Pod Save America - JD Vance Defends Hitler-Loving Racists

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

When a group of Young Republicans' racist private messages—which included praise for Hitler and slavery and jokes about gas chambers—get leaked to POLITICO, JD Vance says "that's what kids do" and that we all need to move on. President Trump names new targets for prosecution, including Sen. Adam Schiff, Andrew Weissmann, and Jack Smith, even as Trump's DOJ indicts his old nemesis, John Bolton. Jon and Dan react to Vance and Trump's comments, discuss the Trump administration's plan to weaponize the IRS, and debate whether the administration is seriously considering starting a war with Venezuela. They then turn to the latest developments in the government shutdown, the growing debate over the DSCC's influence in 2026 senate primaries, including those in Maine and Michigan, and a pending ruling at the Supreme Court that could further weaken the Voting Rights Act. Then, Sen. Brian Schatz talks with Tommy about whether the end of the shutdown is in sight, the administration's designation of Antifa as a terrorist organization, and the upcoming No Kings protests.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.  Get tickets to CROOKED CON November 6-7 in Washington, D.C at http://crookedcon.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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On today's show, we're going to talk about the group chat where young Republican leaders talked about loving Hitler and slavery. Some big moves in Senate primary races, including Maine, the bad vibes from the Supreme Court on the Voting Rights Act, and what it is. means for control of Congress and why you need to get out there to a no king's protest on Saturday. You'll also hear Tommy's conversation with our friend Brian Schatz about the shutdown and all the latest news. But let's start with what our aspiring American dictator has been up to. Trump has ordered the federal government's vast army of prosecutors and FBI agents to prioritize charging and arresting Americans who have criticized the president, even if there's insufficient evidence that they've committed a crime. Trump's regime has already brought charges

against Jim Comey and Letitia James. John Bolton might be indicted by the time you hear this. Trump's IRS has reportedly drawn up a list of left-leaning groups and major Democratic donors they're preparing to launch criminal investigations into. We'll get to that in a bit. And not only is the White House not denying any of this, the president is advertising it from the Oval Office. here he is on Wednesday flanked by the Attorney General and the FBI director. Deranged Jack Smith, in my opinion, is a criminal

and I noticed his interviewer was, I think that was Weissman. And I hope they're going to look into Weissman too. Wisman's a bad guy. I hope they're looking at Shifty Schiff. I hope they're looking at all these people. Getting into Pod Save America guess now, Dan.

Adam Schiff, Andrew Weissman. So one of the many concerns I have about all this is the announcement of each new indictment or investigation, like, generates less coverage and outrage and shock than the last. And then pretty soon, you know, we become numb to all of it. What do you think? I share that exact same concern, right? There was huge outrage when Jim Cumm was indicted. There was anger unless you James was indicted. There will be a minor furor when John Bolton's indicted. And by the time we get to the point where Cash Patel and Stephen Miller show up to

the floor of the Senate to arrest Adam Schiff, it'll be a blip on the radar, right? Like, this is what Trump has done. It's what he does incredibly well. He takes extraordinary, the dangerous, the abnormal, and just makes it feel like a part of our politics, right? He just, he wears down the body politic and just changes the way American life is done. And he has done that on so many issues in so many ways over the last nine months that it's like hard to imagine where we'll be three and a half years from now at this rate.

Yeah, exactly. I think if you're just a regular American watching all this, you think to yourself, well, I'm not Jim Comey. I'm not Adam Schiff. I'm not John Bolton. Like, I'm not a prominent Democrat. I'm not an official. I wasn't on a legal team that investigated Donald Trump. And you might think to yourself, you know, these cases are bullshit. Jim Comey and Letitia James, those cases seem like they may get thrown out. Even if they go to trial, it seems highly unlikely they're going to get a jury. And so you might think that that's like comforting in some ways. But again, those people are going to go through hell and they can afford lawyers. And once you start getting down the list, right, to people who are prominent but less prominent. And then what's stopping Trump in the Justice Department from saying, oh, some random person who criticized us that we don't like? We're going to find some dirt on them. Like it doesn't stop with the people who were responsible for investigating Donald Trump over the last several years.

by any means. Like, he's just going to keep going. Why wouldn't he? What would stop him? If you are someone who, like, we're not far away from it being someone who organizes in their community to protest Trump, to push back on ICE, right? The people who are running these Facebook or WhatsApp group chats that are helping people in communities know what ICE is doing, right? Like anyone and everyone is on the table when your belief is that anyone who opposes the president is dangerous and un-American. Yeah. Well, let's talk about the IRS story. So the Wall Street Journal reports that Trump is getting ready to install loyalists at the IRS's criminal investigative division, which has more than 2,000 agents.

These are the people who carry guns. And he's doing this to get past reportedly all the IRS lawyers who've been pushing back on investigations into Trump's critics because they would be illegal, vindictive prosecutions. Scott Bessent is already the acting IRS commissioner. He's on board. And they want Gary Shappley to run the criminal division. He's a loyalist, and he's reportedly already drawn up a list of left-leaning groups. They want to bankrupt by, you know, putting them through these very long and invasive investigations, as well as individual major Democratic donors. They want to put through the hell of a criminal investigation. This seems like a huge fucking deal, incredibly dangerous. I feel like with everything else going on, it's being treated as like

just another crazy story. What is your, what's your level of concern on this one? That basically Trump's second term is a Watergate every single day. This is exactly what was at the core of Watergate, right? Nixon drew up an enemy's list. He took it to the IRS. He badgered the IRS to go after people, his political opponents, including left-leaning organizations like the Brookings Institute at the time. When the IRS pushed back, he installed a special task force of the IRS to do exactly this to go after his enemies. it is one of the things that became, while it wasn't as big a deal as the break-in, it was one of the core charges of abuse of power that would have led to his impeachment had he not resigned,

and Trump is just doing it. And the difference between what Trump does and what Nixon did is Nixon did it quietly, and it had to be ferreted out by Woodward and Burson and other reporters. And Trump is standing up there just announcing these things for the world to see. But it's the same thing. It's the same abuse of power. It's the same assault on democracy. It's the same assault on the rule of law, but it is what he is doing.

I mean, it's incredibly dangerous, right? And this is like, and this is even more, it's easier to weaponize this against more people than building a criminal case, taking it to a jury indictment. You're now just like reading through people's finances, looking for something to go after, making them, get them, getting them audited, doing all these things to prolong the pain and send a message to this. If you criticize the state, if you question the king, then you will pay a price. And it's worse than another way, too.

Like, this would be bad and illegal if the IRS was simply targeting the president's critics and people the president doesn't like for an audit or an investigation. They're trying to go a step further and saying, okay, in order to take away a group's tax-exempt status, which for many groups would bankrupt them, in order to do that, you have to have an investigation. The investigation goes on for a long time, and maybe it's unpleasant for the. group, but like at the end of the investigation, you don't lose your tax exempt status unless they actually find something wrong. They are trying to change this. So they skip the whole very long investigation part and just are able to take away the tax exempt status much more easily. And they're also sort of shifting the balance of power in the IRS so that all the people in the IRS who are lawyers, who are accountants, whose job it is to collect taxes and stuff like that,

are overpowered by the criminal division, which, again, are the agents with the guns. And then you've got Scott Besson also talking about, he's like comparing the hunt for, you know, terrorist financing, which is like left-leaning groups that they're calling Antifa that might find it something, they're comparing it with going after Al-Qaeda's networks, financing networks after 9-11 on the Charlie Kirk show this week. It's like, do you think he believes that? That's what I'm saying. Like, Scott Bessent is supposed to be like, oh, yeah, he brought people comfort, some comfort, because it was like, well, this guy, you know, he's not as crazy as like a Stephen Miller or these kind of person, these guys.

But, like, I don't know what the fuck's happened to Scott Besson. I don't, I mean, I don't think he believes that. He's trying to fight people left and right. Yeah, I mean, that's part of it, I guess. That's part of it. Again, I mean, I'm a broken record on this, but don't think I would fund a government and hand my tax dollars or anyone's tax dollars. to this IRS so they could do this. Doesn't seem like a good use of money.

Doesn't seem like something that I would want to sign off on. Just saying. Just saying. All right. Let's lighten things up with the headline from Politico. That's become the viral story of the week. Quote, I love Hitler. Leaked messages expose young Republicans' racist chat.

Wow, shocking headline, right? Maybe the story's not as bad. Maybe that's just some clickbait. So the group chat in question includes a dozen young Republican leaders from New York, Kansas, Arizona, and Vermont, state party officials, government employees, even a state senator, in the messages. These Republican leaders joke, put that in quotations, about sending their opponents to gas chambers and loving Hitler, like we heard in the title. They refer to black people as monkeys, rape as epic, and slavery as based. There were jokes about people with Indian heritage, not bathing, about how you shouldn't get on a plane flown by a non-white pilot. And there were slurs, tons and tons and tons of slurs directed towards almost every minority, in addition to black people, Hispanics, Chinese, Jews, gay people.

Some of the Republican officials in the chat have apologized. some have lost their positions in the party, and a few Republican leaders who weren't in the chat, condemned the chat. But one very prominent Republican chose to go in another direction. The vice president of the United States, without being asked, just decided to weigh in on the controversy with a tweet where he dismissed the criticism as, quote, pearl clutching over, quote, a college group chat. Not a college group chat. These people were not in college. He was later asked about his tweet, and here's what Vance said. Grow up.

I'm sorry. Focus on the real issues. Don't focus on what kids say in group chat. The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys. They tell edgy, offensive jokes. Like, that's what kids do. And I really don't want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke, telling a very offensive stupid joke, is caused to ruin their lives.

And at some point, we're all going to have to say enough of this BS. Just to put an exclamation point on this entire episode, the day after the story ran, Politico broke another story about an image they obtained from the office of Ohio Republican Congressman Dave Taylor in which one of his staffers has an American flag that's been altered to include a swastika pinned on his cubicle. Capital police are investigating that one. Dan, thoughts on all the pearl clutching that's going on here? Well, let's start with J.D. Vance. Because it's hard to think of a more pedantic, less interesting, more morally vacuous response to these sort of outrageous, hateful comments than to say, then to adopt the approach that everything my side does is fine, everything your side does is wrong. It's just, it's like he just lacks any thoughtfulness in any way or shape. It would have been so easy to say what was in this was wrong. and also what Democrats have said, like, Attorney General Jay Jones, Virginia was wrong. You could say both things are wrong. Like, that's a very viable thing. I will. I think both things are wrong. I think Jay Jones's texts are horrific. Yeah. Crazy. It's not that hard to do it.

It's not that hard to do it, but he's so simple-minded in his pursuit of approbation from the MAGA set. And it's because he knows that he himself is full of shit, right? J.D. Vance of six years ago, would have trashed this, right? But he knows that he once was a traitor to the cause by calling Trump Hitler. And so he has to bend so far in the other direction to try to prove his Maga Bonifides. And it's just so, it's lame. It's just so lame. Everything about him is so lame. What a journey. What a journey goes from calling Trump Hitler to working for Trump and defending people who say they love Hitler. Yeah. That's a real, that's a real, that's a real journey like all the what aboutism and hypocrisy and all that should aside just i'm just trying to get

into the mind of a human being like j d vance you see these you see these texts you see this story you're not asked about it he was asked about it there after he tweeted about it so no one no one has asked j d vance about it and you're the vice president of united states he does tweet a lot for for being a vice president um but he still has other things to do he's not tweed tweeting like 20 times a day and he sees this story and he's like you know what I think I need to weigh on in this story and instead of even making it like we could have had a disagreement with him and we would have if we if he made this like okay this was bad this is horrible they should not have said this but I don't think they should lose their jobs right and then we have like a

another cancel culture debate and he could you know that's his fucking hobby horse and we could talk about that whatever didn't even go there didn't even say he has not said it was bad. He has not condemned the fucking tweets. He has gone right to like, these kids shouldn't have their lives ruined, never condemned it. Someone saying Hitler. And then also trying to fucking say that these are kids and he just keeps trying to say that, like, oh, they're kids, their kids, they're kids. They're in their mid-30s. One of the people in questions is like a year younger than J.D. Vance. there is something in online MAGA alt-right world where you get points for defending

the indefensible. If you will go where no one else will go, right, then you somehow get points of loyalty to the calls, whatever it is. And so he just jumped right on it and did it. But he did it without thinking. He just like, how can this make, create, give me some fan boys? And it's just, it's, you just have to have so low regard for your own position in the world to think that's the right thing to do. Like, you're the vice president of United States.

You could have influence. You can be a moral leader in some way, shape, or form. But it never even occurs to him to do the right thing, not for one second. I will say, beyond the J.D. Vance of it all, just reading those texts, it's pretty scary. It's, my first reaction was not just like outrage. I can't believe these people. It's like, oh, fuck, this is the future of the Republican party. Like, these people are in positions of authority. And that's one group chat of 12 people. And I think we have seen as you get younger in MagaWorld these days, then you're actually more extreme, not less extreme. And the idea that we had, you know, well before 2024 and maybe before 2020, that as the younger generations grew up, then maybe it was the boomers who Trump was

getting in 2016, and I guess that's true. And that, you know, as the younger generations come of age and vote more than maybe MAGA will sort of disappear. But this is like a, these kids are making like Trump look moderate kids, not kids. All they know of politics, let's say they just happen to be conservative leaning, grew up in Republican households, Republican households, Republican parts of the country. If you are in your 20s, or even if you're 30, all you know of politics in your party is Donald Trump. You remember nothing else. And you probably think of because of the way the online conversation has been shaped, that everyone else is a traitor to the cause or a rhino or whatever else. And that Trump is like, I mean, there was that very infamous Hillary Clinton ad about

the, in 2016, about the kids watching Donald Trump. Like, that was a bad political argument. It was a bad ad. But there is something to be, like, there is a right point there, which is like the president and the political leaders have influence on the American people. And what they define as acceptable conduct takes hold. And he's not like Trump and now Vance are not modeling good behavior for anyone. They're saying you can say or do whatever you want. And the more outrageous, the more offensive, the better, right? That anyone trying to stop you from saying anything is wrong.

And so like this is how you end up with people like this. And these people are positions of power. and they will position the power going forward. And there's a lot of people like them. And it's also incredible how just bold and brazen they are. This is not like someone who got caught on a private chat with their friends and they said some awful, horrendous, offensive things on a small chat. This is like 12 people who were colleagues essentially, right?

Like these are people that you work with that really you probably don't know super well because they're all from, they're Republican leaders from different states, the fucking guy in the Capitol Hill office and the house office that has the fucking

swatzika behind him, what? Like that's on video? That's a picture? What are you doing? It's in an office, a public office? This is not like something

that's happening underground where people are telling jokes, all right? Because I know you can read it and be like, oh, they were offensive jokes, but maybe it was jokes. Like, it's not really a joke.

And it's especially not a joke when you're telling it unlike a group chat with a bunch of colleagues about how much you want to send your opponents to the fucking gas chamber, hope they kill themselves. Group chat is the technically correct term for this, but it makes it really sound like a bunch of college buddies

shooting the shit. Which is intentional. Right? If it was a Slack channel, right? Or they said it in a meeting, it would be treated very differently. But that's functionally what it is in 2025. In case anyone's still wondering where this is all going,

I'm just going to read the headline in an opening paragraph of this story from Wednesday's New York Times, quote, Trump considers overhaul of refugee system that would favor white people. The story starts, quote, The Trump administration is considering a radical overhaul of the U.S. refugee system that would slash the program to its bare bones while giving preference to English speakers, white South Africans, and Europeans who oppose migration. Oh, and the same day, the Department of Homeland Security tweeted,

single word, remigrate. What does that mean, you may ask? Here's Wikipedia. Quote, remigration is an originally European far-right proposal of ethnic cleansing via the mass deportation of non-white immigrants and their descendants, sometimes including those born in Europe with local citizenship to their place of racial ancestry. So, you know, whatever you do, Dan, do not compare these people to Nazis or fascists. It is simply a government. trying to keep out non-white immigrants and encourage those non-white immigrants who are already here or who are perhaps descendants of non-white immigrants to leave to just go somewhere else. That's all, right?

This has been a dark pod so far, I'd say. And it may get darker yet. But before we get to future darkness, I do want to say that these people may have power right now. and they may, and they may, and they will have power for a while now, right, for another couple of years. And so they get to implement these policies. But no one should one second believe they are winning the argument or that the country is moving in this direction.

Stephen Miller, the people in this group chat, the House staff are with the swastika, they are a minority. They're a minority of the country. They're a small minority. They're a minority of their own party. Much of what they believe is an anathema to most of the American people. and there has been, has it manifested itself yet in political outcomes, but there has been a severe backlash to this approach to immigration, to pluralism in this country, right?

Gallup has been tracking the question of whether immigration is a good thing or a bad thing. The question of whether immigration is a good thing hit its highest level in June of 2025. 79% of Americans believe immigration is a good thing for the country. And that is happening while they're tweeting remigrate. They mass ICE agents are storm in the country. They are making the most powerful people in this country are making an argument that immigration is bad. They are losing that argument.

So if a day comes, and I believe it will come when Democrats have power again, the political environment has been created to pass real immigration reform in this country. Yes, it'll be tough on the border. Yes, it'll deal with gang members and drug dealers and criminals in this country, but will include a path to citizenship for people who've been here for a long time, paying taxes, working hard in their community. And it's because of Stephen Miller and J.D. Vance and these other people, they are losing the argument. They're a small minority of the country. They have a disproportionate amount of power. The country is not moving in this direction politically.

It just happens to be that this small minority has power at this moment. I love your optimism. I love, I agree with everything you just said and the data that you said. And the data that you cited. I am wondering why the generic ballot in the midterms is so narrow, why Spanberger in Virginia is only up by a few points. Mikey Cheryl's only up by a few points. I guess I can tell myself a story that these races are about individual candidates and these are not a referendum on you know, Donald Trump's immigration policy or to the extent that people understand and Donald Trump's immigration policy, they think it's about keeping the border strong and secure, which they agree with. It is about deporting undocumented immigrants who are here illegally,

which unfortunately most Americans agree with, a slight majority agrees with, even though they, like you said, in Gallup, favor immigration as a whole. So I guess I could tell myself that story. But I don't know, when the Department of Homeland Security is talking about, is using a word that means ethnic cleansing came from the far right in Europe, and everyone's just like, all right, well, could be a close race in Virginia, New Jersey, who knows? I don't know. I heard you in Ezra Klein talk about this on his podcast on Saturday. Saw that pop up my feet. I knew you were doing the interview. I put in my headphones. I went for a hike. And near the top of the hill, I heard you get into this exact question, and I stopped, and I screamed into the void.

because I think the answer is very clear as to why the generic ballot is what it is, why Virginia is close, why New Jersey is close. And it is that right now at this time, the Democratic Party's approval rating is in the toilet. They don't like what Trump is doing. They don't like what Republicans are doing, but they don't trust us.

You can see this in UGov data where they compare it. Like, we see a lot of how people approve of how Trump's handling of things. UGov a couple weeks ago asked who do you trust more on issues, Democrats, and Republicans are winning on almost every issue other than health care and climate change. And so we are like people want an alternative.

We have not given them a viable alternative yet. That is incumbent upon us. That's the difference between a two or three point generic ballot and a seven point generic ballot like we saw in 2018 when the Democratic Party approval rating was much higher than the Republicans. Do you think in 20? And then we could get there are specific reasons in New Jersey in particular why that race may be closer than we think it should be.

But that I think goes to the broader question of if Trump is so unpopular, if he's doing some way horrible things, if people disagree with the direction of the country's going in, why are they not flocking to Democrats? It's because we haven't given the reason to flock to us yet. Do you think we gave people more of a reason in 2018? Or do you think the party wasn't as unpopular as it wasn't? The party was much more popular in 2018. We were more popular than Republicans. And so we were, if you're looking for an alternative, we were a viable alternative, even for people who would turn around and vote for in 2020 because they wanted to check on power. Right now, people don't know what we stand for.

They don't think we are strong enough to implement what we stand for. And until that changes, we could still win the house, but it would be where we're squeaking it out as opposed to something akin to a 2018 blue wave. Oh, and before we move on, just a reminder as to who the brains behind this operation is, there was a very revealing comment from Donald Trump in the Oval Office this week. Let's listen. But I want to thank Stephen Miller, who's right back in the audience right there. I'd love to have him.

I love watching him on television. I'd love to have him come up and explain his true feelings. but maybe not his truest feelings. That might be going a little bit too far. There it is. Moderating force Donald Trump. This is part of my theory that in the first Trump term, it was the Committee to Save America.

It was all this moderating force around him, trying to stop him from being crazy. In the second Trump term, he's the moderating force. And everyone else is fucking crazier than him. And I don't think he's a moderating, I'm talking relatively speaking, and I think it's true. I think we have an apology to, the Committee to Save America.

No, they should have. I wish they were there. I wish they were there right now. Mattis, who was it? And who was the Goldman guy? Gary Cohn. Gary Cohn. Yeah, he was the sainer Scott Bessent.

Yes. Deena Powell. Sorry, Dina Powell. Yeah, no, would have liked a lot of the NSC. John Bolton. Would have liked a lot of the NSC back there right now, for sure. National Security Council, not these fucking cooks. Yeah, so Stephen Miller, even Donald Trump.

Even Donald Trump. little afraid of Stephen Miller who is by all accounts running Homeland Security the Pentagon Department of Justice all these fucking moron cabinet officials

who were just there for their face on television and because they can read talking points and have looked good on TV they're not doing anything at their departments they are reporting essentially to Stephen Miller

who is running everything and he is as white nationalist as they come don't believe us believe the implication of what Donald Trump just said and he I mean he's Trump has said it before there was reports that Trump has said it before I think like Maggie Haberman has has had has written this in the New York Times reported this that um at one point uh Donald Trump was like oh no one no one hates immigrants as much as Stephen Miller it's not that's not the exact quote but it's like very close to that yeah actually

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In the morning, I really like to have a smoothie with AG1 because then you know, like, whatever happens the rest of the day, you got your vitamins, you got some fruit. you got some good stuff, which is a good way to start the day. Give the new AG1 flavors a try today. Head to drinkag1.com slash crooked to get a free welcome kit, including a bottle of vitamin D and free AG1 travel packs when you first subscribe. That's drinkag1.com slash crooked to get started. Now, despite all of the fascist, or at least fascist-adjacent rhetoric and behavior coming from the White House and some Republican leaders, Trump still desperately wants to be known

as the President of Peace. He is the Peace President. He's getting some help on this from Speaker Mike Johnson who announced on Tuesday that he's leading a coordinated campaign to get parliamentary leaders from around the globe to join him in nominating Trump for next year's Nobel Peace Prize. There's always next year, Dan. And the reason he wants to do this is because, quote,

no one has ever deserved that prize more. And that is an objective. objective fact. It's an objective fact. Did you know, do you know that it was an objective fact? Yeah. No. Fuck Gandhi.

More than Gandhi, yes. Yeah, no. King Gandhi? How many Bobby Reyes and Gandhi do? Come on. To prove the speaker's point, Trump posted a video just hours later that showed the U.S. military

executing people by blowing up another boat that the Trump administration has claimed, without evidence, was smuggling drugs from Venezuela. Later, Trump confirmed to reporters that he has authorized covert CIA operations inside Venezuela, which sort of breaks the first rule of covert operations. Not really covert if the president's confirming it in the fucking Oval Office, Dan. Trump said, quote, we're certainly looking at land now because we've got the sea under control. He also pointedly declined to say whether he'd authorized the CIA to take out President Nicholas Maduro,

though I'm sure he'll spill the beans on that one. If we kept, keep pressing them, even leaving aside the potential ground incursion, just starting a war, we keep getting told that there's a bipartisan concern about these strikes. Where are we seeing that? Are we, is the Hill doing anything? John Thune, Mike Johnson doing anything? Any Republicans? I feel like Thomas Massey and Rand Paul have said something maybe. Okay, yeah, no, we're just blowing people up on the water now.

We're starting to war in Venezuela because, you know, that's how you get the Nobel Peace Prize. You start wars in Venezuela. Yeah, and then Trump today, truth that he basically threatened to send U.S. troops into Gaza. Oh, yeah, he said, yeah, he said they're going to, we're going to kill Hamas if they don't knock it off is the new thing. I don't know. I think the Venezuela thing is just like, it's sort of under the radar. And again, I don't know why, because it is a war that we're talking about, the potential to start a war. I guess we've already started it because now we're just killing people.

The military is just blown up boats. And again, you're like, well, who's on the boat? Oh, drug smugglers. Narco-terrorists. They were coming to America with drugs to poison Americans. Well, A, that's not really a legal rationale to just kill people. But B, where's the evidence? They don't feel like they have to provide it.

Breaking news here is the, from the New York Times. The military commander overseeing the Pentagon's escalating attacks against boats in the Caribbean Sea that the Trump administration says are smuggling drugs is stepping down to officials. Do you think he's stepping down? Do you think he's stepping down because he was being too aggressive? No, probably not. I mean, this is one of those things where in a normal world, with a normal Congress, a normal progress in Congress, there would be pushback to this unauthorized war.

No, not from, like you're not going to get it from John Thune and Mike Johnson, but there would be more people, like the people who actually work on the committees that authorize these things, would have something to say about it, and there would be demands for evidence. This is like in this realm, this is a farm. policy and military, in use of military forces, like one of the rare places where bipartisanship still kind of sort of would exist periodically. But then publicly, I don't know that anyone, most people don't know this is happening. And up until the moment we send ground troops there,

like we do know over the last, you know, 24 years here that the American people have a very high tolerance for military strikes that don't involve U.S. boots on the crowd. Right. Do we feel that anyone's nervous that, you know, now when America, Americans are in international waters or Americans are their places, that maybe other countries are going to say, well, if the Americans can just kill people without evidence now, maybe we can do the same thing, too. That would be a logical conclusion of where we are right now. Throw that one in a poll, maybe. Yeah. See how people respond to that.

I don't think they'd like it. All right. On the Tuesday pod, Tommy and Lovett talked about how nearly all of the Pentagon Press Corps. including Newsmax and Fox News, refused to sign the contract that Pete Hegseth was forcing on them. Quick update on that. Here's the lead from the Washington Post on Wednesday evening. The nation's military and defense journalists exited the Pentagon in unison Wednesday afternoon, having had their accreditation revoked after refusing to agree to the Defense Department's

new restrictions on their news gathering activities. White House Communications Director Stephen Chung then claimed that a number of those reporters actually wanted to sign onto the new restrictions. restrictions but were, quote, physically confronted and threatened with retaliation if they didn't walk out, which of course the reporter swiftly denied, because of course it's not true. How do you think this will change the coverage? Like, I'm glad that the reporters did this and stood together. And I mean, this is like sort of what we had said with the White House AP situation. Like, why doesn't everyone else walk out? And, you know, there were good reasons not to. But what do you think about this? Like, what's going to happen now at the Pentagon? I don't, I don't know. I think. think a lot. I think some of the day-to-day coverage is probably going to be affected. There's the Pentagon briefs every day. There will not be someone there to real journalists to ask those questions, right? In a typical world, even after like these military strikes, someone, military officer in charge would do a briefing and then you would have journalists who would ask questions.

That doesn't happen now. But even the daily or like quasi-daily Pentagon briefings will not happen or have real journalists, which I think is a loss. Sort of the big stories, the ones that reveal, like, what's actually happening behind the scenes. The thing that Pentagon doesn't want you to know, the things that Pete Hacks have to try and to stop, that journalism will continue. Because that is not found by just hanging out in the Pentagon. That's found by developing sources, working with sources, finding whistleblowers, getting documents. And I think that will continue. The bigger problem here, or the bigger, the more concerning thing, is less like the actual impact on day-to-day coverage of this Pentagon in the short term. I think it's just

like what it says about how this administration views the freedom of the press and what it pretends for the White House, the State Department, just for journalists in general who want to cover politics or this administration. I think it's quite, quite concerning. Yeah. I'm guessing those journalists weren't getting a lot of truth out of the Pentagon when they covered it from inside the building. Yeah, I just think you can, there's something to be said. This is the remaining argument for like the White House briefing or the State Department briefing is. there is something for an on-camera moment or real journalists could confront a propagandist and ask them a hard question and expose the lie if a lie comes.

And we will lose that. Because now most of the reporting that exposes a lot of those lies will be in print because you won't get them on. All right. Let's turn to the ongoing government shutdown, which if you're counting, will be on day 17 by the time you're listening to this. Looking like we're going to be in this shutdown for a while, House is still out of session. Senate Democrats for the 10th time rejected the House's funding bill. and the Trump administration has decided to just pay the troops by ignoring the law and diverting money from other parts of the government. Meanwhile, White House Grim Reaper Russ Vote is still preparing to fire federal employees en masse, telling the press that he expects to cut more than 10,000 jobs and shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, though a federal judge temporarily blocked those layoffs late Wednesday.

One possible end to this shutdown may come from Senator Jean Shaheen, a retiring Democrat, who, according to Axis, has been leading behind-the-scenes talks with Republicans to find a way out of the shutdown. But at the moment, it seems like those talks have not made much progress. We'll hear more about this from Senator Schottes, who spoke with Tommy on Wednesday afternoon. What do you think about the shutdown? What do you think? Where we are, where we're going? This is just going to last forever?

It feels like neither side is feeling the pressure all that much? Yeah, I think that's exactly right, is that neither side feels any political pressure. the, I think by the traditional measures of like who's winning a shutdown, right, both in public opinion and tone of press coverage, the Democrats are winning it. But there are two problems with that. One, the Republicans no longer consume that press coverage. So even if they are losing, they think they're winning, which gives them no incentive to get out of the shutdown. And the other challenge is the shutdown is not dominating discussion, right? It is like we've worked in a shutdown. We've covered shutdowns. We've been in looming shutdowns. We've been on the brink of

shutdowns. And we've barreled toward shutdowns. And every time that's the biggest story in the land, right? It's the dominant political story. But it is not the dominant political story this time. In the very first day or so, it certainly was. And, you know, we talked to, I think you and I talked on a podcast about the data that showed that Democrats were really actually kind of winning the messaging wars on this. And I think they still are. But when you look at the data about what stories are breaking through. This one is not breaking through. Like, someone tweeted the other day, some reported to me the other day that there was no shutdown story in the Times, the Walser Journal, or the Post, I think, maybe on Monday.

And what stories are breaking through, Dan? Taylor Swift's album? Perhaps, yes, that's for sure. Perhaps a paramilitary organization that's terrorizing neighborhoods here in the United States running through the streets? Yeah, I mean, we could have this debate again if you like. We don't have. No, I did not want to.

There is it, but there is a, like, there is a, like, there is a, fundamental challenge here, right? Which, like, I told you when we did this, that we could probably have a long, hour-long discussion about this. Maybe we would, because it feels like, well, this may still be around at our next podcast. But the, like, you raise this point, which is the thing that drives conversation is immigration, democracy, crime, issues that go to core of identity, right? And those are the central conflicts in American politics in the Trump era. Health care is not that and does not drive that conversation. The Democrats, I will say, I give them credit for, they want to make health care a bigger issue. Health care, they have defined the shutdown on health care.

This is about health care. A Republican does an interview that get asked about the Affordable Care Act tax credits. Like, they've done that. The political challenge here is, is that the issues that drive attention online and drive conversation are not the issues of primary concern to the voters who sit in the middle. And so you have this issue where you can drive a ton of attention, but you're maybe not be persuading the people you need to persuade, or you can talk about the issues that matter to the people that matter to the persuadable voters, but they'll never hear about it because they can't drive enough conversation. And so it's like this paradox that cannot be solved. And so I don't have the right answer to that. I don't have a

solution to it, but I think that is like the, that is the fundamental challenge in Democratic messaging right now. Yeah. I think that, I think it was more of a challenge. I don't have a when Democrats were talking vaguely about democracy. And when you compare that with economic concerns that people had, I think the choice is much clearer on what to focus on. And now all the warnings about democracy have become quite real and tangible and visual to most people in this country. and it's weird to even call some of the ICE problems immigration base. It is about immigration, but it's like American citizens getting picked up off the street and troops in the streets, and it's just it's mayhem, you know?

And so I do think when you are talking to people about their basic freedoms and constitutional rights, I still don't think there's as much concern because as sort of economic concerns that people have, just because ICE and. the troops aren't in everyone's town yet. But, you know, I think it's, I think it's, I think it's, gaining an importance for people. I think so a couple, I really could talk with this for an hour, but so there's a couple ways to think about this. One is the, the, I guess the dilemma for Democrats is, do you try to make the issues that you're best on dominate politics? Or do you try to figure out how to win on the issues that already dominate politics? Like, that is, that is the core question. That was at the heart of what the Harris campaign. struggle with the whole time. And then the other challenges, and I think we just have to remind

ourselves all the time that unless you follow politics in the news pretty obsessively, unless you live in a city that has seen troops, unless you are a person who is vulnerable to ICE, who knows someone who's vulnerable to ICE, who lives in a community where ICE is present, a lot of the things that cause us to have our alarm bells going off at all times are just background noise to most people living their lives. And that is the challenge. They are not feeling it in the way that the people who are dialed into politics

who are living in the place or this is happening or feeling it. Yeah. I guess the only thing I'd say to that is the issues that are dominating the news, even if they're not our best issues, there is a way to win on those issues by making our best arguments

that are on our turf, right? So, like I always thought that the whole democracy debate like freedom was a better frame I know you thought that too right and have written extensively about it like I do think when you're talking about people's basic

freedoms to walk down the street without being harassed by federal agents who are armed right like that that stuff is that does work for us and I think we have a much better message than Republicans on that I think it's

it's a message about values that are not only embedded in the Constitution, but are like just everyone in America can sort of like fundamentally understand. So in a way, I think that benefits us politically in a way that just talking about immigration, border security deportations, political prosecutions, all the rest, just doesn't as much. That's the only thing. That's the only thing I've been thinking about. Yeah, there is an interesting argument here that I've also been playing with about, it is, like, I don't, using the term libertarianism is, that's incorrect and leaves the wrong impression. But the basic idea is, is Republicans don't want the government to help you

in any way, shape, or form, right? Does it want to help you get affordable health care? Does it help you make more money to help you get a job? Does it want to help your school, you know, have your teachers get paid enough to teach in your school? But they want the government in your life in every other way, right? They want to know, they're getting information about abortions. They don't want you to smoke weed. Like, they don't, you know, they're taking away your freedom of speech, your freedom of assembly, all these things. And like, there's just something there for Democrats to adopt. I think it would be quite appealing with a lot of people who are sick of the way politics is going right now. Because what people want from government is

Social Security, Medicare, Affordable Care Act, tax credits, all those things. What they don't want is mass dice agents. They don't want someone tell them what to say. They don't want someone telling them who to love, who to marry, when they can have a baby, what health care decisions they make. And And there's something in that space for Democrats going forward. Pod Save America is brought to you by Zbiotics pre-alcohol. Let's face it, after a night with drinks, I don't bounce back the next day like I used to. So I always make a choice. I can either have a great night or a great next day.

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they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to Zbiotics.com slash crooked and use the code Crooked at checkout for 15% off. Look, our longer political discussion that we hadn't anticipated having is now a perfect segue into talking about the midterms. Perfect. Big news in the main Senate race,

where Democrats are hoping to beat Susan Collins, Collins, finally. Governor Janet Mills, who turned 78 years young in December, is jumping into the primary. She'll be taking on Oysterman Graham Platner, a regular guy who came out of nowhere and has been winning a ton of fans, including many here at Crooked. Mills would be the oldest Senate freshman ever seated if she were to win. That didn't stop the only slightly younger Chuck Schumer from reportedly spending months recruiting her. The Democratic Senatorial campaign committee, which Schumer essentially controls as leader, is backing Mills over Platner and set up a joint fundraising committee this week.

Someone also dropped some opo on Platner on Thursday. CNN published a report with a bunch of Platner's old Reddit comments from his anonymous Reddit handle, where he reportedly wrote, quote, cops or bastards, called himself a communist and said indirectly that rural white people are racist and stupid. This assault on Platner is making a lot of Democrats pretty mad. One of them is you, Dan. You wrote a whole message box about this that everyone should read, but why don't you tell us how you feel? Here's my take.

If Janet Mills wants to run for Senate, she should run for Senate. And if she wins the primary, she'll beat Grand Platner. She'll be the nominee. I'll support her. I'll donate it to her the next day. My problem is not the Janet Mills. My problem is with the Senator Schumer and the DSEC deciding to endorse in this primary, to get involved in an open-seat primary, which is not something they do very often. And I just don't understand how you can look at everything that's happened in American

politics last 10 years, and particularly in 2024, and conclude with absolute certainty that the best path forward is to nominate a two-term incumbent 77-year-old governor at a time when people are mad at politics, they're mad at the Democratic Party, they are worried about the gerontocracy, and they want change. Like, we should at least be... you put it that way. Well, you just have your mind open to the idea that the way to beat Susan Collins, who is a very hard person to beat, this is not, you know, a lot of times you end up with these generic Republicans in blue states, and you just need a generic Democrat to beat them. That is not Susan Collins. She won big when Biden was winning Maine by 11

in 2020. She has been fortunate enough because of the size of this Republican majority. to not have to vote for a lot of these nominees, didn't vote for the one big, beautiful bill. And so this is not an easy person to beat. And so you should then at least open your mind's eye to the possibility that the way to beat a strong candidate like that is an outside of the box idea, for someone to do something different.

Because Janet Mills, she may be a great candidate, but she is just a better version of the Sarah Gideon campaign in 2020. It's the same thing. It's an establishment Democrat running as made. What if we had an anti-establishment, an outsider with appeal? and just like let the people a main decide.

You don't have to put your thumb on the scale. It's just such a failure to read the room both to understand politics and to read the room about what people are so mad at the Democratic Party

leadership about. I also, you know, to talk about the CNN piece, I had heard from a few different sources that it was the DSCC shopping this app or around. I don't know that. I hope that's not true.

Yeah. I really hope that's not true. What did you make of the CNN piece? Like, look, my thoughts on it were obviously some of those comments like I wouldn't want those if I was running for Senate to appear right I did like how he dealt with it he talked to CNN for the story and he talked about all the comments and he was like I was being an asshole online he was also under an anonymous handle and you know he was saying all this shit and it's like it's it's not great but then he was

like look obviously I don't think all cops are bastards I have plenty of cops who are buddies of mine. Like, I just don't think that. Obviously, I don't think all white people or rural white people are racist and stupid. I'm a rural white guy. I don't think I'm racist and stupid. You know, like, so he's sort of owned up to saying some of it that he wish he hadn't said. And like, I was, I was fine with it, a bunch of stupid comments, whatever. He was an asshole online. Many people are assholes online. So I think it's in the end, it's like one piece of evidence. People are going to have to weigh when they're in a primary. But like, I don't know, maybe I'm, It didn't bother me as much.

It's the response. I've been really fascinated by the response to Mills being in this race, to my piece about Mills being in the race. I heard from a lot of people who I've not heard from a long time. In one particular instance, the last text I had from this person who works high in democratic politics was them being mad at me about wanting Biden to drop out, which I thought was a notable. It was like the single last time we texted.

But I saw someone post online something like they took the CNN story and they quote tweeted and said, like, maybe we could finally learn the lesson to stop falling in love with unvetted shapeshifters. And it's like, okay, so let's slow down for a second. One, maybe this just gets my backup because the exact argument that people made against Barack Obama in 2008, right? Yeah. And let's just let people main decide. Let's find out. Maybe Plattner's a great candidate. Maybe he will implode. We don't know. Maybe Mills will be a great candidate. Maybe maybe she won't be. It's like, that's why you have primaries. And so the DSCC putting their thumb on the scale to try to rig it for Mills is just a, to me, seems like a crazy decision. I thought

his responses were good. It's like a normal, well-adjusted human owning up to a mistake. Will they haunt him in the general election? Maybe. But I will say, not everyone has things they may regret saying because the Republican Senate super PAC came out with an ad today with a video of Janet Mills thanking Susan Collins for all the work she's done for Maine. So everyone has skeletons in their closet i don't know could that that and in the end like which ad is more damaging uh you know graham platner it says he's a communist and that white people are stupid and the cops are bastards or for democrats in a primary janet mill says thanks susan collins like who knows you know you don't know i know the establishment strategist class what they are thinking which is what they always do

and they and they and they tend to do it in the most smug annoying population way as opposed to just like making an argument for people about like what's worrying them about grand platinum or this race right like they don't they they just try to they're like we're so much smarter than you like this is this is the tone that I think that the at least the consultant the part of the consultant establishment class that are very online which is quite a few of them like that tone I think it is not only counterproductive but it it it it's just it polarizes people against what they want right like it polarizes people towards Graham Platner.

Like, I am, I am more, I am more supportive of Graham Platner because of the DSEC. Like you said, nothing that Janet Mills has done, but because of the DSEC putting their finger on the race. And they're doing it, by the way, in Michigan, too. That's, that, which is even crazier. I will not go down this rabbit hole, but that is the, that is a five times crazier decision. Because I know how the DSEC ended up in this position. They've been recruiting Janet Mills for months.

They had no idea who the fuck Grand Platner was. Grand Plattener got in the race. and he turned out to really blow up and raise a lot of money and get a lot of attention and I think there were 750 people at a Grand Platner town hall the rally the other night

but they'd made all these promises of Janet Mills so they're here what they're doing in Michigan to get behind Haley Stevens against Abdul al-Said and Mallory Morrow to me is nuts. That's another conversation for another day but that decision is even crazier to me than this one.

And it's like, again, cards on the table. Abdul is a friend. He's hosted a podcast on this network. love Abdul, also love Mallory, right? Like she's been a guest on PSA. She's great, too. The idea that those two candidates are just like, no, we must not have, we got to go

for Haley Stevens over those two when the primary is like so far away. And, you know, the reason I thought about this is because the original point I was trying to make is what the strategist consultant class thinks is, and it was sort of articulated by a former Biden administration official I saw on Twitter today because they have like Haley Stevens fundraising numbers, and this quarter she outraised the other two, even though overall she's third. But anyway, this quarter she raised that too. And the person tweets, whew, bad day for online vibes candidates.

And so they think that these candidates who draw a lot of attention online, generate a lot of grassroots fundraising and excitement from the base, tend to be more progressive, that at the end of the day, these are not the electable candidates. It is stupid to support them, and it's just a bunch of dumb, lefty activists online who line up behind them. And then when the actual race comes, then we're disappointed because we didn't go with the establishment candidate who's more moderate and maybe more boring or maybe older, but the better bet. And that is their worry. And I'm not saying that in every instance, that worry is misplaced. You can look back through many different candidates that generated a lot of excitement online.

and generated a lot of grassroots support that, you know, turned out to either lose the primary or went on to lose the general election. So I get that. But like, give it a chance. Give it a chance. That's all. And now, you know, like we want to talk to Grand Planner. We'd love to talk to Janet Mills.

Like, we're very honest about how we feel about these candidates, but I still, I support you. If you support primaries, then you have to support primaries all down the line, right? Whether it's a progressive on one side, a young person, an old person, whatever it may be, which brings me to another question. Another contentious Senate primary is in the making in Massachusetts where Congressman Seth Moulton just announced he's challenging Ed Markey, who's 79. What do you think of this one? I think this is really interesting.

It calls the question on if you really believe that gerontocracy is a huge problem in the party, then you have to believe it whether the older candidate is liberal or moderate. Look, I like Ed Markey a lot. I think Seth Moulton is pretty interesting. I think it's great that there's a primary here, right? And we should let the, be like, you and I don't get to decide, right, who's better. I mean, you could if you move back and vote in your own safe, but you don't vote there anymore. I do.

I'm from Seth's district. Yeah. But it's like, I think these older candidates, if they're unwilling to step aside, should face the challenge. And if they win the primary, if that's what the vote piece of Massachusetts side, we've looked at it. We heard the argument for generational change, which they did hear six years ago when Joe Kennedy challenged Markey and they stick with Markey, then that's their choice. but like we should actually have the debate, have the primary, have the contest, hear it out. I would just add that I think this is why sort of lumping everyone into, every old person into like the gerontocracy and this is a problem is not particularly useful. We have talked many times before about how like Bernie Sanders, quite old, quite sharp.

And age is a question if it seems to be limiting your. abilities in some way or if it reveals that you have been in Washington or been in politics for so long that you lack fresh ideas or or different or an understanding of where politics is and how it's moved and how communication has moved all that kind of stuff like those are all very valid concerns I don't think you can just go by the number but you know I think it's definitely a factor just like the person's position on issues is a factor as well right so I just think it's not all black and white and cut and dry on this shit. You just have to ask the question of,

can this person do this job six years from now if they're starting at this age today? Okay, some less hopeful news on the midterms. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case challenging Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which is the section that allows states to use race as a factor when drawing their congressional maps. Before the Voting Rights Act,

southern states would routinely draw the maps so that the black vote was split between. districts, which had the effect of denying black Americans' representation in Congress. And that's what might well happen if the court strikes down Section 2, which seems quite possible based on what the conservative justice has said during oral arguments this week. An analysis by Nate Cohn at the time suggests that Democrats could lose more than a dozen seats in the South as a result, though it isn't totally clear when a ruling will come down and whether these changes might happen before the midterms.

We talked about this a few months ago. You called this a five alarm fire. I don't disagree. What are you thinking now? What's it? You have any, is it four alarms maybe? Three alarms? Are you still at five?

Is there an alarm? There's not a, there's not a, there's not a, I don't think so unless you want it. Look, it's up to you. No, look, we'll be, uh, I think it's a challenging proposition to put a positive-ish spin on something you called a five alarm fire a few months ago. But, um, first let me stipulate, this is, If this were to come to pass, this is very bad for civil rights, voting rights, democracy, governance, and Democrats. Like, this would be very bad for Democrats.

It would give Republicans a decided advantage every time the House comes up. But I'll say two things before everyone panics. The first is, we don't know how this is going to be decided. Like, the hearing was not encouraging, I would say. but that has not always led to the result you would think. Famously, everyone assumed the Affordable Care Act was doomed after its hearing in 2011. It was upheld. Now, it is possible, maybe even probable, that this will get struck down.

Destroying the Voting Rights Act has been John Roberts' lifework and his chosen legacy. And so he may do this. The second thing I'd say is, while this will give Republicans an advantage, if they were to push this to the max to gerrymander as much as they possibly could, there was also a possible boomerang effect, which could make them incredibly vulnerable. Because when you aggressively gerrymander, you basically make more districts Republican, but you make all of those districts less Republican because you're taking all, especially in the South, you'll be taking these 80, 80, 90 percent Democratic districts,

and you are spreading them out into, there's a lot of Democratic voters being spread in Republican districts. And so if you, if the wave is big enough, that the movement we build is popular enough, you can just blow through that and win huge majority. So that's kind of what happened in 2018. And so this doesn't mean that we are doomed. I think there are limits that Republicans will be aggressive about it. There are limits to whether they can be as aggressive as Trump would probably want them to be.

So we don't know what's going to happen here. All is not lost. But this is one more really bad thing. I think this is another part of the Supreme Court's project to lock in a conservative power in this country. Yeah, I agree with all that. My short-term hopeful take is that it feels unlikely that this will affect the 2026 midterms. And the reason why is that they usually hand down their decisions in June and July. At that point, primaries have already happened.

Like, the Supreme Court does not love sort of upending an election before it happens, certainly after. But, like, right before it happens, and I do think just the practicality of redrawing maps and legality in some cases in some states, right before, with like three, four months to go before an election, it seems like... It'd be logistically impossible. Right. Now, now... Because you'd have to run a primary in every day.

It's not just adding one new district. Right. You would have to redraw the entire map for a state. There would have to be new primary elections in all of the districts, new general elections. it would be, I think, functionally impossible for them to do it before them in terms. Now, the courts could surprise us and decide to hand down the ruling early. Yeah. You know, if we hear news that the Supreme Court has decided the case and is about to announce it, I think that would be bad news if it comes well before June and July, right?

I don't think they're going to be like, you know what, these liberals are all pretty concerned. Let's put them out their misery before the holidays. Yeah, no, that's so there's that. Lacha Jane for a piece on this analysis for the argument in addition to Nate Cohn's excellent piece in the New York Times and his analysis basically shows

that if because the other thing that might happen is if it gets struck down then Democrats in a lot of blue states could continue to gerrymander even further right and so we have talked about this before too like Kathy Hokel has been threatening

to you know gerrymander in New York And we're like, well, that can't happen for 2026. But again, if this is affecting 2028 and beyond, you could see that between now in 2028, states like New York, states like Washington, Oregon, Colorado even, could decide to redraw their maps to try to neutralize some of the losses that we get from the South for the Voting Rights Act. And basically, Laxha Jane, the analysis says that if Dems, if this gets knocked down and then Dems retaliate, then Democrats would need to win the House by. 4.8 points by an average of 4.8 points to retain the house, which is socks, because that is a... Yeah, it's a lot. That's a lot. Though I guess it was 4.5 in 2018 was the... That's right.

So it's not crazy, but not great. So that would be my moderately, you know, the sky is not falling take, even though it's fucking horrible if this happens. The other take is also that all the districts will have to be redrawn in 2032. Oh, yeah. That's right.

So that, like, still, that would be, that's another outcome here, which is that it's just forestalled until then, implementation in some way, shape, or form. Or states just don't want, they'll just wait to do it. That would also give Democratic states who have to, like New York, who have to go, jump through a lot of hurdles to redistrict, can get those hurdles out of the way. We'll have time to get those hurdles out of the way before 2032. And I would say, politics changes a lot. Yeah.

Right. The maps for Republicans just drew in Texas would look fucking bananas in 2012. They would be pro-democratic maps all over the place. They'd be helping Democrats win because of what they did with Latino voters. And so the coalition's going to look entirely differently in 2032, which changes things too. So this is very, very bad. Yeah. Don't panic yet, I think.

And if you want to do something, one thing we know we can do is we can push back on Republican gerrymandering that's already happening in states like Texas and Missouri. We absolutely need to pass Proposition 50 here in California. It's just weeks away. Where the fuck's my ballot? I got a text that it was coming from the Secretary of State. Got to look at my house now. Hopefully it's just sitting there. But it's on its way.

Emily got her ballot. Where's my ballot? Anyway, we need everyone getting their networks excited and ready to vote. If you're a California voter, you listen to this, which a lot of you are, go make sure that you got your ballot. Make sure that your friends have their ballots, that people know what they're voting. voting on. And you can find out more about this at Votesaveamerica.com slash prop 50. So just no excuses on this one. You know, the polls are looking good for Prop 50, but a special election with one statewide ballot proposition is unusual, to say the least, in an off-year election.

And so you never know who's going to show up in an election like that. So it's really important to get the word out. And for those of you not in California, there's a lot on the ballot in other places, governors' races and legislative races in New Jersey and Virginia, where Democrats are trying to get a trifecta in Richmond, really important Supreme Court races in Pennsylvania, and in Georgia, two seats are open on the Public Service Commission, which you might be like, why the fuck are you telling me that? It sounds minor, but the commission regulates energy prices, so it's a really impactful position, and organizing for this will be really important to helping John Ossov keep his seat

in 2026. So we need you guys involved everywhere. And on that note, one place you can get involved immediately, like this weekend on Saturday, is to go to a No King's protest somewhere near you. As of last count, there are more than 2,500 events spanning all 50 states, kid-friendly as well. We took our kids last time. They made signs. They loved it. There were other kids there. They were very excited at protesting. They thought it was great. It was a wonderful experience. It was like hopeful, enjoy us, and peaceful. And I highly recommend it. I will say we always encourage everyone to get out in protest and to join these events. I think it's especially important this time, partly because it certainly seems like Trump and Republicans are quite afraid of this.

And they are trying to call it a hate America rally. They're trying to call us terrorists, the Hamas wing of the party. I mean, the shit that they are saying is, disgusting. It's coming right from the White House, right from like top Republican leaders about this event. I just saw Greg Abbott, Governor Texas, is sending the National Guard to Austin for the protest. Oh, come the fuck on. Yeah. Yeah. And like, and Rangers are going and everything because they're like, we will not be intimidated by these hate rallies and we're going to protect the citizens of Austin. So that's Texas. Who knows who else will do this? So first of all, they are they are looking for violence. They're looking for

like any kind of violence or any kind of vandalism to try to paint the whole movement which is going to be hard because no kings, everyone involved in the protest, everyone involved in organizing it says this is going to be peaceful. We want peace this is like a, it's, people have said it so many times.

Of course there are always random assholes that do this for a living that come into protests and fuck shit up for everyone else. And you know, there's always this thing where we're telling everyone, oh everyone go be peaceful and stuff like that like i don't think anyone who is listening to this is uh thinking about going to a no king's protest and causing violence or vandalism or burning a waymo so i you know it's

sort of useless to even say it but um i do think it is important to continue saying this is a nonviolent protest and to take pictures take pictures of yourself there film stuff post it everywhere you know how because this is part of what has happened in the trump era is it's it's not just political but it's cultural, and there is this belief in the country that Trump, that everyone, that more people support Trump than do. And a lot of people are scared and a lot of people don't know that they should protest. A lot of people maybe don't want to speak out because they're worried about all the fucking news that we tell you about every week.

And so I think if you are out there and you go to these protests and I encourage everyone to do that, like take some pictures, take some footage, share it wherever you can. And that is especially true, by the way. if you are a prominent person who might be listening to this, whether you're in politics, whether you're in entertainment, something else, like the more people see figures that they know and respect out there protesting to let everyone else know, this is okay, this is normal, this is what we need to do, like the more people we're going to get to join sort of this growing movement to stop Trump's authoritarian power grab. So I think it's very, very important to get

out there. And you can go to no kings.org. You can go to vote saveamerica dot com slash no kings to check it out and you can find a location very close to you. All right. Last two things before we get to Tommy's conversation with Senator Schatz, we are so excited to announce Alex Wagner's

new series here at Crooked. The show is called Runaway Country. Alex is going to be talking to the regular Americans caught in the middle of our insane politics. Real stories about how real people's lives are being affected. Really think you're going to love it. You can listen to the trailer now. Make sure to tune into the premiere of Runaway Country with Alex Wagner on

October 23rd. New episodes drop every Thursday. Make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcast or watch on YouTube. Also, some big CrookedCon news. You may have heard that our November 6th Pod Save America Live show featuring none other than Jasmine Crockett is sold out. But there are still some tickets available for our day-long Cricket con event on Friday, November 7th. It now features three stages, and that means even more guests. The latest additions to the lineup include our buddies Jen Saki and Simone Sanders Townsend from NMSNBC, Tim Miller from the bulwark, Representative Primala Jayapal, Jessica Valente, Waleed Shahid, Adam Mockler, and Kai Polanco.

They'll join Senator Ruben Gallego, Representative Sarah McBride, Governor Andy Bashir, Hassan Piker, and many more. Also, we'll be hosting more live tapings of crooked shows. In addition to strict scrutiny, you can attend live tapings of hysteria and our subscriber-exclusive show terminally online. that's a lot. There's a lot going on in D.C. Dan. It's going to be a big day. Big day at Antifa H.Q. There are only a handful of tickets left.

Get yours now at crookedcon.com. And we will see you in D.C. next month. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp therapists have helped over 5 billion people. people worldwide on their mental health journeys. That's millions of stories and behind everyone is a therapist who showed up, listened, and helped someone take a step forward. Mom's in therapy, like the right question is safe space to cry or a small win can change lives. John and I are both therapy, boys. Sure are. It just helps. You have to have a place to sort through

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off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash PSA. That's BetterHelp. H.E. p.com slash psa my guest today is hawaii senator of brian shots senator welcome back to the show nice to be here thanks for having me it's great to see you um we're two weeks or so into this government shutdown are there any conversations happening between leadership kind of rank and file you know those the the gangs we used to always hear about uh that would solve these problems or or talks with the white House that kind of might give you a sense of the endgame at this point? We're not quite there yet, but I think what's happened in the last maybe five days is the beginning of conversations. I just really believe two things that first Republicans legitimately

did not understand the velocity with which this health care issue was about to smack all of our constituents in the face and the severity of it because while we were arguing about the big beautiful bill, I think they made the assumption that we were exaggerating about how much this was going to drive up costs. And now they're learning that we're not exaggerating, and we're giving them a lifeline. So they're a little more open-minded to talking. But I think Trump's been overseas, and of course, Mike Johnson won't make a move without Trump. Thune, a little less so.

He'll let some people have some conversations. But I would say the last two days have been the most constructive in terms of, you know, what's our way out of this? That's good news. Can you remind listeners what these horribly names? enhanced ACA tax credits actually do and what the impact would be if Republicans let them expire at the end of the year? Yeah, it's just a subsidy.

I mean, you know, like it just defraise the cost of health care premiums. So for some people, it'll take your premium down from like 150 bucks a month to almost zero. And for some people, it really defraise the cost in a way that makes it possible versus impossible to stay on health care. So the average premium increase, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, for more than 20 million Americans is about 114% increase. And so, you know, people just can't swing that. And the cost of electricity is now rising at double the inflation rate. Vegetables up 39% coffee, up 20%. Lots of things are getting more expensive. But other than housing, healthcare is usually, you know, the biggest

expense. And so driving the cost of one of your most essential things up is super unpopular. And so I think they want out of this as well. Yeah, they're doing a bunch of very unpopular things. You mentioned the cost of electricity going up. That's happening as Trump is killing off all these clean energy projects just left and right. I mean, it's just this ideological-driven sort of attack on the consumer that seems like it's going to harm him. Yeah, I mean, look, I think Trump has a pretty coherent economic philosophy, which is to create shortages and then bail out his friends. And that's what the tariffs are about.

That's what the cuts to food assistance are about. That's what the cuts of Medicaid are about. That's what the elimination of solar projects is about. He likes it if there's less of everything because then everybody has to go and petition the monarch for mercy. Yeah, that's exactly right. There are some Democrats, I'm sure you've heard this argument, who kind of look around the country. They see the ice raids. They see troops in the streets.

They see the administration defying court orders. They see this rescission's process where no matter what you guys negotiate in good faith, the OMB just claws back that money. And they see that and they think Democrats shouldn't fund this government for any reason, given all those factors. What's your response to that argument? I think, look, I think on the rescission side, it's really vital. If we're going to enact a bill, it has to stick. And we have to have some confidence that it's not going to be clawed back. Now, one of the things I've said to my Republican colleagues is, look, if we're going to enact appropriations bills, can you at least senators, house members I have no hope for, but senators.

can you at least say to the extent that we've enacted this on a bipartisan basis, we're not going to come back three weeks later and, like, cut it on a partisan basis. And I think there's some movement on that question. And I think that would be an enormously positive outcome here. Yeah, it seems like the bare minimum they should do. So House Republicans are on vacation. They're not in D.C. I don't think. The White House is using the shutdown as a pretext to lay off thousands of federal workers. Trump is tweeting out videos where he calls his OMB director, The Grim Reaper. There are times where I look at the dynamic on the Republican side, and I wonder if these guys actually really want to reopen the government, but you seem more hopeful than I am. I just think there are enough people who hate this. And I think the assumption that they made about Russ Vaught, I mean, they're saying they're cutting Democratic priorities, right? They cut special ed.

They cut substance use treatment. money. They cut CDFIs, which are these local lenders, mostly for rural and tribal communities. And they, in their sort of bubble on Pennsylvania Avenue, think those are like democratic priorities, or as they say, Democrat priorities. But it's Mike Rounds, it's John Thune, it's Tom Tillis, it's Dan Sullivan, it's Lisa Murkowski, everyone's freaking out saying, I don't know what gave you the idea that this wasn't a bipartisan program. And so I think, I think Russ Vaught sort of overplayed his hand, and I think as we see evidence that they've overplayed their hand, they're going to get even more sort of rhetorically nutty, because I think people want us to fear the thing that has already happened. And I think if the equities were a little different, right, if we were saying, hey, look, if we, if we move on, then Russ Vaught will, like, cut it out, right?

that's one thing. But Russ Vaught has been doing all of these things all along. And he is not in possession of additional new authorities to lay off workers. He's just in the possession of a Twitter account where he can say, let the riffs begin. And I don't mean to diminish the severity, the importance, the illegality, the pain of all of this. But it is very hard to negotiate with someone who is threatening a thing that has already occurred. Yeah, good point. Is it VOT? I've been saying vote the whole time. Did I get the reaper's name wrong?

I think it's Vaugh, but I, you know, it's fine. I guess we don't fear the Reaper, so I'm just going to say it how we want. Switching gears a little bit. So the Trump administration recently designated in TIFA as a domestic terrorist organization. The administration is now threatening to go after progressive groups, they say, are

somehow supporting in TIFA. I do think it's worth noting that one of the many ways the United States combats terrorists, is by killing them. So that's the context here. How concerned are you about this kind of rhetoric and this Antifa designation being used as a pretext to just go after Trump's enemies? I'm very concerned. But there's something that we can all do about it. I'm sure your listeners and viewers are planning on attending a rally on October 18th somewhere in their community. And I think what Trump and Pam Bondi and Kash Patel want more than anything is bad behavior, right?

and flags that are not American. And I just think that we have to be a movement that is peaceful, that is joyful, that is mainstream, that is patriotic. This is not time for the, hey, while we're at it, this is the most important issue that I've been, you know, I have a burning desire to surface today. This is about some basic shared humanity and some understanding of what it means to be in the United States of America and to be American. So bring your American flags and bring your open mind, right? This is not a time to poke anybody in the eye. One of the things that I think

the Trump campaign did very successfully is those rallies looked fun to people, right? Maybe not to us. Yeah, no, absolutely. There was a joy to it. People were dancing. People had American flags. And, you know, post-COVID, by the way, a lot of people weren't even doing gatherings. And here was this kind of communal event. And so we're now the party that I think can reclaim this sense of community, this sense of what it means to be an American. And we have to welcome people who disagree with us about a number of issues to just say, let's fight about that stuff later. this is not what the No King's Rally is about. The No King's event is about exactly that, that we do not elect a monarch, that we have a system of

government that we are not just like adherent to or that we ought to comply with, but we are in love with it, right? That's what makes this place great. And we have to, even though we're frustrated with the leadership of the United States of America, we have to reclaim that flag and fly it very proudly. So are we popping the top and, you know, hanging out the family jewels or is that a no? That's a no. Okay.

Okay. That is not what I expected you to ask me. Flag. Look, I try to keep guessing. No, I did want to ask you about the No Kings protests this Saturday. I will be attending. But top Republicans like Speaker Johnson, they've called the protests hate America rally. I think Johnson also said attendees will be from the pro Hamas wing of the Democratic Party.

What do you make of those comments? And what do you say to listeners who might be a little nervous about going to a big protest? when you got the president sending ice goons and, you know, National Guard members to American cities? Just be peaceful, be fearless, understand what they want is a precipitating event to invoke martial law or the Insurrection Act or some, you know, bogus conspiracy about some nonprofit that's like preprinting signs or whatever it is. But I think at its foundation,

Tommy, what Mike Johnson wants to do is talk about anything other than the fact that prices are about to go up for health care by 114 percent, that vegetables are up 39 percent, that coffee's up 20 percent, and that the price of electricity is up more than double the rate of inflation. And so they would love for the conversation to be about anything other than what people are facing, mostly on November 1, when they get that letter from their carrier saying, your prices have doubled. Yeah, that will be a nightmare for basically every family. President Trump, he just brokered this ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas.

It's unequivocally a good thing. We're all praying that it holds. But it comes after, you know, a huge cost in two years of brutal war. And politically speaking, Gaza has led to this big dip in support for Israel among Democrats. How do you think, if at all, the Democratic Party should adjust its policy towards Israel? Israel in the wake of the war and in the kind of anger at the brutal way, the IDF conducted itself in the Gaza Strip. Like, for example, should Democrats vote against providing Israel with billions in a, you know, a 10-year MOU for foreign military financing? So I think we have a little bit of a luxury of time here.

I think it was appropriate for people who are Democrats who consider themselves pro-Israel to essentially say, hey, this isn't what I signed up for. and I was one of those who started to vote on those joint resolutions of disapproval and other actions to restrict those arms because they were not defensive weapons. The security partnership between the United States and Israel is one thing, but to the extent that Netanyahu was using it to brutalize and kill Palestinians and mass, count me out. Now, I think the question going forward is how does the Israeli military behave? how does the Israeli government behave?

And I, for one, am willing to readjust in the direction of reestablishing a security partnership if they behave well. Now, I don't really have a lot of hope with Smotrich and Ben-Gavir there. I don't really have a lot of hope with Netanyahu there. But I think that if we are to reestablish this idea that Israel and the United States are partners, we have to behave like partners. And I don't think this is a never more. we're never going to work with you again. It depends who is in charge of the government of Israel.

Right now, it's people who are explicitly talking about ethnic cleansing. Right now it is people who are supporting all of these violent settlers and the kind of commandeering of land and other resources from Palestinians in the West Bank. And so count me out of that. But if there is a new Israel and if there is a new policy as it relates to Israel, then I'm very interested in what that would look like. But right now, my view is, as long as B.B. Netanyahu is in charge of Israel, I'm very, very unlikely to change my position. I'm sure as you've seen, too. There's a lot of anger among Democrats at APAC for demanding that Democrats, you know, sort of take the Netanyahu line on everything and for intervening

in Democratic primaries in particular and going after progressive candidates. Do you think that Democrats should take money from APAC's political action committee? And I, I phrased it that way because to say take money from APAC could mean not take money from five million people who just happen to be APAC members or supporters, but I think the political action committee is sort of like a direct reflection of the values of the organization. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to get into like whether it's a super PAC or whether it's a, you know, here's what I would say. I think that APAC 15 years ago used to be a broadly bipartisan organization.

You could disagree with them or agree with them, but they were broadly bipartisan. And I think now they have become an arm substantially of the Netanyahu government. And I try to maintain a dialogue. I haven't raised a penny from APEC-affiliated folks since my very first race. And after the JCPOA, I maintain a functional relationship in terms of foreign policy, where I have a dialogue when necessary. but I just said no thank you to the fundraising side. But I just think they have lost the plot.

And I've told them that directly. I have told them that this is not making Israelis safe. This is not making Israel safe. And this is not making Jews in the diaspora safe. And so, you know, that's my view of that as that organization. And I'm hoping, just like any organization, that they see the error in their ways, but I'm not all that hopeful. Yeah.

One more foreign policy question for you. So the president has put in place this policy of having the U.S. military kill suspected members of drug cartels traveling in boats off the coast of Venezuela. The U.S. has moved a ton of military hardware to the Caribbean. That includes guided destroyers, F-35s, Reaper drones, thousands of troops. As we were talking, Ben Rhodes just sent me a tweet that says, Breaking News, the Trump administration, secretly authorized the CIA. to conduct covert action in Venezuela, according to U.S. officials.

It sure feels like we are barreling towards a regime change war or operation of some sort with Venezuela. How concerned are you? And what do you think the stakes are here or the impact would be? I'm super concerned. I think we need to be vigilant and we need to recognize a regime change war when we see one. There's a tendency because of history to think regime change wars only happen. in the Middle East. And so the fact that this is happening sort of in our hemisphere, I think, is it's taking a little longer for people to clock, like, wait, what the hell are they doing here?

And what evidence do they have? And under what authorities? And by the way, what is the strategic purpose of any of that? And if they're doing this on the covert side as well as on the DOD side, then, look, there should be bipartisan opposition to any regime change. And it is very, very difficult to argue that this is in our urgent, compelling national interests. No, it seems crazy. I mean, how is America First, regime change wars in Venezuela, and a $20 or maybe $40 billion bailout for Argentina? That seems not quite what Trump campaigned on.

Yeah. I mean, although I think if you understand America First as whatever Trump says, fair. Then that's exactly what this is. This is people whisper in his ear at Mar-a-Lago. does it? Yeah, yeah. A lot of buddies of Scott Bessons who work at hedge funds that want to get paid out on those Argentinian peso bets. Final question for you. So Politico had this story earlier this week. It was a leaked group chat with a bunch of young Republican leaders. I'm not going to walk through all the gory details, but like, suffice to say the comments were extremely racist, anti-Semitic, often violence, misogynistic. But my question is about J.D. Vance's response to this story. So Vance tweeted an image of a text from Virginia attorney general candidate J. Jones, where Jones advocated for political violence. And then J.D. included text from himself that said, this is far worse than anything said in a college group chat. And the guy who said it could become the AG Virginia. I refuse to join the pearl clutching when it comes when powerful people call for political violence. So look, I will gladly say that I found Jay Jones's text to be nuts and I condemn them. And I think there's no place in America for political violence, full stop. But I'm curious what you think the impact is. of the vice president just refusing to say, yeah, you know what?

Those comments were out of line, and I don't support that. And, like, I'm not saying that these kids, they're not kids, they're not saying these people should be canceled for life or need to, like, go to prison somewhere. But, like, I just, I don't, I wonder what the impact is of the vice president refusing to say, you know what, I'm not cool with, uh, joking about sending your political opponents to the gas chamber. Yeah, I mean, not like, how hard is Nazism is bad? and I condemn Nazism. So I just correct one thing, Tommy, you know, these are not kids, right?

They're growing men. 18 through 40 through 40. It's another conversation about young Democrats and young Republicans is a little goofy to be 39 and considered a young Republican. But in any case, look, I think, you know, why not both, right? Why not condemn political violence or violent talk on both sides? I do think J.D. is making a – maybe he has no choice. here, but he's making a tactical error. I think Trump is the only politician that can get away with this crazy shit. And I think that one of the reasons Ted Cruz broke with the Trump administration

on the question of Jimmy Kimmel's suspension cancellation is that Ted understands that Trump is singular and can get away with uniquely unconstitutional things. But when it comes time to like run in a primary, someone's going to need to be able to say, look, I supported Trump all the way. But when he came after your First Amendment rights, I was there to stand up. And I think J.D. has just decided, you know, no enemies to my right, even if by to your right, it means actual young neo-Nazis. And that is, I think, a bet that will not age well, but I think he's got no other play. And I also think he's now in an information bubble where people are feeding him stuff he wants to hear. Yeah. And look, as much as these guys like to point the finger at Democrats and, like,

you know, lift up videos from protests on college campus and call us extremists. Like, they have a real and growing right-wing extremism problem. Like, I don't know if you've seen the clips of Nick Fuentes going around and the things he says on his show, but I would argue that this kind of, this kind of commentary from these non-kids is far more common than it was 10 years ago and is becoming kind of coin of the realm in a lot of these young mega circles. Yeah, I mean, I don't know that. But I will say that, you know, I kind of suspected that some of these kids were, you know, I shouldn't say kids.

These young men were shit posters and mildly racist and everything else. But this sort of extent of it, the enthusiasm with which they did it, and, you know, the fact that someone was like, hey, if this ever got published, we'd be cooked for real, for real, indicates they know exactly what they're saying and why it's terrible. but there's a sort of culture of showing that you don't give a shit, right? It's one thing to be, like, irritated by the requirement that you put your pronouns on a Zoom or whatever, you know, or that like you want to watch Andrew Schultz and laugh at all the jokes, even if a third of them are technically inappropriate. That's fine. But we swung a very, very long way from people being irritated by like a DEI panel or, you know, PowerPoint to now it's cool to say racist shit. Yeah. Yeah.

And now it's cool for Pete Heggseth to purge the U.S. military of, you know, black people and women just because he assumes they were all putting there by DEI. Like, yeah, the pendulum has flown way too far. Yep. We're in a crazy place. Senators, thank you so much for doing the show. Best of luck with these negotiations. We have a lot of, we have hope. I'll be hopeful.

But Saturday, no Kings protests. We'll all be there. Thank you. That's our show for today. Thanks to Brian Schatz for coming on. Lovett's going to be back in the feed on Sunday with a conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin about why big business has been so eager to cave to Trump.

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