Pod Save America - RFK Jr. Decapitates the CDC

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

Donald Trump and RFK Jr. team up to fire the CDC director after she voices concerns over Kennedy's dangerous policies—including his announcement that the FDA will limit access to this year's COVID vaccines and his promise to release a report on the "causes" of autism. Dan and Jon sort through the dismantling of America's gold-standard research apparatus and check in on the craziest comments from Trump's three-hour cabinet meeting. Then they discuss the latest polling on Trump's D.C. deployment, what happened a the DNC's summer meeting, and Charlie Kirk's unsolicited advice for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Get tickets to CROOKED CON November 6-7 in Washington, D.C at http://crookedcon.com

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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favro. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Right here in studio. Nothing like the collapse of our public health infrastructure to bring me to the office. So good to have you in Los Angeles. Great to be here, John. So we got a lot to talk about today, as usual. Trump's telling Americans he can do whatever he wants as he gets ready to send troops to Chicago. He's telling us, again, people want a dictator.

but it turns out people may not love their cities being occupied by their military, at least according to new polls. So we're going to talk about that. We'll also talk about how Democrat should handle this issue. Speaking of Dems, we'll talk about the party's wildly successful, universally praised summer meeting in Minneapolis. Wow, that's exciting. The possibility for a midterm convention. That's right. And Gavin Newsom's concerns about 2008. Not about him. But let's start with the CDC news. Hope no one was counting on easy access to vaccines or credible medical information anytime soon because RFK Jr. has decapitated the leadership of the CDC like it was one of his dead whale carcasses.

Here's what we know so far. Things are moving fast on this story. Earlier this week, Kennedy announced that the new MAHA FDA chose to limit the authorization of this year's COVID vaccine. You're now only eligible if you're over 65 or have at least one underlying health condition. The CDC vaccine panel, which Kennedy stacked with anti-vax cooks, still has to approve that FDA recommendation, which they're scheduled to consider at their meeting in September. They also plan at that meeting to consider whether to keep authorizing vaccines for diseases like RSV, hepatitis B, and measles. Kennedy, after this, then met with CDC director Susan Munares, who was just confirmed by the Republican Senate last month and asked for

her resignation over what he said was insubordination over vaccine policy. She refused. He then said she could only stay if she fired senior CDC officials and agreed to accept whatever recommendations his anti-vax kook panel comes up with. Dr. Menares again refused. She then called Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, a doctor, who in turn called RFK Jr. And then this enraged Kennedy that she had told Cassidy and he called. and he then demanded that the CDC director resign.

She refused again, and then Trump fired her. Four top CDC officials left as well and were literally escorted out of the building by armed security. The officials were the CDC's chief medical officer, the doctor in charge of public health data, the doctor in charge of vaccine safety, and the doctor in charge of vaccine recommendations, who posted quite a resignation letter on Twitter, which reads in part, quote, I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to, generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public's health. Cool stuff. RFK Jr. went on Fox and Friends Thursday

morning to talk about the shakeup. Take a listen. What's your reaction to people that are getting a little worried? The agency is in trouble and we need to fix it and we are fixing it and it may be that some people should not be working there anymore. Yeah, he sounds like he's fixing it. I've seen doctors and public health experts all over social media struggling to convey just how serious and dangerous all of this has been. I know you've recently interviewed a few of those experts for the pod. What do you think? What do your takes on everything that's happened here? So, you know, in the recent weeks, as RFK Jr. has been sort of gutting our public health infrastructure has been undermining vaccine policy. I talked to the health care writer of Toul Gwanda, Kately Jadalina,

who is a leading epidemiologist and writes a very prominent substack. And Dr. Michael Osterholm, who runs a vaccine center university of Minnesota. And in each one of those conversations, I raised a question with them about what does this mean for the actual safety and efficacy and availability of the vaccines that we care about? And in each point, they all said to it to me, the reason you can remain confidence, even with these cooks around, as alarming as it is, and no one was saying not to be alarmed, but it's that there were still real serious career scientist staffing the CDC and the FDA. Oops. That is no longer the case. Like, RFK Jr. and Donald Trump have gutted our health infrastructure. They've gutted the agency that monitors pandemics abroad. They've gutted the agency that deals with the availability, efficacy, and safety of vaccines. They have gutted the agency that is tracking foodborne illness across the United States. We are so much less safer that we ever possibly could be because of these decisions. And what it really does, and I think this is a really alarming thing here, is there is a real risk.

of a sort of deadly spiral on vaccines because the people who don't trust the government now run the government and are undermining vaccine policies from there. So then the people who do trust the government have very real questions about can we trust this group of cooks to ensure that we're getting safe vaccines? And you can see just a complete undermining of the vaccine system that has kept us safe for generations in this country because of the work. Because Trump picked, and the Republican Senate confirmed a anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist to be in charge of our vaccine supply. It's incredibly, incredibly dangerous.

Quote, I think this is quite a negative and potentially catastrophic step for the country. That's Admiral Brett Giro, who's a physician who helped lead the response to the coronavirus pandemic during Trump's first term. We remember him from the briefings. And he advised Kennedy during the latest transition. So this is not some liberal cook. And Jerome Adams, who was the Surgeon General for the first term, he's been criticizing this. I mean, it is, it is not like, you know, a group of liberals and Democrats and Twitter. This is, people are very, very alarmed.

Like you said, what happens if there's an Ebola outbreak right now? What have, like, bio weapons, the next pandemic. Like, we just, forget about whether they're cooks or not. None of them have the experience. And these were some of the best most trusted officials who had served both Republicans, and Democratic administrations, including some in Trump's administration over the last couple decades. And now the CDC doesn't have that expertise anymore. It's not just that they question the science. It's they explicitly reject the science because it's science. Because if you're to actually

listen to the science, to actually take a moment to listen to the people who know what they're talking about, to look at the research, it just eviscerates their entire position on vaccines. And so now we're basically, we have our public health infrastructure is run by anti-scientists. Yeah. And just so people understand what limiting the authorization for a vaccine like COVID-19 actually means. So they say, okay, you can get it if you're over 65. It's authorized for people over 65 and for people with one comorbidity, one underlying health condition. So, of course, it has not been approved yet by this CDC panel as well. FDA already did this. The cooks over there now. And now we're waiting for the CDC cooks in September to approve this too. If it is approved, That means if you or I wanted to get the COVID vaccine, we could try to ask our doctor, but a lot of doctors know that if they prescribe something that is off market, which this would be if it's not authorized for people like us, then they could be open to litigation, to lawsuits, to malpractice suits. And so, you know, some doctors will probably say, sure, I'll still do it anyway because these people are fucking crazy, but others won't. And another thing, a lot of people, most people, get these vaccines at Walmart, CVS, places like that, they're not going to administer them to people who aren't over 65 or have one underlying health and condition.

So you really have a lot of people who just don't get this vaccine. And this is the COVID-19 vaccine. The fact that they're going to look at and reconsider measles, hepatitis, I mean, it's like really fucking scary. It's, well, at least measles hasn't been in the news recently. I mean, you see a guy that was. was in charge of vaccine recommendations. I read some of his resignation letter. He also said in that letter, it's clear that he's never once, the senior leadership,

he and his team have never once had the opportunity to brief Kennedy, and it's clear that Kennedy is only listening to outside groups. Yeah, like, this is my point. Like, he, Kennedy's position is absurd. The scientific consensus around vaccines is so strong that it is impossible. It is like being, he is like an anti-gravity. or a flat earth person. Like you can't, you can't have a conversation about it because you can't withstand one minute

of scrutiny. So instead of testing, like being an actual public service official and actually abiding by what he said he would do in his confirmation, what Kennedy is doing, he's avoiding having the conversation so he doesn't have to test, he doesn't have to try to defend his position and people actually know the answers because he will fail at a second. Again, this is like, you know, going back to the pandemic, this isn't about like vaccine mandates and you're forced to get this or that. This is just about the availability of vaccines that have been tested, that have saved millions of lives. And people just saying, I think I want

to choose that. It's safe. It's going to protect me. And I'd like to choose it. And basically, Kennedy and HHS and CDC and the government right now are going to say, no, you can't. You can't, unless you can find it off market somewhere. They know better than your doctor. Kennedy tried to fire Menares. He couldn't. Trump had to do it. So Trump, the White House said today that Trump hasn't commented on this yet, at least as of this recording, we're Thursday afternoon. But Caroline Levitt at the briefing said that Trump fired her. And this guy, Jim O'Neill, who was a Kennedy advisor, is now going to be, you know, the head of the CDC temporarily until they can find a permanent replacement. This guy was a Peter Thiel advisor. Cool. And here's

what he thinks of vaccines in January of 22, he tweeted, is Omicron the best vaccine? Remember, CDC can redefine the word vaccine at will. So his suggestion was, if you get Omicron, that's the best kind of vaccine. It's going to be really interesting to know whether they actually put up another person for this job. Yeah. I suspect they're just going to run through whatever it is 180 days to acting appointments until the midterms or forever. So unfortunately, Kennedy was also asked about the horrific mass shooting at a church in Minneapolis this week, which took the lives of two children. I say, unfortunately, because it gave him a chance to say this.

We're launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence. So this is the new line. J.D. Vance also echoed that in a speech later on Thursday. This is the idea that SSRIs treat people for depression, for anxiety, and the idea here is kids are taking these, young people are taking these, and it's contributing to mental illness, even though they're prescribed to help mental illness, it's contributing to mental illness, and that's causing mass shootings. I would just note that in the United States of America, it is much easier to buy an assault rifle that it is to get access to antidepressants. I mean, this is what they do, though, because there's this whole debate around SSRIs, right? And, you know, they have some downside, some side effects, especially for people under 25, which is why the FDA has, like, a warning on them. And doctors tend to monitor people, especially young people who are on them closely for the first couple weeks to make sure everything's okay. After that, the record is excellent.

It has helped millions and millions of people who are on these drugs. there is zero evidence that it contributes to mental illness or violence at all. There are some, you know, there are some side effects. People get off them too quickly. You have to watch that. So, you know, do it with the doctor. But the idea now that we are going to blame mass shootings on antidepressants, it's just like, and this is just one response to the horrific shooting in Minneapolis by the Republicans.

They have turned this whole thing into a culture war. the shooter 23 years old took their own life it appears that the shooter was trans so they're of course blaming the fact that the shooter was trans on this on the shooting it said that the shooter in one video had like killed donald trump on the guns and so they're saying oh it was like an anti-trump trans person that did it that the shooter also had anti-semitic racist anti-latino all kinds of other slurs written on the weapons the shooter worshipped other mass shooters like the Christchurch right wing shooter

and other like extreme right wing shooters Timothy McVeigh all this other concepts so clearly the person is just disturbed in a whole bunch of different ways that don't fit into a fucking political box either way which is typically the case which is why you don't make every shooting about politics and this is all they can talk about now

I mean I've been in your office all day today which means I've been watching more Fox News and I've watched it once and the car run all day is trans shooter when talking about this. And trans violence. This is their new thing. All the Massachusetts shooters are trans now,

which is just fucking horseshit. The dialogue on this, frankly, the entire dialogue on it is so depressingly tedious, particularly after school shootings, where it's just like it's so detached from the reality. And it's like what the right is doing,

I'm going to get to that a second, is absolutely gross and horrendous. But the whole conversation always is, it happens, is that everyone runs and tries to find out, so this person in a Republican or Democrat, are they pro-Trump or anti-Trump? And then we're going to make our whole case on that.

And I think that is so detached from, that's like a really problem of the political class. It's very detached from, I think, how real people feel about this. Like, I think about this all the time, but just my daughter's elementary school is less than a mile from my house. So every time I'm home during the school day and I hear a siren, my immediate instinct is that the worst thing might be happening, right? Yeah. And I think that's how every parent feels. So you think that every time you drive your kid off at school, no matter where you live, big city, small town, it can happen. anywhere. And what it and so just, and I think the response, everyone's response, the failure to be

able to do anything about this, even though this is obviously the Republicans fault that we have not been able to deal with guns in this country is one reason why people are so detached and depressed about politics because it's like, here's this thing that's happening that I worry about every single day that this only happens here in the United States and no, and we can't do anything of consequence about it. It's very frustrating. On the right, like what is happening here is there you, the way they respond to these shootings, whether it is turning to a culture war, making about trans, making about SSRIs or whatever it is, betrays the weakness of their position. That, like, they're trying so hard to gaslight away from the most obvious fucking fact in the world, which is, it is too

easy to get guns in this country. It's that simple, because that's why it happens here. It doesn't happen to all the other countries. We don't, we are not a country that has, we don't have more mental illness in the rest of the world. We don't have other countries have trans people. Other countries have mental illness. Other countries have all the other shit. The difference here is that you can walk into a store and you can walk out with a gun that same day. And it's like, you know what?

You fucking cowards? Just say, we want people to have guns. And that's it. And we know that everyone having guns means there's going to be a bunch of mass shootings. People are going to die. But more important for our people to have guns to, you know, I guess defend themselves,

to keep themselves armed in case there's government overreach. Yeah, I wouldn't want that, right? And that's it. But instead they have to make up all these other fucking excuse and targets for people, which is just, it's disgusting. The logical consequence of the Republican position here is that their strict reading of the Second Amendment means that they are willing to live with tragedies like this. That is a price they believe is worth paying for treating the Second Amendment the way they

treated. Not the way it's been treated for most of the history of the United States, but the way it has been treated by Republicans in this moment, by this Supreme Court over the last 15 years. And they will not own up to it, right? Just admit it. The other thing is this debate has moved very quickly from, you know, a year ago during the campaign when it was, let's talk about the participation of trans people in sports, especially young children. It's moved from that to now, I mean, and there was always this contingent on the right, but now it's, now it's like the Republican Party position, basically, which is being trans is just a mental illness and that it's not real. Not even like, it's moved so, it's not even like, should we have gender affirming?

care, which age, this guy. No, and now it's just like kids who are allowed to be trans, the parents are doing them into service, the schools are doing them to service, and now they're going to get mental illness, and now they're going to kill people. This is what they're saying. It's just, it's like, it's, and also, like, by the way, that is not where the polling is. Like, we've talked a lot of, this is, this is another thing where, you know, we've talked about immigration after the election, where the polling was and where it is now. On every one of these issues, these culture issues that, you know, the consensus after the election is that, you know, Donald Trump, you know, part of the reason he won was because of this. He has now gone

so far to the other extreme and everyone in his party has that he is not in line with the polling on most of the shit, right? You can have debates about trans participation in sports and you can look at the polling and be like, oh, we got some work to do. But the idea that like trans people shouldn't exist, that's not a, that's not a majority position by any fucking stretch of the imagination. And the way the republics have handled this and the way they've handled trans issues since Trump's been elected is the argument for why Democrats cannot back off on defending the rights, dignity, humanity of trans people. Yes.

Like, we can debate sports participation. You can debate the other issues, but you cannot back away on this because you have the Presby United States, you have members of one of our political parties demagoguing some of the most vulnerable people in our society and treating them as less than human. And it is our responsibility. It's our moral imperative to stand up for them. that that, and this is beyond politics, but as you point out, doing that, treating humans as humans, to let people live their lives is good politics.

And again, like in a normal world, like you said, everyone who has children, people who don't have children would just be saying, okay, two children were murdered, praying in church, and a whole bunch of others were injured, and what can we do as a society about how to make sure that doesn't happen? that's it without doing all of this bullshit. You know, and one way is maybe, maybe we can limit the availability of guns. People still have in the right to have guns, but maybe we can do something to limit the availability of guns or to make sure we do background checks or make sure they don't get in the hands of people who are

mentally ill or make sure they don't get into the hands of people who've already committed crimes, maybe. So unbelievably, all these statements from RFK aren't even his most upsetting of the week. We're back to RFK. This didn't get a ton of attention for some reason, but at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, day, Kennedy gave the following update to Trump. We're finding interventions, certain interventions now that are clearly, almost certainly causing autism. And we're going to be able to address those in September. So again, he's referencing September. That's the meeting where they're going to reconsider

some of the authorizations on these other vaccines. Kennedy has previously said for a long time that he thinks there's a link between vaccines and autism. There is no link, no science, no evidence has ever shown any kind of link there. Trump has also flirted with this idea as far back as 2014, I think. Bill Cassidy, the Republican Senator, who's, again, supposed to be a doctor and was, you know, very concerned about RFK's nomination, but then, you know, voted yes anyway because he just wanted to give him a chance. He is now called for the CDC Vaccine Panel meeting to be postponed because of, quote,

serious allegations that have been made about the meeting agenda, membership, and lack of scientific process. And he said that if it goes forward, quote, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy. Would have been nice if he had weighed in on the lunatics on the panel and Kennedy by just voting no one's nomination. But here we are. What, if anything, do you think Democrats in Congress and maybe Bill Cassidy can do here? I think to make this work, you would need to build a bipartisan coalition of senators, potentially members of Congress as well, who want to fix the situation of the CDC or improve the situation and hold RFK Jr. accountable. And so you could do this in a couple ways. You could, like, they control the power of the purse,

like in whatever government funding, but we're going to discuss. There could be some specific funding, like restrictions or guidelines around how they, about how they can spend their money. You could demand in exchange for funds, more transparency, regular briefings and hearings. You could, in negotiations, if you had a majority there, or you had a true bipartisan coalition, you could try to force new members on the committee or revamping in the committee to get more legitimate scientists on there. But the question, you ask question, what can Democrats do? Democrats can do very little because we have no power. And we're not in a world where there is a specific HHS appropriations bill moving through Congress because the appropriations process is broken.

So this would have to be something that took place in the larger government funding discussion. You could, you could like shut down the government over this. Yeah, or you could, or if a deal was – one of many things. Or if a deal was being done, you could write it into the deal. But it's just easier when you have a specific bill for a specific agency where you have more leverage. The power of the purse is more important than when – or more powerful, you have more leverage in them than if you're doing the whole thing. But you really need Republicans here to go along. And maybe Cassidy will do it.

Maybe there are some others who will. But you need more than just Cassidy and maybe like Collins, Murkowski. And I don't know how much McConnell is feeling about vaccines today. Yeah. I mean, I guess what Democrats can do then is make it – a big enough issue and keep the drumbeat going so that when we get to the government funding fight, this is one of the things that becomes a sticking point in the funding. I mean, you know, we'll talk about this. I'm sure in the coming weeks as we get closer to the funding

fight, but we are now piling up a bunch of very big problems, crises in this government that are making it, I think, easier for Democrats to say, look, we're going to fund this kind of fucking health agency. We're going to fund this ICE agency. We're going to fund these fucking, this tariff policy. Like, we're getting close to that, I think. It's hard to overstate how far out of the mainstream RFK Jr. And Trump are on vaccines. Yeah. Like, extremely... And just public health in general at this point, because it's definitely vaccines, but it's also, I mean, pandemic preparedness, Ebola, all the stuff that we talked about. The polling on the coronavirus vaccine is very polarized on partisanship. Yeah. But on all the other vaccines, we are at like 90% trust.

either so like they are in the far far far minority here and so i think whether it's through the government funny fight whether it's through yelling and screaming about this like actually drawing attention of this is important because you want this to feel so messy for trump who i think is like he is vaccine skeptic and tag it like agnostic sort of like he he sort of tried when rfkid junior came aboard to like push back on the idea of this like you want to make this really messy for the republicans in the senate the house and the trump White House. Yeah, it was the, maybe the most successful initiative of his first term. Yeah, I mean, he's a-operation warps speed. He's a vaxxer. He was getting boosted all the time.

I do. He's over 65. He'll probably get his COVID booster. We say a lot that this, like, you know, Demp should talk about this and make noise about this, you know, name your issue. But I do think on this one, this is people's health, getting their kids vaccinated, making sure that their family has good medical care can follow good, and trust credible medical information coming from the government. That's important to people. That is one that I think resonates with people and that they're going to experience in their daily lives. I mean, every parent at the beginning of the school year

is certifying their kids' vaccines. Yeah. Right? Like, it's something that's very much in your life on a very frequent basis. Pod Save America is brought you by Blinds.com. Blinds.com brings your space to life your way. From expert guidance to customer,

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Save up to 50% sitewide and get a professional measure at no cost. and September 3rd rules and restrictions apply see blinds.com for details so we've all become used to the ritualistic Trump fluffing at cabinet meetings now must have been some real tendonitis after the one I don't want to get explicit but where's the tendonitis where do you think it is Dan that's that's a good answer three and a half hours three and a half hours of Trump fluffing in the last cabinet meeting this week we have an excellent compilation that our producers put together. Let's listen. Mr. President, I invite you to see your big, beautiful face on a banner in front of the Department

of Labor, because you are really the transformational president of the American worker, along with the American flag and President Roosevelt. And there's only one thing I wish for that that noble committee finally gets its act together and realizes that you are the single finest candidate since the noble piece, this Nobel award was ever talked about. And you, sir, are restoring trust to government. I do believe we're in a revolution. 1776 was the first one, 1863 or so, with Abraham Lincoln was the second. This is the third with Donald Trump leading the way.

And we are saving America. How do these people, like, how did they keep a straight face? I mean, they don't believe that. I assume not, but I'm not so sure anymore. I think people can convince themselves with some really crazy shit. I want to believe that before the cabinet meeting, before he walks in, they're all doing like a bit with each other and they're like having a fun competition. Like, okay, who can be the most embarrassing?

We know that Marco Rubio's got jokes, right? That's what we've heard on the Katie Miller podcast. So maybe Marco Rubio is sort of organizing and maybe it's like a pool? I don't think so. I think that they were too afraid of getting caught doing that and then being kicked out of the club. Three and a half hours, Dan. Three and a half hours. Like, Fox cut away, because we were watching it.

And, like, and I had been in a meeting, and I came back, and I was looking on Twitter, and I still see Aaron Rupar and A-C-Y-N sending clips around from the cabinet meeting. I'm like, it's been three hours. What is it happening? Yeah, it's... No substance. No substance at the meeting. Just total fluffing. Like, I love my parents, but I don't think I could, in public, talk about them in the same way.

Like, this is our, this is how our cabinet meetings went, right? The five, yes, it's very similar. Barack Obama would lose his mind if anyone was ever that obsequious in his presence. And I know everyone's like, oh, you know, about everyone loved Obama and blah, blah, it was a cult. But like he got extremely uncomfortable in cabinet meetings when it seemed like people were just... In any meeting. Any meeting. But also, you know, in the cabin meetings, the pool comes in, right?

And so in the pool, then you have like a sort of a fake cabinet meeting while the press is there and everyone gives like little reports. Actually, we didn't even, we had like one person give a, like each new meeting. there would be like a different cabinet member giving a quick report and then Obama would say something. And then the press would be a real agenda. Usually the press would just be there for Obama's opening remarks. Yeah, that's right. And then they would leave. And then so here's the thing.

You do a fake meeting for the press. Then you do a real meeting. They never did the real meeting in this case. They just did the fake meeting for three and a half hours. Yeah. Even the real meeting is not like, I mean. It's kind of fake. It's kind of fake, right?

And we say that we were in the outside of the campaign. We were definitely in the outside. there's a there's the people around the table and there's chairs all around and you had to give up your phone and that was fucking brutal yes because it's like I wasn't talking that's for sure but I was just sit there through the SBA presentation here it's going anyways nothing like this so Trump's cabinet giving him the the Kim Jong-un treatment it's clearly going to his head because here he is musing about himself as a dictator for the third time in the last few weeks so the line is that I'm a dictator but I stopped crying so a lot of of people say, you know, if that's the case, I'd rather have a dictator. If he stops crime, he can be whatever he wants. Not that I don't have the right to do anything I want to do. I'm the president of the United States. If I think our country's in danger, and it is in danger in these cities. The statements and the sentiment are, of course, not new by now. I mean, I think it was very early on in the administration. He tweeted that, you know, he who saves

his country cannot violate any law, the Napoleon quote, or at least the quote that's attributed to Napoleon. He seems to be saying it a lot more frequently these days. The White House, I think, told, I think it was Politico, oh, he's just doing it to knock down all those silly dictator accusations. He's just taking it on because it's so ridiculous. Is that what's happening? He seems to really enjoy the dictator part of the job. Like, this is his favorite part. He's not really digging into the substance of policy issues.

And he really likes sending the military places, having parades in his favor, being fetid by his cabinet number for three and a half hours. And, like, he will say, I'm not really a dictator. But there's no enthusiasm in that part. All the enthusiasm is in the, look at all the things I can do. I'm a dictator. So, yeah, I think he's, like, we know this is what he values in leadership. These are the people around the world he admires. It's not the Democrats. It's the dictators. So it shouldn't be surprising. It's really dangerous here. And what, and we're going to talk about the occupied,

occupied, D.C., maybe soon to be occupied Chicago and sort of the politics around crime. But what drives me nuts about the whole debate around crime or immigrant. is what he's saying there, which is, I can do whatever I want if the country's in danger, right? Same with the tweet. He who saves his country violates no law. What he is setting up there is whatever happens, whatever I decide to do, all I have to say is that there's an emergency in the country, that we are in danger, whether in danger from

immigrants, from protesters, from Democrats. I don't know. We didn't even play this clip. I forgot about it. Stephen Miller was on Fox earlier this week. He literally said, the Democratic Party isn't a party. It is a domestic extremist group.

That's what Stephen Miller said. They are setting it up so that they can do whatever they'd like with the military, with their secret police force to anyone in the country and say it is because there's an emergency because the country's at risk. I mean, this is textbook. fascism. This is how fascist regimes happen. They fake a threat. They seize power to protect people from that fake threat and they never give it back. And it's just like, and we're going to look back on it and be like, well, at the time he just said it was about fighting crime and people want crime to go down or he said it was about immigration and people were really upset about the border. How could it have been about this? Some of those protesters turned violent. Of course we wanted to bring in the troops.

So those comments were part of a longer rant about sending troops to Chicago. Why it's so offensive to him that J.B. Pritzker won't ask him to do it before he does it anyway, which it seems like he will after he posted about Chicago on Thursday and said, quote, the people are desperate for me to all caps, stop the crime, something that Democrats aren't capable of doing. All caps, stay tuned, exclamation, exclamation, exclamation, President DJT. Again, the Gavin tweets are the ones that are silly, right? Those are the ones that are. The administration has also asked for Naval Station Great Lakes, which is just north of the city in Chicago, to offer logistical support for what Christine Nome is calling an ice strike team that is on its way to Chicago. Meanwhile, in occupied D.C., armed troops are still patrolling the streets. The federal government has seized control of Union Station.

So that's cool. Mayor Muriel Bowser got criticism from the D.C. Council after saying she, quote, greatly appreciates the surge of officers and believes that crime is going down. though she did also say that the masked ice agents are unhelpful and that the National Guard presence is unnecessary. The New York Times reports that Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb hosted a call with other big city mayors to talk strategy around Trump's deployment, where he urged a, quote, serious on safety, serious on cost messaging strategy. The big undercurrent in the Times story is Democrats worrying about appearing soft on crime because of their opposition to the president's military occupations of major American cities. You can kill me. Right?

You say the sentence, and you're like, maybe it won't be a self-down crime. Polls are mixed on this. So there was a new AP poll that shows that 55% of Americans support the use of the military and guard in assisting local police. Trump was not attached to this. It was not asked as a, do you support what's happening right now? But in that same poll, 55% oppose the federal government taking control of local police. On the other hand, voters in a new Quinnipiac poll this week opposed Trump's D.C. deployment by 56 to 41. and a new Reuters poll has just 36% of Americans approving of Trump's takeover

while 46% oppose. Polls also show that D.C. residents fucking hate it, which is also evident by the fact that the Justice Department has now failed to get multiple indictments from multiple grand juries in D.C. for charges involving alleged assaults on federal officers, including Sandwich Guy. Oh, Sandwich Guy got off. They didn't get Sandwich Guy.

He's going to, well, he's going to get charged with a misdemeanor because they couldn't even get a fucking grand jury to indict the guy. Really bring a lie to the idea you can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. Oh, Dan. It's there. It just came to you.

I mean, should we take a moment right now, speaking of great sandwich jokes, to point out what's soon to be available in the crooked store? Thanks, Dan. I mean, I was shocked and disappointed by this, but you tell us. Well, Lovett had the idea

of having a t-shirt with a sandwich on it, and underneath a sandwich, It says, hero, which is a name for a sandwich. I was pointed out by Saul our producer. Yeah, it took a solid minute to get it. He got there. He did get it. They also wanted us to wear it during this.

It was sitting on the back of my chair. And I was like, no. I'm like, we're going to end up on Fox anyway. I don't need to be wearing that short while we do. That's right. Wait until we get to the Democratic section. Then we'll be on Fox. That's where we really shine.

I do think there's something to be said for all jokes about the sandwich guy aside. it is extremely rare for grand juries not to indict. Oh, yeah. I have the stat that's going on Twitter, which I don't know why this is dated to 2010. But in 2010, there were 163,000 federal prosecutions, and they failed to get an indictment in 11 of them. So that's a 99.993% success raised. Because I am, because I'm not a lawyer, didn't go to law school, not like Levitt and took the LSATs and got a high school. score. I looked this up the other day. Not about this, but way back when it seems like all of our

colleagues might be getting indicted for the Russiagate hoax. And I was like, why do grand juries turn back indictments like so many times? And I didn't realize like in many cases, there's no judge there. There's no defense attorney. It's just the prosecutor. The prosecutor has, they run the evidence or they present the evidence. And they also instruct the grand jury on what the law is. So they have enormous power here with really no sort of dissenting, opposing argument. Yeah, the point of it is to prove to a jury

that you have probable cause for the charge. Right, yeah. And the standard is obviously much, much lower. So the fact that they couldn't get that, it does tell you that people in D.C. might be getting, I know, D.C. extremely democratic city. But it might tell you people are getting pretty radicalized against the military takeover.

Is he on video throwing the sandwich? Yeah. I think the reason is he's throwing the sandwich. It's not a felony. Of course, you can't be throwing fucking sandwiches at police officers or federal officials, but misdemeanor, which is what he's getting charged with and not a felony, which is the way the law is supposed to work. Back to crime, what's your sense of where public opinion is on this?

We have talked about, I don't know if you and I have had the conversation about the D.C. takeover. We've had it privately, obviously, a million times. But I don't think we've had it on Mike. Please correct us. We literally might have done it last week. You can all correct us. Yeah, I don't know. But what do you think?

I mean, I think it's worth just acknowledging that the politics of crime are complicated. So in 2024, two-thirds of Americans told Gallup that crime was up over the previous year. Crime was down. And this is not a new phenomenon. TikTok broke our brain sort of situation. In every year since the year 2000, a majority of Americans have thought crime has gone up. Most years, crime went down. And it's because there's a couple reasons of this.

One is the news. It's much, this is a worst problem now in social media, but for the beginning, as long as there's been television, the news has led with crime. So if there is one murder in your community, it will be on the news for like six weeks at a time, right? So it never gives you an accurate, you know, the news covers the bumps, not the road. The second is people, and the polling also shows that people are very, think of crime as a serious problem. Even when statistically they have no reason to be very worried about crime, but people's fears are not rational conversation. you and I have about flying all the time where it's like you just you're going to say flying too and also a conversation we had about inflation right this is a different subject but like you can't

be like oh the statistics the economy is doing great and someone's like well actually it's fucking expensive well if someone's what I'm saying when someone's scared of something you can't like telling them that they're more likely to die from a piano falling on their head than whatever they're worried about like this is this is a ongoing frustration of Barack Obama's because remember everyone was worried that ISIS was going to come to their mall and attack them and it's like the odds of that are so small and you have of all these other ways in which you could die, like you're, you're at risk every time you get a car, so people's fears are irrational. And Republicans have a strength on crime, right?

Trump, he had a one-point advantage on crime in a poll recent that happened in 2024, but every other issue he's underwater. This is an issue where he is not underwater, although there has only been limited polling on crime up until very recently. So you hear that in Denver. People are like, avoid his trap. Don't fall on his trap. He wants you to talk about crime instead of tariffs. Well, the president invades a U.S. city. United States Capitol with armed military, it's kind of hard not to talk about, so you probably find the best way to talk about it. My view of it is, is that you can't make it about crime. But you can't say, like, I have just told you the facts that crime has actually

gone down, and it's gone down a lot in D.C. It's one of the largest drops in violent crime in history year over year. But telling people that is not basically your best player, because then it does sound like you were minimizing crime. I think you should make this be about the fact that this is a stunt. It's a giant waste of taxpayer resources, and it's having a against the wishes of the local officials and the local, most importantly, the local police. Yeah. It's tough because if someone thinks that the presence of troops and extra cops and everything else is about, okay, well, there's more cops on the beat. And so that seems good because most people think more cops means it's going to be safer, especially if I saw it.

And it's not just about like. And Bill Clinton ran on that promise. Right. And it's also not just about people. Okay, well, you could say, like, how many people have actually experienced a crime? It's not just about experiencing a crime, though it is about that, but it's just about, like, public disorder, right? Like, if you see, if you're on a subway, if you're on a street corner, you see some screaming and yelling at somebody, like, you're like, okay, this is kind of scary, right? And so it's about more than that. And if, but if you think that, like, that ICE is about deporting the worst of the worst, and you think about, and you think that extra cops is about bringing down crime. Then you're going to say, well, this all seems fine to me.

But if you're walking around the city and suddenly they're tasing delivery drivers and people in masks and hauling them off and throwing them in a van and you're seeing all these troops armed just in your city day after, maybe a couple days. It's no big deal. Maybe a couple weeks. It's no big deal. But like day after day after day. And then you're going to be like, I don't know. Is this really about crime? Because this seems pretty.

And to your point about the stunt, I think everyone who saw the National Guard. troops just picking up trash in D.C. because there was nothing really else for them to do. They probably don't think, oh, this is scary, but they probably think, yeah, this is maybe a little bit of a waste here. That's what I think the right argument here. So the hard part is, like, yes, if you live in the city, you will, you have, like, you experience the disorder to the extent it exists. You know, if you live in a city and you, like, have to get, you have to get someone at Walgreens or Dwayne Reed or CVS to get, let you get deodorant every single time because they're so worried about shop. There's like that, that's, that contributes out people

feel about public safety. But most people don't live in cities or a lot of people don't live in cities. And so they're not seeing the National Guard. They're also not experiencing the crime. Now, people who don't live in cities are actually oftentimes more afraid of crime. Right. Because they watch the local news, which is about the city that they live near. I mean, there was a time in which people were so afraid of crime that they wouldn't put sports arenas in cities. Right. They would put them in the suburbs because they thought people in the suburbs wouldn't go in the cities because they were so afraid. And so I just think that in the argument that Democrats should ignore this is not a real argument because it's not

possible to ignore it. You just sit, you cannot be someone who is a member of the opposition party who has taken an oath to the Constitution and then say, I am just going to stay silent on the military occupation of one American city, possibly spreading to others, because it doesn't pull well. So you just have to figure out how to talk about it. And I do think, like, the way to do it is to sort of alive the crime trap and try to treat it as a stunt that's a waste of taxpayer resources that runs against the advice. It's not what people in the city, or the people who run the city or the people who protect the city actually want. Also, people don't want crime, but I bet if you ask them, do you want a situation where

there are these masked agents setting up vehicle checkpoints asking for people's papers who look like they might be undocumented immigrants, who have brown skin, or in some cases just anyone, and they're stopping the cars and they're saying, where's your papers? I don't think people like that. like I throw that in a poll because I don't think I don't think that's how people want to live in this country so I do think it's like it's it's about framing it in a way and by the way that you know that was happening in Tennessee it happened in in DC on 14th Street like I just don't think people want to live like that either and there's a like this is incredibly dangerous there's a moment you know as you guys talked about on Tuesday they're now carry the National Guard is not carrying weapons in DC for no reason no reason that has been articulated but at some point something bad is going to happen. Something Ken State level is going to happen. And that could be the sort of thing

that fundamentally changes the fabric of this country, both in how the public reacts to it and how Trump uses it. Pod Save America is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. It can be overwhelming to have so many options. Like when you're trying to figure out what TV show to watch, when you're at a restaurant that has a huge, huge menu and you're like, do I get the chicken Madeira?

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right now to try it for free. Again, that's ziprecruiter.com slash crooked. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. All right. Speaking of the Democratic Party, trying to figure out what to do about our dissent into fascism, boy, did they nail it at the annual summer meeting in Minneapolis this week. So this event had everything. land acknowledgements, competing Gaza resolutions, worries about fundraising, polling presentations

that advise ditching the phrase tough on crime for serious about safety. Even a proposal for a new fight song, which we will get to in a bit, no surprise at the coverage of the event, which was for some reason live streamed, focused almost entirely on the party's internal conflicts with a heavy dose of mockery. To be fair, the party did have some wins. Democrats flipped a state Senate seat in Iowa this week with a 20-point overperformance and the DNC had invested in the organizing around that race so they took some credit for that.

But overall, the consensus seemed to be that the meeting wasn't exactly Democrats putting the party's best foot forward. Afterwards, Democratic operative Adam Jensen told the bulwarks Lauren Egan, quote, it would probably be better for the party as a whole if the DNC just turned the lights off and padlocked the building for the next two years. What do you think?

I think the whole thing is maybe a microcosm of all of our problems, which is you have in Iowa this great win, right? Like we know we do well in special elections. We're actually in 2025, we're doing about five to six points better in special elections than we were doing in 2017. So I think that, like, there is evidence that underneath the challenges we're having at the party establishment level that people are doing the work in winning races. And that's very important.

Did you see that turnout was 55% of the. 22 midterms in that district. That's high for a special election in the summer of 2020, 2025. So, like, that is the positive part here. It is the establishment of the party, which is embodied by the DNC, which is a collection of whatever it is, 400-some party chairs, party committee people, just like the absolute establishment of the establishment that is still struggling to reckon with the moment we are in, Right. Both. I mean, I will stipulate, I've been in politics a long time. The DNC has been a shit show almost for the entire time of my career. And particularly when we're in opposition. It exists to be a punching bag and a shit show. Like when you have the White House, the DNC is a political arm of the White House. And it usually is neither, you don't ever really hear from it. It raises it. It does what the White House wants. When you're in opposition, it becomes the vessel for everyone's anger about the party, even though it has so little power and so little influence.

Like, everyone thinks the DNC, like, makes messaging decisions, picks candidates, can fix presidential elections, all these things. And it's really, it's basically in a presidential election. It's a bank account for the nominee. We have some organizing on the side. Here's my big criticism of the whole event. Why did they live stream it? Why did they just, if you're going to have a meeting and you're going to have polling presentations and you're going to do the whole thing and just talk about shit, like, just don't. I mean, you can have, I guess you have press there.

I don't know. like, they can have just, they can just have a fucking meeting. I mean, it's open press. Like, I get that some parts are open press. I'm sure they've been live streaming it for 100 years, like, since live streaming was available. Well, then if you're going to live stream it, do we need to start with the land acknowledgement? Is that something that we, have we not learned our lesson? First of all, and it's not like the land acknowledge, like, do we think the land acknowledgements do anything?

Do we give back the land? Like, we probably should. Do we go do, maybe people should go do something to help indigenous Americans in the country, instead of just acknowledging the fact that hundreds of years ago, something horrific happened on that land. I don't know. It's... What are we doing?

Like, it's very hard to think about what we should do as a party and reverse engineer it from what is going to make it Fox and Friends. Like, I don't want us to do that. But there does need to be a little more savvy about the whole picture that is painted, right? Just a touch. Just a little touch more savvy. Like, what, like, what is the story you're telling with this? Like, there is a world in which you could use this to, like, we have a bunch of exciting candidates, like, really exciting candidates.

We've had, to the credit of the Senate and House, we've recruited a bunch of great candidates to run. The Sherrod Browns, where Cooper is a bunch of really interesting people running for House, veterans, former, like, fired federal government scientists and people work in the VA and all this. You could highlight those people. We're winning races instead of doing that. Instead, the DNC, which has no real say in a lot of these issues, I know we're going to get to the guys. resolution a second, is putting itself in the middle of it. And I think one challenge here is, I don't know what the answer is, but there was, Ken Martin won the DNC race. He was the most insider of insider candidates, right? He was the chair of the association of Democratic Party

chairs. He'd been a party chair for a long time. He'd been a very successful party chair to his credit. But he won the race because he had relationship with all the other party chairs, which is a huge part of the voting block. But it was a continuation of what the DNC had been. I know he's trying to make changes, but like after 2024, you probably needed someone who was going to come in a little bit like Howard Dean did when he won the DNC, who was going to like knock it over and start from the beginning. And so we're kind of making, we're not making any real wholesale changes. We're just kind of making cosmetic changes around the edge and it's not working. But publicly. Like, I mean, we did. Yeah, that's the thing. And it's the public aspect.

That's the tough part, right? Because I think that Ken Martin would say and did say to me when I interviewed him it's like you know he's been uh investing and organizing doing all this stuff and you know that's why they took credit for the iowa thing and good for them and he he has an organizer at heart there is a larger problem with the dnc and and just the party in general that like ken martin is not going to be able to fix yes the the dnc is an embodiment of the party's larger problems yes and uh doesn't seem like they really uh dug into those that much or at least made a lot of progress you know, projecting an image of the party that has learned anything from the last defeat. Right. I think that's the bigger thing is, you can't expect the DNC to solve the problem.

You can't expect them at the August 2025 annual summer meeting, I guess it is, to have figured everything else out. But there was probably a way to be a little more deliberate in the public presentation of what the party was doing. For example, I'm just thinking of this now, like, so that that, that, candidate who just won in Iowa. Fight that person to come speak there. Some of the recruits that we have that are exciting candidates in some of these swing districts. Invite them to come. I bet they wouldn't come. That's the problem. But I mean, this is like this is the problem. Yeah, I know. I know. We're going to get to this, uh, the other convention idea going on. But one of the challenges is if you're Roy Cooper or Sherrod Brown, you don't want to be. You would never go

there. You don't have that. Yeah. You don't have the taint of the DNC being on you. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, all this was going on, Gavin Newsom did a big live interview with Politico, where he did not mince words, I think we have some tape. This guy doesn't believe in free, fair elections. He tried to wreck this country. What? Were you there? January 6?

Tried to light democracy on fire. He dialed for 11, almost 12,000 votes. Now he's doing it in plain sight. And people say, oh, it's just Trump being Trump. Do you think he's joking about 2028? You think when he brings foreign leaders to the Oval Office and he goes to the White House store, have you seen this? Anyone?

Is it just me? And he shows them the 2028 hats. He's not being serious. Wake up. You will lose your country. I mean, that's one way to do it. Yeah. Right?

Now, I caught a couple lines from Ken Martin's speech. And, you know, he was doing the, like, we got a fight fire with fire thing. And he was trying to, you know, be tough like Gavin. But again, that's one person in a whole meeting that gets... It's not that the people there don't want to fight. No, it's, yeah, that's not that. it's just it looks to like I like I kind of like we're hammering on them I'm not trying to defend them in any way shape or form but there was no way this was going to go well right there was just absolutely no way because there's a ways it could have gone better it could have gone better but it just Democrats are mad at Democrats right now so it's one that like if you have a great meeting and the Republicans are going to shit on it no matter what the meeting is but if Democrats are mad at the party as they have every right to be right now then it's you just create this you're you're you're pleasing no one with anything you do I do I do think and wish very much that more Democrats would find their own inner Gavin Newsom.

And what I mean by that is not just do exactly what he's doing and then try to do the tweets that his office is doing and then say the same things that he's like, like, do you, find your, find what's making you upset and what's really bothering you and where you think the country should go and like go say that more and be less caught. I mean, we've talked about this, but, like, be less cautious. And, again, I'm not even saying that, like, you know, Gavin Newsom's going to be our best nominee, right? Like, I'm not, I'm just saying in this moment, in the summer of 2025, there should be more Democrats sounding like that. I think the, I wrote about this in my newsletter in the message box this week, but there is a fundamental divide the Democratic Party.

And we have divides on every issue. Like, as I wrote, we're divided over Ezra Klein's book writings. Okay. We're about to talk about Gaza. Yeah, yeah. Like, so we're divided on everything. But I really do believe the big fundamental divide in the party. And Alyssa Slotkin has talked about this a lot, which is people who think Trump is an existential threat to democracy, which Gavin Newsom does.

And a lot of people who think that Trump is very, very bad, but survivable, that our goal here is to just make it to 2026 and they make it at 2028. And that if you are in the Gavin Newsom camp, you need to think outside the box. You have to be willing to embrace high-risk strategies that push the envelopes or willing to run over norms or pre-examble. previous hill positions. And if you're in the latter camp where I think Chuck Schumer is, I think Richard Whitmer is, you just think very differently. And I think more people should be in the Gavin Newsom camp. I am in the Gavin Newsom camp. But I really found that to be the way to understand how people think about it because the DNC meeting is even if people use the public rhetoric that sounds a version of what Gavin Newsom says, the way that they keep doing things the same

way suggest that they are in the this is bad but survivable camp yes and i'll give you an example of why this is not ideologically necessarily or even old versus young or even are you going to go hard at trump or not bernie sanders Bernie Sanders has been acting now for several years like he believes that we're in an existential emergency he hits Donald Trump whenever he can but he also has his Bernie thing right he believes that the oligarchy is the problem and and he's very economically populace he's been consistent about this for his whole career, but he's out there pulling huge crowds, probably the most popular politician in the party, and he's acting like this is an existential threat, right? Completely different, could not be

more different than Gavin Newsom in a whole bunch of different ways. It is interesting. I can do a whole podcast on this, but like Bernie Sanders, I am interpreting this, but believes that Donald Trump is the symptom of the larger problem he's been talking about for years, which is the oligarchy, unfair economy, a rigged economy. And Newsom, who I think does necessarily disagree with Bernie on Some of the things about the economy thinks Trump is the problem. And like, Alyssa Slotkin, right? When you just mentioned. Yeah.

You know, former CIA. Yeah. And then I, with the people I really worry about, I don't know, I'm not going to name names here, but. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and then I'm not going to name names here, but. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ., like, some people have thought about it are like, I think this is and I'm just going to act that way. There's some people who, they just don't, they can't get themselves there, you know? They can't get emotional. And I don't want emotional, but like,

they don't have the passion. They don't have the fire in the belly. And they're just sort of, you know, very just analytically talking about it. I'm like, what are you doing? I think it's a poverty of imagination. Yes. I think it is very, very hard.

I think this is, you guys talked about why everyone's shrugging about what's going. I think it's very, very hard to imagine what is happening to America actually happening here. Because it was impossible to imagine just a year ago. the idea that you would have a politicized law enforcement agencies that would be prosecuting people's political opponents, that you would have military marching in the streets. Like, that seemed the idea that democracy could crumble.

Like, we believed it could last forever. We believe that for a very long time now. And certainly believe that the only thing that could stop would be a foreign power and not something internal. And so I think for a lot of politicians, particularly ones who've been around a long time, there are exceptions like Bernie. It just cannot fathom this is actually happening in our, are unable to think about it in real,

talk about it in real ways, think about it in real ways, and then embrace the solutions that are proportionate to the threat. Yeah, that's well said. And there's just a lot of, there's a lot of trying, like almost like trying on a costume. Well, that's the fake bullshit, right? It's the fake bullshit. You get a lot, I've said this before,

like a lot more of them are swearing, like they think if they swear a little bit, they drop a few fucks, then suddenly everyone's going to be, oh, they're tough now. I'm for the swearing. I think it's fine. I'm only for the swearing if you swear normally. If this is how you talk, you know, unfortunately, this is how we, I wish I swore less

on this, but like, this is how we talk, you know? And if that's how you really talk, then, like, go do it. But some of them drop it mid-conversation. You're just like, where'd that come from? I've never met a politician who didn't swear a lot, I would say. Never once in my life. Yeah. So, again.

Maybe Joe Lieberman would be the exception. I like the Gavin tweets, but, like, do you find your own thing. Oh, yeah, that's just embarrassing. The people doing the, the other Democrats doing the Gavin tweets is embarrassing. You need your own schtick. Just, yeah, figure out your own schick. That's all. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace.

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com slash crooked to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash crooked. So as I mentioned, the DNC also, we got off topic, DNC also debated two competing resolutions about how to respond to the war in Gaza, with one resolution calling for a complete arms embargo and the other, supported by Ken Martin, calling for a more moderate middle course. After a lot of debate, Martin ended up pulling his resolution and kicking the issue down to a task force of stakeholders.

Okay. Again, don't want to beat up on. the meeting here, but maybe this is a chance to talk about in general, you think the party can get its shit together on this before 2026. It is the question of whether the party will be able to catch up the public opinion, not just within the Democratic base, but within the entire country around military, offensive military aid to Israel during what's happening in Gaza. Yeah. That's the question. Also, side note, we don't need committees during resolutions. Like what is the DNC resolution going to do. I know. I know. I don't. It's like we can have a larger discussion about the party platform in the presidential election year. Like, there's some real questions about how you

useful as, but that at least has some, you're putting on paper what theoretically the nominee believes in. So then you can hold them accountable to that point. But the mid-year, like, just the opinion of the Democratic Party is this. Like, is that, I don't know that, like, I think there's a real effort that should be done to try to move the other half the Democratic caucus to be where we think they should be on this vote. I don't think a DNC resolution is meaningful in that task. And I will say, because I'm not going to make the moral case for this again, and especially because the people and the other side of the party who are still singing the same tune about Israel, you know, they'll say, oh, I get, I get that this is emotional, but, you know, we get to,

we get to seem like we're on the side of Israel. That's where the American people are. That's not where the American people are. Look at the pulse. If you think that, where they are, those are old polls. And it's not just Democrats. It's, first of all, that Quinnipiac poll, like, if you ask what, if Democrats, if you ask just Democrats, if they believe that we should end weapons sales to Israel, it is like, it was like 70%. I mean, it was overwhelming. But the overall number, including independence. And of course, Republicans are still for it. But like, the overall number I think was like, I don't know, was like 56, 57 for ending weapon sales? Like, it's a majority opinion now.

I mean, you ask people who, if they approve of how Israel's conducting the war in Gaza, the numbers are even more devastating. If you ask people, if who they sympathize with more, the Israelis are the Palestinians, it's now the Palestinians, which is also a huge shift from October 7th. I mean, and the reason I'm just bringing up the polling is not because that's how I think we should talk about it, but to those people in the Democratic Party who think this is a polling issue, it is not. I think that there is a lot of parallels in terms of the politics, moment I'm talking with the politics. With Iraq. I know. I've done the same thing. Because you, there are people who know what the right thing to do is, but because of an outdated

view of politics are afraid to do it. And those people, especially if they're running for president, are you eventually going to get to where everyone else is, but are you, you're going to be late. Yeah. And you're going to be, you're going to seem inauthentic. You're going to seem fake because it is. You know, I mean, I'm sure there's some people going to be like, wow, Of course you could have this conversion where you're like, wow, I fucked up and this is horrible. And Netanyahu clearly is never going to end this war and just wants to fucking bulldoze Gaza and doesn't give a shit what happens to people and whatever. Yeah, you can come around to that. But a lot of people are just going to, they're going to look exactly like what it is, which is, oh, this is where the base is and I want to win.

And so I'm going to now pretend this whole time that I was actually going. There were moments to do. Like, obviously, incredibly great credit to the people who were very critical when the Democrats are very critical when Biden was president. like that is the right thing to do but not easy to do it against your president particularly in an election year but with Trump as president and with the way things have changed

particularly with the famine in Gaza the moment is was months ago and so like that is an actual change of facts on the ground that could cause you to change your opinion but the more you wait the more you're going to look like you're playing politics here yeah see Jake Sullivan

yeah Biden's former national security advisor who's talking to our pal Tim Miller on the Bulwark podcast and said that he's advised Democrats that they should oppose weapon sales. Like, that's Jake. Yeah. Who's in the Biden administration. It was the person in charge of implementing the Hugged Beebe strategy.

So like if you're, what are you doing? If you're, you know, I just don't understand. So Axios reporter on Wednesday that senior Democratic officials now want to host a mini convention ahead of the 2026 midterms. I'm now laughing at this because of the conversation. Yes. Where they can showcase candidates and emerging party leaders, not to be able to. out down the next morning, Trump posted that the Republican Party might host a convention of their own before the midterms. That to me was the only evidence that maybe this is a good

idea. What do you think? I, in theory, I understand the idea is that Democrats need opportunities to get attention and having another convention, particularly if you did a big one. You're not filling the, where do we go to the convention? Where was that? Chicago. You're not filling the United Center. It's okay. We all want to forget it. I was like, I know we went to Milwaukee for a week. I know we went to Chicago for a week. We're still waiting for Taylor Swift to come out on stage. Just get Leon Panette instead, yeah.

Like, so the idea of doing a big event and having, like, good speakers and you'd have to get, like, Kamala Harris would speak there and maybe you'd get a Barack Obama. Like, you would need to draw real attention to get real people to do it. Like, that is intriguing. Joe Biden. Your face is so, that's so worth it. That's an option.

I mean, it's an option. I mean, I would actually would say that I'm sure that the people who would attend the Democratic Convention would be very exciting here from Germany. You and I were in the audience for his speech in Chicago, apparently, which is where that was. Keep going. But it does, I'm not sure we could execute it in the right way. It would be my concern. Like, I understand the idea of theory, but if you do it and then you just have another giant fight over a Gaza resolution, or the other thing you would see is, the most prominent Senate candidates don't show up because they don't want to be there for it.

So it's like you're doing this convention and Sherrod Brown doesn't come to where Cooper doesn't come. And Graham Platner, if he's the nominee in Maine doesn't come. And maybe John Ossoff is busy that week. Then it's embarrassing for the party. Yeah, because then you're getting, it's like a speech from Chuck Schumer, speech from Hakeem-Jeffries. And then now we're looking for, now we're looking for more people to fill this speech rolls. And it's like, quick, where's Carrie Washington? And where's all the, where's all the select?

It's just like, I don't, I don't, it gives me the. Yeah, I understand. At first I was like, you know what, we need to get attention. This is, my first instinct was like, oh, yeah, a good idea to get attention. And then having watched the summer meeting and talk about this, I'm like, I just, I think the execution is quite difficult. The rollings are definitely going to do this. Yeah.

Because Trump would like another. And then we're going to, Trump probably did it to goad us into doing it. No, no, he wants to, like, he wants to do it because he wants another party celebrating him, but. Well, and. I think it's to his advantage. Yeah, because I think his big issue for the midterms is the people who turned out for him don't turn out for Republican candidates. And so if he can attach himself to the midterms in people's minds, then he can tell everyone, hey, get out for, get out for me. Don't forget about these

candidates. It's a double-edged sword for sure. But he'd probably, he's probably going to get all the downsides of the anti-Trump fervor anyway. So a moment where he could keep like high-profile moment where he can communicate to his voters that this is, the people who didn't turn out to turn out for this is probably to his advantage. So if he does it, then we'll probably have to do it. Or one place we could just do it is CrookedCon. oh is there a place you know that you know we're having a I'm aware of you're aware November 6 and 7 is there a website you can go to yes cricket con dot com I got it get it was that an intentional tongue twister

was a prank from the marketing team on you yes I think I think most things are yeah all right Dan as promised just to close up the meeting section it did include a fight song which no DNC meeting is complete without semaphores Dave Weigle reported that someone from Act Blue not only shared the song but recommended that the party adopted and in multiple

sessions put the lyrics up on a presentation so the attendees could sing along Dan. Did they incessantly text it to everyone? I apologize for doing this

but I do need you to read the lyrics. I can't read it. I do this from off the doom. I don't have a laptop so you'll have to do it. Fuck.

D-E-M-S-We-Rise stronger together blue skies. Lift your voice. We're bold and true onward Democrats we shine blue the thing that is so funny about this other than the fact that someone thought we needed a fight song um yes and that it has a blue sky reference yes a little on the nose um it's the use of the term stronger together which is the failure of every

democratic messaging process ever no matter how bad it is matter how many yahus are involved that ends up with some version of Stronger Together. Everything is perfect about it. The only thing I am disappointed in is that we can't hear it. Like, is there a melody it goes to? That's what I want to know. I asked Dave Weigel on Twitter,

but he does not respond. If there any... If anyone has... The person from Act Blue, I don't know who it was, but whoever can give us a melody to this, I just, I want to be singing it, you know, because I want to practice for this midterm convention in CricketCon and whatever else.

You heard it here first, that if someone can find the melody for this, John Favre will sing it solo. Can you play it on the piano? I will learn to play on the piano. It will become our new theme song to Potsave America. That's ridiculous. I think you should perform it at,

you should perform it at CricketCon. CricketCon or the wedding, birthday, celebration, whatever, of whichever Vote Save American Volunteer knocks the most doors. Oh, that's a good one. John Favre will come to your gathering. This is now that. This is now, this is now something that's getting out of control.

That is not up on BothSafe America.com by the time this episode comes out on Friday morning, it's a failure of the political team. Come up with the melody, everyone. All right, last thing before we go, we'll just talk about one more piece of news. Taylor Swift's engagement to Travis Kelsey. What? This first I'm hearing of this. I was in a meeting. I was off my phone for an hour.

I come back outside. There's like 40 texts on my, most of them from my wife. I was going to say. And all of the text chains I'm on with her. and other Taylor Swift fans, it was wild. So what I was doing when this came out? What? I was talking to Caroline Reston on Polarcoaster,

and no one interrupted the show to tell her. About hunting wives. We were talking about hunting wives at the time. Which I hate watched, and now can't wait for the second season. If you want to hear my take on hunting wives, subscribe, become a friend of the pod. There you go. There you go.

Anyway, most of the world offered their congratulations. A nice little moment here in our broader descent into fascism. even Donald Trump was gracious about it but then Charlie Kirk you know Charlie Kirk familiar vaguely with him he recently called us a group of

low-tee complainers and whiners I thought that was he's just referring the Tuesday pot it's true he had this advice for the happy couple maybe one of the reasons why Taylor Swift has been so just kind of annoyingly liberal

over the last couple of years is that she's not yet married and she doesn't have children. Taylor Swift might go from a cat lady to a J.D. Vance supporter and I think we should celebrate that. It's a great chance for Taylor Swift now to get married and have

a ton of children. You can certainly afford it, Taylor. This is something that I hope will make Taylor Swift more conservative. Engage in reality more and get outside of the abstract clouds. Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You're not in charge. What a, what a lucky woman who got to submit to that

penis with a hairpiece. That is a, she is, she is one lucky lady. She taught, you know, there's, there's clips of Charlie Kirk's wife talking about how I love submitting to Charlie. Oh, wow. Yeah. You were deep in the internet. I mean, that's why I get, that's why I get straight fives on terminally online all the time. So that's interesting, huh? It seems like he was purposely trolling. Is that what the... No, I think that's his legitimate, sincere belief.

Yeah, he does think birth control makes women crazy. He said that before. I mean, he's a real... He's a real piece of work. Yeah, he's not great. A real piece of work. Just the kind of person you want, being a close advice of the President of the United States.

So it's like fucking... Taylor Swift is, like, worth more money than a million Charlie Kirk's put together, and probably more people go to one. of her shows than have ever listened to Charlie Kirk. Yeah, I'd say that's possible. It's just like, what? Okay, man, good luck. Good luck.

Again, lucky lady, married to Charlie Kirk. All right, new crooked merch that just dropped. Check out cricket.com slash store to see the latest. Who knows? Who knows? Maybe you'll find The Hero T-shirts. And they release the Epstein Files doormat. There may be an Epstein Files doormat in there as well.

Again, got to go to the design meetings more. More at once. That's where love it is right now, probably. Also, a reminder that you can now stream ad-free video with a paid subscription to Cricket. Enjoy Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, love it, or leave it, and offline, and exclusive shows like Inside 2025 and Polarcoaster

with Mr. Dan Pfeiffer. No interruptions, just the content you actually came for. Ad-free video is available now on Supercast Substack and YouTube. Visit cricket.com slash friends to learn more. That's our show for today. We'll be back on Tuesday with a special episode for Labor Day, which will be marking our thousands. episode.

Wow. I know. That's a little behind the scenes. That's why Dan's here, guys. It's here. We have to bring him down for the thousandth episode. It's a very, very, very important moment. Big deal.

That's what we're celebrating, I guess. We're going to be answering lots of great listener questions for the occasion, so check it out. And everyone, have a great holiday weekend. If you want to listen to Pod Save America, ad free, and get access to exclusive podcast, go to cricket.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Cricket. Pod Save America is a Cricket Media production. Our producers

are David Toledo, Emma Illick-Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Cherlin is our executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Segglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt DeGroote is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Heffcote, Mia Kelman, Carol Pellevieve, David Tolls, and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.