Pod Save America - “He’s Running (from the law)”

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

Donald Trump makes it official. Republicans win the House. Nancy Pelosi steps down as leader. Kari Lake loses her race for Arizona governor. And  Dan talks to the Nevada Independent’s Jon Ralston about midterm results and the future. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Donald Trump makes it official, Republicans win the House, Nancy Pelosi steps down as leader, Carrie Lake loses her race for Arizona governor, and later, Dan talks to the Nevada Independent's Jon Ralston about how he nailed his midterm calls, and they talk about Nevada's political future. bad as political future. But first, the Crooked Store just launched brand new holiday merch inspired by your favorite Crooked podcasts. New items include a bake appreciator apron.

Fucking brilliant. I'm so pleased. What a great idea. Just great. For all you take appreciating bakers out there, I can't wait to see. I want to see a picture of Elijah in his take appreciator apron. That's what I want to see. A magnetic poetry kit that allows you to make your own notes app apology. Okay. And more. This holiday season, every order from the Crooked store

will support Vote Save America's Every Last Vote Fund to help the Georgia runoffs. So go to crooked.com slash store to shop now. And speaking of Georgia, early voting starts Monday, November 28th for the December 6th runoff. There's not much time. If you're a Georgia voter, head over to votesaveamerica.com to make your plan. If you're not a Georgia voter, but you still want to help, which you should, you can find remote and in-person volunteering opportunities at VSA. You can also donate to our Every Last Vote Fund. It's going to go directly to grassroots mobilization,

to turning out young people and people of color. It's going to help people with early vote and mail-in vote. It's a great fund. Please donate. Raphael Warnock needs all the help he can get. Republicans are spending a lot of money on this race. So please go to votesaveamerica.com now to help get involved. Can I do two?

I have two housekeeping notes. Oh, yeah. Great. One, there's so much I enjoy about doing this podcast with you, but there's nothing I enjoy more than watching you learn about the merch your company makes in real time. It's like you're basically Donald Trump making a policy announcement. Yeah, that's true. Like you had no idea about the bake appreciator apron until now.

Like it just came out of your mouth and you learned it. Look, after five years, the three of us have tried to split things up with this company. And who do you think oversees merch of the three of us? I'm guessing it's definitely not you based on our experience every Thursday. And I'm guessing it's not Tommy. That's right. That's right. This is a love it thing.

Second thing and more important is I just want to take a brief moment and say happy birthday to Howley. Today is her birthday. Oh, happy birthday, Howley. Yes. We've been doing this podcast for a long time. The podcast has never been recorded on her birthday before. And so it's a very special day. Here's the thing.

I think of all of our partners, Holly is the only one who will hear this is the biggest fan of PS. She's the most consistent PSA listener. And I know that because she will text our text chain with me and you and Emily and Holly on it. And she will mention something that happened on the pod and Emily will not know what she was talking about. Well, you should know that while she is a consistent PSA listener, we are not in her top five of Crooked Media podcasts. Oh, that's tough. Huge, huge world though. Huge world. Oh yeah. Never cared about sports once in her life in any way, shape or form. Not one bit about it. Fucking binging world corrupt like there was no tomorrow. There's a lot of world does out there

my buddy from college visited me over the weekend and he was like i don't have time for a lot of pods i listen to pod save america and of course pod save the world yeah of course of course um okay let's get to the news after three losses two impeachments and one attempted coup turned violent insurrection donald trump announced that he's officially running for president from the scene of his crime at Mar-a-Lago. The hour-long address was panned as, quote, one of the most low-energy, uninspiring speeches ever delivered by Trump. And that was from his former White House spokesperson, Sarah Matthews. The most prominent politicians in attendance were former Congressman Madison Cawthorn and Devin Nunes.

Don Jr. wasn't there. Ivanka wasn't there and released a statement during the speech saying that she would not be part of his campaign. Jared Kushner will also not be part of his campaign, but was in attendance. None of the networks carried the speech. CNN carried the first 25 minutes, and even Fox News cut away multiple times. At one point, people in the crowd tried to leave, but were prevented from doing so by security, red wedding style. As for the speech itself,

here are some highlights. In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States. And we love both sides. We're going to bring people together. We're going to unify people. Two years ago, when I left office, the United States stood ready for its golden age. Blood-soaked streets of our once great cities are cesspools of violent crimes

which are being watched all over the world. We're going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts. China played a very active role in the 2020 election. Just saying, just saying. President Xi, who's now president for life. I call him king. He said, no, no, I'm not the king. I

said, yes, you are the king. You're president for life. It's the same thing. And I'm a victim, I will tell you. I'm a victim. Think of it. I have no doubt that by 2024, it will sadly be much worse and they will see much more clearly what happened and what is happening to our country. And they will see much more clearly what happened and what is happening to our country. And the voting will be much different. Wow. Tour divorce, Dan. What did you think?

Why did he sound like they hit him with a few tranquilizer darts before he walked out on stage? I think drowsy walrus is a great way to describe it. So I like your tranquilizer darts. You know, his heart, I mean, that sounds ridiculous. He doesn't have a heart. His black, corroded heart was not in it. It really felt like he announced he was going to make this speech, felt like he had to do the announcement because he made the announcement before the election, all of his candidates lost and he took all the blame for this and people sort of turned on him. But he knew – because Trump has a sense of these things that if he were to delay his announcement, that would be a sign of weakness. So he just plowed forward. He didn't want to be there. The people in the room didn't want to be there.

Fox News didn't even want to cover it. I don't even – like the fact that Don Jr. didn't show up for it is notable. And the fact that Don Jr. didn't show up for it is notable. The fact that all these people tried to leave a Trump speech and could not leave is funny, but also sort of a metaphor for the last seven years of our life. You just cannot get out the doors of Mar-a-Lago. We are stuck. We're stuck in Hotel Mar-a-Lago. I guess that's what it is. Yeah, we're all at Mar-a-Lago.

I don't mean it's just it was just all lame. It was just totally surprisingly lame, I would say. Surprisingly lame. It definitely felt like they had the speech written before Tuesday's results, and then they had to go back in there and try to make a few edits to make it reflect the reality of what happened. You can always tell with those speeches. Here's what I think happened. Every once in a while, Trump's staff somehow convinces him to read a speech off a prompter. And in this case, I think they probably told him it would like, you know, it would enrage the fake news media if he showed some message discipline and stayed on script and didn't turn the whole thing into another rant about 2020. to another rant about 2020. The problem is for Trump, and this has always been his problem, he hates reading speeches because Stephen Miller is a, again, number one, a terrible human being. Right after that, a terrible, terrible speechwriter who has never learned to write in Trump's voice ever. And it shows. So with Trump,

you either get low energy and somewhat on message or high energy and deranged. And like, sure enough, the New York times reported in one of the stories about the speech that like AIDS have been wrestling with Mr. Trump's impulse for airing grievances, particular over 2020 in hopes of keeping him focused on the future. They were determined to recapture the feel of his 2016 campaign when he ran as an insurgent against the political establishment.

So you could tell they were that was the intended message. But to get him to do that, you have to script him. And he's never he's never good scripted. I mean, that may have been the intended strategic imperative, but there was nothing in the speech that led to that because you can't run as the insurgent political establishment while you spend six of the 12 hours of your speech talking about your accomplishments as president like two years ago. It was just a mess. And what I think it really goes to show is that Trump has nothing to say. Well, I was going to say, do you think there was a message in there? What would you take out as a message in that rambling?

I mean, that, well, like it feels fake to even like answer that question, but I will try. Right. I think this is a joke we used a long, long time ago in the beginning of this podcast and Trump was that it was sort of like trying to divine strategy from a monkey throwing feces, like it just happens. But it is what I think Trump's advisors think the message is, is to use the fond memories that some small portion of people have of Trump's accomplishments against the sour sentiments of the American people during the Biden presidency. Looking at wrong track, right track numbers, inflation, et cetera, that things were – you stop the calendar the day before the pandemic started. This is what life was like then.

This is what life is like now. And I'm going to lay all of your dissatisfaction, all the dissatisfaction you have with the direction of the country at the feet of the president. There's one small problem with that strategy is they just tried it eight days ago and it didn't work.

Which that sort of cast a pall over the entire speech. And you can tell, I mean, the line, and we played it in the clip, the citizens of our country have not yet realized the full extent and gravity of the pain our nation is going through, but they will. Maybe the lamest line of the entire speech, but I guarantee you that line was not there before the midterm results. there before the midterm results. Yeah. I mean, this speech looks different. I'm not sure Trump ever was going to, he was never going to deliver this well. It was never going to be a coherent message or part of a strategy, but the environment in which it would take place would be very different if 13 of 16 Trump endorsed candidates had won, not lost. If Joe Biden had suffered a rebuke, not a victory, all of the, the environment was no one wanted Trump to be doing this. Trump didn't want to be

doing it. People in the room didn't seem to want to be there. It's like they didn't realize they had to go there to get the Tuesday surf and turf at Mar-a-Lago. And it was just the whole thing. It was really interesting leading up to it. You kind of hit this in the intro, but Donald Trump is a former president of the United States. He is someone who led a violent insurrection to try to overthrow election results. He is one of the most famous people on the planet. He is under like nine criminal investigations in every imaginable jurisdiction. And his announcement for president felt like a non-event. There like wasn't chatter of it.

There was no countdown clock. No one seemed excited about it. The MAGA media wasn't excited. Fox sort of seemed like they had to go to a wedding. It's a couple they didn't think made sense. It was just all, it was just really interesting. I don't know what that tells us anything what's going to happen over the next two years,

but in the moment, it was a dud. There was also, by the way, a Herschel Walker endorsement in that speech that Raphael Warnock immediately turned into an ad which i thought was great that's the only thing that really came from that speech also like no hint of a policy agenda or like what he would do as president except for like the only new policy item he has that he's been uh talking about in rallies for the last couple months is this executing drug dealers thing he's going full uh deterte in the in the last couple of months is this executing drug dealers thing. He's going full Duterte in the Philippines. Like, it's just very, it's, there's nothing new to say.

There's no, I mean, there's this whole debate about, you know, should networks cover Trump, you know, that we've had for seven years now. But I think that the lack of coverage this time around was not necessarily like, oh, because we don't want to broadcast his lies. But if you're just being a news organization, you cover what's new. Or even if someone isn't new, but what they're saying is new. And there was nothing new here. He has thought about nothing other than election day 2020 for two years. And it's just, it's boring. This is the worst thing that can happen to Trump is to become boring. And he was boring on Tuesday. Yeah, those are the two worst things. Well, so, you know, as we mentioned, even Fox News broke away from Trump multiple times through the speech.

Here's the moment that happened. You know, Germany tried it. They were up for about a year. Remember I sent to Angela? Remember Angela? Do you remember Angela? Nobody's remembering her now. Angela Merkel. Just joining us, President Trump in Mar-a-Lago announcing his 2024 presidential run.

Angela Merkel. No one's remembering her anymore tough real tough from from sean hannity there why do you think fox of all places did that like what what do you think was going on there i mean they care about ratings too i guess i mean i think they thought that they were helping trump more by cutting to two sycophants, Pete Hegseth and Mike Huckabee, to like praise the speech as opposed to actually playing people the speech, which sucked. Hannity shows on, right? The most pro-Trump personality on primetime is up there. And that person looked at what Trump was saying, thought about what the audience wants to hear and should hear, and decided that instead of hearing the former MAGA king drone on about Angela Merkel, they would rather talk to a guy who hosts Fox and Friends weekends.

Like that was the choice they made. And, you know, I don't even think it's strategic. I think it like maybe if like Lachlan Murdoch or the woman whose name escapes me who runs Fox now were like making like we're in the room pulling the, you know, the levers. But this is this is the, you know, it's 10 o'clock at night on Fox. It's just some random person who's making a judgment on quality of television, and they think Trump is bad television. And that's just – and they just think that's notable.

I don't think it's – I don't really believe it says anything about are the Murdochs walking away from Trump? Because all the – it was very praiseworthy from all the commentary on it and the guests they booked on that show were booked to say nice things about Trump. There wasn't like they were getting one of the MAGA types like Candace Owens or someone else who has expressed reticence about Trump 24. It was just sycophants. But it says just a lot about the quality of the speech and the entertainment value and the news value of him. What do you think about the reaction from Republican politicians,

Republican pundits, and Trump's potential rivals? Silence? Yeah. It's a lot of, not a lot of conversation. Not a lot of takes from the Republican side. Yeah, not people saying positive things, not people saying negative things. positive things, not people saying negative things. There's been a little strain of the pro-Trump world, like the Lindsey Graham's are like, if he can just stick to the script like that, then he can do well. And it's like, no, I'm not sure what that means.

My favorite reaction was from the Conservative National Review, which just had a big picture of Trump on the cover and said, no. the um opening line of their editorial about the speech was and trump's 24 candidacy quote to paraphrase voltaire after he attended an orgy once was an experiment twice would be perverse just so first of all, so national review. Like, just, so that was that. How long do you think they've been sitting, the Voltaire orgy thing has been in their draft folders? They've been like looking for that for like a decade. I think the dynamic here is most Republican politicians

and rivals don't want him in charge of the party, but they're afraid of him in the base of voters. And so they're not sure what to say yet. So they're all just going to be weak cowards like they usually are. And we're running into one of the exact same dynamics that actually led to January 6th, which is this pending Republican runoff is forcing a lot of people to keep their powder dry because they're afraid that if they attack Trump, they will diminish turnout among his voters and therefore lose a Senate seat. That is the root of the quote from a Republican leadership person about,

what's the harm in humoring Trump when he was spreading lies about the election around this time in 2020? And they're doing a similar thing. There will be some people who may think they're going to come out in early December after that election's decided and say they're for DeSantis or something else. But you can't give Trump space. He gathers strength in these periods. You can't humor him. You have to come out and say it. And they are going to make all the same mistakes all over again. And he will end up likely leading the party again, or at least for the foreseeable future for that reason. I do think it's like the, you mentioned Candace Owens, people like her, Laura Ingram, there's more MAGA pundits that have a lot of influence that are starting to break away from

him than there have been before. And I also think it's notable that there's a place for these people to land and it's with Ron DeSantis. And you're seeing, you know, like, I don't know what the primary will look like. You know, you've got like Mike Pence out there. By the way, that Mike Pence town hall last night. It was very funny from beginning to end, which may seem counterintuitive. But here's one really, really funny clip of him trying to answer a question from one of the audience members. And this freedom based on Roe also continue. Barbara, thank you. I've represented Madison County in Congress for many years.

Andrea. It's nice to see you. But yeah, you get like Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, Kristi Noem. But like, I think if the field is split, then Trump gets the nomination because he only has to hit, you know, 30, 40% in some of these states and it's winner take all in the Republican primary. But if for some reason they all decide not to run or everyone consolidates quickly around just DeSantis and Trump, I think that is a different situation. Yeah. I mean, we talked about this for a long time last week. We don't really know how it'll play out, but Trump is definitely weaker than he has

ever been. The question is whether Republicans will have the courage and the strategic sense to exploit that weakness, or they will do what they did in 16. They did multiple times during the presidency and certainly after January 6th, which is just stay silent, hope Trump falls under his own weight, and that is not going to happen. Not going to happen. No. If you want to be the man, you got to beat the man, and none of them are trying to do it. DeSantis is – it's still early, so we don't know. We don't even know if he's running. We don't even know if he has the capacity to relate to human beings. We do not know and really seem to know that. But it's notableb Bush, was to attack each other, not Trump, to try to be the Trump alternative. And by the time there, there never got to be a Trump

alternative. The Trump alternative ended up being Ted Cruz, which is just amusing in so many ways, because if you don't attack him, he's going to gain strength. And so what happens in the next several months here, I think, will what how he's going to look if a primary takes place. And we don't really know that it will. I mean, when we had Maggie Haberman on, she raised real questions about whether you based on her reporting, whether DeSantis would actually run against Trump. Now, Trump is a much weaker figure now than when we spoke to Maggie a month ago. But we'll have to see. So I agree with all that. And I've been saying that, like, like, if DeSantis, if Trump goes after DeSantis, and DeSantis doesn't hit back, he's he's screwed.

Just to play devil's advocate, I was trying to think of, like, from DeSantis's point of view, why he might be operating like he's operating. Like, are there any sort of smart reasons? I think he probably looks at the Republican electorate and thinks, OK, most of these people still have very warm feelings toward Donald Trump. Obviously, there's some like MAGA fanatics, but even the people in the party who might be open to a DeSantis candidacy over Trump still probably like Donald Trump. So if you start getting into pissing match with Donald Trump right now, then and people still don't know Ron DeSantis or enough people all over the country don't know Ron DeSantis, you know, then maybe his approval goes down and he, you know, his candidacy is over before it begins. Since Democrats are much better at beating Donald Trump than Republicans, what advice would you give Ron DeSantis right now? So I tend to agree that, you know, getting into a truth-off on Truth Social with Donald Trump seems like a bad idea.

Like, that's not how to engage with him. Like, don't come down to his level. But also— Don't do the Marco Rubio dick joke thing. Yeah. Basically, take Rubio's strategy, Jeb Bush's strategy. Do the opposite of those things. Do not be those people. You're all Florida politicians. Meet with them, talk to become a vessel for the anti-Trump sentiment in the grassroots of the party? Put aside the establishment.

Like the mistake to make is to be like all the hedge fund guys are coming out for you. Ken Griffin, Steve Schwartzman. That is actually going to – that will help fund your campaign, but it's going to be to Trump's advantage. Just like all of the establishment going to Jeb Bush helped Trump in 16. But be out there. He's been incredibly quiet. He got his good run of press and is just sort of like doing Florida things. Find a way to – is there a big speech to give to lay out the future of the Republican Party that makes the case that it's forward-looking? It can be an implicit criticism

of Trump. But don't just hole yourself up in a room with like your four advisors and have a bunch of meetings. If you want to give yourself – even if you have not yet decided to run, and I imagine he probably hasn't decided to run yet and he has some process to go through, if you want to make sure you have that opportunity at the end of your process, you have to be very visible now. Yeah. I imagine that he would take a look at sort of the primary that we ran against Hillary Clinton back in 07 because, look, and there's a couple of big differences. I think Ron DeSantis has a lot more material to work with Trump than we do. That's one difference, yes. But he's also running against someone who's like

even more beloved by the base, I think, than Hillary Clinton was. Right. Because there's, like I said, Trump fanatics. Look, I think he's now got these, you know, incredible majorities in the Florida legislature. And I think that, you know, the session doesn the florida legislature and i think that you know the session doesn't end till the spring so he'll try to probably pass a bunch of shit between now and the spring i imagine he will try to pick a lot of fights with the biden administration because he is a governor of a big state he'll try to do more stunts like the migrant stunt right he's gonna try to get more i think if you're him you want to get more attention being like, I'm the one who can take the fight to the Democrats and to Joe Biden, not this other guy who's yesterday and I'm the future. And by the way, he's a loser and I'm a winner. And he might

not say that explicitly, but those are sort of the larger themes that you want to get across, even if it's implicitly probably over the next several months. get across, even if it's implicitly probably over the next several months. And I would imagine in this context that electability is going to be a huge point of conversation in this election. And that has been Trump's superpower among Republicans is that he beat Hillary Clinton. And then he could make a kind of fake argument about keeping the Senate in 2018 and then almost winning in 2020. That has been punctured.

And if you were a citizen, you would position yourself as the MAGA guy who can win, the conservative who can win. Not an establishment conservative, a grassroots conservative who can win. But you have to make that case for yourself. win, but you have to make that case for yourself. We gave Joe Biden, and a lot of pundits did, some crap for being so explicit in his electability messaging in the 2020 Democratic primary, but he was right to do so. That's what people cared about. There was obviously a lot of evidence to suggest that he was quite electable, all the head-to-head polls with Trump, but he also made the case for himself, and that's what people wanted, and the same just would have to do the same thing. Yeah. So speaking of Biden, the Biden political team released two videos in response to Trump's announcement.

Let's take a listen to a clip from one. Nobody has ever done what we've done in the last four years. Their entire economic plan, tax cuts for the rich and corporations and record breaking unemployment. The worst jobs report on record. do you believe in punishment for abortion yes or no there has to be some form of punishment for the woman yeah there has to be some form and if i win we will treat those people from january 6th fairly and if it requires pardons we will give them pardons and then the other one not as good for audio but it's just uh trump talking about infrastructure a million different times and then it's a split screen and the other one, not as good for audio, but it's just Trump talking about infrastructure a million different times. And then it's a split screen.

And the other side of the screen is Biden just quietly signing the infrastructure law. What do you think about the Biden folks doing this smart move? Yeah, I don't think this says a lot about what strategy they would employ in the 2024 campaign. strategy they would employ in a 2024 campaign. The Biden folks are in a bit of a challenging purgatory because their most likely opponent, one who at least up until last week had a very large megaphone and ability to attract attention for himself, is out there campaigning against them. Biden has not made a decision about running. He has a process that's going to take himself into next year talking to his family. And so you're in this place where someone's running a campaign against you, but you have not stood up a campaign on your own to fight back. And so this is, I think,

as much signaling that they are going to push back. It's both messages, right? It's I'm a success. He was a failure. I'm better at infrastructure than him, which obviously sends people to the ramparts are so excited about that. And just reminding people that he's just like all the candidates they just voted against on Tuesday with the big lie and the January 6th stuff and the abortion stuff. But it's just sort of telling the world, not really the larger electorate, but just pundits and political activists that we're going to punch back in the interim before a decision is made on a reelect. Yeah.

I thought the issues they chose in that first video that we heard is smart and telling for everything we've just been talking about with the midterms. It's like he's extreme on economic policy, extreme on abortion, extreme on democracy. They hit it all. So our old boss, David Plouffe, reacted to the speech by tweeting, assume he could win again despite it all and act accordingly. Do you agree? And what does act accordingly look like? I absolutely agree. Every election, barring some dramatic change in the political coalitions within this country, every presidential election in the years to come, every midterm election in the years to come is going to be incredibly closely divided in the small handful of states that decide the Senate, the House, and the White

House. And in the middle of a pandemic in which Donald Trump's absolute, obvious, well-broadcasting competence killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, he only lost by 40,000 votes. If he is the Republican nominee, we are right around a coin flip away from him being president again. You had this conversation on offline that I recommend everyone with Lynn Vavreck, the political science professor who has done a lot of studies of presidential elections and makes the point that we live on the knife's edge all the time because we're so closely divided. And so whoever is on that ticket in those two seats, one of them could be president and it could absolutely be Trump. And we can laugh

at him. We can make fun of him. We deserve that, frankly, as a country and as a party. But be aware, do not take him for seriously. Do not take a single thing for granted, whether it's Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis or any other Republican. They can absolutely be president, whether Joe Biden is a nominee or someone else. That is the world in which we live. Yeah. And especially if it's a rematch, if it's Joe Biden and Donald Trump,

then Joe Biden won by like 40,000 votes across three states. And that is tiny. Anything could happen with those 40,000 voters. I mean, that is a weather system in the Midwest from losing. Like that is just how close it is. probably be able to count on one hand. I think it's going to be somewhere between 220 and 222 seats. If it's 222, that would actually be the mirror image of what the Democrats have now as a majority. This means that Kevin McCarthy will need almost every Republican to be speaker. The current speaker, Nancy Pelosi, announced today, right before we were recording this, that she will be stepping down from leadership. She will remain in Congress, at least for the next two years, but she's ready to pass the torch to the next generation of leaders in the Congress. Over in the Senate, Mitch McConnell

was reelected as minority leader after challenger Rick Scott only won 10 votes, only 10 votes for Rick Scott. And the last big governor's race was called in Arizona, where Katie Hobbs beat well-filtered election denier Carrie Lake by less than a point, about 34,000 votes. Hobbs' victory means that just about every Trump-endorsed election denier who ran for governor, secretary of state, or attorney general lost. Let's start there. Carrie Lake was heralded as the future of the

Republican Party. What happened? How did Katie Hobbs win? It is a yet another piece of evidence that this election was a rejection of Republican extremism. Even charismatic, well, you know, well media trained extremists still lose. Yeah. Yeah. She got, she did get closer, right? Like it's interesting. I was looking at the numbers on the, on the governor's race and the Senate race and Mark Kelly got the most votes of any of the four candidates, 1.3 million. Then Katie Hobbs, she was at 1.28 million then lake at 1.264 and then masters at 1.19 blake masters just shitty candidate it's it's weird that the guy giving off serial killer vibes uh was a drag on the ticket that year so hobbs got a lot of criticism, including from us, for not debating Carrie Lake. Not me. I wasn't on that episode. Why do you think that worked or at least didn't hurt enough to cost her the election? It is funny that the two prevailing bits of political conventional wisdom was that

Katie Hobbs should have debated and John Fetterman should not have debated and they both won. I know. I think that while there is some evidence in one particular poll that John Fetterman's decision to debate may actually have helped him, or at least that his numbers went up in the wake of that debate, in part because I think maybe some sympathy for his performance. Dr. Oz's statement about wanting local political officials involved in abortion decisions probably wasn't great for him. But what it probably says is that for the people who pay attention to debates, whether someone debates or doesn't debate, how they do in that

debate is a conversation that happens among people who've already decided to vote and decided who they're going to vote for. And so it probably had zero impact either way. And this is a thing we should probably – presidential debates, I think, are different. They have a much larger audience. The conversation is bigger. They're broadcast on national television, on the networks. But in these state races, they are fun to talk about. They may be fun to watch for some people. But it's just worth reminding ourselves that it is a small – the vast majority of the electorate, particularly the ones who are going to decide the election through their decision to vote or not vote or for whom to vote, it's a conversation they're not engaged in. It does not matter. So we should just remind ourselves that the small

tactical things don't matter as much as the big stuff. That's my takeaway too, is look, I'm a big persuasion guy and I want to live in a world where two candidates debate and then there's undecided voters watching and they change their minds and I just we're not in that world where I think about the calcified politics that that's the world we're in and and also that the people who are undecided don't consume that much news and not only are they not watching debates but they're probably not consuming that much coverage of the debates so I think that's very possible that if John Fetterman had never debated and decided not to debate and Katie Hobbs did choose to debate Carrie Lake, we could have ended up with the

same exact results. I can't tell you what I'm so excited for. What? Some point, like four to six months from now, we're going to be sitting down and do the Thursday podcast, and you are going to learn in that moment that Crooked is now selling big Persuasion Guy t-shirts. And no one will buy that. It'll be our worst selling item. All right, so almost every election denier running for statewide office lost.

And with the very notable exception of Carrie Lake, who just this morning refused to concede and made up some nonsense about voting irregularities, which is not true. Almost every other election denier has also conceded.

Do you think that's a sign that the conspiracy is losing its power? And what do you think happens with Kerry Lake? It means that democracy is completely safe. We can disengage. Everything is fine. That's all the time we have for today. We will see you in a couple months.

This is now a reality TV podcast. I don't know what happens with Carrie Lake. I don't think it really matters. There are legal processes with which people can contest election results. I don't know what she is going to do. She will follow those. Yeah. Yeah. But I think it says two things. One is the best way to avoid election deniers,

potential insurrection, all the things is to just win by a lot, right? Like Doug Mastroano is an actual insurrectionist. He was unable to challenge elections because he got his ass kicked. So if you want to avoid it, kick people's asses. In some states,

that's going to be impossible because the margins are so narrow, but when you do, that solves that problem. And if all of these Trump big lie candidates conceded like normal Republicans, it probably speaks very directly to the specific sociopathic danger that Donald Trump is. Only he can take this all the way to the end in a way that ends so dangerous. To believe it so much or trick yourself into believing it so much that you send an armed, violent crowd to the Capitol to murder your vice president in an attempt to keep power, like that is something very specific to him. And that – and I think that is like when you ask the question about David Plouffe's tweet, like act accordingly because that threat still exists, even if these as long as Donald Trump's in politics, that threat exists. Yeah, I think the results of this election also made them realize that it's not very popular to be an election denying extremist. Yeah, it's also in like what you know, this is impossible to sort of sort through and pull apart.

is impossible to sort of sort through and pull apart but like most of these election deniers were extremists not just because they believed in the big lie not just because they wanted to criminalize all abortions with no exceptions most of them but there are plenty of other crazy things they said too like it's just hard to you know doug mastriano is like posing in a confederate uniform picture like there's you know blake masters is sayingano is like posing in a Confederate uniform picture. Like there's, you know, Blake Masters is saying that the Unabomber had some, was an underappreciated thinker. These people had plenty of crazy shit to pick from here. And it's pretty clear that even folks who were very, very upset with the direction of the country were not ready to take a chance on people like that. I have seen some evidence, and even in some of your wilderness focus groups too, that the big – sometimes there are issues that become identifiers of something. We've seen this in immigration debates before where the Republican position on immigration

for some portion of Latino voters was a sign that this is not my party, even if I agree with them on this handful of other issues. a sign that this is not my party, even if I agree with them on this handful of other issues. And for some set of voters, the big lie mattered. It was a sign that you were not tethered to reality or to serious deaths, or you were too Trumpy in a way that I think mattered. Abortion, same way, right? These extremist position on abortions, those things may matter than all of the other sort of ancillary crazy stuff. And Democrats are going to have to get ready to run against a Republican Party, either at the top of the ticket or in some of these Senate candidates who avoid those obviously losing positions. They may believe them, but they won't talk about them. And we're going to have to

figure out how to – we always talk about like how you create the issue environment you need. Republicans helped create it for us because Donald Trump and his candidates couldn't shut up about the things voters hated about them. That will be different next time, unless Donald Trump's at the top of the ticket. And by the way, they will be aided by a media that will love a storyline that Republicans have decided to quote unquote, moderate themselves. I am already throwing up in my mouth thinking about the Ron DeSantis coverage as the both sides press yearns. Well, he yearns for a normal Republican

who bullies gay and trans kids from the podium. You know it's coming. You know it's coming. It's just like being two degrees less clumsy or less obvious an asshole than Donald Trump does not make you George H.W. Bush, people. We talked a lot about the House and Senate dynamics on Tuesday's pod. But now that we know who the leaders are and what the margins will be, what do you think we can expect from Congress over the next few years? Well, I guess we don't know yet that McCarthy will be the speaker. He still has to go get those 218 votes.

He fell 31 votes short in the nomination process, which is large. I would expect he ends up the speaker. There is no obvious other person out there. And that 31 votes is leverage for whatever insanity Republicans want. And we've already seen it. It was mentioned, like buried in the New York Times, that one of the things that McCarthy has agreed would be on the's laptop is real, all capital letters. So they're just lessons not learned. or that it's to advocate on behalf of the people who tried to murder Mike Pence, which is funny because you know who's a member of the Republican caucus? Greg Pence, his brother.

Oh, yeah. I forgot that. I'm glad. Yeah. I mean, the New York Times put it well, and they said just in one of the stories that their agenda is investigative, not legislative, which is exactly right. All they want to do is investigations. And that's how kevin mccarthy is going to keep his caucus together by promising those things so it's going to be an interesting two years what do you think about this did you see that um we might not get the debt ceiling down in the lame duck because because because fucking joe mansion again is like oh we need a bipartisan the election was nine days ago and we're right back into the Manchin cul-de-sac.

I mean, it's insane. It is insane. This is Joe Manchin's fault, I believe, if this ends up to be the case. But the reporting suggests that this is not just posturing, that people are very concerned that this will not happen. And we are handing a detonator to a group of dangerous yahoos. Yeah, like a caucus that's basically now run by not really Kevin McCarthy, but Marjorie Taylor Greene. And she gets to decide what happens. She gets to decide whether the global economy blows up or not.

Cool. Kevin McCarthy is someone who voted to overturn the election hours after a mob of Trump supporters tried to kill him. John Boehner was a miserable speaker. He was just a weak individual, but he thought his members were crazy and failed to – and failed to moderate their craziness. That is not Kevin McCarthy. No. He makes John Boehner look like Nancy Pelosi. He's so weak and dumb. And so this is very, very dangerous.

stronger force within the party and able to help work with Senator Reid and others to eventually bring these debt ceiling fights to a close without crashing the global economy. Mitch McConnell has a fraction of the legitimacy within the party he had before. And so it's very dangerous. And with Trump running for president on top of this and pushing pressure. I mean, it is insane to not fix it. And Republicans should want to fix it, frankly. Yes. I don't get it. Whatever. Anyway, to end on a high note, we should say that with Pelosi stepping down, I think she will go down in history as maybe the best, most productive, shrewdest speaker of the House that the country's ever seen. Hands down said i don't even think it's a close call she has been a tremendous speaker a tremendous minority leader in the

opposition she has stood up against she has worked with president stood up against president i don't even think it's a close call she's a sheer amount of legislation she's gotten through she's been able to keep her caucus together. It's incredibly impressive. And the thing that's amazing, everyone's like, this Republican caucus is going to be a disaster when it's this close.

And Nancy Pelosi passed huge pieces of legislation with this exact margin. And no one thinks Kevin McCarthy, they're going to be shocked if he can get these fucking Yahoo's degree on a lunch menu. And she's passing climate change legislation

and major stimulus bills and all of that. Like, I mean, she's amazing. She will go down in history. President Obama would always say he couldn't have done any of that stuff without her and Senator Reid. And he really believes that, really believes that. Okay, when we come back,

Dan talks to John Ralston of the Nevada Independent about what happened in that state in the midterms. Joining us now is the person who reminds us every two years that the silver state matters, John Ralston of the Nevada Independent. John, welcome back to Pod Save America. Hi, Dan. Right around the time early votes start coming in in your state, I set up Twitter alerts for you so I can track what's happening. So I know that you are relatively sleep deprived these days and been pretty busy. So we're grateful that you would take the time here when you should be heading towards your vacation, I would hope, to talk to us about this.

Actually, you know, it's funny how many Twitter friends I make every other year and suddenly they disappear. It's like a one election stand, Dan. It's so hard. Well, I stick with you. I just I turn off the alerts after the votes are counted. But but I still read your tweets, to be very clear. All right. I want to start with a prediction that you made before the election. I think if you had polled Democratic operatives around the country, the sentiment was that Catherine Cortez Masto was by far the most vulnerable of the Democratic incumbents. If you'd asked us to pick one race that we were likely to lose, it would probably be this one, given some of the recent strength that Republicans have shown in the state, the demographics, et cetera. I think you shocked

a lot of people and frankly gave a lot of Democrats hope when before the election, you predicted that Masto would actually win and that the Republican Joe Lombardo would win the governor's race. What led you to make that prediction? And did your reasoning bear out when those results came to fruition? Well, and now I have to prove that there was reasoning behind this. The thing is, even a broken clock can explain why it's right. It was not a magic eight ball, I promise. So listen, I've been doing these predictions for a long time, as you know, before the election. And this was the hardest year that I've had to do it. And I took a lot of heat,

by the way, as you probably saw if you were on Twitter, especially Republicans who were not just confident, but almost cocky that they were going to win that race. So how did I come to the conclusion to make the kind of split verdict? Lombardo had been running ahead of Adam Laxalt, Catherine Cortez Masto's opponent, by one or two points in every poll that I had seen. But as you know, Dan, I kind of ignore polls once I start looking at the early voting data, which is somewhat predictive in Nevada because so many people vote early, even after the change in the way we do elections with all the mail ballots. And it looked like the Republicans were doing pretty well. But there were several things that went into the calculation. First of all, there was

no question in my mind that people really, really hated Steve Sisolak for what he had done during COVID and the COVID hangover, as I call it. And so I thought he was in big trouble, whether that's fair or not, that I'm just talking about how I I call it. And so I thought he was in big trouble, whether that's fair or not, that I'm just talking about how I made the decision. And so I thought there were people who were just going to never vote for Steve Zislak, including some Democrats and independents, a big cohort in this state. And so I came to the conclusion that Joe Lombardo's team had run a good enough campaign that they were going to squeak it out. So Catherine Cortez Masto was running against someone who I think the national media really missed something in focusing so much on Blake Masters and Herschel Walker and Dr. Oz as being

these terrible Trump endorsed candidates that made what should have been wins very, very iffy. made what should have been wins very, very iffy. Adam Laxalt's a terrible candidate. The only difference is, is that his campaign was able to cocoon him enough so he didn't say as many dumb things as some of these others. And he had worn out his welcome here, Dan. He had upset a lot of Republicans by blowing what they thought was an almost sure thing governor's race, therefore giving in 2018, giving Democrats complete control of Carson City and the ability to redistrict and reapportion however they wanted. And so there were some buyer's remorse going on in the Republican Party that a lot of people did not pick up on. And especially in Washoe County, which is where Reno is, and which, by the way, he ended up losing by five or six points. And so Catherine Cortez Masto had run almost a flawless

campaign, very disciplined. She worked really hard the last month, and her media in defining Laxalt as this kind of child of privilege, carpetbagger who moved here to run for office and who was caught on tape saying Roe versus Wade was always a joke. And they played that over and over again. I thought, combine all those factors with the fact that despite the premature burial of the so-called Reed machine here,

it was still alive and well, and would just barely push her over the top. So that's how I came to that conclusion. There's been a lot of conversation over the years, but even in the wake of the election about the quote unquote Harry Reed machine, could you sort of explain what that is, how it works and how it has persisted both long after Senator Reed's passing, but also with some changes in the leadership of the Democratic Party within the state. Yeah. So the Reid machine developed, was developed by Harry Reid after some, it actually goes way back to 1998 when he almost lost his seat to John Ensign by 428 votes. I remember all these numbers because I have a

crazy memory and I happen to be writing a book about Harry Reid. And I know you've been reading more than I used to. Yeah. So, and he knew he had to make some changes and they didn't all come to fruition until 2004 when he brought in an operative from Missouri by the name of Rebecca Lamb, who he essentially became tasked with overseeing the Reid machine. And what she did was bring in all these very talented, hardworking, both data-driven young operatives and just hard workers who knew that there was a formula. And the formula isn't that complex. Executing it is to some extent. And that is register as many voters as you can

and then turn them out. Bank votes during early voting. Early voting lasts for two weeks here. Harry Reid wasn't the guy who was going door to door. He wasn't the guy crunching the numbers, right? He was making sure the thing got funded and no one could raise money like Harry Reid. So after he left office in 2016, the machine was still there. It had a harder time raising money. And then after the last cycle, it had even a more difficult time because as you alluded to these democratic socialists took over the democratic party,

which I had often referred to. And I think Rebecca Lamb cringed at this description, a legalized money laundering operation where they would raise all this money, you know, and then, and then use it to register and turn out voters. But they got around that. They set up a parallel organization and they still got the funding for this machine. And they were able to change some election laws that they thought would benefit them because they have an organization and infrastructure. The Republicans have tried some copycat stuff, Dan, but they have never been as effective or hired as good people as Rebecca Lamb and her team. And it is remarkable, by the 12,000, 14,000 votes out of more than a million cast. That's solely due to that machine, Dan, and what they were able to do. It's why they

won three House seats that the Republicans thought they were going to take. It's why in a midterm with Joe Biden's numbers here under 40 percent in some Democratic polls, they picked up seats in the legislature. You know, so it really is a remarkable operation. And Rebecca Lamb, who I thought was going to do a mic drop several cycles ago, she won't do that until she finishes some stuff. She wants Nevada to be first in the nation in the primaries and wants to win for president in 2024. But she deserves a lot of credit. She likes to operate in the background. She'll probably hate that I'm even saying her name on this odd guess. But she is responsible for these victories. Nevada is a state that I think a lot, you probably

know this too well to agree with it, but a lot of Democrats thought was trending pretty strongly blue after 2012. Obama won it easily in 08, I think over six points in 2012, snapped back in 2016, and then has been incredibly close since then, incredibly close in 20. And it has been sort of on the forefront of some of the demographic shifts that have happened within the party coalitions since Trump. Is there anything you saw on Tuesday or in the election month that is what you guys do there that gives you some indication of where your state is going in 2024 and beyond? It's hard. You know, it's hard to, I mean, you talk about the eternity in politics, 24 hours is an eternity in politics now, the way it works, right, as opposed to two years. But listen, there is no question that if you just look at the numbers, Nevada has turned slightly rightward since the time that Obama did so well in the state. He won by double digits the first time. And then, as you say, won by six or seven points the second. But I'm not sure that that is something the Republicans can bank on.

And Washoe County, which is really the deciding county and really the bellwether county in Nevada, the way it works real quickly is that Clark County, where Las Vegas is, has 70 percent of the votes, very heavily Democratic, although less so than it used to be. The 15 rural counties are deep red counties. And then they try to offset whatever the margin is in Clark. And then Washoe decides things. I think that people in Washoe County after 2020 thought that Washoe and after what happened with COVID and people being really mad at the Democrats, both Biden and Sisolak, it was trending red. I had someone on election day when the initial results came out, someone very smart Republican operative in Washoe text me and say, I guess Washoe is going red again. And then everything changed as all the votes came

in. And so Washoe County is a purple county. And you could even say that it's trending slightly blue in some ways. And so, listen, as you know better than anybody, Dan, candidates matter, campaigns matter, and who the Democrats nominate, if Biden doesn't run, who eventually is the Republican nominee is going to determine a lot that happens in Nevada. But I think you still have to say that Nevada leans slightly blue in the presidential race based on what's happened since Obama won in 2008. Joe Lombardo was one of the small handful of candidates endorsed by former President Trump that won. He certainly got less attention than Kerry Lake or Doug Mastriano. Tell us a little bit about Joe Lombardo. Should Democrats who

were very worried about these MAGA candidates who have at some point in time expressed some support for the big lie or question about Biden's legitimacy, what should we think about Joe Lombardo and what a potential threat he poses to election integrity and democracy in your state? It's a great question. And I think it's unfair to Joe Lombardo to compare him to Kerry Lake or Mastriano. I only put him in that basket as someone Trump endorsed, but yes, he is different. And also in the sense that he won. So they probably said something. And he is not an election denier in that sense. And the story of Trump endorsing him is kind of interesting in the sense it's a different kind of story than almost any other one.

Joe Lombardo was in a multi-way primary for governor against the likes of a former senator, Dean Heller, the mayor of North Las Vegas, John Lee, who switched parties to run, and a guy named Joey Gilbert, who is a mega maniac, hydroxychloroquine believer, conspiracy theory believer. But he started to do well and started to get a kind of a cult following. And a cult following sometimes, as you know, Dan, is enough to win in a multi-way primary. And so that's when they reached out and got the Trump endorsement, just to kind of seal the deal in the primary. But Lombardo, I won't say he kept him at arm's length, but he came right after the primary, Trump did, to do an event for Lombardo and Adam Laxall. It was actually almost comical, and you'll appreciate this. There's the sheriff of Clark County running for governor and Trump standing next to him. And the first thing he says, and what got the headlines is, Nevada is a cesspool of crime. Thanks, Mr. President. So he tried to not emphasize at all the Trump endorsement.

But one, this is my opinion, strategic error that Sisolak and his team made, Dan, is that during a debate, and I moderated the debate, I asked Lombardo if he thought Trump was a great president. He said, I wouldn't use that adjective. I'd say he was a sound president. By that afternoon, they put out a press release correcting that, saying he was a great president. And then Trump came a couple of days later. And when Lombardo was up on stage, he was calling him the greatest president of all time. So it was a kind of pathetic bending of the knee.

But like almost all Republican candidates think they have to do this. And the New York Times reported last week or this week, I'm sorry, Dan, all the time is running together. I understand it. Exactly what I thought had happened is Trump heard about what he said in the debate, went crazy, was going to withdraw the endorsement until they put out the corrective statements on that. But, you know, he's not an election denier. He did the nod to election integrity, which are the code words that the base needs to hear. But he has not talked about overhauling election laws. Sure, he's for voter ID, like every Republican is for, but that's going nowhere in a democratically controlled legislature. A real election denier secretary of state who could have done some damage lost.

And so I don't think that Lombardo's agenda at all is to change the election laws to make them a threat for integrity. They're going to try to ratchet back certain things. But here's the thing, Dan, is that what the Reed machine has proven is that, I sound like their agent here, but it's the truth, is that it doesn't matter what the system is. They're going to out-organize, they're going to outwork and out-fund whatever the system is. And so I do not consider Joe Lombardo a threat. The thing about Joe Lombardo, sheriff of Clark County, he's a cop his entire career. He doesn't know anything about state government or these state issues. He was able to fake it through superficial answers during the campaign. He's got a lot to learn. And who he puts around him, I think, are going to be the signal on that issue you asked about and other issues in state government.

Last question for you. You mentioned Rebecca Lamb's desire to make Nevada the first in the nation in the primary process. We don't know whether we're going to have a Democratic primary this upcoming election cycle. There may not be, but the DNC is looking at how to rearrange the calendar. since 2020 about the sort of accessibility of caucuses as a method. Is Nevada considering switching to a primary in order to be in the front of the calendar? Is there anything you can tell me about how the party there is thinking about it? Yeah, they changed it. They changed the law. And so it's going to be a primary because just for this reason, Dan, because they knew that the Iowa caucus was a nightmare. Caucuses are undemocratic. Even Harry Reid may rest in peace before he came out and said, all right, I've decided caucuses are anti-democratic. We should change it. But they were doing this all because they wanted to show the DNC, look, we're up to doing this the right way. Please make us first. And by the way, I think if Harry Reid were still alive, that we would have a much better chance of being first in the nation because he could whisper in the presidency or do this for me, Joe, because the president will have some say in this.

I don't think first in the nation is going to be Delaware, but I do think that he is going to have some say if there is a primary system and who goes first. And I think Nevada has a great case to make. By the way, I'm obviously a partisan on Nevada. You know, I think we matter and we should matter more. But, you know, we're much more of a demographically diverse state. And we are what the Democratic Party wants to show to the nation, despite the kind of quirkiness of Nevada and the caricaturing of Nevada that is done. Not that you would ever do that, Dan, but that some people nationally have done. John Ralston, thank you so much. I hope these final votes get counted and you get to take a long vacation. And thanks for all your hard work in keeping us updated on what was happening in this election.

Thanks for having me. on what was happening in this election. Thanks for having me. Thanks to John Ralston for joining us today. Everyone have a good weekend. Dan and I have a Thanksgiving mailbag for you that's going to run next Tuesday. Other than that, everyone have a great Thanksgiving break

and we'll see you after the holidays. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producers are Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis sound engineered the show.

Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz, Sandy Gerard, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montu. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash Pod Save America.