he had already been indicted for sexually abusing his own daughter from another marriage. So she first of all, marries someone who had been indicted for sexually abusing his daughter. then he sexually abuses her daughter 10 years old physically and sexually abuses both kids her brother as well and then when the guy gets arrested and charged with rape of her own

daughter she decides to believe him and then flees the state with him so he can avoid charges avoid standing trial and then amy acting never saw her mother again they had been on the run ever since the guy eventually dies. And then, Vivek Ramoswamy says, oh, great idea. I'll put her in an ad. And then J.D. Vance sees that and is like, fuck yeah.

Tells it like it is. And the guy, the hillbillogy, the hillbilly elegy guy who wrote a book and rose to prominence because of his experience as a child in a traumatized household. And he has like not a shred of empathy about this. It's like,

he's a fucking sociose. He has no soul. Like he does not. True sociopath. He calls himself like a Catholic, a man of God and goes on and on about how like he's one. What the fuck? His problem is that he only cares about whatever he thinks advances his own ambition. And he has decided that the only way that he can be the nominee of Donald Trump's Republican Party is that he has to double and triple down.

He has to prove his loyalty because he was once an apostate. It's to prove his loyalty over and over again every single day by doing the most debasing stuff humanly possible. And you know what he's good because like he did this with childless cat ladies. Remember like, you know, a couple months ago, who knows when it. He gave some interview where he was like, yeah, I wish I hadn't said that, you know. How much you want to bet like three months from now, six months from now, a year from now, this will get brought up and he'll be like, you know, once I learned about all the details, which I didn't know at the time, once I learned about that, yeah, that they shouldn't run that at. I don't know. I'm not sure because with the childless cat ladies thing,

his thing was not like, you know, I offended a lot of people and I heard from them. And I thought about it. He realized it was bad for him politically. So that's why he felt bad about it. I think this will follow him in 2020. Oh, yeah. Oh, I think so as well. And maybe he will realize that.

But I just don't, maybe he'll admit it. I don't know. But I'd be, I kind of be surprised that he would have enough, like, self-confidence and self-awareness to realize it's bad from because they're going to be, you know, Will Summer, the Bulwark has a piece out today about how now the right media after being initially against us, the MAGA Media folks are coming out in support of the ad. People like Ben Shapiro, you know, it's like, this is, you know, politics is a tough business kind of stuff. So I can...

Ben Shapiro compared it to RFK's family members coming out during the campaign and criticizing RFK Jr. He compared it to, he says the same thing. Missing a few elements of the story, but yeah, sure. Yeah, and the fact that in this case, this person had not... really been involved in their daughter's life for 50 years. So, like, why she's a character witness? Just married to a fugitive rapist pedophile. I mean, just put a fugitive rapist pedophile.

Married a pedophile, brought that pedophile into the same house as her children. And then when that pedophile got caught abusing her children, left her children, abandoned her children for the pedophile. And then a whole bunch ad makers, staffers, Vivek Ramaswamy, Jady Vance, I guess Ben Shapiro, all these. they're all like, yeah, this is our woman. This is her. She's a great character witness.

It's... It's... It's one of the most disgusting things that will ever happen in American politics. It really is. Like, I just don't... I mean, it's shocking. It's shocking.

And you know what? Something to be like a shocking, but not surprising. Actually, it's surprising. I'm like... I said this yesterday to Rhodes and we did Only Friends, but I was like,

I could have seen a still very slimy way to handle this, which is, would be J.D. Vance being like, I have so much empathy for Amy Acton, and that's horrible what she went through. And I don't know about the sad, but Vivek Rameswami, he's still the guy I wanted to be governor, and that's one ad, and maybe it was a mistake.

But basically what John Hustead did, which is still pretty slimy, because John Hustod also appeared with Vivek and Vance and didn't actually call for the ad to come down, right? So it's like he's not a fucking profile and courage on this one. But... Just a coward with a great ass. Coward with the great ass, right?

But, like, Vance could have gone that route. No, that's not the right he went. No. He decided to go the lowest possible. He had, that's the only way he can go because he's got to prove that he's truly MAGA. Speaking of Vance, being in tune with his home state, after the rally on Tuesday,

he dropped in on a Cincinnati Bengals practice. And there was a video of him attempting to greet the players as they went into the locker room, but it sort of sucked. It's just him sort of like just being typical d. J.D. Vance. Well, they all walk past him without acknowledging him. A couple quickly said hi. But here's star quarterback Joe Burrow getting a question about it afterwards.

Vice President Vance, I was here in practice today. Did you have got a chance to interact at all? We did not. We did not. He came with everybody and left with swiftness and efficiency. What do you think? What do you think Joe Burrow was thinking there? Do you think this was just for you personally, because I know you're a Patriots family, but you married into a Bengals family? I know. There's a real relief that the superstar quarterback did not do what many NFL players have done. You know what's funny? The true Bengals fan in my life is my mother-in-law.

I have not, I got to ask her what she thought about that. I bet she held her fucking breath through that whole thing. Especially because she's had quite a few things to say about Tom Brady. Yeah. To me. Like how many mega quarterbacks could one guy have in his family? I think the video itself, which doesn't really play in the, for the purpose of this podcast, but is really worth watching,

because there's something so delicious about the fact that I imagine that most of J.D. Vance's life was wanting acceptance, but being denied acceptance and an acknowledgement by the football team. Yeah. Just like he was never a cool kid,

always a nerd, and the football team, best case scenario, pretend like he didn't exist, that's best case scenario. Now he's vice president of the United States. He has one heartbeat away from being the leader

of the proverbial free world. He goes to football practice, in his home state, and they ignore him just like his high school team. The only enjoyable thing about J.D. Vance's 2028 presidential campaign is going to be watching him put on the human suit and go out and do culturally expected things that a presidential candidate has to do and just watch how awkward it is. I mean, for all the, for all the mockery Mitt Romney got for every time he tried, you know, like the who let the dogs out, Vitty.

The, uh, still a classic. Yeah, these are all deep cuts. J.D. Vance is going to be a hundred times worse. Yeah, that's true. He's going to make Mitt Romney look like a man of the people. Same with, like, he's going to make Ronda Sanders look like the coolest customer out there. It's the only thing I'm looking forward to. I cannot wait.

All right, Trump's continuing flirtations with other men kind of drowned out the other political events on Wednesday night. But we did get the final debates in the Michigan and Kansas Senate races. Let's start with Michigan. If you didn't tune in, here's a sample of how it went. So being bought off by the Muslim Brotherhood, having donors to his campaign from Hamas at support Hezbollah is not a problem? To bring in a question, my commitment to the Constitution is really beneath you. I am proud of America.

I'm proud to be an American. I'm proud of our Constitution that guarantees all of us the right to pray as we choose to pray. And the question that you would ask that, I think is actually really quite shameful. Yeah, so that's how that went. How much of the debate did you get to watch? It actually was not as a tough, like it wasn't as a contentious debate, I think is the first one. I was trying to- Which is surprising since he's talking about being bought off by the Muslim Brotherhood.

I was trying to two-screen the debate as my family was watching the WMBA finals game with the Valkyries last night. So I caught most of it. It was like, the other ones were quite heated. And you often see this happen when there's multiple debates. It's by the third one, everyone is sort of, they've gotten everything they have to say on her chest. The clip. Yeah. Although the clip, they're kind of exhausted by it.

They've probably seen the focus groups would say that no one liked what they saw, and so it was a little more chill. I'm not sure that any of these debates had any impact on the dynamics of this race. Yeah. I thought Abdul, the thing that where Abdul is very good is he responds to the attack that he is anti-American, too extreme, a terrorist, not by saying I'm not a terrorist, not by rebutting the individual facts, although he does that when he has to. it's that he shows in what he says and how he acts how he loves this country.

Like his closing statement, as has been in all of these debates, it's very powerful. He talks about his love for the country, how it's very Obama-esque and how basically only in this country his story could be true, how privilege he is to have the opportunity to be in America's to run for office here and what that says about this country. So I think he handles that very, very well. Yeah, we talked about the exchange with the Republican, you know,

tracker plant, whatever, in that. town hall. The guy with close relationships with CBS news talent. Yes, that's right. And how, you know, maybe Abdul's answer was part of it was good, but maybe it was like a little condescending, which the question or deserve, but maybe not the wider audience who might have the questions. I feel like in this was like the best of Dabdala handling Mike Rogers attacking this because

he was even respectful to Mike Rogers who did not deserve to be. He did not. He did not take the bait, which is the thing that I've told. tends to do in these cases. Sometimes that works out to his benefit in viral moments, and sometimes it doesn't. But he was disciplined in this debate. And you can sort of watch a debate and get a sense of potentially what the internal

polls say. Like I remember watching the last Abdul Haley-Stevens vote debate. And it was like, remember we had no idea what the public polls are saying. It's like watching that debate, it's very clear that Haley Stevens thinks she's losing this because she's really, she was the one swinging at all the pitches. You watch this. You believe that Abdul thinks he's winning or his poll suggests he's winning. and he's trying to finish strong and not, you know, get dragged into the mud with Rogers

and Rogers by, with all the Hamas and mothers. You can tell Rogers thinks he's losing. There was also another moment where Rogers did criticize the tariffs, which sort of, but like didn't say he would do anything about them. So it leaves them open to that. But when you can tell why earlier he hadn't done that because if you criticize the tariffs, then you have to say, like, well, I'll stop them when I get to the center or something like that. He can't say that, but he was. He was like, yeah, they weren't well thought out.

Well, I bet he says something different when Trump comes to Michigan in two days. Can't wait for that. All right, over in Kansas, it was pretty easy to see why Roger Marshall is having such a problem holding off Adam Hamilton. Let's take a listen. The real problem with the cost of diesel in particular is number one is the Ukraine war. And because of that diesel production has gone down. I just want to say, see, he's just said that the war in Iran is not the problem. The war in Ukraine is a problem. The Ukrainians trying to defend themselves are the reason why we have record diesel prices, nobody believes that. This happened in response to the war in Iran

that didn't need to happen, was not a necessary war. And this is why the prices went to record highs. Just curious, with all of those undocumented children that you delivered, did you also call ICE and ask them to be taken away? You say you've listened in 300 campaign stops. You did not listen in 300 campaign stops. All right. You had 300 photo ops. Let's move on. Nice. Not bad for a pastor. I was going to say, how do you think Hamilton did? I love Adam Hamilton. He's so good. He's really, really good. He's so thoughtful.

I think there is a question. And he's tough without being an asshole. Yeah, which I think that was a real question, right? It's one thing that you know, you're a pastor, you're new to politics. Can you mix it up? Because you have to mix it up. And it is one thing to, you know, say tough things in your positive American interview or your stump speech at a rally. It's another thing when you're sitting on the same stage of someone.

And he was aggressive, but in a way completely consistent with his demeanor, consistent with his values. he was very, very good. Also, that might be the first time I've seen Roger Marshall. I think I've probably seen him before, but I really couldn't pick him out of a lineup. Yeah, I've seen clips of him dodging questions about the time that he ordered the arrest of a woman who owed him $50?

This is a tough race to figure out how it's going to go because Hamilton is ahead by a little bit, but he's, of all the races, he's like probably the furthest below 50 in a lot of these polls. But interesting enough. Third party candidate there? Well, yes, third party candidate there. But more importantly, it's the one case in that last batch of Times Siena polls where his name idea is lower.

And he actually is underperforming. There's a lot of undecided to pick the Democrats on the generic ballot who are not yet for Hamilton. So he has room for growth that a lot of these other Democrats don't have. Now, small sample size, et cetera. But he got in this race very late. he is quite well known for someone who gets a race later. He does have a church with 100,000 members that broadcasts its sermons on TV every week.

But it's clear that he has room for growth with likely Democratic voters. So he is a very, very, very real shot. I really do believe that. Well, also, you know, I think Kansas hasn't elected a Democratic senator in almost 100 years. 94 years. Yeah.

Herbert Hoover was president. Donald Trump, not even born. But, but, like, has regularly elected Democratic of governors. Yeah, it's a very strange quirk in history. Yeah, the idea of a Democrat winning statewide in Kansas is not crazy at all. And Kathleen Sibelius, Laura Kelly, current governor, like, it's, it's happened. Yeah, it's sort of a weird quirk that there just hasn't been a Democratic senator. Yes. So it's, it's real. All right. Last thing before we get to love its conversation with Keisha Lance Bottoms, we talked on the Tuesday show about the extremely convoluted influence peddling

scheme involving Alina Haba, Trump's former personal attorney and former U.S. attorney for New Jersey. her Turkish billionaire husband, the Kennedy Center, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Some wild madlibs there. Well, here's a simpler corruption scheme to get your head around from a New York Times report on Tuesday. A Venezuelan billionaire named Julio Herrera Velutini wanted a campaign finance conviction expunged from his record. You don't want that on your record. No, no. So what do you do?

He made a massive donation to a Trump super PAC. That didn't work. I guess no one really noticed. So he created a fake business, hired Alina Haba as its fake general counsel, while she was still working at the Justice Department, and then promised to pay her $50 million over four years. Just a few weeks later, here's what the Times writes. Quote, Mr. Trump granted Mr. Herrera a full and unconditional pardon. How about that?

Hobba denied that the employment had anything to do with the pardon, but, quote, declined to discuss her work for the fake business. I'm sure Alina Habo believes that as a member of Trump's inner circle, she's untouchable, counterpoint. She might want to check out the report in the Wall Street Journal today that DOJ is looking into allegations that former Trump campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, profited off his role as a senior advisor slash romantic partner at the Department of Homeland Security. counter counterpoint.

The journal also reports that Lewandowski has told friends that if a criminal case is brought against him, he's going to get a pardon. Counter, counter, counterpoint. Trying to count the counters here. Trump was asked about all this just before we recorded and said that if his people aren't honest, they have to be prosecuted because they're stealing from me,

is what he said. Me. Me. As the president, stealing from me, because the taxpayer money is my money. and the corruption that I get to do because of my office is my corruption. What do you think about this one? How much is he going to have to pay Alina Hobbit to get that pardon?

Corey Lewandeski. $51 million? Is she got $50 million for this? I mean, I think she's probably only gotten $10 million because it's... Oh, yeah, it's over a couple years. A couple years. So she hasn't fully vested her $10 million corrupt money yet. Also, if I was where I would have slowed the pardon down.

It's just really obvious. I mean, it's so, like, I can't bring in that story trying to figure out how it was that she had a $50 million fake job and was working in the Justice Department at the same time. But it turns out she had one of the, like Corey Lewandowski, one of those fake special government employee things where you can work for 30 days, but also make other income on the side. And this is what they're investing. Yeah, this is what they're investigating Corey Lewandowski for because he was special government employees. So we had this other consulting firm and was just going around just, just, approving all the contracts for the Department of Homeland Security. So he was picking the contractors who were, of course, giving him money,

paying him for this. And then there's a lot of questions about a plane purchase that had some relationship to political supporters of Christy Noem where they overpaid for it. And this is a stunning detail about the private plane. Okay. We've talked about the bedrooms, the bedrooms, the showers, the marbles, the showers, the marble countertops,

there is a table with a manta ray skin on it. What is a manta ray? A manta ray is a very large. It's a giant ray that is usually often eight feet wingtip to wing tip. Just as a side note, I took my kid snorkeling with manta rays over the summer.

And so people are skinning these things and using it making countertops? For Christy Gnome? Yeah, I don't really know how they got them. Dog killer? Yes, maybe she. had a Manta Rite pet and was to satisfy with it, I don't really know. These fucking people.

Yeah, like, you know what? Yes, they get to be held accountable is a thing. Did you see the whole thing with Alyssa Slotkin last week? We didn't even talk about in the pub, but like, she was asked, it was Sted Hernden, and she was in the IOP in Chicago. It was like, you know, what are we doing with Democrats take back Congress? And she's like, look, well, first priorities, we absolutely have to take care of cost of living stuff.

and we have to work on that. She's like, you know, I also think there needs to be accountability and I think specifically around the corruption, and I don't think we can be doing this all the time because we can't just be focused on corruption. There's a lot of other things to do. But I think we need to take some signature cases and make sure that people are held accountable

and not obviously she's like we can't, you know, Trump is Trump, but like all the people who did his bidding, you know, need to be held accountable too. And I want to make sure that, you know, when people are thinking about joining the Trump administration, they think to themselves, well, I don't want to get myself into a bunch of, this is probably more trouble than it's worth because they're going to see the people who were corrupt and broke the laws are held accountable.

And people on the right fucking flipped out. They called it fascism. They said that Alyssa Slotkin is trying to, is just promising that she's going to throw young conservatives in jail or Republicans in jail as, is retribution. it was, the hysteria was insane. Do you know why there was hysteria? Why? Because they're all making money off this thing.

Yeah, I was also... That fucking shit Mike Davis was like, this is what the second... She's going to find out what the Second Amendment is for. Oh, I did. You're right. You saw that. I did see this, yes. But like Mike Lee jumped in, Steve Scalice jumped in. Like, it wasn't just, like, dickbags on Twitter.

It was like real, like, elected Republicans going after Elizabeth's locking on this. It was horror. It was horrifying. I mean, that's what they're going to do when we do all of them. It is this amazing thing where it's like, oh, now see, Democrats are going back to weaponization. It's like, no, you stole money. You all stole money and profited off your fucking jobs and you broke a bunch of laws. Guess what?

When you break laws and you fucking steal from the taxpayers, you should get held accountable. Also, not for nothing. The Trump administration has been trying to prosecute everyone from the head of the Fed to a guy. who threw a sandwich and everyone in the middle. It's like, meanwhile, this guy's like, you know, Lena Hobba is getting $50 million to get a pardon. And we're like, oh, don't stay away. She's general counsel of a fake company.

Also, is it really worth $50 million this dude to get this campaign finance misdemeanor office? I was going to ask that. I was like, look, I haven't had a campaign finance misdemeanor on my record. But I don't, I think if I did, I don't know that I would pay $50 million if I have that money. He's also not an American citizen. So, like, what is it?

What was he looking for then? Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, that's between him and Alina Haba. Well, I guess Alyssa Slack and the rest of those will find out next year. Let's hope so. All right, Dan, when we come back, you'll hear from our candidate for governor of Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms. Pod Save America is brought you by Nutraful. Sometimes upgrading your wellness routine doesn't require a full overhaul.

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Now, Nutraful is offering our listeners $15 off. Your first month subscription and free shipping when you visit Nutraful.com and enter promo code Crooked. That's Nutraful.com spelled, N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L. promo code Crooked. For $15 off, be sure to use our code to support our show. Hey, everyone. My name is Elijah Cohn, and I've been a producer here at Crooked Media for a decade. I love making our shows with the smart, creative people who work here and hearing from

all of you who listen every week. But the thing that I'm proudest of is that video we've made of Yvette Ramoswami grunting while hitting baseballs. No, wait, sorry. The thing I'm proud of stuff is the work we do through Vote Save America. See, we don't want our shows to only leave you feeling anxious about the state of the world. We want to give you something you can actually do about it. Just this year, our listeners have raised millions of dollars and filled thousands of volunteer shifts to help candidates and causes in the 26 midterms. And we have no plans to slow down as we head into 2028.

As far as I know, there's no other media company that does what Cricket does. We make entertaining, thoughtful content that brings people into politics, and then we give them a direct way to get involved. And if you believe in that mission, one of the best ways to support us is by becoming a paid subscriber. Your subscription helps us keep making the shows you love in building a media company that doesn't just talk about politics but helps people change them. And if the mission sounds great but you feel like you need some sweet subscriber benefits

to get you over the finish line, we've got you covered. Subscribers get ad-free shows plus excellent exclusive podcast, newsletters, and much much more. So thank you for listening and supporting what we do. Head to crooked.com slash friends today to learn more and become a subscriber. joining me in studio, she is the former mayor of Atlanta and Democratic nominee for Georgia governor, Keisha Lance Bottoms. Welcome back to the pot. Well, thank you for having me. I'm so glad to be here. It's been a long time since we've had you on.

Now, back in 2021, you made the unexpected decision to not seek a second term as mayor of Atlanta. You were on Biden's VP shortlist. You had turned down an offer to run SBA. What do you think about that decision in retrospect? and what led you to jump back into politics? I very much still believe it was the best decision. And, you know, it was difficult to articulate it at that time. Everybody called 2020 the Great Resignation.

I call it the great re-evaluation. And for me, it was making a decision that was very personal, what was best for my family at that time. My kids were, two were in elementary school. One was in middle school. One was a senior in high school. the disruption of life as we knew it in 2020. And then personally, my dad died suddenly at 55.

And I was giving a lot of thought in the aftermath of COVID especially, just about mortality. And if I had four years left, what would those four years look like? And for me, it was stepping out of the ring. And, you know, people make changes all the time. career changes. Most people don't do it in the public eye. And I did it with 68% approval ratings at that time in the mayor's office. So it was unexpected. But a decision I'm very proud of because I put my family first and I made a decision that I know was best for us at that time. I think if I only had four years left, I'd really focus on gaining as many YouTube followers

It's interesting that you bring up that period of time because a lot of the attacks against you are around the response to COVID and about efforts to protect people during that time the difficult decisions that leaders were making. And I sometimes feel as though a lot of people, they want to hold Democrats responsible for the trauma and the hard choices that we were all making.

Like Democrats are mommy and you're mad at mommy for doing the thing that was meant to keep us safe. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. And if you think back and again, people with a lot of money had the ability to try and erase history and rewrite history. If you remember when Georgia opened up very early, we were the first state to reopen. Even Donald Trump was upset at that time that the state had opened up so quickly. We were making decisions based on what the science was telling us. Carlos Del Rio, who was an infectious disease control expert at Emory University was on speed dial for us.

And it was all about data and metrics. If our numbers were at a certain point, we'd make certain decisions. So it was never emotional. It was never personal. It was how many people are dying, how many people are infected. At that time, we didn't have vaccines. And Atlanta fared better than most cities, just in terms of, of the number of deaths that we had.

And I know it was because we were driven by the science. But also, we had the support at that time of our business community. There were corporate leaders, Fortune 500 CEOs, who were helping us make those decisions, university leaders, hospital leaders. So it was never in a vacuum. And even when we talk about the crime numbers at that time, I remember in 20, 2020 preparing March of 2020 to give my state of the city address. And I came across a draft of that speech that got pulled down because we had to shut everything down.

I was touting how our crime numbers were dropping across the city because we were on this trend, seeing our numbers drop in all the right areas. And then 2020 came the pandemic, the protests of the summer of 20, and we weren't spared from what the rest of the country experienced at that time. So now you're running for governor. What do you see as the biggest challenge facing Georgia right now that the governor would be in a position to address? The governor can make a lot of decisions in Georgia.

It's one of the most powerful governors in the country just by the way the office is constituted, Although we anticipate there may be an effort to strip those powers, God willing, when I win, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. But the governor of Georgia has the ability to make 4,000 appointments to boards and commissions. The budget comes from the governor's office. The governor can suspend the gas tax, which my opponent opposed at some point. So the ability and the will of the governor has a lot of influence in Georgia. I want to expand Medicaid in Georgia. We are one of 10 states who have not expanded Medicaid,

and it's not been done because the governors haven't wanted to do it. So I want to talk about where your opponent is on this question because he seems to be a little bit all over the place on Medicaid expansion. In the Republican primary, he seemed to be against it. Now he seems to have moderated, but to be honest, I don't know what his position is. He says he wants intelligent Medicaid expansion. but it's not clear what he's talking about.

Do you know what he's talking about? No, I don't know what he's talking about because it doesn't make sense. I describe him like the whiz. Whatever the color the day is is what he goes with. One day he wants to be Donald Trump. One day he doesn't. One day he doesn't want Medicaid expansion and the next day he does. One day he says the National Guard is going to be called in during our election.

And then he doesn't remember one day he owns and invests in four data center companies. and then he doesn't know that he does. So, you know, I don't know what this new position is on Medicaid. He's never explained it. I doubt that he knows it. But what I do know is that his entire fortune is built on us having a broken health care system. He makes money when hospitals can't retain doctors and nurses. He makes money by sending people back in at a much higher rate in,

In Alabama, he called it venture philanthropy. We call it vulture philanthropy. It was a failing hospital in Alabama because Alabama is also not expanded Medicaid. And he extended them what he called a lifeline at a 14 to 19 percent interest rate. That's a loan shark. I just want you to know something, which is that when I was a kid, I was in an all-Jewish production of The Wiz, not the Wizard of Oz, but little Jewish boys and girls playing all the characters from The Wiz.

Can you believe that? No, but I want to see it. I don't want anyone to see it. No one can see it. And what was your role? I was the Tin Man. Slide some oil to me. I sang it.

I sang that part. Well, that's ambitious and impressive. I can't believe that was allowed. All right, we got to move on. Georgia, speaking of the arts, Georgia has become a, I can't believe. I was a kid. What were the adults doing? I love it.

That's wild. That's wild. Georgia has become a hub for film and television production, but, you know, for a long time here in L.A., it was like, oh, Atlanta's taken all of L.A.'s jobs, right? And the numbers went up dramatically, but then there was the strikes and there was a slowdown. And now L.A. and Georgia have both lost a lot of production jobs to London and other places. And New Jersey. And New Jersey, which is, I mean, what are we doing?

How much of a role do you see the governor is having in trying to keep film and production jobs in Atlantic? Because it was a huge business, and that's suddenly declined. Well, again, a lot of what happens in Georgia through the legislature comes from the will of the governor. So my understanding and talking with industry leaders is that at some point, Georgia got complacent. We came out fast and furious with this great incentives package that was able to take business from California, Louisiana, North Carolina, New York. And then we stopped there. We never updated our incentives.

We didn't tweak them based on new competition. So this has been an active conversation that I've had because we now, even in Georgia, have a whole generation of students who've now gone through our university system training to work in the film industry. We've got some great programs. at many of our schools,

and now the business is not there. So we got to make sure that we update it as we would with any industry that we're trying to remain competitive in. So right now, if you look at the polls, you have John Ossaf polling ahead of Mike Collins, and then you're locked in basically a dead heat with Rick Jackson, which would suggest that there are some people out there

that are either voting for Osov and undecided in the governor's race, or voting for Ossov and maybe considering a split-ticket vote. What is your message to those specific voters, that group of people that are leaning Osaf, but not on your side yet? Yeah, and so what I will say about that, and Senator Ossoff is an incredible leader, incredible friend. We did a great rally together.

Just last week, we've done several together. What our data is showing us is that many of these, are a Republican split ticket voters. But that being said, you know, I'm making my case to everybody, Democrats, Republicans, independents. And we need strong leadership in Georgia. We need better in Georgia. And better means expanding Medicaid,

better means making sure our schools are fully funded. Our current education formula was written in 1985 when I was still in the marching band at Frederick Douglas High School. and Dougie Fresh was the halftime show. Would you play in the marching band? I played the clarinet. I put the drums.

I played the drums in the marching band. Yeah, and for me, it was just a time to be social. I wouldn't that serious of a musician. I didn't have any friends. Yeah, but I remember that Dougie Fresh halftime show. We did not do that. That's like I'll sit. It was a different school.

It wasn't the school. No, it was. It was different. But that's when our education formula was written. Also, supportive of our small businesses, creating a pathway for free technical and community colleges. And I'm hearing from our young people loud and clear, expanded access to mental health services.

These are the things that are on the ballot that I'm talking about that I've laid out plans for and my opponent has been saline on. The things that he has talked about, taking credit for the six-week abortion ban in Georgia. He's taking credit for Medicaid not being expanded in Georgia. So he's focused on. all the wrong things because he wants to be Trump's favorite governor, in his words. He wants to be Trump with a southern tone, in his words.

He doesn't disagree with a single policy from the Trump administration, in his words. Do you think they're going after you on crime. They're going after you on some of the COVID lockdown stuff. It's clearly about keeping a certain subset of voters on size. right, as you were saying? And are you meeting people on the campaign trail that are sort of susceptible to all these ads that are trying to kind of stereotype Democrats

about law and order or about immigration? Like, do you have a message for those voters to kind of basically say, hey, like, this is what the race is about? They're trying to scare you on this, but here's the ways you know that you can trust me on these things. When we find that we are able to put the truth in front of people and remind them of what actually happened when I was mayor, it's very easy.

This is why resources are so important. This guy's put $200 million into this election, $100 million against me alone. This much money has never been spent to try and slander one person, one family, than has been put up against my family and I. And we are still tied in this race. So when I remind people,

I balanced the budget for four years. I didn't raise taxes. I gave police and fire largest pay increase in the history of the city. I left $180 million in the bank. We got our employees up to $15 an hour during the fight for $15. We created a child savings account for all of our public school kids, 7,000 units of affordable housing. We created an affordable housing trust fund.

When those facts are put in front of people, then it's no match. But when you are up against the largest television by that's ever been made in the history of Georgia, this guy sends so many mailers to my house. I get like three duplicate mailers a day telling me not to vote for me. It is this unlimited amount of money and we are tied. Then it is, it's this reminder that he has the money,

but the people still have the power. Our challenge is just having the resources to get our messaging out, which, by the way, anybody who wants to support can do that at K-E-I-S-H-A for governor.com. And momentum is on our side. The turnout numbers that we are seeing from Democrats are very similar to those that we saw in May during the primary. We were outspent by 100 million by Republicans, and we still. They'll outvoted them by 150,000 votes. And a poll that came out today from the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the newspaper shows that I'm winning with independent voters. One of the issues that's been sort of part of this race is data centers. You've come out for a moratorium. Your opponent has said it should be left up to local governments, the counties.

He's also an investor in data centers. Why is a moratorium more appropriate than just leaving it up to, say, county commissioners? Well, let me just touch on what he says. Which is what he's saying. Yeah. Yeah, now that maybe he remembers or doesn't remember or I don't know if he's just not telling the truth or if he honestly doesn't remember that he owns these four companies. In Bowie, Texas right now, there's a community fighting against him where he said, I want community to decide. the community is saying we don't want this data center in our backyard. And it's been clouded

in secrecy and they're saying we don't want it. And he's still trying to push it forward. I'm saying pause in Georgia. Right now we are number one in the country for new construction. We have passed northern Virginia that billions of dollars of incentives have been promised. I'm saying let's take a pause. Let's get everybody at the table from people. people who can talk to us about our water sources, who can talk to us about property values, who can talk to us about long-term health impacts, who ratepayers, who are saying, my bills have gone up. Let's get in the room and then figure out the responsible way that we move forward as a state.

So I'm asking for us to pause on new construction until we can get all of the information because the state of Georgia has never offered that to people in our state. Voting has already begun. Your opponent has embraced Trump, tried to distance from Trump, but through it all has, again, it's hard to pin down, but has embraced the 2020 election conspiracy theories. First of all, can you just talk about the kind of shenanigans that you could see in Georgia and how you're protecting against them? And then also the risks of having somebody that has embraced Donald Trump in charge of Georgia in a presidential election. Yeah, this guy has said that Trump's going to love him as governor. So what that means in Georgia is that if Trump were to make that call, find me 11,000, however many votes, he would answer it.

It's dangerous. Already, as we sit here today, 260,000. FBI agents have been dispatched into Fulton County, trying to find some mythical narrative around the 2020 election. This guy, in the one and only debate that he showed up for, when I said that he said the National Guard would be called in, said he didn't say it. Again, I don't know if he's lying. Well, no, he's not telling the truth. Maybe he doesn't remember he said it, we've heard the tape where he said the National Guard will be called in. So it is, and just to remind people, Georgia's been on this path for a while. So when people were standing in

line last week and it was 85 degrees in Georgia, you could go to jail for giving someone a bottle of water in Georgia. You could be charged criminally for giving someone a bottle of water. We've had our drop boxes removed. We've had the window for early voting reduced. We've seen hundreds of thousands of people purge from the voting rolls. So it's, you know, Audrey Lord said, Revolution is not a one-time event. This has been gradual. And if this guy is in office, there will be no safeguards in terms of leadership because the governor has to certify the election. And it's frightening, not just as a candidate, but as someone who lives in the state. That this is, we are the cradle of the civil rights movement in America.

Congressman John Lewis was my congressman. Ambassador Young is still very vocal about the sanctity of access to the right to vote, that this is what's facing us as the state. And I was with Ambassador Young a couple of weeks ago. And I don't think I've ever seen him emotional. I was speaking at a church. He stood up to speak and talked about voting. And twice during his remarks, he was visibly emotional.

And I can only imagine for someone like him who lived this, who fought for it, who bled for it. just I'm sure it's upsetting and frightening and it should be to all of us. So your dad was a Grammy

nominated R&B and soul singer. He opened for the Beatles. Elton John, he ought to start playing piano for his band. I think he actually played guitar. Oh, guitar.

Really? Elton John has actually told me the story, but I can't remember. He said it was the biggest break he ever got in music. He's, He said we had moved to Europe, and there was something called the Northern Cray's, Northern

Soul, where soul singers like my dad would then move to Europe when their career started to Wayne. And Elton John says that he went to audition for Wilson Pickett, and he passed on them. And my dad picked the band up, and they traveled around Europe, and he said at the end of the tour, my dad took his tie off and put it around his. neck and then Sir Elton serenated me with one of his songs. Did you ever think about going into a career in music over politics? Was that ever something that was a draw to you? It was.

I just can't sing or dance. It was what I always wanted to do. So, yeah, that was the end of that. If elected, you would be the first black woman elected governor anywhere in America. Obviously, your campaign, follows Stacey Abrams campaigns to sort of build and organize in Georgia. What does that mean to you? How do you think about that?

For me, it is deeply personal. My family goes back at least five generations, at least five in Georgia. We can trace our roots to a plantation in Crawfordville, Georgia. My daughter recently pulled up some census records from Hancock County, Georgia, and it has one of my ancestors listed as. a fill hand, one as a house servant. And the fact that I am able to be the Democratic nominee just speaks to what's possible.

The other side of my dad's story, my dad was just an incredible person and a wonderful father, wonderful human being. My dad's name was Major Lance. My dad struggled with addiction. When I was eight, my dad went to prison. And I say my first tour around Georgia, was not running for governor,

I was going to visit my dad in all these places. And I go to some of those towns now. Like, oh, I remember when daddy was in prison here. And so for me, it is so much more personal that given my story and all the generations of my family overcame and sacrificed that this opportunity is before me. And it is, I hope, representative of the possibility for people all around the state.

So when this guy says he wants to be Trump's favorite governor, I want to be the favorite governor, that little girl who no longer gets to go to ballet but has to go visit our dad in prisons on the weekends. Keisha Lance Bottoms, good luck in the campaign trail. Thank you. The website is kisha for governor.com. You should consider putting 60 million of your own money in.

I think that that would be a smart way to compete. I don't know why you haven't thought of doing that. Well, God hasn't seen fit to make me a billionaire yet, but hey, I'm still young. Who knows? Yeah, anything is possible in America. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

That's our show for today. Thanks to Mayor Bottoms for coming on. Alex will be back in the feet on Sunday with a conversation with former Attorney General Eric Holder about election protection and how this year's big gerrymandering push is playing up. Bye, everyone. I just don't say anything. I just don't even know what she was just waiting for you going to say the wrong thing. Pods of America is a Crooked Media production.

Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Michael Goldsmith, with Reed Jirlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroote, Ben Hethkoe, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte, Landis, Kenny Moffat, Adam Lipper, Joseph Dutra, Desmond, Dan Farrow, David Tolls, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized

with the Writers Guild of America East. Hey, everyone, my name is Elijah Cohn, and I've been a producer here at Cricket Media for a decade. I love making our shows with the smart, creative people who work here and hearing from all of you who listen every week. But the thing that I'm proudest of is that video we made of Yvette Ramoswami grunting while hitting baseballs.

No, wait, sorry. The thing I'm proudest of is the work we do through Vote Save America. See, we don't want our shows to only leave you feeling anxious about the state of the world. We want to give you something you can actually do about it. Just this year, our listeners have raised millions of dollars and filled thousands of volunteers' shifts to help candidates and causes in the 26 midterms. And we have no plans to slow down as we head into 2028. As far as I know, there's no other meetings.

media company that does what Cricket does. We make entertaining, thoughtful content that brings people into politics, and then we give them a direct way to get involved. And if you believe in that mission, one of the best ways to support us is by becoming a paid subscriber. Your subscription helps us keep making the shows you love and building a media company that doesn't just talk about politics, but helps people change them. And if the mission sounds great, but you feel like you need some sweet subscriber benefits to get you over the finish line, we've got you covered. Subscribers get ad-free shows, plus excellent exclusive podcast, newsletters, and much much more. So thank you for listening and supporting what we do.

Head to crooked.com slash friends today to learn more and become a subscriber.