Pod Save America - Trump Admits He's for He/Him, Not You

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

Republicans attempt to defend President Trump's admission that he does not "think about Americans' financial situations," while his Department of Justice is on the verge of giving him billions of taxpayer dollars to settle the lawsuit he brought against his own IRS. Jon and Dan react to the president's financial priorities and then turn to Democratic strategy, including how they should be talking about the administration's corruption, how they're fighting back against Republican gerrymandering, and the latest on the DNC's refusal to release its 2024 autopsy.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast, episode title, and episode date.

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I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Donald Trump has fled to China. After admitting he doesn't think about Americans' financial situation, not even a little bit. We'll talk about all the fallout from that, fun little gaffe, and the possibility that Trump may personally pocket billions in taxpayer dollars because of a lawsuit he filed that his own justice, department is on the verge of settling. We'll also talk about the Democrats' latest plan to fight

the Republican gerrymander spree, more updates on the DNC and its Phantom 2024 autopsy, and of course why the new 22-foot golden statue of Donald Trump at his golf club, blessed by his spiritual advisor, is definitely not a golden calf. Before we get into any of that, if you're a friend of the prod subscriber, which if you aren't, you should be, you can Now buy tickets for this year's CrookedCon. Special presale just for subscribers. So go get your ticket now. If you're not a subscriber, which must be because you hate pro-democracy media and love podcast ads, you can buy Cricket con tickets starting next week on May 19th, Tuesday, May 19th.

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Cricketcon.com. All right. The president is in China, glazing Xi Jinping. He called the communist dictator a, quote, great leader while dropping some knowledge on his Chinese hosts. Chinese restaurants in America today outnumber the five largest fast food chains in the United States all combined. That's a pretty big statement. Pretty, pretty big statement. Pretty big statement. Glad he gave them that one. The Beijing leg of Trump's affordability tour puts him out of.

of the country at a moment when the president has never been less popular. After starting a war, he can't seem to end that's led to inflation he doesn't seem to care about, which for some reason, he won't stop telling us. President, you promised to bring inflation down. It's now at his highest level in three years. Are your policies not working? What's happening? We have a ballroom that's under budget.

We're right now on budget, under budget, and ahead of schedule. I double the size of it, you dumb person. It's double the size. with Iran, Mr. President. To what extent are American financial situations motivating you to make a deal? Not even a little bit. I don't think about American financial

situation. I don't think about anybody. The best part of that is like, it would have been bad enough if he had just stuck with, not at all. Because then, like, that's still bad, but then you would have had to like, you know, make sure you heard the reporter's question and whatever. But then he

like does the quote as if it was like, here's the line that if you say it will be a major gaff. And he's like, I will do the whole line. I will just say it. I do not think about Americans' financial situation. I don't think about anybody. The only thing that would have been worse

if he'd ask him to turn the helicopter engines off first so he could say it. So the audio video. Okay, folks, I'm going to do one more take. I'm going to say it a little louder and two camera, just so it looks better. Let me hold this big box of gold right now. Exactly.

Can you get the unfinished ballroom in the background in the shot? In fairness, the one group of Americans whose financial situation Trump keeps improving our democratic ad makers. In the pantheon of gaffs, where do you rank this one? Donald Trump has said many offensive and morally odious things over the years, but from a political perspective,

this is the worst thing he has said by far. Hands down, not even close. Do we think so? I mean, God, I can't remember. It's been 10 years. But yeah, it's up there for sure. It absolutely has to be. And here's why.

Because a lot of Trump's, like, though, terrible things he says, like Nazis are fine people. Right, right, right. I trust Russia over our own intelligence agents, all of those things, which are really, really bad things for president to say on every level are a field from the thing Americans care most about. So right here he is doing the worst kind of gaffs are when you say the truth out loud.

And that's what this is, because what he said was the exact thing that the people who voted for Trump, who have grown dissolution with him and are thinking of voting for Democrats fear most, that he does not give a shit about them. Yeah. It's like he said the whole thing. And you just, that is our message. Like somewhere on a whiteboard in a Democratic super pack is Trump does not care about American people's financial situations. And then he said it.

He said our message on camera. That's bad. Remember Kamala's for they, them, Trump's for you. I guess Trump is not for you. No, Trump is not for you. This is, this is, this is, this is not for you. Yeah. This is like when Kamala Harris, the two quotes, which we'll get to this later, but when Kamala Harris said that Biden, Bidenomics were working,

And when she had no ways and when she would separate herself from Joe Biden, similar, right? When you make a gaff that fits with people's greatest fear about you, those are the gaffes that hurt the most. I was thinking whether this was even the worst gaffe within the context of all of the terrible, politically stupid gaffes he's made within the context of the, just affordability, just in that category. Because I remember it was like, affordability's a hoax. It's bullshit. Everything's fine. People are okay if it could be worse. gas prices. I mean, there's just so many of them. I do think this nicely encapsulates that

aside from anyone policy or him being out of touch with how people are feeling, he actually just doesn't think about it. Does not care. Could not care less. Back to the ballroom. The business is like the advisors are saying, well, he was talking about, it was talking about this in the context of Iran having a nuclear weapon. And what he was saying is that he doesn't think about American's financial situation in a way that would stop him from doing what he needs to do to stop around from getting a nuclear weapon, which is also funny because he hasn't done that either. Yeah.

That's right. They still have the uranium dust, and our gas prices are really high. Zero progress. Zero progress since this war, the latest war began in February of 28. Whatever he bombed over last summer is one thing, but like nothing on the nuclear dust since this war started.

So hasn't figured that out. Doesn't think of American's financial system. situation. It has been funny to watch Republicans respond to this one, which so many of them have been asked to do, including the vice president and the Speaker of the House and random members of Congress. Let's listen. Yesterday, the president was asked about whether American's financial concerns were motivating them to make a deal with the wrong. His response was, I don't think about Americans' financial situations. You think that's the right message. The president should be considering the financial tool. I don't know the context in which you made

that comment, but I can tell you the president thinks about Americans' financial situations. I I talked to him on average twice a day, sometimes three or four times a day. If I could just kind of give a little clarity to what I think President Trump was saying is, look, he does care about the American people. He does care about the price of the pump. Well, I don't think the president said that. I think that's a misrepresentation of what the president said. So good. So good.

I like, let me just clarify. Let me just clarify when the president said he doesn't think about Americans' financial situation. What he actually meant was that he cares about America's financial situation. It's like, look, he's an old. older gentleman isn't getting a lot of sleep. He gets confused sometimes. I like that Mike Johnson went to, I mean, I talked to him two, three times a day. It's like, what does that have to do with him caring about American's financial situation? I also enjoyed that the question was, do you think that's a good message?

I don't know the context. Like, no one has a narrower media diet than Mike Johnson. I feel like every Democratic candidate on the ballot in 2026 should make their Republican opponent an answer for this. Right? It feels like a leading question, John. I'm just saying, like, why I haven't... Yeah, I'm trying to figure out, like, why I haven't seen more of that yet. I mean, I guess you can only really do that in a... I guess the place to do that is in a debate, because if you do some video where you're like,

I call on my opponent to, you know, no one's going to actually do that. That's not going to get you very far. But I do think it would be a good debate moment. So I think the way we generally think about this, the way that question is framed is, like, based in this other world of politics that you and I came up, in where these Republicans are out there on the campaign trail. They're being trailed by a pack of experienced local reporters who are waving recorders and notepads at them demanding answers, sort of like. Jeff Bezos took all their jobs.

So that's not how the world works anymore. Right. Yeah. And so that's not like I would like a world. Like I want every Republican walking down the halls of Congress to be swarmed by the staff of Punchball News and demand it. They can't leave the Senate subway until they answer this question. I would like that.

That is good, carmic justice. What is, and people should use it in debates. The better thing to do here in this media environment is you take the Trump clip, you mix it with a, you then followed up with a bunch of policies that this Republican member supported or is fine with or has done or they themselves said that illustrate this larger point

that Trump and his Republican flunkies do not give a shit about your financial situation to focus on all these other things. And I think that's sort of the way it happens now. like in a campaign. I just, like, you hear this all the time. And I think about this. I always know, like, why is no one forcing these candidates to ask about it? It's because there is no one to force them to do it anymore.

Right? There's maybe one reporter trailing them in some of these places. You know, I watch the, I don't know if you've watched any of these. This is sort of off topic, but I watched the last California gubernatorial debate. Seems like there's a couple opportunities there. The CNN one or the Buffy works one. Neither. The, um, the local NBC affiliate one that came after the L.A.

mayoral debate. Oh, okay. Yeah. I watched the CNN one and I watched the Buffy one. Yeah. The Buffy Wicks sponsored a housing debate. I know that as a lot of the Democrats for those are wondering. I will say that.

Buffy Wicks is an assembly member of California and a friend of ours. Yeah, no, I will say that neither the L.A. mayoral debate or the California gubernatorial debate that I watch was very inspiring. Yeah. If you've done, if you've done local races, the, it's been a long time since I've done that. But like, these debates are never, they're not presidential debates. No, they're really not. There's not a lot of hard follow. up. There's a lot of rules.

Sort of, but anyway, anyway, for other people running for Congress, I do think that could be a good moment, but you're right. I think you throw it in an ad. I think you could be creative, whatever. We could talk about that forever. Pot Save America is brought to you by common power. We don't need the DNC's top secret election autopsy to tell us that we lost the youth voters at an alarming rate. That is accurate. Wow. They'd still like it. They really know their audience. They really do. Research from Tufts University found that Democrats lost a 21 point advantage in the 2024 presidential election compared to 2020.

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And he continues to use the presidency to make himself richer in cartoonishly corrupt ways. Remember the $10 billion lawsuit Donald Trump filed against the IRS over his tax returns leaking? Well, the New York Times reports that Trump's

Justice Department might settle the lawsuit any day now and that quote, a settlement payment, even a fraction of the size of Mr. Trump's requested $10 billion could be much larger than his other attempts at private gain, potentially doubling his net worth with our tax dollars. I know a lot of these corruption stories are a bit complicated, but this would just be Trump literally just taking the tax dollars, we send the government and putting them directly into his pocket.

First of all, before we get into like the political implications of this, do you think they'll actually do something so brazenly stupid as this, even by Trump standards? Yeah, I think they might. And I think they'll justify it by saying, look, we didn't do it for 10 billion. We did it for one billion or two billion. So, yeah, the other thing that they kind of floated in the story, and I couldn't tell if this was, you know, some reporting that didn't, they couldn't bear out yet, which was there's a possibility. they might just say no, no financial award goes to Trump from Trump's Justice Department, but that somehow he gets protected from ever being audited again. Which is also incredibly corrupt, of course.

Yes. But I do think any kind of dollar amount is whoof, fucking nuts, man. It, I mean, would have to be, let's say it's, let's say it's $1 million. Right. Let's say, let's say, just still stealing. This is a lawsuit. where Donald Trump sued Donald Trump. And now Donald Trump is going to settle with Donald Trump to give Donald Trump money, our money.

Our money. He's basically just backing up a truck to the Treasury Department and taking our money and giving it to himself. And he's going to say he's giving it to charity. That's what he said when he was pushed on this in an NBC interview earlier this year. Donald Trump's been lying on giving money to charity his whole life. Like this would be the greatest example of presidential. corruption in American history by a factor of a thousand? It's just stealing money.

I was going to say the easiest to explain. Don't fucking get out your message box on this one, Dan. Don't worry. I'll be message box in this one. Let me tell you. It's just like, he's stealing from us. You go to work, you get a paycheck. They take taxes out of the paycheck.

It goes to the government. Now those taxes go in Donald Trump's pocket. He's a thief. He is stealing from us. $10 billion. He is a crook. That's it. I mean, it's wild.

It's also like a lawsuit that, I mean, not to get into the details here, but now that we've done our top line message, like an IRS contractor, if I can leak all these tax returns of a whole bunch of wealthy people, including Donald Trump, to ProPublica. Apparently the guy went to jail for five years over this. And others who had their tax tax returns leaked, sued. None of them got any damages. Ken Griffin, the billionaire, he was one of them. He got like a public apology from the IRS. There's all kinds of problems with the lawsuits.

It's for way too much money, first of all. He doesn't seem to have filed it at the right time. There's only one party of the lawsuit. That's the big thing. But I don't know. I think the big thing is it's also clear that if it was Donald Trump suing Joe Biden's federal government or some other president,

this lawsuit, he would never get anything from this because it's a fucking phony lawsuit. and the only reason he would win the lawsuit is because he decides the lawsuit because he is the justice department because the justice department isn't independent. And so he tells them, hey, settle this lawsuit that I filed against us and I'm going to pocket the cash or I'm going to pretend that I give it to charity. It is unfucking believable. I can't wait. I hope he does it. You know what?

It is worth $1 billion in taxpayer money. I will, I'll write some kind of a check. Not for that much. But I would, I mean, this would be the greatest political gift. Now, this is the easiest one, but I know you have thoughts on just in general how Democrats should be talking about corruption over these next couple months leading into the midterms. Yeah, you know, way back in 2020, I, one of my arguments was that the way, before we, before Biden was the nominee, where it was beginning run of Trump, 2019, 2020, my argument was

that Democrats should frame the argument against Trump around. chaos and corruption. And you were in some of these meetings. Pollsters would come to us and they would say, corruption does not work. We've tested it. Voters do not buy the idea. So they don't buy the idea that Trump is corrupt is that it does not move them.

It's not new information to them. They are willing to accept a baseline of corruption from Trump. It's kind of priced into their baseline. And they kind of think all politicians are corrupt. Flash forward to now, even as really, recently as early last year, when Trump was really doing a lot of all this crypto stuff. We heard the same thing from the same pollsters that corruption was not a message that worked with swimming flotters.

And I believe these pollsters. I believe their data. I just think they are tactically correct and strategically wrong. And there's two things here. The first is corruption. This is a different backdrop. People may be okay with Trump dipping his beak when gas is under $2 a gallon and prices are low and the economy is going good, they feel very differently about it when gas is $450 a gallon

and the economy sucks. There's a very different backdrop to this. That's one. Two, I think how we use corruption is very important here because I think too often Democrats treated as if we were in a court of law, like we are going to present this evidence. There is the Qatari jet. There is the theft of the $10 billion. Look at the crypto schemes.

We have presented this evidence. Jury of my voter peers, please tell me whether you find the president corrupt. And if you find him corrupt, then we're going to get rid of them. But that's not how it works. Right. The way to think about corruption is to understand that it's to treat corruption as an explanation for why everything sucks. It is the keystone to explain why rich people are getting richer.

Politically connected people are getting pardons and gifts and access. and you're getting kicked off your health care, you're getting kicked off your food assistance, why nothing works, why corporations are getting richer, small businesses are hurting, things costing more, is it is all because of corruption. It is a corrupt system. It is bigger than Trump. Trump is a part of that system. He is exploiting that system. And if we don't talk about corruption as a party, then what we are doing is we are implying to voters that we're okay with that system because they think we're part of it too. Now, I think there's a lot of Democrats have to do in terms of the positions we have, the policies we advocate for that show that we're willing to,

and to take on that system. But if you just refuse to acknowledge this giant elephant in the room that people believe the system is corrupt, and it is corrupt because Donald Trump is showing us every single day, then you're just leaving so much money on the table. No pun intended.

How much do you think an actual reform agenda should be part of that? I don't think it is credible for the Democratic Party running in 2026 to have a, this is our reform agenda. I don't think anyone's going to believe that. I think individual. candidates should be running on it. Obviously, like the biggest layup ever that we seem

incapable of accomplishing is banning members of Congress from trading stocks. Like, truly one of the biggest mistakes of the Biden era was not getting that done when we had the majority. You know, dark money, you know, the AOC, and I think, I hate to say it is, I think Ted Cruz have this bill that says that members of Congress can't become lobbyists when they leave. Like, I think industrial people should have their own to show that they're taking on that system. I think it should be a big part. Like, I want our 2028 candidate to be seen as a reformer. Like Assoff is doing that in his stuff right now. But I don't think there's like a Democratic Party agenda. When we get in, if we take the house, one of the things we should do is pass a government ethics campaign finance reform bill.

We know it's going nowhere, but we should show that we want to deliver on it. I kind of think that and I don't know if this is for if we take the house and then just want to pass a bill that is sitting there ready for a Democratic president or this is the candidates who run in 2028 who do this. But I think you need a few very big ambitious, haven't heard before reform ideas that people can grab onto, both because that's what it takes to get attention in this information environment. And like, the stock trading ban is great. And obviously polls through the roof. We get that. But like, people have been talking about it for so long. Like, when is it going to happen? I think the next thing it's going to get attention to someone actually fucking passing the stock trading ban.

But how would you stop the corruption we just talked about, Donald Trump stealing from the treasury because he controls the Justice Department? Like, we're going to have to figure out a way. Like, this is, again, this is another conversation, but like the idea that the next Democratic president's just going to be like, well, the Justice Department is independent again. And that's going to prevent the next Trump from doing what he has done with the Justice Department seems a bit fanciful to me. I'm talking like historic,

like we have gone through in these last, this term especially, like historic levels of corruption we've never seen in the United States of America. And so it seems like you'll need reform that has also will be reformed for the history books that we've never seen in the United States of America too. And I worry that you'll get this like fucking mealy-mouth

like, you know, just bit by bit reform agenda that is just recycled from Democratic campaigns passed. I think there's sort of two things that are at play here that sometimes get conflated. One, and I would say they are related to. One is reforming campaign finance law, lobbying, just like government ethics, right? Like akin to a version of what Obama ran on in 2008 and what Democrats actually passed in 2007, I think there's six or seven when we passed it. And then there is like, what do we do with the fact that our system is so filled with Swiss cheese that a bad person can exploit it with no consequences?

Like, how do you rein that in? What can you do to rein in presidential power? Like, will a Democratic president come in and be willing to rein in their own power in ways that would put them under more scrutiny? And it's hard because the Supreme Court immunity decision makes it hard. like you say like what is the like you could put in place a bunch of different disclosure laws or conflict of interest laws that apply the president you make the hatch act applied to the president it doesn't currently do there are things like that you could do um and it is but what do you do what are the teeth right if the president just says

fuck you like what actually can you do in a world in which the impeachment system does not work when I wrote uh my book on Trumping America in 2020 I guess it came out 2020? Yeah, right before the pandemic. And like one week before the pandemic. And one of the, like this is a big, I spent a lot of time working on this

and why I thought Democrats, both politically, for the sake of the party and the sake of the country, the next Democratic president should do this. The next Democratic president did not do this. But one of the things was repealing the OLC memo, the obviously legal counsel member

that said that the president could not be indicted. Now, the Supreme Court has, because that, that's one of the, then the Supreme Court just made that memo, case law now. So you can't do that. But we do need to think, like, this should be a big part of Project 2020, or whatever is thinking about how we, how we, what, like, what lessons can we learn

from all the bad shit Trump did? And how can we stop future presidents? Because the system never anticipated someone is craven and corrupt as Trump. Yeah, the easy way to say it and not the message you way to say it, but it's like, you got to, all the norms got to become laws. Codify the norms. Yeah. But how do you enforce the law on the president?

Then there's the, that's the question. Like you can make the people around him. Like, there are all these things that you would want to do that are very hard constitutionally. What you have to do is, is I think, right into law, because the loophole that the Supreme Court decision gives you is anything that is clearly not an official act he can be prosecuted for. And so you would have to make sure that certain things, you have to put into law that certain things that the president does are not official acts in the legislation. I think that's, I'm not a lawyer, obviously. It's good enough for me. It feels like by then some smart lawyers and maybe Claude can help us figure this out.

Anthropics should really start paying for this. All right, Dan, we're going to move on, but there's some breaking news on this IRS thing right from... You dropped the case? Well, so ABC News is reporting that Trump is poised to settle the case. And instead of the $10 billion, it's going to be $1.7 billion that he still gets, but he's saying it's going to turn into a... a $1.7 billion weaponization fund so that people, I guess, can sue people who've weaponized the government against Trump allies.

And I'm sure there'll be strict oversight over such a fund that, of course, does go to Donald Trump. And that's what'll happen there. So it's a slush fund for Trump, potentially his family, and his friends? Yeah, that is about right. That is about right.

It seems like a good use of taxpayer dollars. The compensation fund. is believed to be the main condition for Trump to drop a series of legal, blah, blah, blah. The settlement terms are expected to prohibit Trump from directly receiving payments related to those claims. However, entities associated with Trump are not explicitly barred from filing additional claims sources. Oh, like his family and his business, who also had their tax releases. The proposed fund, which would face significant legal hurdles, would draw money from the

Treasury Department's judgment fund. $1.7 billion will be coming out of the Treasury in this scenario going into some slush fund. that Donald Trump controls is what you need to know. Cool. Correct. So it is some combination of what we thought it might be. And still bad. Yeah.

Yeah, I'd say it's still bad. Still a lot of money. It's a lot of money. $1.7 billion. Just taking it out of their treasury. Ponte of America is brought to you by fast-growing trees. All right, we got it. You might be skeptical about ordering plants online.

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which of course could be bullshit. Of course, they'd project confidence. But the one thing they can legitimately point to is the success they're having, gerrymandering the maps, courtesy of, again, the Supreme Court. Some new developments there. South Carolina now looks like it will redistrict, even though a handful of Republicans joined Democrats to vote down the idea earlier this week. The governor's going to call a special session that will apparently require only a simple majority.

so that's not good news. Louisiana advanced its plan too, but they're getting rid of one Democratic district, not two, so slight good news there. On the Democratic side, Maryland may now move to redistrict the cycle after all. The Senate president there, who would oppose the idea, is now in talks about it with Governor West Moore. So fingers crossed there. Mississippi and Georgia will both redraw their maps, but not till 2008. So that's temporary good news. would-be speaker Hakeem Jeffries has announced a no more Mr. Nice Guy approach pushing every blue state to redistrict by 2008

and promising to shame any Democrat who resists and he also is sharpening the rhetoric on Republicans he promised this week to quote crush their souls okay then there's Kamala Harris who popped up on an organizing call about redistricting with this advice

I think that we need an expand playbook. This is a moment where there are no bad ideas. No bad idea brainstorm is what I'd like to call it. We talk about what we need to do and think about doing around the electoral college. We talk about the idea of Supreme Court reform, which includes expanding the Supreme Court. We invite a conversation about multi-members districts. Let's talk about statehood for Puerto Rico in D.C. We've got to neutralize these red states from cheating, including blue states expanding their maps. So that was Kamala Harris zooming in from I don't know where. Let's have a no bad ideas brainstorm, Dan. Okay. What do you? I haven't even a part of many of them. It's, uh, it's not possible.

There are bad ideas in a brainstorm. I've heard many of them. There are many, many. Sometimes they, sometimes they leave the brainstorm and then we're saddled with them. In fact, Saying that just usually elicits more bad ideas. People should have a little bit of fear of what they suggest in a meeting. What is, anyway, what? Talk to, talk to Kamala Harris' team about the backdrop. Anyway, she's going to be doing an appearance. This was not a media event.

She was zooming into, I think it was a merge, which is an organization that recruits in trans women candidates, I believe. Good she's out there chatting. We like it. What do you make of both the Democratic counterattack plan in the short? term and then some of the longer term stuff that Kamlo is talking about there. We have to recognize that we are now, because of the Supreme Court, we are now in a state of perpetual political warfare.

The maps will be redrawn every cycle and at every time when there's a change in power. So if we have a trifect in Oregon now and we redraw the maps, Republicans get a trifective two years, four years, six years later, they'll redraw the maps again. And we're just going to live like this. And it's going to be that way up until the moment Congress passes a ban on partisan gerrymandering. And so we have to approach this fight with the attitude that I think Hitch King Jardis is bringing to it to which is we need a maximal approach. We have to use every single lever of power we have.

If there's an opportunity to draw more Democratic districts in one of these blue states, we have to do it. If we have to repeal or find clever legal workarounds for anti-Gerrymandering laws and amendments, then we must do that. Because as we can already see, Republicans are wasting no time. They're leaving no stone unturned to find extra seats. And I hate jurymandering. You hate jerrymandering.

Democrats hate jerrymandering. This sucks. Like, you know, you guys joked about the, or you discussed and joked a little bit about the plan of Virginia to retire. all the justices and put new ones in. Yeah. And that does seem extreme. And it was, I think, for a variety of reasons, logistically unworkable this time.

Mainly for IT reasons, apparently. Yes. But even, yes, it's confusing. But either that sort of idea, I hate to say this, has to be on the table. That idea is no dumber or worse than just packing the Supreme Court ads they've done in Florida and Utah in other places.

Or like throwing out votes in an election that it already happened in Louisiana. Yeah. Yeah. It's like we just, I don't want to do those things, but we have to be, we have to think like that because we are, we're now in a total war for democracy. The Republicans are trying to, they are just, they're just eliminating black districts across the country.

When this is all said and done, 30% of the black caucus could have their district, they didn't lose election. Their districts would be written out of existence because the Supreme Court says that racial gerrymandering was okay. And we have to have a very aggressive attitude about it. So that's the short term. Over the long term, you know, this gets into the conversation we just had about how you reign in political power from, you know, corruption from Trump is we do need to think

about how when we have power, how to use that power to protect democracy and fight fascism. And the way to do that is you have to make the country more democratic. That means getting rid of the filibuster. That means giving D.C. statehood. giving Puerto Rico the opportunity for state of shit. If the people Venezuela want to join America, given Trump's approval ratings right there, we'll take them too, right?

Cool. It is, you know, court reform, as Kamala Harris mentioned, including expansion or certainly term limits would be very helpful in their creative ways that I think you can get around some of the constitutional language on term limits. But all these things should be on the table because Republicans are exploiting

the loopholes in our system and they're doing it ruthlessly in revolution. relentlessly, and we have to find ways to, and the system cannot work. The whole thing falls apart if the popular will of the people is denied because of a handful of justices who were put on the court by Donald Trump, a guy who only won the popular vote once over the course of, you know, they're still ruling this way decades later. Like, we have to think really hard about how we reform our system and fix our democracy, and we should be willing to expend political capital to do that. Now, I don't think we should run on that message right now. That's not what I'm arguing.

But I think when we're in power, we have to look at that very seriously. Well, but I also think there's an expectation setting here, too, that's a, I think, is a challenge because we just talked about and you just talked about sort of gerrymandering or redrawing maps if we have a trifectin a blue state and like the same breath as, you know, Supreme Court expansion, right? And I think that we have to divide all of these reforms into reforms that we're we can do because we have power now in certain places and reforms that we can only do if we amass power that is much more power than we have right now. Which we can only do the, we can only do the latter if we do the former.

Well, right. Well, that's also true. I mean, they go hand in hand. But like, you know, you really can't blame any blue states right now for, except for Maryland. Yeah. This one guy in Maryland who's like the state Senate president, I think. Yeah, who has refused to do this. So as of right now in the calendar, he's the only one who's not doing what he could do with the power that they have in Maryland, right? Then you sort of wonder, like, if you're looking back, and it's too late now, but could Illinois have done redistricting this time around

if they jumped on it? Maybe. Like, did Pritzker make a mistake there? I don't know. I don't know why they didn't do it. But, like, you know, it's too late now, but like, that was one state. Colorado, too, like, did they miss the chance on this? I do think there's a series.

And then New York, I think there was more of a legal thing. But look, between now and 2028, you think I get New York, you got Illinois. I think you got Wisconsin maybe, which is going to be tougher because there's a Republican legislature there. But I don't know what Evers can do or the next. Pennsylvania is an option. Pennsylvania is an option. Colorado will be an option. It's Maryland, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Colorado, New York, New Jersey, maybe.

I may be missing one. There's a list of states that can get you well over a dozen new seats. Yeah. And so all that, all those, all those states got to move for sure. And if they don't move, then they deserve all the pressure and all the criticism that they have coming to them, for sure. This is hard because what happens sometimes when you redraw the districts is you take these compacted districts that off, that are largely, their urban districts usually made up of a large segment of the black population. They have. And then you, you basically do the reverse of what Republicans do, which then you divide that district up in several ways and put some of those black voters into these swing districts and make them more Democratic. And you do, and this is one of the

things that has, even New York has already said, we've already been reporting that New York may not take a maximumist approach to this in 2028 because there's fear that it will reduce New York's black representation in Congress. So we're really going to wrestle with that and figure that out. But ultimately, it's not good for anyone if Republicans just control control. Congress at infinitum because we don't draw the districts in the right way. Yeah. Because, you know, like you guys were doing the math, the math on Tuesday's podcast. And, you know, and I, like, the political environment still suggests Democrats will take the majority. But this is a historically good political environment. We're not going to

have that every time. And if we can only have the House when the president is at, the Republican president is at 38 percent and saying insane shit all the time while involved in it protracted war in the Middle East, we're not going to. going to have the House that often, which means we're not going to govern that often. It reduces the chance that a Democratic president has a governing trifect to actually get shit done. Yeah, I mean, I was doing the math on this before we started and I looked at the Cook Political. And you tell me if my calculation's wrong on this, but if we, if Democrats win all the tossups and all the lean ours, which is pretty, we pretty good. But like in a big blue, you know,

that means we get 13 seats. We flip 13 seats. And that, and for that I was saying that if that's if Republicans then win all the likely ours and all the solid ours. And of course, there are now some blue seats in solid R and likely are because of the redistricting. But so like winning all the toss-ups and all the lean-Rs and only netting 13 seats is like not, it's not great. We didn't win all the the lean R's and all the toss-ups in 2018. Right. Exactly. So it would have to be a better environment than 2018, which it might be, but like still. Now to your, to the broader national reforms, which again, And we are not going to win this on a long term on a state-by-state basis. Like you have to have national reforms.

National reform is the only way. Federal legislation is the only way to stop gerrymandering everywhere. It's the only way to change the electoral college. It's the only way to change the Supreme Court. And in order to do that, it really comes down to like, can we field candidates that win Senate seats in this cycle, at least, Alaska, Texas, Iowa, Ohio. And people might say, oh, those are some hard states. It doesn't get easier than those. It doesn't get easier.

And so if we're fielding candidates who can't figure out a way to win in those states and we're not focused on how to win in those states, then no one should be talking about all the other reforms because they're never going to get done. And one thing I do worry about is that for people who don't pay close attention to politics, they're like, well, why won't the Democrats pack the court? Why won't the Democrats do this? Why won't the Democrats do this? Well, they can't because we didn't win the Senate.

And we didn't win the Senate because we didn't get a candidate who could win Texas or could win Iowa. or when I just I only say that to tell people that like you we really have to focus on winning very difficult states, um, which we have a good chance of doing this in this environment with these candidates. Mary Peltola in Alaska and, um, James Tala Rico in Texas. You can go on and on. But like those are the kind of those are the states that aren't just nice to win. Like we have to win if we ever hope to have these national reforms. There's a longer conversation. And it's a quite depressing conversation about the state of the Senate map. Because if you sort of look at, at it. But it's like that's everything. That's all the stuff we're talking about, all the anger

over the VS, the voting rights act and the Supreme Court, all this shit. It all comes down to the Senate. No. And I mean, it's exactly right. And so if you look at the Senate map, I'm doing this on top of my head. But there are only two Republicans in states, like in remaining in truly swing states. And it's Ron Johnson and Wisconsin and Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania. Yep. Because we have both centers in Michigan. We have both senators in Arizona. We have both senators in Georgia. And it's like, and this is the map in 2026 where we are expanding into Alaska. This is why I think Mary Poltola's race is so important. Like if we can now put Alaska in the column, then perhaps then if Murkowski retires at some point, maybe we can get the other seat there. So now we have that. But like,

it's, it's, everyone's looking at Texas like, oh, Democrats always, they always dream about Texas, but it never happens. And it's a lot, it's really expensive. So it was like, well, there's not a lot of other options. Yeah. You know, like, we're going to have to win Texas if we hope to survive as a democracy, unfortunately. And Florida, too. Like, I mean, this is just, unless we want a bunch of liberals move into Wyoming and

fucking Montana, which. Honestly, it's the highest leverage play that Democrats could do. Move to move to Wyoming. Move 50,000 to 100,000, move 100,000 Californians to. Look, Jackson is beautiful. Or to Wyoming. Do it after the 2030 census is completed. that we don't lose even more electoral votes and then go.

Yeah. That's a, you know what? Hey, you know what this was? A no bad ideas brainstorm. You know, there could have been bad ideas, but there weren't. At least, well, that's what we're going to call it that. They could be bad ideas in there, right? Pod Save America is brought to you by ZipRecruiter.

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So one of the architects of the redistricting strategy, Trump political director James Blair, is about to take a leave from the White House to run the midterm operation full time. Like any good Beltway strategists, he marked the occasion by conducting a lengthy interview with Dasha Burns at Playbook about his plans, which were then transcribed.

And he summed them up as attack, attack, attack. And his key quote, swing voters already think the Democratic Party's too far left, And we're going to make sure voters know just how far left they are. They are woke, weak, and way too liberal. You get three Ws. You always need alliteration. He knew that liberal one at the end needed a way because you need the three Ws.

Otherwise, it's not a good slogan. And the whole country will be reminded of that. He also told Dasher Burns that Democratic primaries in infighting are doing real damage to the party and that he plans to capitalize on that. Seems like that's a play for social media to get everyone fighting even more. But we can leave that aside. If I'm not mistaken, message box pro

subscribers have already seen your take on this, Dan. But for those who have not visited messageboxpro.com to lock in the special early sign-up price before it's too late. How's that for an organic plug? That's organic,

and I'm going to make even organic in a second. Yes. How do you think Democrats should be prepared to respond to the weak, woken, way too liberal attack? Well, John, great question. And great opportunity to talk about message box.

Pro. So thank you for that. Wonderful. Some of you may remember a few weeks ago I launched Message Box Pro, which is a subscription service for people who are working politics and communications at any level. And subscribers get weekly strategy memos from me, data-driven insights on what to say, advice on how to get your message heard, polling analysis, and access to a community of candidates, operatives, activists, and organizers. Nerds.

Some are nerds. Some are quite cool. The real nerds are not subscribers. And we are up and running. We've already have strategy memos out on where swing voters get their information on how to construct a narrative for a coherent, cohesive narrative for this election, you know, what the latest polling on the economy says and what to do with it. And the message box pro community is up and running.

And it's truly amazing. We have all these people in there every day connecting, sharing best practices. They're posting their questions from me. I'm answering them every day. It's like it's really awesome. I'm really excited about it. And as you mentioned, there is a special founding members discounted price of $49.99 a month forever. It locks in forever.

No matter how much Trump's raises prices and everything else, you get to lock this in, this price in. There are only a handful of those left. So there is no better time to sign up than now. So go to messageboxpro.com. End of quasi-organic plug. Thank you. I'm going to give a quasi-organic plug on a plug. here. I was doing a fundraising event where I was moderating for a couple house candidates in this cycle.

And they're in the red to blue program and they could flip their seats. And they said to the crowd that because the, like, you know, the D-Trip offers them financial support and all the support that the D-Trip can. but like they're not getting detailed campaign advice. They're not getting detailed strategy advice. It is hard to hire pollsters strategists, right? You've got your like very small team if you're running a house campaign. And so they were like, we listen to Pod Save America a lot to try to get, like we to try to get advice. And I'm like, oh gosh, now I'm sorry. Like we're going to make sure we get some, no, we can't have too many no bad ideas brainstorms here.

But our friend Dan here doesn't just spout off ideas on the pod. He's going to write them down in memos precisely for candidates like this who can't afford to hire fancy consultants. But Dan can provide his wisdom in written form to all of you who are running for office, especially, and that's our house candidates. What about people who are running for like local office and races that are even smaller than that? And they definitely can't afford to have these consultants. So I think it's a fantastic service that you're doing this. I think it's very much needed. And if you are someone who's running for office out there or working for someone who's running for office,

I think this would be a very, very valuable use of your money. Well, thank you for that. Double on, quasi-organic plug. But now, I'm going to see your original question. Yeah, I forgot. I asked the question. So, basically, the question relates to James Blair, woke, week, and way too liberal. That's it.

And so basically what James Blair is doing here, other than just puffing his chest in a political interview, is trying to rerun the 2024 strategy in 2026. And I have bad news from Mr. Blair. It's not 2024 anymore. The world has changed. Views of Trump have changed. The in 2024, Trump was seen as strong. Seen as much stronger than Biden, much stronger than Kamala Harris.

Democrats were seen as the extreme party. That has flipped. Pluralities of voters now describe Trump's leadership as weak. There is a tip poll from last week, which shows that a large number of independents describe his leadership as weak. He has not seen as a strong man anymore, in part because he is dawdling around. out there. He's not getting anything done. He's sleeping at events. He just seems distracted enough. He doesn't seem like a strong figure because he promised to take on the system and he really didn't do any of that.

And even, well, I'm not saying the Democrats have we have are associated with American flags, baseball and apple pie right now. But voters now, because of the way Trump is governed, voters now see the Republican Party is more extreme. In the Cook political report poll of the 32 battleground districts, more voters are worried about Republican extremism than Democrat extremism. So, like, I'm not saying that this, that this strategy can't have some effect. It's more likely to have an effect in ginning up GOP turnout than persuading swing voters. But it is not, maybe it's the only strategy available to them with a president with these approval ratings saying all the dumb shit he's saying, but it's not necessarily a winning strategy. You get one of these attacks.

If you're running in a Senate race or a House race, run a bunch of ads that you, you know, some crazy position you've taken in the past. And in your week and your two, woke and all that kind of shit. Do you, how do you respond? You respond to the attack, you ignore the attack, or you do the, they're just doing this because they have nothing to say about the fact that you can't afford gas and rent and your mortgage. You don't do that last one.

Let me explain. I think the way to think about this is they just, it's, we're six months from the election. There aren't really ads on the air in any of these races. They've told us what the plan is. So you can prepare for it. So you spend that between now and then, inoculating yourself against that attack. And there are a couple ways to do that.

One is this is an attack on generic Democrats. Don't be a generic Democrat. Find ways to separate yourself from the party. You can do that going to the middle. You can do that going to the left, depending on your district. You can do that by criticizing the former president. You can do that by criticizing the leadership.

Be willing to run against the Democratic establishment. That will help inoculate you against an attack on generic Democrats. So that's one. Two is the way you demonstrate strength is not trying to talk tougher on immigration or crime than Trump, although you should, if those are issues in your race, you should have positions on them that show that you take people's concerns about them seriously. The way you show strength is to show that you are a fighter, right? How you fight is more important than whether you fight left or you fight right or you fight middle. It is that you are fighting for something. So look for ways to highlight that.

about yourself and go on offense and attack the other side as extreme and demonstrate their extremism. Okay. All right. Good advice. You can get some more of that advice at messageboxpro.com. All right. While we're talking about democratic strategy, there's been some developments around the DNC autopsy report in which we have taken great interest. The chair of the DNC, less so. The AP reported on Wednesday that, quote, democratic operatives have begun informal discussions about recruiting a new chair and that senior strategists have even approached our pal Amanda Littman, founder of Run for something about the job, though she has declined. They also interviewed, the AP also interviewed current and former party officials who defended

Ken Martin, said his job is safe and are apparently mad at us for asking him why he hasn't kept his promise to release the autopsy. Then on Thursday, our friends at the bulwark published a piece from former Biden Harris deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty titled, Here's What I Told, the DNC autopsy. We've talked to Rob before. He's been on offline. I feel like he's been on the pod at some point. He's been a potse.

Yeah. I've been a interviewed on a positive memory. It's a long piece, long, long piece. But especially if you're working on campaigns, if you're an operative, if you're in the field, if you volunteers, plenty of interesting insights that we can get into. But one notable thing I want to highlight, Rob writes that his understanding of the autopsy mystery is that, quote, no autopsy was released because there is no actual autopsy.

The members of the autopsy team were in over their heads and struggled to put the thing together. What they produced was a loose summary of a bunch of interviews that were largely done without talking to the campaign or the big spenders, end quote. Now, Tommy and Lovett and I sort of talked about this a little after the Ken Martin interview. Tommy had heard similar reports. I had heard similar reports from people, from different people. So this is just more corroboration of that story from Rob, who was. was interviewed by the autopsy team and then his autopsy,

what he told them was never win anywhere. And so he published this piece. Your reactions to Rob's piece and also the continued frustrations with Ken Martin and the missing autopsy. Which is the great title for a Hardy Boy's book. The Autopsy DNC Ken Martin conversation is so frustrating because it's, It's very clear what happened here, right? Like, there is, Ken Martin promised to do an autopsy. The people he picked through the autopsy did a piss poor job.

There is no autopsy. He looked at what that was, said, we cannot release this. It would be embarrassing. And now he's out there saying we can't release the autopsy, but there's no autopsy, so we can't solve the problem. Because he can't do, because he has not been, like the easiest thing to do would be to say, to do it right the first time, which would have been cool. That's number one.

Yeah, we could have done that. Failing that to just be honest and say it needs more time. And you would have taken some shit for that, but that is better. But then to say it's finished, it's in a drawer, it's incredibly useful. Look at the playbook we use based on it. Well, will you release it? Well, we can't release it because it doesn't exist. And so we're just like, it's a never anything.

He's basically lied himself into a corner here. Yeah. Yeah, he has. And this is what made. This is what's so enraging about it because, like you said, would you have taken some shit if when they said the. autopsy was going to be released. He said, you know what, it's not ready. We need more time. You know, there's a whole, yeah, but like if I had interviewed him then, and he said that to me,

even if he said it to me when I interviewed him a couple weeks ago, he was like, you know what, I know I said we were going to release it. I know people want it. We're going to, the midterms are coming and we're going to be working on it. And then, you know, the day after the midterms, we were released full one because it'll be, you know, we're going to head into primary season then. And then for campaigns running for president, they can learn lessons then. and we're going to do that. I would have been like, oh, okay, cool. Instead of what he's dealing with right now.

And it is the thing that everyone's like, oh, the autopsy, the autopsy, who's obsessed of? The autopsy is not the fucking, I mean, it is the point because I think it is very useful, but it is the, like, theoretically useful. But it's like dishonesty that is really crazy right now. And on Rob's thing, like, so what we have here, and this is Rob's thing in relation to Ken's answers, we have a. A single senior Biden-Harris official wrote his own autopsy that includes more info and more lessons than anything Ken Martin's DNC has released.

And, you know, contrary to what Ken tried to tell me, like, the world hasn't ended. Democrats aren't tearing themselves apart over it. Rob writes that some of his own colleagues, like disagree with some of the things that he concluded in there. Fine. They can write their own. People can debate it. Figure out the best way to move forward so we can win. We're all big boys and girls.

Like, we can all be trusted with the information. And what it seems like for every time Ken Martin talks about this and now some other DNC officials, former and current that are defending him, is that like they don't believe that we should be trusted with the information. They don't think that we should have it. They, they, in Ken Martin either thinks that we're stupid or that we don't deserve the full truth. And either option is completely unacceptable for the person who's running the Democratic National Committee. Yeah, it's so, the whole thing is just so stupid and pointless because we didn't have to be here. Like what matters? A lot of people say, like, what are you going to learn from the?

autopsy, but even it was perfectly done. That's to me beside the point. Yes. What bothers me about this is that the way the autopsy has been handled is indicative of the larger problems at the DNC. And you hear this from a lot of people in the party. Donors, operatives, elected officials, very few people are happy with the way things are going to the DNC. They're unhappy with how the money's being spent. They're not happy with how little is being raised. And I'm happy with how little's being raised. And we, like Ken Martin with you, you can debate all the factors of it. But there is dissatisfaction there.

And there are challenges in the leadership. It is born as autopsy. So like, what do you do about that? Can you get a new DNC chair? I don't know. It's not a particularly easy thing to do. So apparently the big problem is not the rules in getting rid of the DNC chair. It's finding someone who will take the job because the job sucks.

And it's very, very, very hard. And Ken Martin was dealt a very, very, very tough hand with. and, you know, it's just the whole thing is dumb. Well, I think the problems at the DNC and the lack of transparency and the dishonesty from Ken are also, I think, emblematic of a larger issue with the Democratic establishment. And this goes back to Rob's piece. Rob, who was one of Biden's most senior staffers, writes in the piece, quote, President Biden never should have run for re-election in the first place, end quote.

Now, like, credit to Rob for admitting. that and also for acknowledging that when he publicly made the case after the Biden Trump debate, that Biden was still the only person who could beat Trump and the rest of us who thought otherwise were, you know, self-important bedwetters. Self-important podcasters. Well, he also, we're all, specific words in the email. I was combining to it was also and then everyone else is the bedwetting brigade. Yes. So beyond podcasters, anyone who thought that anyone who thought that maybe that debate was bad and maybe Joe Biden should step aside was part of the bedwetting brigade, which I guess included most Americans.

And Bob, to his credit, and the thing says he was basically just trying to be a team player because he was on the campaign. It's like, that's fine. But the reason I bring that up is, I promise, not to relitigate old beefs. But I don't think. Let's do this entire section on Ken Martin and the guy who wrote the email that called the self-important podcasters. But the goal is not to relitigate old beefs.

And this is, everyone should read Rob's thing. And I want to talk about some of Rob's insights because I think they're great. And Rob and I have talked about it privately. So it's not like this is the first time this is happening. But I do not think that the Democratic establishment has fully reckoned with the magnitude of the credibility problem that it has with voters. And a big reason why is that a whole bunch of them tried to tell us with a straight face that Joe Biden was fine and the debate wasn't that bad. And he was still the only person who could beat Donald Trump. And now Ken Martin is trying to tell us.

with a straight face that actually he has been releasing the lessons from 2024, and we're all assholes for wanting the full autopsy, and the DNC's finances are totally fine. And if people in the Democratic establishment who work on campaigns, candidates, officials, if they want to keep doing that shit, fine, but don't be surprised when people don't believe what you say about politics. It's just like, and like I don't, it's like there is a credibility problem here, and I get, we've been on the inside.

And I get it. And you're on a team and you just, you've got to like, anyone who criticizes you, they're bedwaters and all that bullshit. But like, you have to forget about the people criticizing. You have to think about beyond that what the voters think. And don't treat voters like they're stupid. Like people know when you're lying to them. Like everyone, like everyone knew that Ken Martin wasn't telling the truth in that interview. It was pretty obvious. Yeah. I mean, there's, there are two different things. Yeah. That was the big problem. There's a different way in which the interview goes where Ken Martin comes on. He gives his answer.

and is not defensive about it. And he basically kept trying to tell you that he actually, for all intensive purposes, released the autopsy. So you should stop asking about it. And that's how he ended up down this rabbit hole, which you can not get himself out of. I guess the only thing I would add to this. And if you want to talk about the recommendations at Rob's report, which I think I think is quite good.

But I just think the one, just to put a button on it, and I say this with good nature, is that Rob, who called the self-important podcasters in that email, discuss the autopsy today on his podcast. Which Rob is self-aware enough to make jokes about, which is great. Yes. Which is totally fine. Again, it's call us whatever the fuck you want. Yeah, I don't care about that. It's actually great for us in the long run.

Right. Joe Biden, not stepping aside, cost us all a lot, right? All of us. And not forget about us, but lots of people. Not us. It didn't cost. Right, yeah. I'm fine.

But like, the whole country. Collectively cost. That's what I met. Yes, collectively. And I think, you know, part of the autopsy is not like, oh, well, Biden's gone, whatever. But it is the Ken Martin thing. And I think the reason I was so excited about it is it like, it was like PTSD from 2024 where the Democratic Party is like, all is fine. Don't believe your eyes. Everything is good here. Leave it to us. We got it. And you're all bedwetters. So what do you think some of the recommendations and insights from Rob's memo? Like what? What do you, what? What stood out at you? So what I worried a little bit about just sort of 2024 lessons in general in the autopsy is 2024 is somewhat of a black swan event, right? You have Biden, you have this older candidate who does not leave, then face plants on a debate stage. And then they just throw the vice president with 107 days to go against someone like Donald Trump,

who then gets shot in the ear. Like, you know, it's just, you know, like every, like it's tough series of events. Tough series events that are not going to, you know, not going to. on what happened again. And so, like, there is this world in which you could take the wrong lessons from something like that. Or you could just throw up your arms and say, it was 107 days. We were fucked.

Inflation was high. What I thought was useful about Rob's was I think some of the lessons in there are useful for campaigns going forward in terms of how you think about communicating in this media age. Yeah. Like, even in, you know, even he makes a point that the campaign spent half as much on digital as on TV. which was a dramatic shift from 2020 when it was 70-30 digital, 70-30 TV digital, I believe.

But TV was sort of still the dominant medium, right? It was really how it drove, is where the campaigns, the messaging they truly believed in went. It sort of was how they thought about the campaign strategy. And I thought just thinking about like, you know, almost not getting rid of all TV ads, but shifting the focus more digital. The one thing I thought he said at the end that was very smart was,

And this is something that I think it's smart because I agree with it. I've been arguing for it for years is that you have to digital should no longer be an apartment in a campaign. And I thought about you when I read that. It's all digital. And I think that we really have to just think that way. And there's a lot of very specific things about how you do with creators and how to think about branding and all of that.

And something that are unanswerable questions about how, and we're getting really nerdy here, how you think about digital persuasion in an algorithmically powered world that only shows people on content they already agree with? Yes. We had the debate a million times throughout the 2024 campaign about what is polling well and testing well and the people who test these ads and they test it with like not just 300 voters in some shitty public poll, but like thousands and thousands of voters and like with you know.

And they're like these are these are really great testing messages and yet, you know, Kamala Harris talking about fascism or this or that or brat some or all the bullshit. it. And Rob talks about this in terms of brand. And I hate the word brand. It's icky, but I think it is useful in this context. You have to use it. Yeah, yeah, I get it. But he says at one point, you know, we could have focused more on

prescription drugs or whatever the top polling issue was, but that would have been driving a message when we should have been building a brand. A brand is a story about who you are and what you believe that everything else, the ads, the organic contact, the surrogates, the creator appearances, the events levels up to. I think this is, I think that is so important. And I worry sometimes that when we, and this is like I think a legacy of when we grew up in politics, which was like you get the polling back, you get the messaging.

These are the top polling messages. We must get these messages out because they work with voters. But voters are never going to fucking hear these messages anymore if they are boring. If they don't tell a story about the candidate, maybe they'll hear the messages, but they won't be persuasive as to voting for the actual candidate because they may like the message, but they may not. like the candidate delivering the message or may not trust the candidate delivering the message. And so everything has to level up to who is this person? What do they stand for? Why are they running for president?

So much of what Rob's memo made me think is just the importance of the candidates themselves. I know. I know. I know. But like you think that's fucking obvious, Dan, but it's clearly not. It's clearly not in our party because we do all this stuff around the candidates, It's give them good ads, good messaging, this, that, the campaign staff, we blame for this, that. But it's like if you don't, I mean, at one point he talks about, he says, digital presence is a direct reflection of a candidate's brand.

It's how voters come to understand who a candidate is. For this to work, the candidate needs to be actively engaged in the planning and execution of their social media presence. And Rob tells a story about when AOC endorsed Biden, he like talked to AOC for like 45 minutes about and she had like detailed ideas. is about digital, about how she wanted her, the videos they did with her, what she wanted to say, all this kind of stuff. And then he said when he worked for Beto, back when Beto ran, Beddow was like the same way when Beto was like going viral and all that kind of stuff. And this is the same thing that I say a million times with speech writing, right? Which is like, because Barack Obama was so involved in his speeches and because I spent enough time with him, that's the only reason

I was able to like help him deliver good speeches. And I think on a lot of campaigns, the candidate looks to the staff and the consultants and is like, all right, make me a winner. And I just don't think you can do that now. I think if you were going, especially if you're going to run for president, you need to know exactly what you believe, exactly why you want to be president. And you need to be able to communicate that, if not first to the American people, to at least your staff on a regular basis.

And I just don't think that has happened in a while. This is going to be an unpopular suggestion that I often offer to candidates when I talk to him and this drives the staff fucking bananas. But if you were thinking of running for president right now and you do not have TikTok, Instagram on your phone and you're not going to YouTube and just watching it, then you should not run. And maybe you want to put on a burner because you don't necessarily want the Chinese government slash Larry Ellison to have all your shit. But point being is you have to be fluent in the language of today's media ecosystem. system to understand it. And it can't just be that your, you know, Rob makes this in the point. You can't just be that your staff walks in and gives you a quick five-minute briefing and a memo on what you're supposed to do because you don't understand it. When they relaunched the HQ

headquarters or whatever it is now that was the Kamala HQ, and Kamala Harris did this briefing. She did a video for it. She clearly had no idea what it was or what it was going to do. But that is, unfortunately, that is a lot of Kamala Harris's appearances. Yeah. You have to swim. in the sometimes very rough and dirty seas of today's internet to be able to truly communicate. I was going to say, when you said sit down and make sure you have all those on your phone, yes. I think the other thing you need to do is before you even meet with your advisors, and this sounds maybe cheesy and a little antiquated, but I don't know,

write down, type out, why you want to be president, what you want to do. Do you have a few big ideas? Like actual big ideas, not like, I want to grow the middle class. I want to bring down costs. No, no, like, people didn't like it. It was controversial. Everyone knew what it was by the end. Freeze the rent.

Free public buses. Like, if you want someone more moderate, Gretchen Whitmer when she was running in Michigan, fix the damn roads, right? Like, just pick fucking something that you actually want to do that you will be able to talk about and communicate about in an authentic way on all of those platforms that you are also watching because they're on your phone. Yeah. If you do not know why you're running, you can't answer what the, what is it known, once known as the Ted Kennedy. question. Right. Because he failed to answer it in the 80 race.

Then you shouldn't run. But then all the time with TikTok's not going to help you. Then you're just consuming content. You're just doom scrolling. Anyway, go read it. It's at the bulwark. I'm glad Rob did it. Good for him.

And other people should do the same because I guess we're not going to get it out of the DNC. All right. One last story before we go. The new gold statue of Donald Trump that was gifted to the president by crypto grifters and blessed by his spiritual advisor and passion. who has repeatedly claimed that, quote, this is not a golden calf, but rather a symbol of resilience and gratitude to God for sparing Trump's life from a sniper's bullet in Butler. All of that is real.

That is a real thing that happened earlier in the week. Trump himself couldn't make it to the statute dedication, which was, I believe, it has Doral Golf Club. But he did call into the ceremony with this observation. Everybody is taking pictures of it. Everybody is, my people told me that it's unbelievable all day long. They're taking pictures. They stand up next to it and have their picture taken.

It is unbelievable. He is correct about that. I would definitely take a picture next to it. The Palm Beach Post interviewed a bunch of PGA pros who were at Dural Health for a tournament. Best response. It's big and gold. About all I got. It's his place.

He can do whatever he wants. I guess that's true. It's big and gold and he can do whatever he wants. What did you think of this one? Just so fucking weird. It's so weird. Like, I want every person in America to see this. Like, it is a just the idea that the president, just, I want you to think about this for a second.

We're at war. Prices are high. Shit's not going great generally. Presidents, even in the best, of times, are pretty busy. So there's a scheduling meeting. They talk about the things the president could do. And remember, when you're scheduling Trump, you have to schedule it around 6 to 8 hours of Fox News viewing. And truth socialing.

And truth socialing really happens after working hours when he should be asleep. And you decide this request comes. And you're like, you know what? That would be good use of the president's time? You know what wouldn't be fucking weird at all? You know what would not? It would definitely be good politics and not at all contribute to the idea that he's a narcissist who cares only about himself. Let's have him call into the ceremony about the gold statue delivered from God of the president at his golf club.

So many parts of the story are funny. The people who did the statue, created the statue, used it to sell a mean coin called Patriot coin. So this is the crypto time. And then the pastor, who's a guest became his spiritual advisor. Great. Doing a bang up job of that. Sign me up. Just did an Isaac Chotner interview, which, oh, man. He asked him, like, well, how did you get into this? How did you become a Trump supporter? And he said, so early on, I was there. And the Lord told me then. The first thing the Lord told me was to show the world that this man's not racist.

And then at the end, Isaac asks him about the AI image of Jesus and what he thought about that. And he said, well, again, I was one of the first people to reach out to the president and say, that was bad. Please take that down as fast as possible. And Isaac said, what did he say? He said, he thought it was a doctor. But again, he's no theologian. And then Isaac says, I'm not a the theologian. And I knew it wasn't a doctor. And the pastor just goes, great, great. So good. So I'm so glad we can last to laugh. Yeah. You know, just throw the statue up there with the ballroom and the arch and the $400 million guitar jet and the $10 billion he's putting in his pocket from the IRS. Oh,

free idea for Democratic digital consultants. It's a little AI. So follow your local laws. Unclature pearls. Well, also, it is illegal in some states. But we need images. Maybe it's the only idea. You just need fucking Photoshop.

You just need images of vulnerable Republicans worshiping at the Trump statue. It's a good idea. I think we do with J.D. Vance and or Marker Rubio. You know what? Not even Messaged Rec Pro. That shit's free. I mean, it is now.

you just said it. Yeah. We're not putting this behind the paywall. Lucky you guys. All right, that's our show for today. And in case you want more Dan and more great advice, he's back in your feet on Sunday with our pal David Axelrod. I can't wait for that episode. Excited.

Have a good weekend, everyone. Bye, everyone. Podsave America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Ferris Safari with Reed Erlin, Eichaelin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroote, Ben Hethkoe, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Carol Palaviv, David Tolls, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.