Pod Save America - One Flu Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Episode Date: October 13, 2026

A right-wing conspiracy theory claiming that James Talarico, who has been off the campaign trail with the flu, was actually at a mental institution in Ohio is immediately debunked in humiliating fashion. Jon, Lovett, and Tommy react to the idiocy and all the other developments in the race to flip the Senate, including Trump calling Abdul El-Sayed a "jihadist," Darline Graham insisting the war with Iran must go on, and Trump's super PAC announcing that it's "trimming the map" to focus on fewer races. Then they react to federal agents raiding Rep. Ilhan Omar's DC home, Pete Hegseth's announcement that the Department of Defense will livestream an execution, and reports that Trump may now be considering firing the scandal-ridden ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle. Finally, Chris Pappas, the Democratic nominee for Senate in New Hampshire, talks to Lovett about his campaign in the Granite State and his family inventing the chicken tender.Hate listening to ads? Become a Friends of the Pod subscriber for ad-free episodes of Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett or Leave It, Runaway Country, Offline with Jon Favreau, and more—plus exclusive content, including bonus episodes of Pod Save America. Subscribe now at crooked.com/friends, on Apple Podcasts, or through the Pod Save America YouTube channel.To watch this episode with subtitles, click here and turn on closed captions (CC).You can request a transcript by emailing [e-mail]. Include the podcast name, episode title, and air date. Please allow 48 hours for delivery.

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And when you order, please write in POTAve America in the checkout survey. It tells them we sent you, and it really helps support the show. Simply Safe, ahead of crime in real time. Welcome to POTave America. I'm John Fabro. I'm John Lovett. I'm John L. Vittor. On today's show, we'll talk about the life and sudden death of the Republicans' talafrico

conspiracy. The party's decision to go all in on attacking Abdul El-Said as a Muslim terrorist. Elon Musk quietly spending more on the midterms than he did on the entire 2024 presidential campaign, federal agents raiding Ilhan Omar's House, Pete Hegseth's plan to live stream an execution by firing squad, and Kimberly Gilfoyle's Greek sugar daddies. What a list. Plural. Yeah, there's two that we know.

Oh, yeah. But who knows? That's dessert for the end. The story's still young. Then you'll hear Love it's conversation with the Democratic candidate for Senate in New Hampshire. Chris Pappas. All right, let's start in Texas, where the Republican desperation

to hold on to a Senate seat that's slipping away led the MAGAverse to concoct a conspiracy so stupid and short-lived that it barely survived the weekend. It all started on September 30th when James Telerico said during a virtual campaign appearance

what are you doing? It's cooombing images of traditional Greek desserts. I was realizing all I had was Baclamo. Hey, you got a joke in the oven, And jokes of the hopper, everybody, stay tuned. Don't look at my screen. That's my space.

You made it like a hundred fun. Honestly, better that it's at least connected to something we're talking about because it could have very well been something that he planned on baking this evening. He has been baking a lot. I did. I made a lovely apple card. I feel like you're getting good of baking. I am getting very good at baking.

I'm glad you're sharing. I was reading about the actual news. And I thought, oh, I don't know, I don't know a Greek dessert besides Baclavlava. And I thought, well, there's got to be a pun somewhere. John knows. I love Baclav. Why do you need, what do you need aside from bucklava? Well, I don't, I don't need anything.

But then I was thinking, oh, like, you know, I was thinking Kimberly Gilfoyles on the dolemaids or dolemaid's, you know what they mean? But that wasn't very good. So I thought I was like, and then I was like, oh, babies got back, la la la, you know, that's nothing. So I was looking for other options. Okay, well, anyway, should we go back to Texas? Sure. Okay. What happened there?

So it started on September 30th when James Tilarico said during a virtual campaign appearance that he was sick with the flu, went to Earth. in care and would be staying home for a while to avoid infecting anyone. The following week, right-wing influencers reach the only logical conclusion about Tala Rico's extended absence, which is that he was actually at a psychiatric hospital in Ohio called the Lindner Center of Hope experiencing what Ken Paxton's campaign called, quote, a full-blown mental Tala freak out. The entire basis, the entire basis for this allegation, was that a Texas Democrat named Lena Hidalgo took a leave from her job in 23 to get treatment at this same Ohio mental health facility, which led some online MAGA

sleuths to discover that last week, a private plane made a few trips between Austin and the Ohio airport closest to the facility. I don't get your skeptical tone. Then two MAGA influencers published a clip of a secretly recorded phone call with someone they claim worked at the facility who supposedly confirmed that Talleyico had just been discharged. How about that? How about that? Well, hours later, the whole thing fell apart.

The hospital denied Tolariko had ever been a patient there. Tala RICO said he's never even been to Ohio. Has never been to the state? He was on camera in Austin the day he was supposed to have been discharged. And then the bulwark published the full recording of the phone call, which revealed that the MAGA influencer had apparently pretended to be Tala Rico's cousin made up a patient code and had repeatedly been told by the employee that there was no James Talarico in their system. My favorite part of that is it was like, oh my God, how'd they acquire the full tape?

They asked. And the guy sent it to him. Which was really a botch on their part. And it's worth saying, too, that several other right-wing outlets, none particularly reputable, also declined the story. because when you listen to the full audio. Daily Mail, the Blaze. The Blaze turned the story down. You know, maybe there's examples of people going from Texas to Ohio to get mental health care,

and I'm sure that takes place. Could have also been going a whole bunch of other places in Ohio. For sure. It was like 30 minutes from the airport in Mason, Ohio. So they just sort of looked it up. Yeah, and there's a sort of not really a Sherlock Holmes and Watson situation. It is funny that this all stemmed from a bunch of, right-wing lunatics being like, oh, every Texas lib who's crazy goes to the same place in Ohio.

Yeah. It's like they had a thing. The Talley, the Paxon campaign is flailing and slowly dying. And they had this thing, which is James Tolarico disappears off the campaign trail for a while. So they're like, it's totally legitimate to ask where he was or probably to use it to cause his campaign problems. But there was not a there there. There was not a reason that then disqualifies him from office. He was sick.

He said so in the video where he actually doesn't look that good. He looks pretty flush. They've also like concocted this whole story that that no one knew where he was and no one told anyone and it was been two weeks. And it's like, none of that is true either. He skipped an event and got on the, he attended an event by Zoom and was like, I have the flu so I can't be there in person. He's a guy with type one diabetes who got a bad flu. So it was probably exacerbated by that. Like that's probably why he was sick.

And by the way, this, I'm surprised this doesn't have. happen more often. Because campaigning is disgusting. Yeah. You're talking to strangers in close quarters and touching them constantly. You are kissing babies, which are the biggest vector for disease that I've ever met personally in my life. You're also exhausted. Are people still kissing babies? I think so. Anyway. And then like, but these Q and on-brained fucking morons start with the private plane thing and then like prank calling a mental health facility in Ohio and recording themselves, probably committing crimes. I mean, I just want to call out the, the leaders. of the pack here, just the stars who gave us this.

Spencer Pratt, who a bunch of people here in L.A., who called themselves Democrats, thought maybe it was a good idea to elect him as mayor. He kept pushing it to say he had the conspiracy. He's heard from his sources. He looks like a fucking moron because he is. Caroline Wren, who was a J-6 organizer. And she used to be like a semi-normal fundraiser for the Republican Party.

She's friends with Tim Miller. Yeah, became a J-6 organizer. Was like sued for defamation over the match. incident. Schlapp. Schlapp. Schlapp. I'm just saying his name.

Oh, sorry. I thought I said it around. Shlap. Someone named Tickle texts. Uh-huh. No, not tickle text. Tickle text, yeah, who's got a sort of a criminal background. And Nick Sorter, he was the one who published the call.

He was one of the influencers that was involved in the recording. Do you know he has an open warrant for his arrest in Kentucky for violating his probation? He was convicted of a DUI, harassing police officer, stalking a woman, kidnapping her dog and sexually assaulting. her. Jesus Christ. Yeah. What? That's a long list. Open warrant for his arrest in Kentucky. This is the guy that everyone was like, and then Elon Musk is like, oh, something's wrong

with this campaign. Elon Musk is amplifying the whole thing. Megan Kelly had said, but she was like, well, has anyone spoken to the woman who was on the phone? Can someone get in contact with her because maybe she's being now, they've gotten to her? Megan Kelly's like, well, it said he's never been a patient, but he has ever, has he ever been there? They're like, release the records, like, what records? I've never been there. You got it. You got it. What are you talking about? of everywhere you've been.

We need body cam footage of James Talleyico from the moment he was sick until the moment he was back on the trail. That's the only way we can put this to rest. It's also very like this idea that like James Telerico, look, there have been Democrats who, I think like you wouldn't be surprised had a mental health breakdown.

You know, they've got to have that energy. You're like, present company. We're close. Yeah, people that seem like they're barely holding it together. People that could lose it at a moment's notice. Talaico's so even killed. He's so like kind of calm and restrained.

So I guess the idea is being like, oh, that no human, no person can actually be that, you know, that chill and that chill. Like, there must be a dark underbelly. And whenever that emerges, he, of course, goes to Ohio. He's also getting screwed by the Biden of it all and the lack of candor there, the fetterman of it all. It's a touch of a lack of candor there. But it's like, it's just, I was texting with Tyler Goes Flack over the weekend. Like, the most annoying story in the world is when everyone's like, prove a negative.

Right. And then you're trapped in like the Elon Musk. Twitter information ecosystem where if Elon replies to a tweet and is like, seems troubling, it amplifies it to, you know, 100 million people. I get that people worried about like the Biden comparison too. But there really is no comparison there. There was a bunch of reporting there whereas the people were like, I was around him.

And he kind of seems a little old and forgetful. There's no. This was made up. There's no anything that James Telerico had any kind of mental issues whatsoever. Nothing. Zero. And it is funny watching like some of the right-wing influencers who are pushing it after the whole thing fell apart

we're like, yeah, this is crazy. Like Current Revolt, which is like a right-wing Texas news source. They all did this Twitter Spaces conversation afterwards, which is amazing. And this guy from Current Revolt was like, this story sucks, man, this is shit work, bro. I'm actually upset. And then there's people like

TPSA's Andrew Colvitt who tweeted, it genuinely doesn't matter if it was a mental health hospital or the flu. It matters. Disappearing for two weeks was bad enough, wasn't two weeks. He said he went to a primary care and urgent care. So now this is the new thing that he said.

He went to urgent care in Dallas, but then he told a station in Austin that he also saw his primary care doctor in Austin. It's like, well, I guess when he got home to Austin, he saw his doctor after going to urgent care when he was traveling. Right, he's on the road. He saw an urgent care and then went to see his doctor.

You fucking idiot. What voter cares about the fucking idiot. It is so funny to say, look, whether it's the flu, as he said, which is common and ordinary, or a secret trip to an Ohio-based mental health facility. Six of one, half-dozen of the other. Tomato, tomato, tomato.

Also, honestly, I'd tell you, I'd rather be crazy in Texas than sane in Ohio. I'm just being honest. You're lucky my wife doesn't listen to any pot. Did you also see that some of the people, another, might have been the same or different Twitter spaces, was pinning this all on Jeff Rowe, who was a longtime Ted Cruz aide,

who also worked for Ron DeSantis. Apparently he was shopping this around, according to some former Trump. official's MAGA influencer. So, like, this story could have a little bit of a longer tale, because it is a person who knowingly and improperly obtains someone else's medical records and then uses them to do harm can be fined up to a quarter million dollars. HIPAA! Finally, a HIPAA violation. It is very funny that a HIPAA violation actually became a history. We got a HIPAA. You might all be asking yourselves, what do we do about a right-wing media ecosystem that can so easily amplify

bullshit like this? What do we do, John? The answer is, support your friends at Cricket Media because we're trying to build a counterweight to that ecosystem. Yes. And subscribing is the best way to support the work we're doing here. Plus, you get ad-free episodes of your favorite Crooked pods, all of our newsletters, all kinds of fun subscriber benefits, cricket.com slash friends. Well, right here in this rubber room every day. Full frontals of Dan.

Full frontals of Dan. Full frontals of Dan. Yeah, you just need the code. Did you see that there was a guy, that guy from Smallville posted a selfie that said, not posted, sorry, posted a picture. Hey, everybody, I'm in New York City. But it was the reflection. You could see his hog.

You could see what? You could see hog. He deleted it. Oh, that's tough. I don't know who the guy from Smallville is. Is that a show? It was a show. It was a show.

He's had a career since then. I'm sorry if I'm only referring to him as a Smallville man. Anyway. But not a small man. I hope that wasn't describing the hog. Right, exactly. A small, you know, a man from Smallville, not a Smallville man. You know what I'm saying?

I'm trying to figure out a transition to Ken Paxston here. Speaking of Small hogs. There we go. Ken Paxon's got a small vowson's got a small man. own problems. He was finally asked about the series of secretly recorded comments from a DC fundraiser where Paxton complained, these were, this was a real recording. Yeah. Where Paxton complained about Trump's midterm convention, the Iran War, the price of gas, how little control he has over his own campaign message and the need to cut Medicare and Social

Security. Here's what he said on Fox. There have been now five audio leaks. It raises some flags, maybe among other Republicans, over your thoughts publicly and privately over the president and Washington. So just because they were able to clip a few things doesn't mean that that's actually what I meant. He is... Good answer, sir. He is... Generational talent. We're going to say generational talent. He is such a... It is extraordinary how far he's gotten. This man is the Attorney General of Texas. He is the worst communicator. Corruption gets you pretty far. Yeah, I guess so.

Kind of relieves you with the burdens of campaigning. Right. He also never run against Democrats. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. He's never faced anyone like crazy, six-gender Jimmy, you know. Yeah. James El Rico is going to beat him from inside of that fucking, what are those things called?

What are those things called where they wrap your arms around? Straight Jacket. Yeah. James El Rico is still going to beat you, you dumb fuck. Guy can't. Not so straight jacket, you know? Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right.

I want to watch, yeah, James Serrico. Beat a jacket. Eat a whole steak while in a straight jacket. You eat a whole fucking T-bone steak with no arms. At least Trump had a funny explanation for the whole thing. Trump said that he was so sick because he was eating a bunch of meat to try to prove that he wasn't a vegan. And he was throwing up all the meat.

I once again stand by my pitch that he do a campaign ad while eating a steak from top to bottom. I still think that's a good idea. I've been more hungover from big steak dinners than alcohol at times. You eat too much meat. You feel like awful. You have bad dreams. Yeah, you know.

In that same Fox interview, Paxton was also asked about Trump challenging Teller Rico to a debate on his behalf. Let's listen. President Trump, he called you guys out, said you all should have a debate and talk about the issues, contrasts between your policies. Is that in the works? Well, no, look, we've been working on that for months with him. And, of course, we can never quite work out the details.

Wow. It's in place. Teller Rico, quote, tweeted that and was like, here's the details, anytime, anywhere, any place. It's, you see, I think it was Karl Rove said that if Paxton doesn't debate, he loses. Oh, I didn't see that now. Which I think is a great way to just say, I think Paxton's going to lose.

It's just like, everyone thinks Paxton's losing. The polling suggested, the spending levels from Republicans suggest it, the fact that Trump is repeatedly going to Texas suggested. And then, but the fact, like, that Paxton will not debate in that context tells you that his team has so little confidence in their guy. I think they're right. That even just juxtaposing his face,

with Tala Ricos is too much of a risk. I'll say one more thing. That's the only good advice he's gotten. And I do think one reason this has gone so far is because Ken Paxson isn't doing that much campaigning. He's refusing to debate. He's not really out there. And so this is like, oh, man, Tau Rico's been gone for nine days.

Like, Ken Paxon's been basically absent the whole fucking campaign. In July, someone spotted him in London with his mistress. That's what he was doing in July during the campaign. And I'll just say, I don't know much about that lady, but babe, you can do better. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You can, don't, you can... Was she the biblical influencer or something like that?

No, no, no. That could be making that up. Yeah, whatever. It's going around. In Michigan, where Abdul is ahead of Mike Rogers by a few points. The Republican plan to win is pretty subtle. See if you can figure it out from this clip.

We are not, and we will never be one nation under Muhammad, because we are, and we always will be one nation under God. Muhammad El-Sahad. I call him Muhammad. Somebody said, His name is it Mohammed. It's Abdul.

I said, to me it's Mohammed. I'm the president. I can call him whatever the hell I want. The guy's a jihadist. Look at his statements from two years ago. He said, jihadist. I don't want a jihadist as a senator from Michigan. Notably, that wasn't even in Michigan.

That was a rally in Tennessee with Trump and the first gentleman you heard from is Kid Rock. Did he just just go to political events now and work out with Bobby Kennedy? Like, this is only a bit of race. relevance as far as I can tell. It doesn't have much beyond that. Probably plays at some birthday parties. Oh, he did do that alternative halftime show.

I remember that. Oh, yeah, that's right. There was some sort of, there was an event that had fallen apart. It was sort of a conference where they didn't sell enough VIP tickets, so they pulled the whole thing down the Kid Rocks supposed to attend. Interesting. I don't think it's going to be that well. In Michigan, a super pack is up with an ad accusing Abdul of being funded by,

uh, quote, Islamic extremist groups who hate America. Uh, and Rogers himself chuckled along as Louisiana Senator John Kennedy attempted did this joke outside of Detroit on Friday night. APEC wouldn't be, they wouldn't come here if Dr. El-Sayed didn't sleep in a bin laba, mama, odd and church. I'm just telling you. Third time's a charm there. Nailed that line, Mrs. Doubtfire.

Went to Oxford to get that foxy, remember. Abdul responded with a tweet saying, That's Rich coming from someone who wears his bedsheets out at night. But the campaign's main response to the Abdul as a terrorist attack is a closing message that's all about Rogers, the Iran War, and prices like this new ad that went up over the weekend. Trump's War Abroad costs taxpayers a billion dollars a day on a war we have no business fighting. Our schools crumble, our factory shutter, our gas prices skyrocket. But when they want war, billion dollar blank checks.

Mike Rogers has been advocating for war after war my entire adult life. I'm running to invest our tax dollars here in Michigan. So Republicans all in on full-blown Islamophobic. thoughts on how well they're executing that strategy and how Abdul is responding. I'd say it's subtle what they're doing, but you can't read between the lines. I thought what Axe said to you on the Sunday episode was good. The first Abdul ad out of the primary was with his grandparents. And that was obviously because they saw what was coming and they've sort of been aware

of this the whole time. I think the more you are seeing just Abdul being a, like, he's a jihadist, he's a doctor. And like the more you have him out there kind of just sort of being himself, I think the less those attacks will resonate. But obviously they're trying to, you know, I don't know how many people are going to come away believing he's a fucking jihadist, but they're trying at the margins, try to just get enough people to either kind of have just a tiny, you know, bit of concern that he's too far

left, that he's too extreme, that for some Jewish people in Michigan, then he's too anti-Israel, right? Just enough to kind of on the edges make a difference. And I do think that's like a legitimate thing to be worried about. Yeah, I mean, like, Abdul in reality is a lax bro doctor nerd. You know, right? That's who he actually is. Pretty dorky too.

Yeah. I mean, it's like a very smart, like academic guy. You know, it's like this is all just disgusting. I think like the what folks need to know is that this is a lot of phobic stuff. It's not like a one-off thing. It wasn't like a surrogate going off script or kid rock going off script. Like this is the main message they are closing with. And I think for us, we grew up in a political context post-9-11 where this stuff was really powerful.

Like Democrats are Republicans won an election against a triple amputee Vietnam veteran by calling him soft on terror in Georgia and what, 2002, 2002. And so it makes me nervous. Obviously, it's no longer 2002. I think people are a lot less scared of terrorism than they were then. I think that people are a lot angrier about the economy now than they were then and they're blaming Republicans. But like, Republicans think it's working. And it's not just about Jewish voters. Like, I think it's about scaring away moderate white people.

I do wonder, like, Michigan has a relatively large Muslim American and Arab American population. I hope that this will upset and animate that group of people and get them to turn out. I think Abdul needs to keep doing what he's doing, like stay focused on the cost of living. Tying the Iran war into it is good. I hope when Obama comes, Obama will talk about Abdul just being a normal guy in the way that Republicans tried to like other him as well and make him this scary kind of terrorist person and obviously just bullshit. But Abdul's getting out spent two to one. That press conference with John Kennedy is about how APAC is now coming in and spending directly, probably in the IE side, when initially they weren't going to.

So, like, the money advantage in Michigan is just as bad as everywhere else. I do think if you want to do Islamophobia or any phobias, you've, the most effective political attacks, there's like a, you've got to be in the dog whistle zone. Yeah. And if you get, if you go from the dog whistle zone to the. that just the bullhorn zone, you do risk that it becomes so extreme to people that it starts backfiring. And I think left to his own devices, Mike Rogers would be right in the dog whistle zone because he's lived through 2000. He loves those wars, all the wars, right? Love the Patriot Act, love surveillance. Like, he's a George W. Bush Republican in that way. So he would be there.

But then Donald Trump goes up and does his thing and calls him Mohammed and says he's a jihadist and and then fucking John Kennedy is talking about bin Laden jerseys. And I do wonder if... Shortling along. Yeah, if they are getting to the point where they risk a backlash against their attack. I hope so. Yeah, also, you have to assume they're on this because, you know, like it is a tough environment for them.

There's not a lot they're doing that's working. They don't have a lot of good arguments to be made here in the home stress. Trump is deeply unpopular. The agenda is deeply unpopular. Mike Rogers has basically embraced it. So this is what they've got. Yeah. Pots of America is brought to you by ChiliPad by Sleep Me.

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Andrews had a lot of great hits during the debate, but the most notable moment from Darlene Graham was this about the war in Iran. Why in the world would we stop now when they are still dangerous and we are close to ending the war? Annie Andrews referred to Graham's famously bad answer during the primary debate in August, where she said national security is not my thing, and Andrews replied on Sunday, if your surgeon said that appendectomies aren't really his thing, would you still hand him a scalpel?

Or if your surgeon was like, you know, I can't finish the surgery, my sister's going to just run it, get it done for me? Yeah, or if the surgeon said it's not her thing. That's important. So this race should not be close, but Andrews is just two and a half points down in Nate Silver's model,

and Republicans just committed $5 million, so they're clearly seeing something in the data as well. You think it's the same thing they're seeing everywhere, or is Graham making the problem even worse? She's a terrible candidate. She's embarrassed herself in the big sort of statewide moments of the race. I'm sure there's a lot of affinity for Lindsey Graham, but I don't know that it carries over to wanting to make someone a senator for a full term. And so the environment is. bad. Look, we lost that Senate seat by 14 points. The last time,

you take a nine-point swing towards Democrats, throw some five, five or six points for her being a bad candidate. All of a sudden, it's not crazy. It's not crazy. That last five is probably tough. Yeah, I'm not saying, I'm going to do it, you know, plus two points for her being great, whatever. You can, like, find, it's not, you're going to,

it's easy to imagine us losing narrowly. It's harder to imagine winning, but this is an environment where we just don't know. By the way, like, worth saying, this could also be a race where there is a way It is not extraordinary. It doesn't carry all the way across these dark red states, but we can still win the Senate, in which case we will have invested and built an organization in a state like South Carolina or other states that were closer than we have any business being.

And that will help us in the future. So it's worth fighting this out, even if it is ultimately one of the more difficult ones to win. It's a tough one. There's got to be some subset of the population of South Carolina that does not like seeing their Senate seat get passed around the family. Like, that's just a weird thing, especially to someone who just seems manifestly unqualified for the job. I should just, I do want to say, why in the world would we stop the war now when we're so close to it being over is like, first of all, it doesn't make any sense. But it's also how you end up in Afghanistan for 20 years or Vietnam for eight and a half years or for fighting an endless war on terror. It's like that sunk cost fallacy that just is the dumbest way to think about war in foreign policy generally.

I mean, so her credit, she is really channeling her brother. her brother in the best possible way there. That is true to what Lindsay Graham would have believed. Just looking down on having, taking a break from having sex with the hottest dudes he's ever seen. What do you think he doesn't have it to say? Wait a go, sis. Way to go, sis. Got it.

Two thumbs up. Two thumbs up. Two thumbs up. And then... Okay. It's obviously not just... It's obviously not just South Carolina that's become a problem for Republicans. Trump's Super PAC leaked on Monday.

that they are now, quote, trimming the map, just like you might trim a rosebush to keep it, keep it beautiful, you know? That's right. You got to pull off some of those kind of dead leaves to cover the growth around. Manscaping. Michael Watley and North Carolina, one of those dead leaves. They've trimmed that. As the leaker put it, they're, quote, moving on from districts that we don't think it's the right time for

and piling in further on ones we think it is the right time for. Beautiful. That sounds like it's like right from Veep. Yeah, let's say, yeah. For the Senate, that means focusing their spending in the final weeks on the piece as three states, Ohio, Iowa, and Alaska. They're very focused on those three. They think if they sweep those, there's no chance the Democrats win. They think if they get two out of three, that's a pretty good shot, too.

As for the House, on Friday, the Cook Political Report, moved 18 more House races towards Democrats. One Republican House member in a tight race bravely complained to CNN on background that Trump is, quote, dragging the party down. But good news, the piece also says Trump's rallies in the deep red places where he's still popular have reportedly, quote, bolstered the president's mood. Oh, good. That's what matters. Are you happy doing what you do? Yeah, that's right. Trump was in Ohio on Monday night and heads to Alaska on Tuesday, bringing with him the same urgent closing message we heard over the weekend.

When you stand up here, it's just like the love. I could say the stupidest things and you clap. Oh, I love yourself. That's true. And they did. Yeah. We put that hypothesis to the test a whole time. And boy, boy, have they all knocked it out of the park.

You delivered. On the money, Teddy Schlafer at the New York Times reported on Monday that Elon Musk has dumped more than $276 million into Republican groups and super PACs just since July, making him by far the biggest player in the midterms. And again, it was more than he even spent on the 2024 presidential race. What were your takeaways from Teddy's piece? Big pictures that we have the most broken campaign finance system on the planet and that hopefully someday it will upset people enough that we change it.

But the more proximate thing I was thinking, I mean, the total for Elon is now at $366 million in the 2526 cycle. But we don't actually know the full extent of his giving. because he's also given to dark money organizations that don't have to disclose it. So it could be way more. But it does seem like Elon Musk's money is the sole reason that Republicans were able to afford

to dump $200 million into Ken Paxson's race in Texas. He's like single-handedly potentially saving that race. I also maybe wonder, what's the kickback going to be from Trump on the back end, right? Like Elon got to be deputy president the first time. Didn't work out great. But you've got to figure there's going to be some big Pentagon contracts. Maybe Grok will fly the F-35 or something.

I mean, I think that all of these fuckers now, just they are so close to realizing their AI dreams. And they just want to make sure that Trump lets them continue to step on the gas and that there's no regulation whatsoever, that Elon can continue to walk into the Oval like he did and show him the latest Grock, show, you know, where he impressed him by showing like, look, Grock thinks we should kidnap Maduro. Trump's like, put J. in a bikini. Do it. Let's do it. It's also just, so there was one number from in there that just jumped out of me that he's putting, I think, is 76 million into this canvassing operation for low propensity Republicans, right? And if you want to squint your eyes and find the places to be worried, it's that these polls are not wrong, but they're not capturing some Republicans that might turn out and that could make the difference, right? And maybe that's part of the theories.

That's a bit alarming. The other question I had in all of this is Donald Trump is sitting on 400 million dollars and a lot of these pieces are not about money being pulled but being reallocated and he's about to come in and you have all these people dropping hundreds of millions of dollars and I my question would be how much money is going to be in Donald Trump's pack on the day after election day right like how much is he actually going to put out of his thing should we take bets yeah I wonder so it's already I think I think it's close to 200 of that 400 they've spent so we'll see but like we'll see we'll see like how much is he sitting on coming out of this you will sit yeah I bet it's at least 100 million there there is there is

There's one other way to look at it, which is Elon, all these other Republican donors, Trump's PAC, they have already spent hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it concentrated in the month of September. And it has done them very little. Very little. Yeah. Very little. Now, in that scene in piece, Republicans are saying, well, no, if we hadn't spent all that

money in September, it would have been even worse. And the money we spent in September has stopped this race from being over. already and for more of a blood path. Exactly. I would expect a consultant to say. Right. Yeah, as they cash in for more ads, right?

Yeah. But it is interesting to me. Like, I'm just, one thing I'm going to be interested in after this race is over is, like, more money was spent on this race than any other race in history, including like, we're reaching like presidential levels, if not more, right? At least from Elon. And how much, how much can a crazy amount of money still make up for,

a dog shit political environment when people are like, fuck you. It's just so inefficient at the end, too. Like, Tala Rico was on the air all summer long alone, I think, and running like local ad buys. Now Republicans and the SuperPax are buying nationally televised Texas football games to try to get their message in front of people. And, like, there's just so much wasted spend there. I think, like, I read that story and I thought it was interesting that the MAGA-Inc people decided to go out and pitch it.

It's partly because, like, all these operatives like to brag and hear themselves talk and just like can't help themselves. Also, like the ad traffic changes will be public, so you might as well frame it up. But they're clearly pre-spinning defeat. And they're going to pin this whole thing on Ken Paxton if a bunch of races don't go their way because they had to dump so much money into Texas. And like, sure, on some level, that's true, but also Donald Trump could have endorsed John Cornyn and avoided the whole problem. Yeah, they're going to blame, they're going to blame the candidates. It's already starting to do that because they can't blame Trump because that's not allowed. And I do think part of this is wanting to be able to say after the fact, I know we lost the Senate,

but don't blame us. We put in all the money we said we would. We did everything we possibly could. The billionaires, the AI billionaires, the money, we were there for you when you needed us. I'm sorry, Ken Paxton was a dipshit. Obviously, it's not your fault, sir, glorious leader. But we did the best we could. The other part of this, too, is the money toward the end.

You know, in all of these stories, there's this moment of lamentation about like the Democratic billionaires just aren't putting the same amount in, which is true. Part of that is because those are people that all felt burning. by the waste of putting money into campaigns and not feeling like there was a return. And I wonder if that's not coming for these people after this race. I think Elon has the sort of zealotry of the convert.

And for him, right, he's made a trillion dollars. He's a trillionaire now, whatever, close to it. And so for him, the amount he's putting out there pales in comparison to how much his net worth has gone up over the course of this race. But for a lot of these people, $100 million, it's real money. It's a lot of money.

Also, for Republicans, political donations, our investment because then they have tax cut or deregulation or something on the back end. For us, we go to our rich people and we say, please vote for us and give us money so that we can raise your taxes. Right. It's a little different deal. It's interesting that in 2025, Musk said in terms of political spending, I'm going to do a lot less in the future.

Clearly, change his mind. I mean, clearly what happened there is he was too much the public face of his involvement in politics. And I think probably the advisors around him and the communications. people at his many companies were like, hey, it's probably hurting our bottom, it's probably pissing off investors, hurting our bottom line. Voters. Yeah.

And so maybe you can continue to be involved in politics, which you know you want to do, but just do it with your money and mostly shut up and show up at the White House every once in a while and sit next to Trump and smile and just don't say anything else and maybe tweet a little less. Remember him in the cheesehead in the Wisconsin? Yeah. Well, that was a huge fucking embarrassing for him. He dropped like 50 million into that fucking thing. That did nothing.

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Fox News reported that it's related to the citizenship paperwork. her father filled out for her when she was a kid. She was born in Somalia. So I think she was 12 when they came over here and she was 17 when she became a citizen. J.D. Vance told Benny Johnson back in March that he thinks Omar committed, quote, immigration fraud. And DHS secretary Mark Wayne Mullen said on Johnson's podcast last month

that the investigation was, quote, ongoing and that, quote, something's going to happen. He added, if we actually move a case forward, it's not a political case. to Benny Johnson on his show. Wink, wink, not. Yeah. Omar, who like every member of the House is up for re-election,

responded to the raid by saying she won't be silenced. The House Democratic leadership put out a statement calling the raid corrupt weaponization of the federal government against Donald Trump's enemies. Trump himself was asked about the raid

and here's what he said. They're looking at her very carefully. I've always found it to be totally crooked personally, but that has nothing to do with me. I think she's a terrible person, just a complainer. She comes from a country that is a non-country. And then she comes over here and she complains about our Constitution.

I think she's a terrible person, but that's really up to the DOJ. I have nothing to do it. And then the bees got them. Dude, it's just so annoying. Go inside and do that. So much for the longstanding precedent at DOJ that they don't investigate elected officials right before an election. Guess that's out the window.

Let alone for alleged immigration fraud that's supposed to, supposedly involved her late father when she was just a child. What do you make of all this craziness? Yeah, I mean, it's clearly, I mean, it's outrageous to do this in October of an election year. I mean, it's supposed to be like a 60-day blackout period. They're well within that. There's no indication that they couldn't have just done this the day after the election and it would have harmed the case in any way.

The reporting around what happened is very weird, though. The investigation was reportedly led by the Homeland Security Investigations Division at DHS. And again, so folks at the timeline, Ilan was born in Somalia. Her family had to flee when a war erupted there. She did four years in a refugee camp in Kenya and then came to the U.S. at age 12, as you said. So, like, even if her dad did falsify the paperwork to get her to the U.S.,

first of all, who could blame him? And second of all, we generally don't hold children culpable for crimes committed by their parents in this country. You're like, it's an outrageous thing. You can't if it's a criminal investigation. There's a potential that they could do a civil investigation to Dean naturalize her if for some reason they found that the paperwork was fraudulent. But again, all the reporting says it's a criminal investigation. Yeah. And so the question is, how did they get

a criminal search warrant? Some of the reporting suggests there might also be an investigation into personal finances or campaign finances or something about a, there's some nebulous line in some of the stories about an interaction with a foreign person. But we don't know. Obviously, we do know that these guys were out to get her. I mean, J.D. Vance, in that interview you mentioned, was talking about trying to build a case with her and talking about it was Stephen Miller. So this is coming from the highest level of the White House. And it's just like Trump, the things he says about her and everyone from Somalia, it's so racist and so vile. It's not so normalized. It's a non-country. He said it's a non-country. And again, like last thought, like, if I don't want to be alarmist, but if I was Donald Trump

and I was kind of flailing and looking at some, you know, last gasp way to cling to power and punish my enemies, I would turn to DHS because they are extremely well funded for a very long time. you have built within DHS, this private militia force that he calls ICE. And then there's this 7,000 person, HSI group that does these criminal investigations. And it's like, the whole thing is very, very weird. And the what about his Republicans are like, oh, you were fine when Trump's, you know, Mara Lago was rated, but that wasn't right before an election, you know? And like, there was clear, like, an evidentiary basis because you left the top secret documents by the shitter.

Also, yeah. Also, Joe Biden wasn't running around being. like, well, I think there's some stolen documents there that we're going to bring a case against him. And then it turns out there were and there was plenty of evidence. So, yeah, two things. One, like that 60-day rule, just a kind of cultural rule. Like, let's all be respectful of the democratic system and not launch investigations that will be sensationalized in the last days of an election. It's why what James Comey did in 2016 was so despicable because the reason you don't do this is because you wanted to do this. Because you want to do.

understand that, first of all, people are innocent until proven guilty. And a raid of a home or a press conference about potential charges, all of it is salacious and garners attention and makes people look terrible. There have actually been examples of raids and things that take place in the 60-day windows. A Republican member of Congress who to this day thinks he was railroaded by actually the DOJ under Bush because of an investigation related to his sister that I think cost him the seat, whatever, like, it's a cultural thing, right? And so why do you go after Elon Omar? Well, because, you know, you try it out. You see how far you get, right? Like, I, Trump will have DOJ going into a presidential election. We can expect them to try to weaponize it against any prominent Democrat.

They're already trying to do that against Gavin Newsom. When it comes to like the, and, and the thing is, the reason it has always been so important that you enforce the laws and find the guilty and don't go after people and find the laws they broke is because we understand that in a society of laws, people will make mistakes. And if you go digging, you can find someone. If your citizenship paperwork can be opened up at any moment because of a mistake, because of a reason, because someone doesn't like you, no naturalized citizen can trust that their citizenship is secure. And that citizenship is what protects all the rights under it. And so, like, that is what makes all of this so dangerous. That is why it is similar to when they send two random fucking DOJ people to Wyoming to go investigate the election.

They are testing what they can get away with, and they are socializing what they're going to try to do at scale in future elections. Completely fucked up. And I was like, why not you could probably, if there's paperwork issues, you could try a subpoena first, right? And before you do a raid, I was sort of wondering, too, like, how they got a, because a judge signed off on this warrant. DOJ got the warrant, even though HSI did the investigation or did actually raid at the house. But I guess like you only need probable cause of a crime that will be found at the place, right? So they could say that like somehow maybe they think that her father's paperwork could be found at the house. You probably need more than that.

I think it's probably more than. Yeah, I reached out to a couple lawyers today. I think we don't know what we don't know. And we also know that the Biden, TOJ opened and then shut some sort of investigation into Ilan Omar. So obviously the Trump administration people know that. So they'll probably try to like use that. Who knows? Like, none of it's on the level.

Right. But the point is to do it close to an election and, you know, and then make a big fucking deal out of it. Speaking of Tin Pot dictatorship, we haven't had a chance to talk about the literal snuff film our government wants to produce. Pete Hegseth announced last week that he intends to live stream the death by firing squad execution of Nidal Hassan, who killed 13 unarmed soldiers in the horrific attack at Fort Hood back in 2009.

Here's Hegseth breaking the news. execution by firing squad. Army major betrays his country, radical Islamist kills a bunch of Americans at Fort Hood. Of course we're going to do it at Fort Hood. We're going to do it on a Thursday. We're going to do it at one o'clock, which is when he did it. And it's going to be soldiers with rifles executing the firing squad. And we'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that is public, because people need to understand that this is a, there's serious consequences for these types of things. So if Trump and Higseth go through with it as scheduled on December 3rd, Hassan's death would be America's first public execution in almost a century. Democrats and the U.N., of course, condemn the decision along with several Republicans. Here's how the three highest-ranking Republicans responded. I've seen these announcements. I don't know that that's actually going to happen. Let's sort of see what I think it's going to happen in December when he's executed.

I was very busy yesterday when that news broke, and I haven't had a chance to talk to the president about that or Vice President of Am. or HECSF. But there are our colleagues who have concern. He was vicious, he was violent. There are two thoughts. Don't show it and show it. Because, you know, by showing it, maybe other people won't be doing what he did.

So I'll make a decision ultimately. So those comments from Trump came a day after he said he absolutely approved the live stream plans. Mark Caputo at Axios also reported that Trump has, quote, privately shared misgivings about the live stream idea. I think there's a chance the blowback actually makes Trump back down from this one?

Yeah, I don't think, look, I'd be shocked if this goes through. It seems like a kind of addled, dumb secretary of defense going off with his idea without having thought it all the way through or without talking anybody particularly smart about why it's a terrible idea. People, obviously, is morally despicable. But he just doesn't, he, why does he think, Pete Higgs said, think that we don't do public executions is because we're woke. Does he think it's because we've gotten too woke? We stopped doing it because these were big public spectacles. And actually to the point a lot of

people made about this, oh, you think it's going to be a deterrent? You think people that want to go out in a blaze of glory will really hate the idea of knowing that if they commit a gruesome murder, they'll get to be killed in front of the world stage. And it actually goes back to why we stopped doing this in the first place, right? It wasn't because people weren't interested. Tens of thousands of people gathered at the last public execution. But these spectacles were not something people could control. And what would happen? People would yell. People would scream. The person about to be executed would give a speech. People would cheer for them. People would try to free them. People would get drunk and they would fight. It was a disgusting display. And it wasn't just the do-gooders who were against

capital punishment who thought it was a vulgar act and wrong kind of aesthetically and morally. It was actually advocates for the death penalty who thought, oh, let's get this behind closed doors because then people won't see how gruesome and despicable it was. They thought it was a way to prolong it. there's a reason they ring bells. When the executions moved, sorry, I happened to read a book about this recently, when the executions were moved behind the prison walls in England, they would ring the bells. And the neighbors would ask the prison, can you please stop ringing the bells when you do the executions? Because it's making us all uncomfortable.

And it reminds us all, this is where you're doing, you're killing. And the warden was like, nope, unfortunately, we're going to continue ringing the bells. So you think they should be public then? No, no, no. I'm against the death penalty. but I don't think Pete Hegseth has thought through what he would be doing for the death penalty. He's just like, he's like just a comic evil

fucking wannabe alpha man. Like this is the high T version of this. Same time, same place. We're going to kill him here with rifles. Shut up, man. If Nadal Hassan was like killed your relative or something, like in witnessing the execution helps you find closure, okay.

But to live stream it to the world, like we look barbaric, al-Qaeda. We'll use it to make him a martyr. The guy's in a wheelchair. He's a 56-year-old man. When he shot up Fort Hood, they shot back. He was wounded. He can't move from the waist down.

So you're murdering an old man in a wheelchair, and you think that's like the high-tee thing here. It's like fucking psycho Pete Heggsett stuff. It's always these religious fanatics who are born again that love this stuff. Like, I hope this gets walked back. Yeah, to your point, they did interview a couple of the family members, the daughter of someone who was killed, the daughter of Michael Grant Cahill

objected to the whole broadcast because she said it turns the tragedy into a public spectacle and it shifts the attention away from the victims which so that's like that's at least one family member. But like look, there's there's all the like pragmatic reasons not to do it, right? Which is like what about the members of the firing squad?

Right. Like will they be known to the world now? What about the rest of the military? Putting the rest of the military in danger? I'll kind of threaten to kill. prisoners in their custody if this happens. Yeah. What about kids who stumble upon the live stream?

We're going to do this now. The government's just going to let. And it's like, like I oppose the death penalty, but you don't have to oppose the death penalty to find this morally repugnant. Like if what additional purpose is served by turning the death of someone into a public spectacle? There is none.

Well, this is why he said that? And why is our government inviting us to become spectators to the violent death of another human being. Like, one of the reasons, like you said, we stopped it a fucking century ago is because it is like, it is degrading and dehumanizing, not to the person being killed, executed,

but by all the rest of us. Yes, it's, and the, Hegset sort of stumbles upon his, on his words there when he goes, well, because it's a deterrent so people know you're not supposed to do this. It's like, are you, are you, are you, do you think that people on the oppression

you can commit math shootings on military basis? Like, we are all aware. I was so close to doing it. I saw that guy get murdered by our military on live TV. And so now I'm going to hold off on my plans. Do you think Cassant, this guy that did this? Do you think he was under the impression that he was going to get away with it? Right.

Like, this is somebody who went in with this under the expectation that they were either going to die then, die in the future, whatever, go out in this blaze of glory. Why are you giving them the fucking glory? Like, why would you do that? Fucking moron. Yeah. All right. Before we get to love his interview with Chris Pappas, we got some Kim Gilfoyle updates.

I know you've all been waiting for those. Dan and I talked about the Wall Street Journal and Daily Mail Stories on Friday show, which involved Gilfoyle soliciting $100,000 from her Trump donor to pay off her Amex card in exchange for the promise of access she never delivered, along with her champagne-fueled Greek party life as ambassador. Over the weekend, the journal published another piece about Gilfoyle's overly friendly relationship with two wealthy Greek businessmen who reportedly bankrolled her private jet travel and luxury hotel stays. One of the businessmen benefited from Guilfoyle telling other countries to buy his natural gas. And she was also caught on tape bragging about the PJs and calling one of the businessmen

her people. She also threw a temper tantrum after not being able to get into a dinner party for Eric Trump being held at Greek House Davos. The horror. According to the AP and other outlets, Trump and Marco Rubio are now considering firing Gilfoyle with a senior U.S. official telling the AP that the president and Secretary of State, who was just in Greece defending Gilfoyle, are, quote, extremely pissed off. And here's what Trump had to say about the situation on Monday.

And are you considering firing her? Well, we're looking at it. Yeah, we're not happening. Oh. Yeah. So, like, I suspected that Trump may not fire her because she knows where all the bodies are buried, having been almost a Trump family member. But it sounds like she's going now.

What do you guys make? bury her ass in Greece, and it didn't work so well. Yeah, I don't, yeah, fly too close to the sun, you know. My son dumped her like a dog and now so did I. I just want to say, I cannot get enough of these fucking stories. These are the best. Like, what's amazing is they're all going to the Wall Street Journal, but they're kind of disconnected. Right.

So it can't be the same source. It's like someone, people just all over the world just fucking hate her guts and are running to the Wall Street Journal to talk about it. I mean, from her text, I understand. Yeah, well, the first story is like the lobbyist. and then she threatened to topple the Greek government. That's a fun little detail. My favorite part about the Amec story is repeatedly scolding him in writing for putting the crimes in writing. She says, Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things.

Then there's this IG report. I don't know if you and Dan talked about this, where she fired her head of security or demoted him. This is my favorite part. She called him at 4 a.m. looking for more ice, obviously shitface and mechonos. And it was some grandpa who was like on her security detail. And then the story. Demoted. Demoted the next day.

And then, like, a recording of her unable to get into Eric Trump's party is the funniest thing in the world. You were engaged to his brother. Eric Trump's party. And some Greek business guy, one of her sugar daddy's, is on the guest list. And she's like, you should be kissing my ass. She should be kissing my fucking ass. That's the quote. I also think it doesn't really matter that she knows where any of these bodies are buried because even if he fires her, she's going to need a pardon.

Right? Like, she is, she is going to need it. He's a, she broke, it's so brazen that the texts are so brazen. And by the way, she wasn't undone because they put it in writing. She was undone because he showed this text that he is leaking. He's going a big,

he's on the record saying it was definitely a quid pro quo. Like he is basically saying that she was asking for and receiving bribes. God only knows what details will find out about the relationship with these, these Greek businessmen. so like she's really fuck she does have diplomatic immunity so like she might even need the pardon diplomatic immunity i don't listen i'm not i know how it works from lethal weapon too but i'm not sure how i don't know that it protects you from taking outright brys before you were confirmed right right the quotes are amazing i see nico's every fucking day i'm flying with him to paris i'm with him for a

fucking week he loves me honey i spent christmas with him new year's okay stad like everywhere you know someone was saying last week when the church came out like is are we supposed is the are we supposed to believe that maybe there was more than a friendship or a business relationship with her. And I'm like, actually, now reading all of the texts, I kind of think that's just how she talks to people, which is like just an annoying fucking person who's like, hey, baby, hey, honey, fly me here, fly me there. This is, like, she seems like she sucks.

Did you guys read, did you guys catch the response quote from the embassy? Like, some poor flack had to give this. The unsubstantiated claims are simply a distraction from the great work she is doing in Greece in the broader Eastern Mediterranean. I love it they had to throw in the broader. That is such an NSC goon. Right, because I suppose by saying. I guess she's also responsible for what's happening in Cyprus.

I assume that's part of it. She's doing a lot of good work there. She's toppling the rain. How awesome that Marker Rubio is so pissed. He gives this big fucking speech in front of the Acropolis. And it's just completely overshadowed by this dingbat that they fucking put in Greece. It's funny. It's very tough, you know, he's got the hubris.

She's staring at our reflection in the fucking pond. Yeah, he's so arrogant that he is giving a speech about saving Western civilization, and it's destroyed by the U.S. ambassador to Greece. A person you should not know exists or ever hear from, and yet she ruins all of the stories. It was incredible. Honestly, it's a great symbol for, like, what Marco Rubio's entire presidential run at some point will be like,

is he, like, tries so hard to sort of present himself as this sort of stable, normal adult in the room Republican. and all the shit he's done by being connected to the Trump administration is just going to keep fucking biting that guy in the ass. It's almost as if he's going to have to keep rolling this boulder up a hill and it's going to keep rolling back down

over and over and over again. And he was so pissy with the eyes. He's like, you guys think this is gospel. I don't think it's gospel. I'm trying to give him everything. He's like just absolutely a whiny bitch. I think he'd given him a list. I think that's great.

He definitely has one. Yeah, no. I'm in. Imagine just having to go to your ex's dad to get a point. pardon. You know, like, you don't know, what kind of terms are you on? You know, like, like, she's got to text Don and be like, hey, I know, think, I look, I agree with. I think he's going to do, like, literally write down the names of every single person who has ever worked

in the Trump administration, and I'm pardoning all of them right now. Oh, no. There will be no requests. Except for you, Christy Noam. Yeah. There'll be a couple I don't get it. Yeah, he'll go through anyone who, like, really pissed him off. I realized that Kim follows me on Twitter, so I followed back and I DM'd her. Oh, really? What did you know? Anything. I just thought, I said, Amex, do you have an Amex issues? No, I said, sub-Kimbo slice. Congrats on the epic run of press coverage.

Not sure how they roll in Greece, but here in America, we respect the big bollery lifestyle. I want to come on my show and talk about it. We can tell out that dumbass security guard. It wouldn't get you ice. Nice. Let me see a show you right back. Tommy, were you jealous when I, you know, Jared Kushner follows me?

Yeah. Should I DM him? Yeah. Do you want a message that you want me to send to Jared? You should, do you followed him back? Yes, I have. I did do the follow back. I felt embarrassed that I hadn't been following Jared Kushner.

Send him a note that's like, hey, man, sorry that my co-host called you a literal war profiteer. We don't even like that guy anymore. If you ever want to talk about it, here's my number. Perfect. All right. All right. When we come back, Lovett talks to New Hampshire Senate nominee, Chris Pappas. Pazza of America is brought you by Bombas.

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with over 200 million donations and counting. Head over to Bombas.com slash crooked and use CodeCrucid for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash crooked. CodeCrickid at checkout. Joining me now, he's a member of Congress running for Senate against former Republican Senator John Sununu. Chris Pappas, welcome to the show.

Great to be on. Thanks for having me. Let's start with this. Your family restaurant, the Puritan Backroom, I could not believe this. Your family claims to have invented the chicken tender. Well, it's been written. So we long didn't really claim it. And publications like the New York Times have done the research and dug into the issue and credited us with pioneering, inventing the chicken tender, whatever term you want to use. But we sell a lot of fried chicken tenders these days. usually 10,000 pounds a week, sometimes a lot more than that during the busy season.

Yes, obviously there are many who make similar claims. Is there technically a difference between a chicken tender and a chicken finger? Yeah, no, I think there is. Like a nugget is very different from a tender, is different from a finger. I think like a nugget is processed, ground up chicken, right? I think a finger could be any piece of chicken, but a tender is a specific muscle on the chicken. in itself. So there are only two per every birth. Thank you for clarifying that. I don't know. I feel like if my family had invented something

as wonderful or been affiliated with potentially having invented something as wonderful as the chicken tender, I think I'd make it a bigger part of my campaign. I think you're making a mistake. It's out there. Most New Hampshire voters have eaten there at one point in time. So usually when I'm talking to voters, the first thing I hear is I met my spouse at your restaurant. I love going there for family functions or whatever it happens to be. So it's great. And actually a few weeks ago, We had Joey Chestnut in town, and he led a chicken tender eating contest at the local minor league ballpark because New Hampshire has been, Manchester has been declared the chicken tender capital of the world by the mayor. So there's a lot of chicken tender lore in this city here. How many did he eat? Do we know how many he ate?

I think 50 pieces in five minutes, and there were teams of three people each that could not eat more than the one Joey Chestnut good in the five minutes. Pretty cool. So your opponent actually said to a room full of Republicans that he's running to send you back to busing tables at the Puritan. He seems like a guy that's really in touch with the working people of New Hampshire. I mean, that one's like a slow pitch right over the plate for you. What was your reaction to that? Yeah, well, it does show how elite and out of touch this young Sununu is, who's part of a very famous political dynasty in New. New Hampshire. I don't think this guy knows what hard work looks like. And when you run a local business, you do everything from top to bottom. And I did that for about 15 years between college and getting elected to the House in 2018. But the fact is there's digged in all work, including busing tables, washing dishes, serving other people. That's how I discovered public service to begin with. It was working at my family business, running the show there,

being part of the local community. And John Sununu clearly is out of touch. He's part of an elite political class. He's been our U.S. Senator before. When he was defeated by voters, he went and fed at the corporate trough for the last 18 years, working for corporate special interests

and one of the biggest lobbying firms in D.C. So this guy doesn't know what hard work looks like. So you mentioned that he has this name, Sununu. It's obviously a big New Hampshire political name. he wants credit for having been anti-Trump in the past while embracing the Trump endorsement and the agenda now. He has an add-up,

and I want to roll a clip of it because it basically just says don't believe the hater, something like this. Oh, the things you'll hear about me in this campaign. They'll say I'm a... That when I was in Congress, I... It goes on like that. It seems like people are hoping the name and sort of the independent vibe will carry the day

and that they won't kind of hear the argument that you're making. What was your response to that ad? Well, the good news is the more this guy's on TV, the more they recognize that he's not his younger, more affable, gregarious brother, who was our moderate governor for about eight years. So, you know, I think that we want him to be out there as much as possible, so they realize which Sununu he is. But the guy just doesn't relate well to voters. He's running a very 1996 campaign, which was the first year he ran for Congress.

He's been in office or working in Washington for 30 years. And I think he just doesn't get what this moment is about. This is a moment where people are so hungry for change, including generational change. They want new voices at the table. And the last thing we need is to put someone back in office who was there before, who didn't get the job done for New Hampshire. I mean, he was drummed out of office in 2008 because he was down the line for George W. Bush and the unpopular policies of the moment. And now he's sidling up with Donald Trump in this election where people want to fundamentally change the way Washington works and want people who are going to stand up to this president and the policies that are making life more expensive.

So he's trying to do everything he can to relate, but he's a pretty lazy campaigner. We're running circles around the guy. The only thing he has going for him is his big name and tens and tens of millions of dollars of out-of-state money. that's flooding into New Hampshire, which is making this race close. I was for you just bring up the name. You know, you've had center races that are decided by about a thousand votes. I mean, these things can be, New Hampshire can be razor thin. There is, it's been noted that his campaign signs do not say his first name. They say Sununu, because he's counting on there being some confusion.

Are you hearing about, like, is this something you're actually feeling and worrying about inside your campaign? Is it actually something you need to address to make sure people understand which Sununu is running? It's less of an issue now than it was maybe a year ago or six months ago. I think people are figuring it out because they're seeing him on their television sets and on their screens. Yeah, he doesn't put his first name on his signs. And frankly, he didn't when he first ran for Congress in the 1990s because at that time he was hoping people would confuse him with his dad, who was our governor back in the 80s. So look, he's part of this

family dynasty. New Hampshire deserves so much more than this right now. We need a full-time senator who understands the challenges out there, who knows the communities of the state, who understands how our small business economy works, and who will stand up to Trump and the political class in Washington, D.C. He's part of that broken system, and he's the last person

that can bring change and challenge the status quo for New Hampshire. So if you're in the Senate, you've said that there has to be accountability for the Trump administration while focusing on the economic issues that are driving a lot of the discontent with the Trump administration.

Now, your colleague Thomas Massey proposed an impeachment resolution for Hegsef. If you're in the Senate, would you like to see a Democratic House impeach Hegsafe so that there can be accountability for the Iran war and other abuses of power through that kind of a trial? Do you think that's a worthwhile endeavor? Well, one of the reasons why I think that we were sent home by Mike Johnson early was because he didn't want this resolution to be on the floor because he knew it was going to be a political problem for Republicans, and he was afraid he might actually lose some Republicans on that vote. Look, that's a process, obviously, that starts in the House. I, as a House member, have had the

unfortunate opportunity to vote on two Trump impeachments, the first one back in 2019, and then again in the wake of January 6th, I will always stand up for my oath of office. And there's got to be accountability for these guys. The fact that, you know, Pete Hegseth has fired or drummed out dozens and dozens of top military officials continues to lie to the American people about how this war is progressing, is hiding basic information from the American public and from Congress. We have to reckon with that. And that starts by ensuring that we are not confirming unqualified appointees like HECF, that we have committees that are actually holding real hearings, including on the way this war has been conducted, which hasn't been done in the Senate to date because Republicans

refuse to dig in on those topics. So this is about national security and making sure we have the right people in the right place to keep America safe and keep our troops out of harm's way. And I do hope that we can focus on ensuring that there is accountability for Trump administration officials who have been following the law and the Constitution and have been making our country less safe. Well, at the same time, making sure that we don't lose sight of what people want us to focus on here all across the country, which is the affordability crisis. bringing down costs, making this economy fair. We can do both at the same time,

but it shouldn't come at the expense of how we can make progress for the American people. So you'd be the first openly gay man elected to the Senate. We've had some women who have been elected, but you'd be the first guy. I don't feel like anybody cares or is really talking about it. I think that actually, if you asked a lot of people, they would have no idea that you would be breaking this barrier.

Do you think it's important? Do you care? Do people ask you about it? Well, I always have to add the caveat that we know of. Well, of course. Yes, for sure. Hundreds and hundreds of senators elected through the years. And no doubt there was someone who was in the closet at one point in time. For sure.

But look, I'm not running to make history clearly, but it is interesting that we are continuing to take steps forward in this country, even while this administration and Republicans play the culture wars and target the LGBTQ plus community with some of the most cynical attacks. And, you know, as someone who grew up in New Hampshire, I've lived my whole life here, I wasn't sure as a kid that I would be able to have a full life,

that I would be able to find love, that I would be able to represent New Hampshire as an out gay man in Congress. So it's a signal of how far we've come. We've got more progress to make. But this campaign is really not about making history. It's about making a difference for New Hampshire, how we fight to change things in Washington,

and stand up to this president and make people's lives better. I wonder if you'd inspire other closeted members of Congress to come out. You're in the house right now. There are closet cases all over that building. Do you have any your gaita are ever going off in the hallways? Look, we have the largest equality caucus

that we have ever had in congressional history, and we are always open to new members. Okay. All right. Well, that's not a no. I'm not hearing a no. I have not thought that, boy, that seemed like a closet case walking by me in the hallway. But you don't, right?

Some of these Republicans, I mean, come on. Everyone should be able to be themselves. The thing I have a problem with is folks that have family members, you know, people that have staff members, and they're voting against their fundamental dignity and full equality under the law. So we will take any converts who are willing to actually step up. and make sure we're including everyone in the destiny of this country. It is serious, and I know, and I know.

All right, last question for you. You got tens of millions of dollars. Elon Musk put some money in. This Cokeback group, billionaire back right-wing group, is put in, I think, like, $15 million. The Senate, Republican PAC is putting in another $17 million. That's a huge amount of money coming in. First of all, what are they trying to do and what do you need?

Like, what are you trying to do right now to kind of fight back against this money that's coming in? Yeah, look, they're trying to muddy the water. If this election is about people's feelings on the economy, people's feelings about Donald Trump in the direction of this country, we're going to build the broad coalition of Democrats, independents, and Republicans that we need to win a tough Senate race. But if they succeed in making it about anything other than that, and they've got messaging all across the board on a number of different topics and really, you know, just trying to make voters, I think, numb and walk away from their responsibilities this election. If it's about anything other than those core issues, you know, Johnson, who could win the Senate race. So, you know, we just want to do our part in New Hampshire to lock down a tough seat and ensure that then we can take the steps in the four other states we need to flip the Senate majority. So people can go to Chris Pappas.org, help us flip the Senate, help us do it one state at a time.

This is a state where we had a Senate race in 2016 that was decided by 1,017 votes. Those 1,017 votes saved the Affordable Care Act back a few years ago. So politics is a game of inches here. We're in all election day voting state. So we got to work hard over the next 22 or so days to get out the vote and win this thing. And as long as we can communicate our message, I feel hopeful about what we're going to be able to do here. And in so many other battleground states across the country, voters are onto this president. He has breached trust with the American people, including people that voted for him in the last election. So this is a moment where we can really broaden the conversation beyond just the base of the the Democratic Party and talk to people's challenges and how we can do a lot better. Chris Pappas, good luck, and thank you for being here. Thanks so much. That's our show for today. Thanks, Chris Pappas for coming on.

Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Pots of America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Farris Safari with Reed Jorlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroote, Ben Hefcoat, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, David Tolls, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.