Pod Save America - Trump Closes With Small Fries and Big D*cks

Episode Date: October 22, 2024

Running on fumes with just two weeks to go, Trump raves about Arnold Palmer's genitalia and works the fryer at a McDonald's. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris campaigns across the battleground-state suburbs with Liz Cheney, and Barack Obama hits the trail for her in the Sun Belt. Then, Jon, Lovett, and Tommy discuss the legality of Elon Musk's million-dollar voter-registration giveaways, and Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz stops by to talk about the state of the race and what people can do to help.

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Wow, okay. On today's show, an exhausted Donald Trump is talking dicks and flipping burgers. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Wow, okay. On today's show, an exhausted Donald Trump is talking dicks and flipping burgers. As both campaigns race to get those last remaining

undecided voters off the fence. I'd much rather be talking burgers and flipping dicks. Oh, high fived on that. I didn't even know that was coming. I like to surprise you guys. Kamala Harris continues her sprint through the battlegrounds with help from Barack Obama, Liz Cheney, and many others.

While the world's richest man launches a legally questionable million dollar sweepstakes to help Trump. And later friend of the pod, Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz talks to Love It about how the race is looking and the most important things everyone can do to help. But first, Donald Trump may very well win this race, but with two weeks to go,

he seems to be losing steam and his mind. A Trump advisor reportedly told an outlet that their 78-year-old candidate has been canceling interviews because he's, quote, exhausted. A recent Associated Press headline reads, A failed mic leaves Donald Trump pacing the stage in silence for nearly 20 minutes in Detroit. This was after he stopped taking questions at a Pennsylvania town hall so he could rock out to Ave Maria and YMCA for a good half hour or so.

And whenever Trump does speak, his rhetoric lurches from deranged to absurd. Here he is with Fox News' Howie Kurtz over the weekend. but nobody wants to put him in. It was the biggest crowd I've ever spoken to, and I've spoken to the biggest crowds. I've never seen that many people. I tell you, there was a beauty to it, and there was a love to it that I've never seen before. The enemy within is a pretty ominous phrase if you're talking about other Americans.

I think it's accurate. I mean, I think it's accurate. After our interview, Donald Trump flew to Pennsylvania. Arnold Palmer's hotel, where he discussed the golfer's side of his manhood. This is a guy that was all man. His man was strong and tough, and I refused to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros,

they came out of there, they said, oh my God. That's unbelievable. I had to say it. He had to say it. Why do you guys think he felt the need to tell the crowd that the late Arnold Palmer was hung like a one wood? There's a lot to talk about in that whole package. Why did Halle Kurtz have like a four packs a day voice in the interview and then he sounded normal after? There's a lot to talk about in that whole package. Why, yeah, I would say. First of all, why did Howie Kurtz have like a four packs

a day voice in the interview and then he sounded normal after, what was going on there? So, I was, this is neither here nor there, but also, Howard Kurtz, he looked like he was from the 70s. It was like a, not in a good or bad way, but like his haircut looked like he was like reporting on the oil embargo during the Carter era. It was a deeply weird interview.

Do you shower together after you golf? This was one of my first questions. Like I'm not a golfer, but it doesn't seem like a shower afterwards type of sport. Yeah, Ben Dreyfus did some original reporting on this. I was gonna say. Did you guys see this? I didn't catch that.

Tommy, I was gonna bring it up and then I was like, I don't know how to explain Ben's reporting in a way that is appropriate even for this podcast. I don't wanna scoop him. I don't think how to explain Ben's reporting in a way that is appropriate even for this podcast. I just think it's cool that of the three of us, I'm not the one that went deeper into whether or not Oliver Palmer had a giant dick deep under the dung.

It's a weird story. Ben Dreyfus did. Ben Dreyfus did. And? There's a lot of circumstantial evidence that he does not necessarily have a big dick. Had. Circum... Sorry.

Rest in peace. Yeah, he's dead. He's dead. Circum, sorry. Rest in peace. Yeah, he's dead. He's dead, yeah. He's dead. He died in 2016. Yeah, they had to push that lid down on the coffin pretty hard. Wait, shit.

Shit. This is what this campaign has done to us. There's nothing left to talk about except for dead golfers junk. This is the point too, like, we're skipping over how in the interview, he was like, oh yeah, I do think that the violent attack on the Capitol was a day of love. And, and I do think the Democrats are the enemy within,

which again, we, we predict that this would happen. I think this, this was like right after Mike Johnson, speaking of Johnson's went on meet the press or somewhere and was asked about this. And he's like, oh, that's, went on Meet the Press or somewhere and was asked about this and he's like, oh, that's not what he meant, that's not what he meant. And sure enough, Donald Trump's like, this is exactly what I meant.

I'm gonna punish Adam Schiff, that's what I meant. Whatever Glenn Youngkin said, whatever Mike Johnson said, whatever anyone else is saying to try to defend me, that this is exactly what I mean. Yeah, it's sort of, it's, if Trump were on a unicycle saying I'm gonna imprison my enemies, it's still dangerous, even though it's pretty funny that he's on a unicycle saying I'm gonna imprison my enemies, it's still dangerous, even though it's pretty funny that he's on a unicycle.

Yeah, a deranged clown can be funny, but like, you know, you give him the nukes, not so funny. In general, how do you guys think the let Trump be Trump strategy is playing out in the final weeks here? Net positive, net negative? I think on balance, it's a net negative. Uh, like it seems, it's hard to argue that if you were just, you know, have like a disciplined message about the economy

for the remainder of campaign, that that would probably help him. Calling January 6 a day of love absolutely unequivocally hurts him, and repeating it on how it hurts him. I think the Arnold Palmer stuff, like, look, there's a lot of young men in particular who hear this and just think it's funny. They think Trump is authentic, he's goofy, he doesn't care about being politically correct or saying the right thing.

Like the head spinning part about this is always that he wins evangelical voters like 95 to one and you would think that the kind of Mike Pence's of the world are the people who would find this offensive in some way or the people get mad about like a Disney character not being white every few years, just kinda brush this stuff off. No, there's a little bit of politics in him talking about

Arnold Palmer having a big dick, which is like he was a real man. There used to be real men in this country. We celebrate real masculine men. And the other side doesn't. With big dicks who golf. Big swingin' dicks. Big golfing dicks. Bunch of guys in the shower just.

Yeah. Even I'm uncomfortable with how much he has a stance. He doesn't even knee club this Arnold Palmer guy. Jesus Christ. He's just out there with a putter, fuckin' buck ass naked, golfing. Let me tell you about the only poll that matters.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ah. Ah. I. Yeah. Yeah. I mean. I just think like, look, it doesn't matter how, look, any great golfer will tell you. Oh, here we go.

You don't need a, you can have a heavier club, you can have a lighter club. It's about touch. It's about finesse. I was gonna say, I was waiting for Tommy to make the motion and the. I beat him to it. I beat him to it.

About his short game. Hey. Continue, what else were you gonna talk about? Yeah,. Hey. Continue, what else were we gonna talk about? Yeah, I mean, look. What else were we gonna talk about, John? I don't know. I think you can say in these final weeks he is not driving much of a message himself.

We can separate him from the campaign, of course. His campaign is running all kinds of ads. They are driving a very specific message. He is not driving much of one. There was also a time story, I don't know if you guys saw this last week, about how he's just, over the weekend, how he's just bored of the economy.

That's why he's making it all about immigration. Like when he does drive a message, it's almost exclusively about immigration because he thinks the crowd seems bored by, which I think is very revealing. It's what the crowd likes, and it's what he likes. He's genuinely passionate about it. I think like with Trump, the medium is the message.

I think when he's ranting and raving in front of his biggest fans, I think his biggest fans like it when it gets outside of that, I think when he's ranting and raving in front of his biggest fans, I think his biggest fans like it when it gets outside of that. I think it hurts him. I think the kind of goofy, rambling, occasionally funny Trump in a podcast setting, I think they think it's better for him

than sitting down for mainstream interviews. I don't think it's as helpful as their campaign would want it to be because he is so, he's just lost a step. So even when he's doing his greatest hits, he's just not bringing the same energy to it. He doesn't have many more steps to lose at this point.

No, no. He's almost out of steps. Have you seen these clips of Frankie Valli? No. Frankie Valli has a Vegas show. Yes, it's quite sad. I believe, and basically they kind of wheel out into 90 some odd year old Frankie Valli and he kind show, I believe. And basically they kind of wheel out into 90 some odd year old Frankie Valli and he kind of holds the mic up here and then they just play his greatest hits.

And increasingly that's what Trump is like. They kind of get him out there and he's like, they used to be tough in this country. I think the Jews might be responsive. It's like, and it's a little bit like he's a random number generator and just like some part of the Trump large language model will kind of spit something out.

There's a bit of, you'll be surprised to learn, there's a bit of hyperbole that like, whenever Trump says something crazy now, they try to like put everything in the dementia frame, right, he's lost it. Like the Arnold Palmer thing is, I don't think it's not that, even though some people were treating it like that. He didn't tell it as well as he would have five years ago.

He would have been more charming and funny about it a couple of years ago. Right, right. But I do think when you combine the like, the weird swaying to YMCA and Ave Maria at that town hall with the 20 minutes of walking around in silence while he's waiting for a mic, also no one could get him a mic in 20 minutes.

It's inexplicable. That seems great. Inexplicable you don't have another mic. And just like the rallies, the rambling, the speeches are going on for even longer than usual and they've always been really long. Again, if you watch a rally or an interview with a MAGA friendly outlet,

which is the only ones he does now, I think you will not be impressed with Donald Trump. And you're right, the podcast ones, maybe some people are impressed with that, some of the podcast interviews, but I don't know. The irony is he only does stuff in his safe space. He's on like kind of podcasts with former wrestlers like The Undertaker or kind of Barstool Sports type shows

or Fox kind of friendly audiences. But he does better when he's pressed a little bit. When he did the thing with John McAuliffe-Waite, the editor of Bloomberg News, they got into a back and forth and Trump was pissed. He was punching back and he got aggressive and it made him a little more disciplined. And also he was getting cut off by Mikkel Thwaites.

We couldn't go on. He couldn't do the weave for 35 minutes about some bizarre story that ends with, you know, the golden bear's ass is kind of like the punch line. It's like he gets forced to be a little more focused and like pugilistic. And I think when he's on,

when he's just like alone at a mic, he ends up in going on these diatribes that hurt him. Yeah. Two of Trump's comms people did an interview with Semaphore where they said that the free wheeling Trump is a strategic choice to counteract the Harris campaign's portrayal of him. And basically they said that, you know, if voters see Trump laughing and joking, I've never seen him laugh, they know he can't possibly be a threat to democracy.

Do you agree with that general idea? I agree that that's what they're trying to do. And I think there's some validity to it. I do think that if the only thing people saw was Trump laughing it up at a McDonald's or having a funny moment on a podcast with Theo Vaughn about Coke, and then what they see on television

is Liz Cheney being like, he will end democracy. I think that that is their fair pushback, but it's not enough. It doesn't counteract the other many clips of him actually issuing the threats and doing all of the rest. Yeah, I think we're kind of, we're trying to retrofit reality into a strategy here. Yeah.

You know, I mean, I think the thing that prevents people from thinking that he is some scary authoritarian threat to democracy is his four years in office and the fact that he's like the best known celebrity on the planet. I'm sure these interviews help him goofing around being fun and talking about like, you know, the guy who took over for Lou Gehrig, that all helps Wally Pipp. But yeah, I mean, these guys are trying to make it sound like they have some sort of strategic genius here when it's just their guy doing Trump jazz.

I thought what was most revealing about that is that they are concerned that he appears as a threat to democracy. And they know that that is not politically helpful to him. And so that they are trying this in the first place. Agree with you guys that they're not quite succeeding. Well, yeah, I just think that like there are two campaigns running.

Like Donald Trump is not strategic, but he has smart people around him. Everything they do isn't gonna be stupid. Trump is gonna get wins on the board. He's gonna have effective moments. He's gonna have charming moments. I think to Tommy's point, yeah, they're trying to turn the fact that they can't really figure out what to do

with him at a rally to stop him from going off script for an hour and a half. They're trying to turn that into an advantage. But like reading that interview, it was like, well, this is pretty smart. Now you then remember, wait, half, they're trying to turn that into an advantage. But like reading that interview, I was like, well, this is pretty smart. Now you then remember, wait, the person they're describing is Donald Trump. No, he's not having this incredibly successful interview

on these platforms. He's not delivering what they're claiming he's delivering. But there's a part of that interview where they talk about why they prefer going to comedians and others than going to national media that a member of the Kamlo Harris campaign could absolutely say that like less charged and toxic conversations.

And I'm like, well, that's smart, that's right. Yeah, they're just describing like the reality of the current media landscape. Yeah. Trump event that got the most attention this weekend was the big visit to McDonald's in Pennsylvania. Basically the Trump campaign shut down in McDonald's temporarily, then picked some people

to go through the drive-through so Trump could serve them fries and repeat the weird lie he keeps telling that Kamala Harris never worked at McDonald's. Just no basis in that at all. Obviously, this drove everyone a little crazy. The One CBS reporter did ask Trump a substantive question about the minimum wage.

Let's listen. Well, I think this, I think these people who work hard, they're great. And I just saw something, a process that's beautiful. It's a beautiful thing to see. These are great franchises and produce a lot of jobs. And it's great. And great people work in here, too. But what's about the minimum wage?

But would you agree? We've recently increased. So yes, ma'am. So take that as a no? Maybe? Yes? This whole stunt photo op event, whatever you wanna call it,

generated quite a bit of attention and blowback. What'd you guys think? You got McDonald's this morning. I did get McDonald's this morning. I was so angry. It made me want McDonald's too, just because we're talking about McDonald's. Advertising works, branding works.

Yeah, I mean, it definitely made me want McDonald's more. I mean, look, I think Donald Trump putting on and taking off an apron for the first time in his life had a closed McDonald's while he pretends to serve food to super fans recruited, I suppose, by either the campaign or the MAGA owner of this franchise. Like, it's a good picture. I think it's a good picture for Donald Trump,

but I think we have to, like... It's so hard to get out of the, like, he's in an ape... Like, all the kind of, like, joking and making hard to get out of the like, he's in an ape, like all the kind of like joking and making it about the picture and not about the fact that like, of course he doesn't support raising the minimum wage. Like Donald Trump would be a disaster for people who work at McDonald's.

It is a sick fucking joke that he's putting on this apron. Last time he was president, he tried to take away healthcare of millions of people. Many of them probably worked at McDonald's. He's opposed to their ability to unionize. He will take away their basic healthcare protections. Doesn't wanna pay overtime. He will cut taxes for billionaires and corporations

and make a national sales tax that regular people will have to pay to cover the difference. Like it's just, it's the whole, the idea that he is this candidate of the working man because he's put on a fucking apron. Like I think it's a good picture for him, but it's like our job to kind of not fall into the trap

of debating and being at the McDonald's and like getting back to this, like make the picture a fucking a joke. Yeah, it was a really smart event. I mean, it's really, really smarter than I do. I don't know why he's obsessed with saying Kamala didn't work at McDonald's. I guess he just lets her call her inauthentic or something.

But yeah, he got to raise that there. I mean, it seemed fun and funny, normal, the whole event. I mean, I watched the whole thing. It was like 25, 26 minutes of him learning to use the frying machine, doing it in a suit and tie, which looks ridiculous. But I don't know. He's authentically a fan of McDonald's.

He eats it. He served it to athletes who won national championships. It was obviously a campaign stunt. He didn't really work the fryer. He dunked it once. In 07, remember Obama did the SEIU walk a day in their shoes event? That woman Pauline Beck where he got up at the crack of dawn

and went with her. They made breakfast for this man. She was a home went with her. They made breakfast for this man. She was a home health care worker. She made breakfast for the man. He swept up. It was an actual day of work with the SEIU. That was different. This was just a 25 minute stunt,

but it went super viral on social media. We're all talking about it. I think it was very smart. Yeah, I think it's like a net neutral. I think there's like, there's a ton of people making fun of it. Ton of people saying it's the best thing ever. I can't imagine it's moving many people.

I think, but look, there are a bunch of people who maybe don't read about it, but just see the picture and might be like, oh, cool. Like it's- That's the vast majority of people. Cool people, cool. Vast majority of people will see a clip on their TikTok or social media or something and be like, oh, there's Donald Trump's- That's the vast majority of people. Cool people, cool. Vast majority of people will see a clip on their TikTok or social media or something and be like, oh, there's Donald Trump, there's McDonald's.

It's kind of fun and different. Well, it broke through to like, you know, people in my life that don't pay attention much to politics and I got some texts where people were just like, what the fuck is this? It wasn't like cool, it was like, what the fuck is this? Yeah, I just think that like, the Trump people liking it,

I just think it's a great picture. It's a great picture and then people making fun of it because it's like, oh, it's like the worst undercover boss, like all those kinds of jokes. I do think you have to kind of get to like, this is somebody pretending to care about working class people. Right, that's what we do.

And he will not. And like, it has to just be very, like not jokey. I think the responses that drove me most insane are this is just like Dukakis in a tank. It's like, no, it's not. Oh, that was one of the popular liberal responses on Twitter. Those people are stupid. Another one. He looked at an apron.

Another one was, Oh, by the way, did some investigative reporting and that McDonald's got fined for health violations. That I thought was kind of funny. I will not, you know what though? I'm sorry. I like that. I'm sorry, but McDonald's serves millions of people every day, nobody gets fucking sick, it's amazing.

Nobody gets sick? It's amazing. Nobody? Very rarely, very, very rarely. Obviously the Kamelhauers campaign would do this, but they were showing some of the responses on TikTok, which I do think were very funny. It's just some like young kids being like,

hey, grandpa, just put the fries in the fucking bag. Well, the best part of it is he was obsessed with the fact that you didn't actually have to touch the fries to get them from the fryer to the container before the packaging to the packaging. I was like, what did you think happened at a restaurant? Do you think people were hand scooping your fries? He was doing a very Trump thing, which was just like talking a lot about how this and that and the other thing, like the people are just sitting there, like

waiting, the people who've been hand selected by the campaign are just waiting there for their fries in their bag so they can drive off set. But then he did a little press conference from the takeout window, so he was taking questions from the press, and the image was him. That window was so good. It was good, it was good.

It was well done. It was good, it looked like, yeah, it kind of reminded me of when John Amos was coming to America and running the McDowell's. I'll tell you what, if he wins, the picture of him smiling and handing out fries is gonna be the picture. If he loses, the picture of him

sitting behind the window like this, which was another one, that would be the picture. I really just- It would be him at like MSG or him in Coachella being like, why are you in California and New York just to run for an election? Here's one response to the whole McDonald's thing from a Democrat that I did find compelling. You've got Donald Trump putting on a

little McDonald's costume because he thinks that's what people do. They're not trying to empathize with us. They are making fun of us. They are making fun of us. Donald Trump thinks that people who work at McDonald's are a joke. Elon Musk thinks that dangling money in front of a working person is a cute thing to do when the election of our lives is before us. Because that's what people and billionaires like that do. That was AOC, of course. I liked that because I think it turns it into a real populist argument and sort of exposes the fraud

without being like, meh. No, I think that's right. Which that was my scientific term for what I thought most of the responses were like, meh. Yeah. Speaking of the world's richest man, Elon's now running a sweepstakes in Pennsylvania, where he gives a million dollars a day to someone who

signed his super PACs petition. You sign a petition saying you support the first and second amendment. The only requirement of course is that you live in Pennsylvania or in one of the other swing states and are registered to vote. He's already given away at least two checks, but if you Google how to sign up,

all the top results are articles examining whether this is legal. Tommy, have you read some of those articles and can you tell us if it is in fact legal? Tommy's read an article, he's here to tell us what he found. Much like Elon, I skimmed a couple. Much like Donald Trump,

learning the fry later for the first time. Hey, here we are, Kimmy Finance Law. So the law specifically says you cannot pay or offer to pay someone to register to vote or to vote. And those who do so can be fined up to $10,000 or get five years in jail or both. Because basically we don't want the election turning into a bunch of billionaires paying the most people to vote.

Well, some of us don't want that. Some of us don't. Furthermore, the Department of Justice clarifies in its guidelines about prosecuting election offenses that bribes include lottery chances or sweepstakes. So making this sort of a sweepstakes for Yulan does not get out of jail free card. So some election law experts think that this gambit from Yulan is clearly illegal. The must defenders will say no he's just offering a reward to people who sign his petition he's not encouraging you to register to vote but as you know to John to be eligible you have to be registered

to vote or live in one of these seven swing states. And the deadline for entering the contest just happens to be the deadline to register to vote in Michigan or Pennsylvania. So it's not subtle, it's very clearly just designed and talked about in concert with a bunch of messages about registering or voting early. With all election law things, you can find experts who say it's illegal,

you can find those who say it's not. You can find those who say it's not big picture I think Elon is betting that no one will enforce it Yeah that if they do good bet when you look at the history of the FEC Trump friendly judges will probably get your back because they're greenlighting all kinds of Campaign spending these days and if Trump gets elected Obviously he will just never ever prosecute you on must on the list of pardons for him Yeah he will just never, ever prosecute Elon Musk. Down the list of pardons for him. Yeah, so I know Jamie Raskin talks about this

in some more detail in today's What a Day newsletter, so check that out. But you know, I think the bigger picture is like, what are the politics of this? Will people think it's gross? I kinda do. Gross or just like, oh, you gotta pay people to vote for Trump?

That's what I'm saying. Is that what we're doing now? I think Americans might inherently be offended by paying people off to vote. That's why, that's actually the part about the AOC clip that I liked even more than McDonald's part. Me too. Is just like, oh, this billionaire is gonna dangle

a million dollars in front of the plebes to see if you'll vote for it, you know? It's just like such a. That said, if I were, I'll just say that if I were a registered voter in any of the swing states that were eligible, I would of course sign this pledge. Everybody listening, if you feel like you could sign this pledge, I would consider doing it

because you can do a lot more with a million dollars than you must can. And yeah, no, what honestly it reminded me of is there's like old footage and photographs of like Belgian and British colonists like throwing coins and candies at the children in their colonies. And that's what Elon going out there

and like dangling money in front of people like genuinely reminded me of. Yeah, it's too cute. I don't think it's very, I also don't think it's very effective just from a, like, yeah, you can sign the, if you're a registered voter or you registered to vote, this still doesn't mean you're gonna go vote. No, and this suggestion is like, okay. Well, it's a First Amendment Second Amendment petition

So you're only gonna get Republicans and then you're gonna have their contact info and then you know Elon can get them with messaging and actually turn them out It's like no you're just having a bunch of people who want money So they'll pretend to care about the First and Second Amendment and sign your dumb little petition And again, you have to take our word for it a lot of they interviewed some Trump campaign officials about this, who of course all in background, about Elon and the ground game and everything.

And to a person, they were all just like, yeah, he's got his own thing. We've got our other things and he's just doing it. We're happy to have him out here, but it sounds like they. But this is like, I feel like this is the Honorable Palmer's dick of the Elon shit, which is like, no, it's not the million dollar pledge. It'll make sense in a second. It's the tens of millions.

He's doing the weave. I'm doing the weave, baby. I've been weaving, listen. Do you think Trump invented the weave? The guy's been weaving dicks forever. Yeah, it's the hundreds of millions of dollars being dropped on the race by Elon, by the crypto bros, buying ads.

This really is now in the home stretch. There's the Kamala Harris campaign, of dollars being dropped on the race by Elon, by the crypto bros buying ads. This really is now in the home stretch. There's the Kamala Harris campaign and then there's the kind of twisted, bizarro, evil version. The Kamala Harris campaign has raised a billion dollars. Trump has Elon's money and all of this crypto money and all of this billionaire money from Ken Griffin and others. There's a real field organization. There's their paid for field organization, which I really hope is working about as well as you would expect an Elon turned on field organization in the last weeks of this campaign. Then you have a turn out the vote operation versus a undermine and scare the vote operation. There are these two things sitting side by side and

Elon is a big part of that. Last thing before we get to Kamala Harris, we mentioned already the Democrats have different theories of the case about how to attack Trump and company. We have talked about our former boss, Barack Obama, who's been having a really good time on the campaign trail, just tearing into Trump. Let's listen to how he did it recently. You would be worried if your grandpa started acting like this.

You would. I mean, right? You'd like call up your brother, your cousin or something, be like, hey, have you seen grandpa lately? What are we going to do? But this is coming from somebody who wants unchecked power, wants the most powerful office on earth with the nuclear codes and all that. Now, the point is we do not need to see what an older, loonier Donald Trump looks like

with no guard rails. America's ready to turn the page. Speaking of people who like dick jokes, speeches. So that's basically another version of the unserious man, serious consequences that Kamala Harris has used. I don't know, I like it. Yeah, I think threats to democracy can sound a little vague

and hard to understand in practice. I think don't give kooky grandpa the nukes. That's not complicated. Yeah, the only- You can see that one. Yes, I think that was great. And it was actually much more, it's mainly just like Donald Trump would be a mad king. Sometimes we talk more about the mad,

sometimes we talk more about the king. And that was, I think, more mad focused. But you saw a little of the kind of the threat to democracy rhetoric with the phrase guardrails, with no guardrails. It of the kind of the threat to democracy rhetoric with the phrase guardrails with no guardrails, it's very like kind of threat to democracy. It's just like-

I like the word guardrails just because it, you can conjure up a picture at least, as opposed to some of these words that the democracy defenders use. Yeah, no, for sure. Because no one knows what a guardrail is. No, I agree with that, but I think like, if you don't, what do you mean guardrail?

Like, the argument that that Donald Trump is just, he's losing it. You just don't want somebody who's losing as president. You don't really need the other party argument that like, oh, Mike Pence doesn't support him. He's gonna have a different group of people around him. That is a different argument. I thought it was like-

I think that's a, well, I think that second part is a very effective argument. I agree. I think the big obstacle here, the big hurdle you've got to overcome is what Tommy pointed out, which is everyone's like, oh yeah, we survived the first Trump term. And then I think the big obstacle here, the big hurdle you've got to overcome is what Tommy pointed out, which is everyone's like, oh yeah, we survived the first Trump term.

And I think what you have to, the argument you have to make is, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fine. And maybe you haven't tuned in since then, but this would be much different because he's fucking crazy. This has to be new information. He's crazier and the people around him

that were like somewhat normal are all gone. And the people that are there, your Laura Loomers, your Mike Flynn's, all these people, they are fucking the bottom of the barrel. I completely agree with all of that. I just think that Barack Obama, even at his most, we're all struggling to tell this story that's connecting the fact that he's a kind of a doofus

who's losing a step and wandering around the stage and not totally in control of his faculties from the authoritarian strongman that's coming towards us. I think both are part of the story and we're all figuring out different ways to talk about them. I think that that guardrails thing is just like, that's a larger argument that we don't see there,

but I get it. ["The Last of Us"] All right, we're recording this on Monday afternoon, West Coast time. And today alone, Kamala Harris did an event near Philly, a conversation with Liz Cheney, hosted by her pal Sarah Longwell from Bulwark. She was in the Detroit suburbs and the Milwaukee suburbs. Those were after we taped. Here's a sampling of the message she's driving in those places.

This is from her event in Detroit, and that was moderated by Maria Shriver. Madam Vice President, you know, everybody I talked to says, you know, I have to turn off the news. I can't read anything. I'm meditating. I'm doing yoga. I'm doing I'm so anxious. I just don't even know. I'm eating gummies. All kinds of things, you know.

What are you doing? What are you doing? Not eating gummies. I've said many times, I do believe Donald Trump to be an unserious man. But the consequences of him ever being in the White House again are brutally serious. And take it from the people who know him best. His former chief of staff when he was president, two former defense secretaries, his national security advisor,

and of course his vice president, who have all in one way or another used the word that he is unfit to be president again and is dangerous. And that illustrates the challenge from the other side. She goes from gummies laughing gummies to he's a dangerous threat. It's so funny that just like, I'm sorry, but like Shriver just talking about what people are doing

to deal with their stress just sounded so fucking rich. So rich is what it was. So the headline in the Times from Monday morning's Pennsylvania event was Chaney with Harris tells anti-abortion women it's okay to back her. Just wild times. What's your take on what the strategy was behind these Cheney events?

So I mean there was a Times analysis that talked about who both campaigns think are the persuadable voters left out there and the Harris campaign thinks about 10% of voters in swing states are still winnable and a big chunk of those voters are Republican women who dislike Trump, but need to hear more from her on the border and the economy to close the deal. And these events are laser focused on those women. And they also, I think, generally push back on the Trump criticism of Kamala Harris as like a, what's it, she's a Marxist, communist, fascist at this point, you know, whatever he's calling her, some sort of extreme radical.

When you see her up there with Maria Shiver or Liz Cheney, I think that really rebuts those criticisms in a pretty strong way. I was watching the Pennsylvania one and when Kamala Harris got a question about abortion and she started giving her answer, I was watching Liz Cheney and I'm like, well, this is awkward because it's like,

usually they're just talking about things they agree on. And then Cheney asked to step in and then gave that answer on abortion. And it just made me think, you know, there's been some criticism from some corners of the internet on the left that like, oh, Kamala Harris is out there with the Cheneys and now she's blowing the whole thing.

But like, not only has Kamala Harris not moderated any positions or given up anything in order to get the support of Liz Cheney, there's Liz Cheney saying, oh, by the way, I'm against abortion, but I'm here because I think this is so important. And by the way, these abortion bans have gone way too far. She was talking about how in Texas, Ken Pax and the attorney general is suing to get women's private

medical records because he wants to see if they've traveled over state lines to get an abortion. And Liz Ch he wants to see if they've traveled over state lines to get an abortion. And Liz Cheney is like, we can't do this anymore. So I thought it was like, I thought it's really effective. Yeah, I just, Liz Cheney, I think, is an incredible spokesperson in that setting. It is like, she's doing the thing

we've been asking everyone to do. And it speaks to both what it clearly took for her to do this and also the cowardice of so many others that she is basically alone up there. But like that was a great event. It was just a great event and it's incredibly persuasive. I don't wanna see Dick Cheney out there ever, but yes, Liz Cheney is a very good spokesperson.

I don't think he'd be useful many places. No, and she's, I think she's like shown herself to be a principled person from impeachment until now. And I think people give get further benefit of the doubt on a lot of the other stuff. And again, it just sends the message like, yeah, we don't agree, yeah, I'm conservative, but there's just bigger things at stake right now.

I wanna talk a little bit more that New York Times story that Tommy brought up about how both campaigns are identifying and thinking about undecided voters. Another group of undecided voters that both the Trump and Harris campaigns are targeting are disproportionately younger and less white. And they talk about that in the piece. One example, a 22 year old in Arizona, they have him in the Times piece who

said he doesn't care who wins and that he only registered to vote because his mom made him, but he will vote for Harris if someone brings a ballot to his front door. I mean, I hope, I hope that Harris campaign gets his address. That's why you have a field program people. His name's in the piece, give him a call, find his address, send him a ballot. How long did the times interview take my man? You care a little bit, you care enough

to spend a whole interview talking about it. That's a good point, it's a fair point. How much you don't care. Trump campaign thinks that about 5% of voters are undecided and like you said, it's funny because we're gonna talk about Plouffe's interview in a little bit with John Hyman but Plouffe said there's about 4%

but I think what you mentioned from the Times piece is the Harris campaign thinks that up to 10% are persuadable and the reason I think it's bigger is because of those Republican women or right leaning independent women who just do not like Trump but are not yet sold on Harris. Yeah, it's hard to tell just sort of how people slice and dice the numbers between like the group

of voters that either won't vote or almost certainly would vote for Trump, the group of people that won't vote are almost certainly or probably would vote for Kamala, and then the group of people that are truly going to vote or may or may not vote but are actually undecided. Yeah, the Times found that they think that 3.7 percent of voters in battleground states are undecided, which is only 1.2 million people. So 1.2 million truly undecideds. But I think you're right. These numbers, these percentages swell when you're talking about not voting to

voting or, you know, people who might be persuaded to stay home, basically. Anything else you guys found notable in that story? I just, the refrain of how people want more information and then how hard it is to get that people the readily available information, and even that when Kamala Harris does this huge round of press, how little of it ultimately gets to those voters.

There's one piece, according to times, no single program reached more than one in three of those undecided voters. There's just like, I felt that- I was surprised by the other direction. Yeah, so it says in the Times piece, it said, internal surveys, the Harris campaign internal surveys, showed that two thirds of undecided voters

in the battleground states had consumed at least some of Kamala's interviews during her big media blitz week or two weeks, but no single program reached more than one in three of those undecided voters. But two thirds of undecided is just seeing something. That shocked me. That I just like. Big daddy gang?

I guess. I just like, what does it mean for, I just like how hard it is. Like these are all people saying they want more information. She's doing a full court press across every kind of media. And like maybe, maybe one in three is getting some clip of one thing. It's just like, just remind, just like.

I thought where you were gonna go with the more information complaint is the woman that they interviewed at the end of the piece. She's like a 40 something woman in Pennsylvania and she doesn't like Trump, but she's like worried about the economy. She goes, you know, I've heard a little bit about Kamala Harris's plans, but on housing,

she wants to give like first time home buyers a $25,000 credit on their down payment and I just don't wanna be given more money and no one's talking about the supply of housing. And I was like, ugh, she wants to build 3 million more. But she also said she might write in R.K. Junior as a protest at the same woman, I think. Yeah, that was the same woman.

It's tough, undecided voters are tough. And we love them. And we just love them. We love them tough, undecided voters are tough. And we love them. And we just love them. We love them. And we don't wanna say anything other than we love them. I just love their whole energy that they're bringing to this. I also found it interesting that of the more than a hundred clips during her media blitz

that the Harris campaign tested for their effectiveness and increasing her support, her proposal about providing home care for adding home care coverage to Medicare coverage for seniors ranked at the top, which is interesting because again, who's gonna talk about that on shows like ours and cable and everywhere else? I mean, we mentioned it,

but like it's not gonna get people get pundits excited, but it moves votes. Yeah, it's something people care about. I also thought the Trump campaign found that upper grabs voters were six times more likely than other battleground voters to be motivated by their views of the war in Gaza. They didn't really stay in which direction. I found that interesting too, especially since

the Harris campaign doesn't seem to see that. I like there, so there was that fact. And then the other point that the other, the other factor in the Trump campaign is that the undecideds are more likely to work two jobs on average and they earn 15,000 less per household than the battleground voters who have made up their minds. And I saw those two facts side by side

and I was like, I'm trying to make sense of this. So undecided voters are working two jobs and really struggling, but also more motivated by the Middle East than other voters. And I wondered if some of that was a little bit of them- Wish casting. Wish casting and kind of putting a little something out there. I think it's also who the pool is that you're talking about.

If these voters are younger, you're just gonna get more of them that care about Gaza than older voters, I think. Yeah, the other sort of last thing I noticed on this was they talked about how Kamala Harris bought ads on daytime Fox because more women are watching Fox during the day than at night when it's more opinion focused.

Then the Washington Post had a bunch of swing state polls out today where they asked people about their main news sources and they found that about a quarter of those who consider Fox a main source of news said they're considering voting for Kamala Harris with about one in six saying they have already or definitely planned to vote for her, which is just a very surprising fact, I thought.

Well, on the last pod we did, I can't remember when, with Dan, I had looked at the latest New York Times poll and that showed that 10% of undecided voters say that Fox was a news source for them. Yeah, but then I wonder, like, okay, so then the kind of person answering these polls is the kind of person consuming this news? And I don't know

I made me think like well, does that tell you more about the poll than it does about the voters? Well, we also got more insight into how the Harris campaign is thinking about this extremely close race from David Plouffe in a new interview With Puck's John Heilman. Here's some of that. This race is just dead even and listen, you know, I think the Trump campaign Would admit that too and you can tell based on their activity and what they're saying. I guess my confidence is more based on looking at who the undecided voters are. And you know, data these days is incredibly rich and sophisticated. Every battleground state of the seven, there's at least 4% who are still trying to decide

who to vote for. And the early voting data we're seeing so far, there's no suggestion that they are turning out a bunch of irregular voters. Does your data in the seven battleground states show any sign that Trump has momentum and that he's tight? Whether when you say, I get that it's mathematically, statistically, this is going to be a toss-up race within the margin of error in all seven. But you could see there is momentum

that's coming through in your data that's not noise. Does the Trump campaign have any of that in any of the seven battleground states? No. I would listen to an interview with David Plouffe. Maybe he should just give like a five minutes every night from now until the next two weeks, wouldn't that be nice? For sure.

Because it's not like, I call this, it's prestige-hopium. It's not like everything's gonna be fine kind of thing, but it is because at the end he's still like, yeah, we could lose this race, it's very close, it's tied, right? But it is, it's just a lot of great insight from Pluff. I highly recommend you listen to it and Pluff, if you have any more stuff to say,

just come back on Podsive America. Yeah, we'll do that five minutes here or the calm app, by the way. But yeah, it's also like, there's a point in the interview where Heilman asked him like, what do you say to people looking at the swinging of the Nate Silver average? And he's like, I wouldn't look at that.

I don't look at that. And I'm just like, yeah, don't. Well, he said it's based on public polls. Yeah, they just don't look. He won't look at any public I don't look at that. And they're just like, yeah, don't. Well, he said it's based on public polls. Yeah, they just don't look, he won't look at any public polls because he thinks they're junk. But that, but just that like, that they're based on public polls

and if the Nate Silver model says it's 5248 versus 4852, it still means that 48 times out of 100 Kamala wins or 48 times out of 100 Trump wins, like these little changes don't matter. And it was like what Plouffe said to Dan a couple days ago, very similar to what he's saying here, which is basically like these ebbs and flows in the public polling that are causing these epic swings

and vibe shift and text to me are like, they're just not real, they're just not real. Yeah, I mean, I think another important point he made was that Trump is just so dependent on turning out these first time or irregular voters, and that's a real risk. And he repeated his observation was that Trump is just so dependent on turning out these first time or irregular voters, and that's a real risk. And he repeated his observation

that they're not seeing incels marauding to early vote locations, so that was good to hear. And again, we talk a lot about how Democrats are struggling to win over male voters, but Plouffe talked about Trump's massive disadvantage when it comes to the women, especially college-educated women and women under 29.

And then again, for all the talk about shifts in the Latino vote, for all the talk about shifts in the Latino vote, he made the point that a lot of the numbers are coming from these national polls where you're sampling like 300, 400 total people. And there are gonna be states like Florida where Trump is gonna win overwhelmingly and is gonna win with Latino voters.

And that's gonna skew what sort of the aggregate picture looks like. But really the Harris campaign is concerned about Arizona and Nevada and parts of Pennsylvania. Yeah. I also thought just in general, he said, look, Trump's gonna get 48, 48.5% of the vote. And that's probably higher than he got even in 2020.

He's like, and that's just a fact that we're all gonna have to live with. And he thinks that any tightening that we have seen in the polls lately is just polls that had Trump at 43, 44, 45. And then finally he's getting his vote share, which he's going to end up getting. And she's, you know, sitting at 49, uh, in a lot of these. And so I think when, you know, he keeps, he has said before to Dan too, 48, 48 or 48, 47 in like all these swing states.

And he said that the reason that he has confidence, that he's cautiously confident is what he said, is that he thinks that they have a higher ceiling, that Kamala Harris has a higher ceiling than Trump does. And that the remaining voters who are undecided look more like Harris voters than Trump voters. But that said, they still have to get those voters out. They still have some persuasion to do. And he also said that he thinks door knocking and canvassing and like going out there

is gonna be more important this year, this election than it has been almost any other election. Yeah, and partly because the campaign started later, there are people that truly are undecided and want more information and it may be somebody coming to their door to give it to them.

Like that kid in Arizona who needs the ballot dropped off at his door. How are you guys feeling? Terrible. Yeah, I don't feel great. I just, I went into the CVS and I got a two for one Pepsid so that I could have one in my house

and one in my car. Which is, I think maybe just being 42. I think that I think if we were up by five, I still probably would need it, but I can't be sure. I can't be sure. I feel fairly Zen. Um, you know, it's a little angsty over the weekend. I did go to a children's birthday party and was

talking to one of the parents. And of course you have to, you know, you do the pod wherever you go. And, uh, and I was, I was giving what I thought was just a pretty not optimistic or pessimistic neutral analysis of where the race stands. And I finished up and then she walked back up to me 10 seconds later, she goes, you made me feel awful.

This is scary. I'm like, yeah, we can lose, like it's not. No one should think that, I think there were some, a lot of good feelings as there should have been. After the switch, after the convention, after the debate, I know that I thought that there was a possibility if she did well in the debate,

maybe she'd open a little bit of lead that would be stable and that would be that. It's just, it's gonna be a tight race. And that's just- What feels bad is that this piece of shit is even in the running. Yes. Of course. That will never not be the case.

Yep, that's right. But it's also like, I just don't want us to do the same thing we did in 2016. Like, who gives a shit how you feel over the next two weeks? I'm sorry, Maria Shriver. It doesn't fucking matter. No, but it doesn't matter how, no, thank you. And thank you for asking.

I'm checking with people you love. Thank you for the question. Thank you for the question. But like, oh, what are you doing to deal with all the stress? The stress over the next two weeks, who cares? Well, I was gonna- Who fucking cares? And I know- On whatsaamerica.com.

You did what you guys have done this to and you felt the same thing. Like, I ended up doing a kickoff call for the Wisconsin Democrats, their organizers, the whole staff Sunday night. And after a weekend of feeling a little angsty about everything, I finished that call and I heard all the stories about the doors they knocked on

and the voters they talked to the people. And I was just listening. I was just like listening on the call after I like talked to them for a couple of minutes and I stayed on for the whole half hour. And I'm like, this, I walked out of that call. I'm like, this was better than any good poll. I just felt, I felt so great.

Now, is that feeling valid because it's all anecdotal? Who knows? Maybe not, but it felt good. Well, that was the point that like, you'll hear with shots where he was talking about that moment where Kamau says, oh, you're at the wrong rally. You're looking for the smaller one down the street. And he said that like, when he was first running,

there was no poll. He's running a state legislature race in Hawaii. And that like, you did matter. The vibes did matter. They mattered both because they represented how things would go, but also vibes will help you get things to where you need them to go. And so like a lot less angsting,

like are we gonna be okay, Tex? It is not known. It will not be known until a few days after the election. Everybody's just gonna go to vote save America and do the shift you haven't done yet. Well, who needs polls though when we now have actual votes coming in that we can analyze before they've even been counted?

That's right, more than 15 million people have already voted early, which means tea leaves are being read and lessons are not being learned. And either of you guys wanna remind folks what the early vote can and can't tell us? Yeah, it can't tell us anything. It can't tell you anything because this early voting,

it has gone 2020, 2022, 2024, each of these elections, like the pandemic, post pandemic, the rise of vote by mail and early voting, a Republican candidate who has come out against vote by mail and tried to push people towards election day. Like the influence of all of this means we just don't know what the vote share will be on election day. And an election that will be decided by a point or two,

if we're lucky, that will really matter. And so the margins are what matters and there's no way to know the margins. Like maybe there's value to it for a campaign and very specific kind of targeting and information. But for us out here in the world, not particularly useful. Yeah, unless you're doing very sophisticated

like regression analysis based on blah, blah, blah, math, math, like don't read this stuff. Yeah. It's useless. Yeah, so everyone knows because, you know, we heard Pluff talking about the, they feel good about the incels not showing up at the polls. You might be thinking like, what does that mean? Because the ballots aren't coming in sticky.

So, wow, this is a real, setting a real record on this episode. Yeah, it's a good episode. Good episode. What they, what the early vote can tell you, and again, it can really tell campaigns that's who are, who have so much sophisticated data

and are calling thousands of people a night and ground game and all that kind of stuff. You know, they can tell you party, demographic information, vote history. I think that's what Plouffe's referring to. So in some states, you know, if the voter who's voted early has voted a lot before, or are one of those low propensity voters.

And then you can see if the low propensity voter looks like a Harris voter or looks like a Trump voter so you can make some educated guesses if you're the campaign and That only helps you in so far as not knowing if you're gonna win but knowing okay We've got these voters, but we still need to go after these voters because they haven't early voted yet And so now we need to go make sure that they send their ballots in. Like that's what early vote is good for in a campaign. It's not good for telling you like, oh yeah, now we're gonna win. Because even if you ask campaign

with sophisticated data analysis about what the early vote shown, they'll say, well, we're a little down, but hopefully on election day, everything, we're gonna chase all those ballots that didn't come in yet. That's what they'll say. And by the way, that's not necessarily a false hope, right? Like there have been elections where the early vote,

people took that to predict a democratic lean that wasn't there. There the times where I used to take a Republican lean that wasn't there like it's just it's not been predictive There were people in 2016 looking at the early vote predicting Landslide Hillary Clinton victories and they could not have possibly been more wrong Yeah, just not make that mistake again any end and you know because again the behavior the voting behavior has changed so much That even in I remember in 2022, the early vote was sort of bad for Democrats, quote unquote bad compared to 2020, because everyone was using the 2020 comparison.

And it turned out that was all wrong because people's behavior started changing. We will find out after the election, what we learned about early vote and what we learned about the polling this cycle. But there's really- And then we will take those lessons and for next election day afterwards-

Forget them and over apply them. There they go. We will fight the last war yet again. We shall fight the last war. There's Kamala to the incels. Do not come. Do not come. That's for the vol cells.

Do not come. Oh God. You can yes and a joke once. Yeah. That's some fun shit Okay when we come back from the break Lovett's gonna talk with senator Brian shots about the latest with the key Senate races Shots is like how did it happen to me? That's the throat of shots of me doing that yeah, that's it

Anyway, you know who is coming on the pod? It's Senator Brian Schott. Is that what you want, Tommy? Want me to add to your little joke? Okay. I like that. Your little joke, see? See? Oh, you can tell a little joke too.

I know, I know. Oh my God. Maybe you can make us a little scorecard. We're already in the ads. Anyway, yeah, we have two quick announcements. First, the entire season of Empire City, the untold origin story of the NYPD is finally out. The series that was named one of Vulture's best podcasts

of 2024 takes listeners through pivotal moments in the NYPD's history that shaped modern policing, including how the police got militarized, what happened when New York City cops started policing abortion, and the first ever investigation into police corruption. You can binge all episodes now by following Empire City wherever you get your podcasts and enjoy ad-free listening

by joining Wondry Plus and the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts. Also, you don't need us to tell you this, but the most effective messengers in these final days are not people like us. What? They're people like you. Oh.

That's why we've launched what we're calling Last Call. Last Call. Last Call. It feels like we should have like a ding or something. Oh, let's add a ding in the post. Let's someone add a ding there. We need everyone listening. That means you.

If you're listening, we're talking to you. To think of three people you know in swing states, okay? Three people you know, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, or Georgia. Friend, former colleague, a one-time hookup. A frenemy, an acquaintance. The love of your life who moved away, broke your heart. Yeah, the one that got away.

Here's the ask, scroll through your contacts list, find those names and text or call them or message them, do whatever you have to do. Then do that five more times before election day. Reminders work, ask them if they have a plan to vote. You can send them to Vote Save America. They can look at their ballots. They can figure out to make a plan to vote.

And if you don't know anyone in those states, which fuck you coastal elite, you definitely know three people who could use a nudge to vote no matter where they live. And that's important too. And for one lucky person who does it, we're giving you a million dollars. And that's important too, you know? And for one lucky person who does it, we're giving you a million dollars.

That is, for the lawyers, that's not- For the right person, a million dollars. That is not true, that's not true. There's a million dollars in it. That is parody. For one lucky person. That is parody. One million dollars. Wow, what a contest. Your move, FEC.

Uh, again, if you don't know what to say in those text DMs and calls, go to votesaveamerica.com slash vote where you can sign up to get scripts that you can put in your own words to send to your friends, maybe even written by John Lovett. Just go to votesaveamerica.com slash vote

and click get the script to get started. This message has been paid for by Vote Save America. You can learn more at votesaveamerica.com. This ad has been paid for by Vote Save America. You can learn more at votesaveamerica.com. This ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. When we come back, Brian Schatz. ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] Joining us today, friend of the show from the great state of Hawaii, Senator Brian

Schatz, welcome back to the pod. Nice to be back here, John. Good to see you. Yeah, it's great to see you too, Senator Schatz. I just want you to know I'm now losing it. So this is going to be, let's see what happens. The anxiety is through the roof. The priorless sex not working.

I'm having fever dreams. I'm having stress dreams. So we have two weeks left. People are voting. How are you feeling? How are you feeling about the state of the race here? Look, I have to say it, I'll say it this way. We are slightly ahead and if we do everything

we're supposed to do, we will win. And if we do anything we're not supposed to do, we will win. And if we do anything we're not supposed to do, we will not. So I like our chances, but we really do have to execute in the next couple of weeks. Now, Kamala, the good news, right, is that our candidate is executing

at a super, super high level. And that's not just important from the standpoint of vote getting, it also gives a lot of confidence to the grassroots out there. The people are giving money, the people are knocking on doors. When you see your candidate kicking ass, you kind of want to follow that example. So I think it's as important that she sort of lead us as it is that she sort of demonstrate that she's the right person to be the next president of the United States.

So I'm feeling pretty confident, but definitely not overconfident. And you know, there's an old line in an old movie, I don't trust happiness. So I'm going to be scared all the way through. Yeah, that's um, sounds Jewish. So let's talk about what we what we need to do. I was talking about this with Tim Miller, and he used a sports analogy, which is it's now about the 12th man, it's now about the crowd and what the crowd can do.

But on the other hand, you know, we have to do everything right, and we can't do anything wrong in order to win. Why does that logic not apply to Donald Trump? Well, listen, I don't know, and maybe it does, right? Maybe some of these hiccups, maybe the fact that he's starting to turn down Well, listen, I don't know. And maybe it does, right? Maybe some of these hiccups, maybe the fact that he's starting to turn down media opportunities, maybe the fact that he's not even campaigning in swing states, but going to California and

New York, like all of that could end up being in retrospect, the reason he loses. All we can control though, is what we're up to. And we have to execute as well as we possibly can because of the Electoral College. If this were a popular vote thing, I think I'd feel a little more confident. But I do feel confident and it's a weird thing, right? The polling is fine but not, you know, dispositive. But I will tell you last night when the vice president was interrupted by some hecklers and she said, oh no, you must be at the wrong rally.

There's a smaller one down the street. It was such a small thing and yet it was such a big thing. You only do that if you have a spring in your step. And I have very, look, I started in politics in state legislative races where we had no money for polling. And so it was a lot about body language and organization and kind of the vibes on the ground. And we could predict with some regularity, with some confidence who was gonna win without any polling.

And so I would say, if you took all the polling out of it, Kamala Harris is kicking ass and Donald Trump is melting down. And then if you put the polling into it, it's damn close. I love that. I love a vibes-based analysis. Let's talk about Trump. So we've got, I think, two stories right now.

One is Mad King. He's bouncing and swaying to the music. He's rambling, seeming confused. He's canceling interviews and events. The Harris-Walls campaign is asking on social, are you okay? And then we've got the two bit authoritarian. He's starting to deploy the military handles enemies, promising mass deportations, threatening democracy.

How are you putting those two stories together right now? Well, I don't think it's that hard. I mean, I think that the problem with characterizing him as a threat to democracy is that you're sort of inherently giving him a ton of power, power over our collective psyches, power over the American experiment, and then he seems strong. And so I think what the Harris campaign has done and it sort of unlocked, even in a way that the Biden, the successful Biden campaign did not, was this idea that you sure he is a threat, but he's

also a joke. And if you look through history, lots of people who did lots of bad things were also ridiculous figures in human history. And so he's both of those things. He's a legitimate threat to the American way of life. And he's also a jackass. And one of the things that I think Kamala is doing well, and one of the reasons that we were doing poorly with Biden, frankly, as our standard bearer, is there's just at least some portion of

the electorate that wants someone who's on the ball, who looks like they're kind of like smacking the other side around. And they're not really sure what they think about the issues, but they want someone who looks like a good television president, right? Like someone who looks like they're kicking ass and Kamala Harris looks like she's kicking ass and whatever Donald Trump's like, you know, personal flaws and policy flaws and his sort of almost evil way of viewing the American experiment, he had some game back in the day. Like he could actually be fun to watch, interesting to watch, infuriating to watch, but like good television.

This is not good television anymore. And I think that there is something pretty significant about Kamala pointing that out. It's of course not the main thing, but remember people vote for your side for their reasons, not yours. We are not looking to get vindicated here. We're just looking for the W.

Yeah, it's funny as you say that, I hadn't thought about that way. Cause I remember early in like 2017, 2018, I would say like, hey everybody, we gotta like accept, like Trump has some charm here. He has some charisma. He can be funny and people really, they did not care for it.

But it reminds me, have you seen these videos going around a Frankie Valley being brought out to the microphones to lip sync his old hits? There's a little bit of a Frankie Valli energy to it where I actually hadn't thought about it that way that he really is kind of, he's trying to do the performance he used to do

and it's not, it isn't working, it isn't working. Listen, so I grew up in Hawaii and we used to do. And it's not, it isn't working. It isn't working. Listen, when I, so, you know, I grew up in Hawaii and we used to go, you guys call it karaoke, we call it karaoke. And you know, I would always sing, you know, Just Once by James Ingram. It was a blast. I was 16 years old, then I was 26 years old.

And there was some point at which, you know, I'm in my 30s, I'm singing Just Once by, is it fun anymore? Is it charming anymore? Is it hilarious anymore? I feel like he's sort of the last guy at the karaoke bar, you know, and he won't let go of the microphone. You know, that story is, I think it's helpful.

It's a good analogy. It does make me sad. I think you could keep doing karaoke. I don't think you need to stop. I don't think you can age out of it. And I think that you should let that go. That's something, that's projection. Listen, I'm not saying that I shouldn't think you can age out of it. And I think that you should let that go. That's something, that's projection. Listen, I'm not saying that I shouldn't sing.

I'm just saying I should maybe pick a new song. Yeah, no, okay, pick a new song, pick a new song. So it's a close race, rather be us than them, but Trump could win. And based on what you're seeing right now, and only to point us to places where we have to work harder, close some gaps, if Trump ekes it out, how did he do it? you're seeing right now and only to point us to places where we have to work harder, close some gaps.

If Trump ekes it out, how did he do it? How did he put together the coalition? What are we missing? I still think we need more actual human beings in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and we need more money in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio for Sherrod Brown. Look, it is fair to say that some of these races, the die is cast, the money is spent, and it's basically up to the voters now. But there are a couple of places where it's close enough and the turnout operations matter

enough, and they are sophisticated enough where you could take a person who lives in Santa Monica or lives in South Texas and just wants to help, and they get sophisticated enough where you could take a person from, who lives in Santa Monica or lives in South Texas and just wants to help and they get on that online phone banking thing and they actually make a difference. So I would still help in the Midwest, both by sending money and by either showing up physically or making phone calls.

So Trump has been pulling out of events, Clear's campaign is trying to take him out of these sort of more national platforms, whether it's an NBC interview, a CNBC interview, 60 minutes, and they're just sort of resigned to what he's gonna do at the rallies. Meanwhile, the thought might be, okay, so they're letting his freak flag fly

in these debates that are mostly reaching his supporters. They're counting on the media not covering it really that effectively or kind of sanewashing him or people not really seeing what he's saying at these rallies. But they're going to make up for it with ads that are more mainstream. And yet in Pennsylvania, they're running millions upon millions of dollars of ads demonizing trans people as opposed to inflation or the economy or what have you, can you make sense of it at all? Is there any theory to it that we might look back on and say, oh, that actually was smarter than it looked?

No, it's not smarter than it looks. They tried it the last couple of cycles. It doesn't work. It is their happy place ideologically, and it is where they go when they don't have anything to run on. Look, they wanna be closing with an inflation message, right? They wanna be closing with an economic message, but Kamala Harris and the Democrats,

and Bob Casey and Sherrod Brown and John Tester and Tammy Baldwin and everybody else have basically erased the Republicans' lead on the economy. And so they just sort of like dig in. You know, it used to be the caravans. And because first of all, border crossings are at a, not an all-time low, but at a low over the last several years, and the Republicans killed the border security bill, they don't have that one.

They don't have inflation. And so they're just kind of like digging around in their trunk trying to find something and this is their sort of ideological safe space. There's no evidence that this moves swing voters and I think Tim Walz and Kamala Harris and everybody else is handling it well, which is to stand for equality but not to dwell on it because frankly what people find offensive about that, regular folks, is like, why are you even talking about that? Like, that has nothing to do with my life. So Trump is doing a fair amount of a certain kind of press,

which is interviews with podcasters and influencers in the kind of loosely part of the manosphere trying to reach these lower propensity less political men? A, do you worry about it? And then B, should Kamel Harris go on Joe Rogan? Sure. I will listen. I worry about everything. But that doesn't mean that I think this is like the winning strategy. I think the winning strategy would be for him to wake up one morning and pretend to be a moderate and say nice things about democracy. That would worry me.

Whether this will work or not, I have no idea. Yeah, I think she should go on Joe Rogan. I know people who listen to Joe Rogan. I think she can handle Joe Rogan. I've watched clips. I haven't listened to a whole Joe Rogan podcast because I can't set aside two and a half hours necessarily. But, you know, one of the things that I think is true about Joe Rogan is that he's kind of impressionable

and likes to be kind to his guests. And I just don't imagine that he's gonna come in like loaded for bear. I'm sure he'll have some prepped questions, but in a sort of political discussion between Kamala Harris and Joe Rogan, I do think Kamala, you know, wins the exchange. Now, does that end up in, you know,

a bunch of clippable memes that, you know, are designed to make her look bad? Sure, but I still think, you know, they're gonna do that anyway. Those memes are gonna be created anyway. And I just think she looks strong. She looks unafraid. And I think one of the other things, you know, I got a couple of buddies who have difficulty

with Kamala, but not for any real reason other than they have been sort of poisoned by the internet. And so sometimes you just have to break through that palace guard and talk to people directly. But like, do I think the whole campaign is going to hinge on going on Joe Rogan? I do not. I just think she should basically find whatever audience she can find. And I think the cool thing about their campaign is I think they've figured out both like probably statistically speaking, because they have real data operations, and intuitively that

basically wherever she goes and she and she presents, she ends up slightly more popular than when she came in. And so my view is if that's true, then Joe Rogan's got 12 million people and you should talk to him. Yeah. More, more, more Kamala is more and more Trump is less. Yeah. And also like Brett Baer, she went, she did it.

I think there were good moments and there's moments they're exploiting, whether you call it a big win, a medium win, a draw, whatever you wanna say about it. It's not gonna get tougher than that. It's not gonna get harder than that. The combination of questions designed to go for biggest vulnerabilities, the interrupting, all of it was like, I think as tough an interview

as she could possibly have. So any logic for that interview to me was like, I think as tough an interview as she could possibly have. So any logic for that interview to me says like, go, go there, like just like, fuck it. Let's talk about the Senate. Your colleague from Texas, John Cornyn, he's leading candidate to succeed Mitch McConnell, whether in majority or minority, vowed to block nominees for Kamala Harris

he deems too far left. He said, I'm not going to schedule a vote on some wild-eyed radical nominee. So if Kamala Harris wins and the Senate flips, would Kamala Harris be able to replace a Supreme Court justice or even have a cabinet? I don't know the answer to that. And that's why I really don't. And I, you know, I don't like the hypotheticals just because I don't even like to stipulate either a win or a loss on either side.

But I do think it illustrates how important it is for us to focus on these Senate races. Like there is no path to a Kamala Harris cabinet or to a rebalancing of the Supreme Court or to climate action or to codifying Roe or to codifying LGBTQ rights, or any economic progress without a democratic Senate. And I just don't want anybody

to get sort of despondent here. We were here two years ago and four years ago, and it was predicted by all the smart people that we were going to lose the Senate. And then we kept the Senate, and then we kept the Senate again, and we've passed the biggest climate action in human history,

and we've reduced the price of prescription medicine, and we've done all these incredible things only because we won the Senate. And so, yes, the presidency is job one, but job one A is making sure Sherrod Brown and John Tester and Tammy Baldwin and Alyssa Slotkin and Bob Casey return to the Senate.

So talk to me about Nebraska, Texas, Florida. I'm not going to talk about Nebraska at all. I don't know very much about it and I don't want that to polarize. What I would say about Texas is that Beto know, Beto got very, very close, and I think Colin Allred is running a slightly more disciplined campaign and a very well-funded campaign. You know, he's very close and does need money. And I think the theory of the case in Florida is basically the same except that we have reproductive choice on the ballot.

And so in a scenario where the turnout projections are slightly undercounting the number of pro-choice individuals showing up, then I think we could either win Florida on the presidential or lose by a little. And then Debbie Mucarce-Powell can win. She's running an extraordinary campaign. But both of those campaigns are campaigns that actually need hard money cash. So if you've got 500 bucks laying around, send the campaign, not some campaign committee, not some super PAC, send the campaign some money and they will put it right into communicating

with voters. So I really enjoy that Nebraska's not happening. Sorry, I even raised it. Forget about it. Huge mistake on my part. Forget it. We don't even know what's going on there. It's not even, it really has nothing to do with us, frankly.

Correct. So interesting about Nevada, Arizona and Florida, these are states with competitive Senate races. They are states that, uh, Florida's tougher, but, but where, uh, traditionally we've considered them swing states, uh, in the presidential and their states with abortion ballot measures. Two theories here. One is the abortion ballot measures turn out people that care about basic reproductive freedom. The other place like Arizona, you have voters who are gonna vote for Ruben Gallego, they're going to vote to protect abortion, and then they are considering whether or not to vote

for an anti-choice, anti-abortion president under the feeling that they're balancing, that they're protecting abortion in Arizona. Anyway, how do you deal with that kind of false sense of comfort? Well, I think the Harris campaign has done a pretty effective job in making it clear that Donald Trump really is going to push for a national abortion ban. And so it won't matter what kind of statutory protections you have at a state by state level.

And the problem is, I mean, for us is that they talk about minimum national standards, right? And that is a ban. That's what they mean. And Donald Trump is going to do that. There's no doubt about it. That is part of Project 2025. I think we've done a very good job of getting the word out and making it clear that you sort of can't have your cake

and eat it too and vote for an anti-choice federal candidate and a pro-choice ballot amendment. But the problem is that even if that is something that has gotten through for say 80% of the voters, we kind of need it to get through to 95% of the voters in order for us to fully align and have the abortion rights referendum in Arizona win, Gallego win and Harris win.

So I'm losing my mind. You surf, should I be surfing? Yeah, you should, sure. Of course. Southern California. Wow. It's a lot of balance, huh? Yeah, I mean, but you're young, you'll be fine.

And you know, you did a reality show that required all kinds of fitness, you'll be fine. And never got to use it. Never got even to, never. My balance is actually really good. And never got to use it. Never got even to, never. My balance is actually really good. Never got to fucking use it. Yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't watch it as you know.

No, I know. You should surf. But the problem with Southern California surfing is like part of what's good about surfing, like fishing, like hiking, like lots of things, is that you kind of can escape the hustle and bustle. Southern California surfing is like as stressful as driving on the freeways because it's just packed and a little bit aggressive. So, you know, those are not my vibes. Honestly, just like using stereotypes about my

culture to just putting them together. Oh, we're all sitting in traffic here in California. You and Chris Murphy, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, you seem close. Have your hands ever brushed in a weird way? Chris Murphy and I, no, he's very Northeastern. There's no touching. So that's good. That's interesting. So, Home Stretch, just let's reiterate

what you feel like people need to do. Sorry. What? Go ahead. what you feel like people need to do. Sorry. But. Go ahead. We got, you want people to go to Pennsylvania.

We gotta get calls in and feet on the ground in Pennsylvania. We need money in Ohio, Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, and we need calls and volunteers in Wisconsin. What else is the other priorities for you right now? That's it. I mean, the other thing I would say is like, don't agonize, organize. I do think that, you know, we're a party that tends to agonize too much.

We're a party that doesn't trust happiness. And we're a party that can sometimes talk ourselves out of having the winning momentum. Now, Kamala Harris has done a lot to give us a spring in our step. And it is our step, and it is our obligation, seriously, it is our obligation to stuff our phone in a sock drawer and go out there and campaign. Do it, people. You know, we know this show is very popular,

so I know how many people are listening and I know how many people have signed up at Vote Save America, and I don't like the ratio center Senator Schatz. A lot of people listening to this that haven't done a goddamn thing. Well, I'm not gonna scold anybody except to say that, here's what I would say. Look, my first race 26 years ago, I was running for the state house, and I came out of the primary election,

kind of bruised, I didn't look super strong, and a mentor of bruised, I didn't look super strong. And a mentor of mine said, let's assume you're behind by about a thousand votes and you've got 90 days left. So you got to win over something like 12 people a day. And let's assume you win over one in four people that you talk to. You're not winning over everybody. Okay, you got to go talk to about 50 humans every day for the next 90 days, and then you're gonna win this thing. And that's what I did.

I actually knocked on doors to the point where people told me to stop calling and coming by. I wore my shoes out to the point where I had to buy a new pair of rock porches from the local Ross on Ward Avenue. And I won by 425 votes. And I would not have won by 425 votes if I stared at a screen wondering if I was going to win by 425 votes.

What happens next depends on us. It does not depend on events far away. It depends on what we all do, what all of the listeners do. So if you haven't sort of taken the step to either press the donate button or to get on the phone and start calling family and friends or a list provided by the campaign, now's the time. Now's the time. What a great message to end on.

And I just also wanna say, wherever you are, even if you cannot physically get to Wisconsin, Pennsylvania or any of these other swing states, you can call into those states, you can donate into those states, you can donate into those states, and I guarantee you, wherever you are, you are within 90 minutes of a house race that could swing the balance in the house,

and you can go knock on doors there. John Tommy and I are beginning to hitting some of the doors in California as well. So go to votesaveamerica.com. The time, it's it. We're at the two-week mark here, people. Phone's down, knocking fist up, you know? Senator Brian Schatz, always so good to see you.

It's good to see you too, John. You made me feel better. I'll look forward to watching Survivor for the first time. That's great. Maybe something we can do after we win. Okay, take care. That's our show for today. Wow, what a show.

Thank you, Senator. Dan and guest host Alex Weiss, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. Take care. That's our show for today. Wow, what a show. Thank you, Senator. Dan and guest host, Alex Wagner of MSNBC Primetime Fame. We'll be back with a new show on Wednesday. Bye everyone. Wonder who's Dick they'll talk about.

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