Pod Save America - Trump Deports Noem

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

Trump abruptly fires Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Dan and Jon discuss the Congressional hearings that led to her dismissal, Trump's announcement that Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin will replace her, and the future of DHS. Then they react to the administration's ever-shifting justifications for their war with Iran, Republicans voting with Democrats to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi over her handling of the Epstein files, how MAGA is already attacking James Talarico, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy's new target: Dunkin' Donuts. Then, Dan talks to Politico senior political columnist Jonathan Martin about Tuesday night's results, the tense Republican runoff in Texas, and Jmart’s forthcoming podcast series, On the Road with Jonathan Martin.

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I'm John Fabro. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Donald Trump fires Christy Gnome like a dog, who she shot. We'll dig into the congressional hearings that finally brought her down and talk about why Pam Bondi will be in the hot seat next. We'll also discuss the latest with Trump's war in Iran and why some Democrats aren't ruling out funding it.

Then Dan talks to our friend Jonathan Martin, senior political columnist at Politico about Tuesday night's primary results and Republican strategy heading into the midterms. And finally, I'll tell you why RFK Jr. can take this delicious, oversized vat

of caffeine and chemicals out of my cold dead hands. I got a lot of questions for you on this topic. Just be prepared. I'm ready with answers, Dan. I have no doubt. I have no doubt. This was my second Dunkin coffee of the day. I did this just for the, just for the prop. I just note that every morning through some format, John complains about how little sleep he gets.

I'm sure these two things are unrelated. Let's go on. Okay, sure. Anyway, before we go on, please consider becoming a subscriber if you're not already so that you don't miss out on all the grade A content we're churning out. for our friends of the pod. Subscribers get our new extra episode of Pod Save America now called Pod Save America Only Friends. Other subscriber-only shows like Polarcoaster with Dan what did you guys talk about this week?

Carolina did a deep dive on the primaries this past week, especially on Texas and what it means the Democratic Party going forward. And we looked at the public opinion on Iran and what it tells us about where politics may be going in a time of war. Awesome. So check out. You can get Polar Coaster with Dan Pfeiffer. You also get access to our growing excellent list of substack newsletters like Pod Save America open tabs.

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We all do the fact-checking. Anyway, head to cricket.com slash friends and please subscribe today. All right. Let's start with the big news of the moment. Christy Noem has been deported from the Department of Homeland Security, along with her top advisor and reported fuck buddy, Corey Lewandowski. Oh, man. Trump announced that he's nominating Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullen,

former MMA fighter to replace her, and that Nome will become, quote, special envoy for the shield of the Americas, Our new security initiative in the Western Hemisphere, we are announcing on Saturday in Dural, Florida. I thank Christy for her service at, in quotations, homeland. If you're wondering what finally led to Gnomes firing, let's start with a fun compilation from her dual appearances before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees this week.

Have you had sexual relations with Corey Lewandowski? Mr. Chairman, I am shocked that we're going down and peddling tabloid garbage. I know you said it's garbage and it may be, but I really think you need to say the word no into the record so that you can clear that up. I think the ridiculousness of this and the tabloids that you are quoting and referencing are insane. And this has been something that I've refuted for years and I continue to do that. We used a 737. I've been on it once, but it is being used by other administration officials and it is used for commanded control flights. What kind of deportee justifies being flown out of the country in a luxury jet with a bedroom and accommodations like this? A 14-month-old dog is basically a teenager in dog years.

You decided to kill that dog because you had not invested the appropriate time and training, and then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it's a leadership lesson about tough choices. Those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment. Not unlike, what happened up in Minneapolis. I just asked if you had anything you wanted to say to the parents or to the family of Renee good after you called them domestic terrorists. I can't even imagine what they have gone through in the loss of their son and the loss of their family members.

But how about specifically calling them domestic terrorists without any evidence of that? Sir, I did, ma'am, I did not call him a domestic terrorist. I said it appeared to be an incident of. I think the parents saw it. for white it was. I don't know about you, Dan. I think she nailed it. I mean, just top-notch performance all the way around.

Wow. I mean, we've heard all those clips. We've even talked about them on YouTube. But just every time, it just, it really hits. And that's just, I mean, it would have been, we would have been here for an hour. We could have played so many more. It was hard to pick. Yeah.

And yet, of all those, the straw that really broke the camel's back, like the one that you probably shot also, was this exchange with Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana. Republican Senator, let's play. How do you square that concern for waste, which I share, with the fact that you have spent $220 million running television editing?

advertisements that feature you prominently? Sir, the president tasked me with getting the message out to the country and to other countries where we were seeing the invasion come from. That has been extremely effective. Ask you to run these advertisements, is that right? We had that conversation, yes, before I was put in this position and sworn in and confirmed and since then as well. Okay.

Did you bid out those service contracts? Yes, they did. They went out to a competitive bid, and career officials at the department chose who would do those advertising commercials. My research shows that you did not bid them out. In fact, one of the people you picked the strategy group, I'm sorry, Safe America Media was a company formed 11 days before, you picked them and that the strategy group got most of the money and the head of that is

married to your former spokesperson. That would be Tricia McLaughlin, who we have spoken about before on this program. Once or twice. And maybe I've tweeted about a few times as well. That's her husband who got the contract. Sorry, the subcontract. because he had no connection to the firm who got the real contract because that firm was created just 11 days before it got the contract

in what was, I'm sure, a competitive bidding process. Yes. Usually the government likes to give money to recently form shell corporations. Now, if you happen to miss these ads that Chrissy Nome used $220 million of your hard-earned tax dollars to create an air. Here's one that apparently set Trump off. Why do I love these wide open spaces? They remind me of why our forefathers came here.

Not just for its beauty, but for the freedom only America provides. I'm Christy Kno. What? What does that have to do with anything? Yeah. I mean, having watched, I saw that ad many, many times during football games

and other sporting events. But just watching it here in this context, it's very clear that it does, like the whole point was to tell people to self-support. Like that was the idea. Now, I don't think there's a lot of evidence that television advertising is a good way to convince people to do that. But even this ad does not actually tell them to do that. No. It's just a political ad for her in her home state where she wants to probably maybe reportedly run for Senate in front of Mount Rushmore on a fucking horse who she probably then shot.

So I don't know if everyone caught the moment in her exchange with Senator Kennedy, who could use some caffeine himself. It was a little slow, where that really ended it for her, which is when he was like, oh, did you talk to Trump about these ads? And she said yes. And he's like, oh, Trump approved these ads. She said yes. So apparently Trump did not, or at least Trump says he did not approve these ads. And when Trump heard about that from Senator Kennedy, who then called him and asked him if what Kristine Ome had said was correct, and Trump said no. And then Trump got so angry that he called Reuters and told them, I never knew anything about this. And then today, Thursday, that was it. That was it for Christine Ome. Are you surprised that this is what finally did her in after all that we've talked about about everything that Christy Noem has fucked up in her tenure as Homeland Security Secretary? In a normal country with a normal president, the murder of and smearing of to American citizens by the Department of Homeland Security would be the fireable offense.

Yeah, the kidnappings, rendering people to a foreign torture dungeon. Just incompetence and chaos all over the place. A lot of it. A lot of stuff to do. All the cruelty and then the incompetence even in executing the cruel missions. Like complete shit shit all around. But in Trump's world, it is corruption and graph that does not involve him. And so that is what bothers me.

And I will say watching this, Lovett and I did a YouTube rep response on this after the Senate hearing. And Kennedy does masterfully walk her into the trap. Yes. He like sets it up, talks about the ads, gets her to say it. She kind of like implies yes,

but doesn't say yes. And then he follows up and asks. And then when she kind of sort of says yes the next time, then he's like, oh, really? I find that surprising. I can't imagine the president or Russ vote, the head of OMB signing off on. $200 million of ads to improve your name ID.

And like you in that moment, it felt like her date, like her days probably always number, but particularly numbered there because everyone can see the trap happening and she walked right into it. Yeah. And it's only, it's not only corruption that doesn't involve him. It's corruption that she blamed on him. And leveraged him for like he's in those ads, right? Like he's in those ads in a way that seems.

But he's second. He's second fiddle in that ad. He's not the top of the movie producer for these ads. But like say you say she, she was lying. She didn't ask Trump about the ads. She did the ads. The ads pissed him off. He was annoyed about the ads.

What you do in Trump world is you fall on the sword. And you say, oh, no, I just did that on my own. And then he probably keeps you at that point. Because he doesn't mind having a bunch of fuckups around him. He does mind having people around him who then point the finger at him. That's like, that is the only rule. in the Trump world. You do not blame Donald Trump for anything.

Donald Trump is perfect in every way. Donald Trump can do no wrong. But the thing with Christy Gnome is, and it's really, like, this is the key to explain everything, is that she is particularly dumb. Oh, yeah. Like, she didn't mean, she didn't, like, think she was blaming him.

Yeah, she didn't have this moment of, yeah, of course. She's just like there's this incredible lack of self-awareness and how she has done everything, no sense of how she's actually being perceived. by anyone else. And it's like every person in that room, every person watching on TV as it's happening,

is watching Kennedy march her into this trap. And the only person who doesn't see what's coming is Kristino. Even Corey Lewandowski probably saw it was happening. You know who probably didn't see what was happening? Her husband, because he famously is not seeing what's happening, but was sitting right behind her the whole time while they were asking if she ever had sex with Corey Lewandowski,

and then she didn't say no. because she was under oath? And there's been a lot of like blowback to this in some places online. Like is she being shamed? You're like, do what? So is her personal life matter. But here's the thing. And this is the point.

She's sleeping with a subordinate. Of course your personal life matters in that situation. It matters for anyone in any job. And it's not like he was a subordinate. And then they just fell into love through the shared passion for mass deportation. He was her boyfriend. she hired him at taxpayer dollars, gave him an incredibly sketchy job that allowed him...

And a gun. And a gun. Well, he never got the gun, right? He did get the badge. I thought he just got the badge. Oh, there's some dispute there, but anyway. Either way. But it gives him this incredibly sketchy job that allows him to circumvent all ethics

and security clearances to just, or all of his ethics requirements. And gives him full run to brandish his gun on the back of the plane. Are you seeing air quotes for gun? Yeah. Okay, just checking. I meant penis. A lot of... Okay.

Good, good stuff. And so it's like, it is quite relevant here. Like, he had basically all the reporting shows, he basically was running the department. Yeah. Making all the decisions. Everything came through him. Some of the reporting now, since the firing was announced, points out that, yes, the hearings were, like, the final straw. But, you know, it's did, is that according, well, this is what the White House is trying to say.

now, but that like Trump started souring on her around the pretty and good killings and her going out and calling them domestic terrorists. Again, not because Trump thinks that she was wrong to do that, but that it caused the White House all this trouble and all this political trouble and all the stories about the corruption and the Lewandowski affair apparently bothered Trump as well, which we saw in the read about in the Wall Street Journal story about the two of them. So I do think it was a number of things that sort of built up to this for him, which in the same way that like if Pam Bondi gets fired at some point, we're going to be like, well, there was a whole bunch of things that led up to whatever she finally does that gets her fired if that happens.

So Mark Wayne Mullen, Oklahoma Senator, who by the way, also after Alex Prattie was murdered, said that he was there to cause, you know, maximum violence or something. Yeah, that he was there to cause maximum violence or terrorism or whatever. He said something very similar to what Nome said and Miller. do you think he gets confirmed pretty easily? And how would you advise Democrats to handle his confirmation hearing? I presume it's not going to be hard to get 50 Republicans to vote for him. Maybe they're going to get...

And John Fetterman, who already said he... And so Fetterman, so you only need 49. Which means if she wants it, Susan Collins, can take a pass on this and separate herself from it, even though this is not going to solve her political problems on ICE and she's the one who writes the ICE funding bills. I think Democrats, so yeah, I mean, look, they confirmed a Fox News host to be the head of the Pentagon and an anti-vax guy who put a dead bear in the back of his car to be in charge of health and human services. So anything is possible here. I think for Democrats, we should use this as an opportunity to highlight. There are high profile confirmation hearings. There are going to be the vote here. There'll be debate around it, reporting around it. Use it to highlight all of our arguments against ICE. and everything Trump is doing and the problems with how they've handled things and everything from what happened in Minnesota to the detention centers to the U.S. citizens and legal residents who have been detained, some cases for weeks at a time, just across the board.

The mass surveillance used, you know, the surveillance techniques and the facial recognition used to track protesters and things like that. Here's a chance to raise the salience of something that we should be making a strong argument about. And then every single person, apparently not named John Federman, should vote. vote against this person. Because here's the one thing I can promise you. I don't, I give two fucks about Senate collegiality because you used to slowly work out next to this person on the treadmill at the Senate gym, which is how we ended up, Marco Rubio ended up getting 99 votes. There's just no

way that you're going to feel good one month from now, two months or now, three months from now for voting for Donald Trump's DHS secretary. A hundred percent. I mean, it is, it is absolutely insane to vote for this man. And I assume, I've heard, I would be shocked of anyone other than John that I've been voted for him, honestly. Me too. Me too. And I would be like, I think you could see Collins and Murkowski, perhaps, not vote for him as well. But like even someone like Tillis who really doesn't like know him and was calling for her resignation, I bet Tillis votes for him as well. Yeah, this is in his eyes an improvement. He got what he wanted. But I, and I agree with you that that's the focus. I would also like focus on one or two issues. I would try not to do like a whole

smorgasbord of things with Mullen. Like you want a story coming out of that? Like I would focus on the murders of Alex Prady and Renee Good and as a way to talk about sort of the constitutional rights of all Americans and legal residents being violated by ICE and people and the violence that they're committing and the horrible conditions like I would try to narrow in on that and you know try to get answers from him on both things that the administration is hiding from us and that hasn't been forthcoming about like are we getting an independent investigation into these murders, what's happening in some of these detention centers, but also like, you know, put him on record making promises that he will, you know, then break, but at least have him on

record saying under oath, saying that he'll do certain things or he'll uphold certain rights. It used to be you could use these hearings to extract promises. Right. From people to release certain reports to those sort of things. But he won't need a single Democratic vote, not from anyone other than Federman. And so even if you ask for it, he's not going to say yes because he doesn't need your vote. Now, I don't think that he is somehow a better person than gnome or is going to have like a run a kindler, gentler DHS. But I do wonder if they will use the transition and the new, the fact that there's a new secretary to do some window dressing on DHS to try to make it seem like Mullen is riding the ship.

But what do you think? Like, do you expect DHS to look any different under, under Mark Wayne Mullen than it has under Kristinaum? I think there's a chance that'll look less chaotic and stupid. Just the way DHS was run under Christinaneum and Corey Lewandowski was insane. Like when you read the stories about how they ran the department, Corey Lewandowski approving every single contract for everything like over $1,000, just like insanity. I think that it will be a more effective department in terms of probably executing on what Donald

Trump wants because it won't have Chris. Nome at the top, but it will not be a better department in the way in which we want to be a better department. Although the thing I would say is that Donald Trump doesn't really understand why Kristy Nome failed so bad. Yes, she was a particularly stupid, particularly inexperienced, unqualified person for this job. And he picked her because he thought she was good on TV. He's making the same mistake with Mark Wayne Mullen. Mark Wayne Mullen ran a plumbing business before he entered politics, which is totally fine. Like, we probably want more plumbers in Congress. but he has no actual expertise in any of the issues that DHS does.

He's not even on the committee in the Senate. And he also doesn't have any- Makes him like the rest of the cabinet secretaries. Right, right. And he also doesn't have any management experience either, right? And it is a beast of a department to manage. And Trump picked him because he thought he's good on Fox News. So it is the same, he's committing the same sin again.

Maybe it'll turn out better this time. But he doesn't understand why the first choice went so poorly. And again, Stephen Miller still the boss. Yeah. Boss of Pete Hegseth, boss of Pam Bondi, boss of Christine Ome, and now Mark Wayne Mullen. And J.D. Vance. Also boss of J.D. Vance. Right. I mean, he didn't really have a boss anyway because he doesn't do anything except shitpost. Paz of America is brought to you by Bilt. No one likes paying rent, but Bilt makes it feel a little better. Built is the loyalty program for renters that rewards you monthly with points and exclusive benefits in your neighborhood. Let me explain. With Bilt, every rent payment earns you points that can be used towards flights, hotels, lift rides, Amazon.com,

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Squarespace.com slash crooked to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain that's Squarespace.com slash crooked. Okay, so, Christy know I'm getting shit canned only briefly stole the spotlight from the biggest story in the world right now, Trump's new war in the Middle East, which has become a global crisis that spread all the way from the Indian Ocean, where the U.S. sunk an Iranian Navy ship near India to Turkey, where NATO forces shot down an Iranian missile. More than 1,300 people have died so far, mostly in Iran, but also in Lebanon, Israel, and all the other Gulf nations that have been hit. Missiles have rained down on not just military targets, but

embassies, airports, hotels, hospitals, schools, travel and commerce in the region, is it a standstill, oil prices keep surging, causing markets to tank. Thousands of Americans are still stranded in the Middle East trying to get home. And of course, six American soldiers have died in a war for which Trump and Republicans have offered no time limit, no price tag, no exit plan, and no coherent answers about what the goals are, why we attacked, or even whether the war is actually a war. Let's listen to the cascade of bullshit from the administration and Republicans from just the last few days. We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action.

We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties. Yesterday, you told us that Israel was going to strike Iran, and that that's why we needed to get involved. the president said that Iran was going to get. Yeah, your statement is false. So that's not what he. I was asked very specific.

Were you there yesterday? Yes, I asked the question. No, did you? Israel forced your hand to launch these strikes against Iran? No, I might have forced their hands. You see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. If we didn't do it first, they would have done it to Israel.

They have declared war on us. We're not at war right now. You can see this is war. We haven't declared war. They declared war on us, but we haven't declared. Just now, you said this is war. They called it war. They called it war. What I was saying, okay, well, that was at Misco. We're doing very well on the war front, to put it mildly, I would say. Somebody said, on a scale of 10, where would you rate it? I said about a 15.

I guess the worst case would be we do this, and then somebody takes over who's as bad as the previous person, right? That could happen. Jesus Christ That could happen So, clear as day We attacked Iran because Israel was going to attack around But also because Iran was going to attack Israel But also because Iran was going to attack us But also we're not at war

But also the war is going well But also we may just end up with an Iranian regime That's even worse than before That all makes sense to you, Dan? How are you feeling about all this? Not great, I'd say. I mean, it is like in some ways it's not surprising that Donald Trump who has never read a briefing, paid attention in a briefing, has any sense of world history, military strategy, the Middle East would get this wrong at every opportunity. Like he's a knucklehead. We know that. But the fact that no one else in the administration, Marco Rubio, Pete Higgseth, I was going to say the National Security Advisor, but that's also Marco Rubio can explain why we're there, what we're doing, what happens next, what Victor

looks like is something bigger than a communications problem. It's not that they lack a message. They don't have a strategy. There's no plan. They did not think this through. The military had a plan to blow things up. And they have clearly done that quite successfully. But that's the full extent of the plan. There is no actual idea. Like it really is one day it's regime change. The next day it's not regime change. Today, Donald Trump told Axios that he wanted to have a hand in picking the next Ayatollah. And he does not like the leading candidate right now. And he does not like the leading candidate right now. We need a great Ayatollah. I'm going to have the best Ayatollah in there. It's going to be, you wouldn't believe the Ayatollahs I'm looking at. Yeah, he's, he wants an Iranian Delsey. It's basically what he's saying, referring to.

He's talking about picking an Ayatollah like it's the fucking curtains for his ballroom. Yeah, but it's, we're not in charge there. We don't, we don't have control of it. Like what? And then sometimes, I don't think they're going to take our advice after we are raining down missiles and bombs on them. And it's like one day we're going to arm the Iraqi, the Kurds in Iraq to come over and invade. The next day we're telling people to, like, there's just no plan. And it really, like, this is, was always the nightmare scenario with Trump as president, was that he was just like stumble ass backwards into war. And that is exactly what's happened here. There was, like, and also just for what it's worth, he said he had a feeling they were going to attack us.

Just a feeling. But that, the idea. You got to trust your instinct on these things. I think that country might attack us. Let's invade. But it is a lie bigger than any of the lies told by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld in the run-up to the last Iraq War. It's just, it, like they're just lying all the time to hide the fact that they have no idea what the fuck they're doing in a war in the Middle East that is causing chaos, stranding American citizens, having troops die and spiking oil prices all at the same time. to one of the most to be charitable to the administration, which we do on this podcast,

which we love to do. You know, maybe the most coherent explanation was given by Rubio at one point. Yes. He's sort of gone back and forth. You know what they say about broken clocks, right? Right, yeah, he's tried out a few different rationales as well. But basically he's saying, okay, so we know that Iran wanted to develop a nuclear weapon.

Of course, we obliterated their nuclear weapons. nuclear sites, but not really. They've already tried to rebuild. At one point, Trump says they were two weeks away. That's crazy. That's a lie. No one thinks that. Someone else says maybe they're a year away. So that's shifting, whatever. But anyway, let's say Iran still wants to build a nuclear weapon. So then Rubio says, well, if they want to build a nuclear weapon, they're also churning out all of these ballistic missiles and conventional weapons so that they basically can put up a shield around their country so that no one can attack them for trying to build a nuclear weapon so that they can build their nuclear weapon in peace while they have all these missiles to protect themselves

from when we try to bomb them to stop them from creating a nuclear weapon. So that is the, so that's the most charitable rationale and it is still fucking bonkers. It still makes no sense. It makes no sense. Like, so you're going to have, you're going to have so many ballistic missiles and conventional weapons that that's going to stop the United States and potentially other NATO allies or other countries around the world from attacking, like, which we already did once before. Yes, that would be the point. We bombed the nuclear sites.

So what the fuck are you talking about? Like, and if that is the rationale, then when do we know? When do we know that we have destroyed enough missiles in a country of 90 million people where probably most of the regime except for the dozen or so senior leaders that we've killed already is still intact. What's the plan there?

And look, I saw in Financial Times there was like an Israeli official that went on background and was basically like, look, if there's a new regime, great, if not, whatever. If it's a worse regime, if it's a better regime,

that's fine. If it's just chaos, if it's civil war, if the Kurds come in, any kind of chaos is good with us because it will degrade their ability to develop a nuclear weapon or at least take their focus and attention off that for a while. That was the plan from the Israeli official. That's what we want is a giant failed state of 92 million people in the middle of the Middle East.

We're just going to soak chaos, how long it will last, what it will lead to. We don't know. We can't say. But it seems like what Trump wants to do in his mind is in a couple weeks or apparently Central Command. said they're asking for military officials to come help them out at Central Command through September of this year, it said in Politico. But anyway, so a couple weeks, months, whatever it is, and then Trump declares victory. We're done. We did it. We look, look, we obliterated their nuclear sites. We got rid of all of their ballistic missiles or we got rid of enough of them and then we're gone. We're done. We win. And the bet then is that the chaos and the killing and the repression and everything else we unleash in the Middle East because of this just won't be the focus of our attention

anymore once the bombing stops. That seems like that's his bet. I mean, that is a potential short-term political solution to a problem that's much bigger than politics. Yeah. Like, think about what you've unleashed in the Middle East under all those scenarios. Well, and also Trump's probably like, I won't be around by the time it bites us in the ass again. I'll be out of office. I can't, I apologize to him remember who said this. I heard someone say that it was a Middle East scholar of some kind of saying that like there's a whole generations of Iran who were coming up who wanted a more modern Iran who really didn't have antipathy towards the United States. Right, that was from a different generation. And now they all will because we've been blowing up their homes for five days now. We, we bombed a school, a girl's school. We killed 175 people, mostly little girls. Originally, thought maybe it was an Israeli missile. Now the New York Times just has a new piece, put it together and think that it's in all likelihood. It was a U.S. attack that did it.

So that's something that we did. Medical centers, hospitals bombed, just killing people left and right. And then also the destruction that's happened in all these other Gulf countries. For what? For what? And no one can answer that question. So we killed the 86-year-old Supreme Leader who may now. be replaced by his son, even though Trump

doesn't like the son. Maybe they'll kill the son. Who knows? Then there'll be someone else. The idea that we are going to bomb and kill these people into submission and that is going to create a peaceful Middle East is just, it's fucking insane and not borne out

by any evidence throughout any of history. Yeah, it's just it. Like you just, they can't answer like two follow up questions on this where it's like, oh, we want regime change. Well, how's that going to happen? Who's going to be in charge? What kind of regime is it going to be? Are we going to do anything to ensure that it's a regime? Is it a democracy? I mean, Trump did say, one of his 19 random phone calls were reporters who happened to call him, that he wanted freedom for the Iranian people was his first thing he said.

He definitely doesn't want that. He doesn't care about that for sure. For sure. They are probably hoping that they can get, and I forget where I was reading this, but there's like basically, you know, two factions in Iran in the regime. And one is, you know, we repress our people at home and then also we're very aggressive outwardly to the rest of the world. And the other is we have a detent with the rest of the world and we still repress the hell of other people at home, right? And Trump clearly doesn't care about the Iranian people at all. He clearly doesn't care if the violence and repression continues there. What he hopes is that maybe he'll find a regime that's corrupt enough to do a deal with the West, with the United States, and they can go on doing whatever they want to the Iranian people at home. That's his probably best scenario. Now, even that's not something that you

can just fucking plan out. That's just, hopefully that's where everything lands. We don't know. We don't know. On Tuesday show, we played Trump responding to the first American casualties in the war with, quote, that's the way it is, likely be more. Pete Hegseth was arguably even more callous and defensive on Wednesday when he scolded the press for hurting the president's political standing by reporting on the deaths of American troops. Here's what he said, followed by Caroline Levitt's angry defensive heggseth during her briefing. This is what the fake news misses. We've taken control of Iran's airspace and waterways without boots on the ground. We control their fate. But when a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it's front page news.

I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad, but try for once to report the reality. His... Hex-up was complaining that it was front-page news about these sixth service members who were killed. That's not what the secretary said, Caitlin, and that's not what the secretary meant. And you know it. You know you are being disingenuous. There is not...

We've never had a secretary of defense. Who cares more? If you've got through where tragic things happen, it's front-page. news. I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad. As you know, we cover the deaths of U.S. service members under every president. The press does only want to make the president look bad. That's a fact.

Especially you. No, listen to me. Especially you and especially CNN. Good for Caitlin Collins. So, I don't want to give political advice to the White House here, but I'm not sure the most effective response to Americans dying in the Middle East

is going to be, but think about all the American soldiers who weren't killed. which is basically what he wants the press to report. You don't talk about any of the good stuff. You just talk about an errant drone or tragic things happening. I mean, what the fuck? Yeah, it's sick. How do they not see that, though?

Like, that was not, that wasn't Hegseth off the cuff. Hexeth was reading a statement. Here's how that is, because to be Trump, to work for Trump, to be a Trump superfan is to only be able to see the world through Trump's eyes. to view everything in the context of how it affects Donald Trump. Is it good for Donald Trump? Is it bad for Donald Trump? And that disease is so prevalent that it even applies to the death of American troops who serve under Pete Higgseth.

He is the Secretary of Defense. And he can only see the death of troops who died in part because they did a very poor job of planning for this war. Yes. Because they were in a, by reports, they were in an unarmored, unfortified trailer. as attacks were being launched. Attacks that we chose. We picked the timing of them. We chose when they would be.

And they left the troops out there. But the only way you can see it is as something that is bad for Trump, not what's bad for these families, not for the people, families and young kids here. Yeah. But what's bad for Donald Trump, and that's it.

And that's all that matters. That's all they can think of. And it's honestly perverse. We should note that the reason Trump has unilaterally taken this country to war is because Republicans in Congress, and now a few Democrats, have voted to let him. In the Senate, Republicans this week blocked a vote on a War Powers Act resolution that would have stopped Trump's military action in Iran unless Congress explicitly authorized it. John Fetterman was the only Democrat to vote with the Republicans, and Rand Paul

was the only Republican to vote with the Democrats. In the House, only four Democrats voted against the resolution and it did of course fail. And none of the two that we screamed about last week. I was going to say, Jared Moskowitz and Josh Godheimer changed their minds. Good for them. And Moskowitz did a really, I thought, long, thoughtful statement about why he did it. He did. And I haven't seen anything from Josh.

No, but yes. Everyone has the right to change their mind. And if you do so and you explain it, kudos to them. But these aren't the last votes Congress will likely face on the war. Trump officials have said that they're probably going to send what's known as an emergency supplemental funding request to Congress, aka give us more money for the war, reportedly with a price tag of $50 billion, with a B. This is after Congress already approved nearly $1 trillion in defense spending since Trump took office last year. And if that makes you angry,

get ready for the lead of this Politico story about the extra war funding. Quote, Some Democrats aren't ruling out voting for a multi-billion dollar military infusion, setting up a potential internal clash in the weeks ahead. You want to tee off on this one, Dan? I do. This is an illegal regime change war of choice being conducted by a corrupt tin pot dictator who is unable or unwilling to explain to us why we're in this war, what we're doing, or what victory looks like. The idea that we would give him funding to pay for this war,

to do that would be to take every last bit of power and influence that the Congress has is to hand it to the president. This is the only check available to this president that we could possibly do. And to see that would be to validate every criticism, fair and unfair that people have had about Democrats since Trump was elected. It would be a truly insane thing to do. Yeah. I mean, I am going to give Democrats here the benefit of the doubt and that maybe they're just thinking through things. Maybe they didn't want to go on the record, although they did talk to the reporters about this. Some of them went on the record. Some of them went on the record, yeah. And maybe they'll change their mind, just like Jared Moskowitz and Josh Godheimer changed their mind.

So maybe they'll come around. But I do think voting for funding on this war would be perhaps the most catastrophic vote of your career. I really do. And so I've heard a few, you know, so it's people on the Armed Services Committee, Democrats on the Armed Services Committee, I guess, that were the focus of this Politico piece. They have Alyssa Slokkin, which I was surprised about on record, saying she's like, well, I'm thinking about it, but we're in it now. I don't like this war, but we're in it, some version of that. And I've seen people say, well, you know, during Iraq, a lot of Democrats voted for supplemental funding bills because they wanted to make sure that even though they hated the war and they were opposed to the war in Iraq and they wanted the war in Iraq to end, that you can't just leave the troops in the field without armor or without the funding they need because that puts troops in danger.

And like, first of all, back then, I always found that argument a little, you know, the idea that a vote in the Congress is suddenly they're going to run out of money. But at least then the troops were in battle. They were on the ground in Iraq, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of American troops, right? And so you could make an argument that you can't just withdraw all at once immediately and you need some extra funding. I get it, right? Also, there's a bigger point here. here than that. That's what I'm saying. That's, that's the bigger point here is like, this is just money to keep bombing Iran, which Donald Trump can stop any second he wants, leaving no American soldier at risk at

all. But I think there's an even bigger point than that, which is that was an authorized war. Congress, there was a process in which Congress president asked for authorization. The Congress gave it to them. They shouldn't have, but they did. It was a war that was a military action approved by the the UN Security Council. This war has no domestic legal framework at all is an illegal war. Violation of international law. Violation of domestic law against the Constitution. No clear rationale. President who's a fucking criminal. Like, what are we doing? Yeah. It's just the like you can, we can argue and I, and I'll take that criticism that even even Barack Obama and the Senate shouldn't have voted for some of these. But these are, these are apples and fucking oranges. These are two

different situations. This is a war of choice. And it's not even, they can't even, the whole process is so fucked up that they have to stop themselves from saying the word war, because to do so is to admit to the illegality of what they're doing. The choice should be, if you want money for this war, come try to get authorization for it. We're not going to fund any legal war that you could end any day you're choosing. So it's like you're asking us to, first of all, you got a trillion dollars over the last year at the Pentagon. You're now asking us to pony up another 50 billion at a time when people can't afford groceries, a home, their health care, so that Donald Trump and BB Netanyahu can keep dropping bombs on a country of 90 million people

because they think that's how you bring about peace in the Middle East? What the fuck are we talking about? How do you even consider voting for that? I believe in the end the overwhelming majority of Democrats will vote against this. John Fetterman obviously will. maybe one or two others will. I certainly hope not. I plan to yell about that at every platform available to me if they do that because it's, it is truly insane. And it should be the, the Democratic leadership should not be trying to manage the caucus here. They should try,

they should be lobbying members to vote against us. It should be the position of the Democratic Party, the House and the Senate that we are not going to vote for this for the reasons we just laid out. And if other, if people do it, that can happen where you're always going to have members. They have Rand Paul. We have John Federman. But this, you were, if it feels like two voters that the Democratic Party, the Democratic leadership is okay with this, then that is catastrophic, even for the people who voted against it. Yeah, because I just, it's, it's bad enough if you're like a John Federman who supported the war and is going to vote to fund it as well. I mean, that, that to me is insane anyway. It's ideal. It's insane. It's insane. It's insane.

but it's consistently insane. Yeah, it's coherent. The idea that someone who, like all the rest of the Democrats have said it's an illegal war that they oppose,

that you would say, this illegal war, now that we're in it, I must vote to just fund it with taxpayer dollars. It is, it's also just weak. You know?

Maybe that's like the least of the problems, but it just makes you look so fucking weak. I am going to believe that in the end, Alyssa Slacken is going to vote against this. Me too. That's why I can't, like, if you just wanted to, you know,

if a political reporter caught you in the hall and you weren't ready to say anything, whatever. That's fine. It's kind of happening to Gallego on CNN. It seems. Well, it was very, I was, I thought it was weird because Gallego's answer was, well, at least half of the funding would have to come from the other countries in the Gulf because we're not paying. But I'm like, why are the other countries in the Gulf didn't ask for this fucking war either? And now they're getting hit.

Yeah. Then he tweeted that he was definitely not voting for it. I saw that. He clarified that, yeah. No, no, which is good. But I'm just like, what's everyone doing here? It's a no. It's a no.

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But Pam Bondi, she's out there saying, hey, don't forget about me. due to popular demand, she'll now be doing an encore performance of last month's congressional testimony. And by popular demand, we mean that five Republicans on the Oversight Committee voted with all the Democrats to subpoena Bondi for her handling of the Epstein files. Notably, the 50,000 documents DOJ has reportedly withheld, including those related to unverified claims of sexual misconduct against a minor by Epstein and Trump himself. The New York Times and other outlets also reported out Wednesday that DOJ. has been forced to abandon the case they were reportedly trying to build against Joe Biden and his top aides

for their use of the presidential auto pen everything is so fucking stupid since federal prosecutors in Janine Pirro's DC office couldn't find any evidence of a crime. Oh, no shit. The Times also just reported that Lindsay Halligan, the Trump defense attorney he appointed to indict Jim Comey and Tish

James after all the other real prosecutors refused, is now under investigation by the Florida Bar Association for the nakedly political prosecution she attempted and could potentially lose her law license. Bondi's DOJ just crushing it, Dan. Let's start with the subpoena. I'm actually a little surprised we're getting another round of Bondi hearings. I was assuming these were closed-door depositions.

You think so? My assumption was this was similar to the Hillary booklet. Now we'll probably see video of it, but it was similar to probably. process. But what would, what do you think the, the focus is? Is it, is it just these most recent files that came down, including the Trump stuff? Because yeah, I think it is the file, why the files haven't been released. I think it's chain of custody on the files. Um, I think now she's going to be a position where she's also going to ask questions about Gleine Maxwell's ending up at the country club. The, so all the whole process about which they came to be, the release was compelled and what was not. And I think there is something.

here. It is sort of a consistent threat between what happened to Nome with John Kennedy. What's happening here to Pambandi is there are, I'm not saying Republicans are breaking with Trump. They are not. But they are finding places. They are desperately looking for places to show some measure of independence. And in this case, Nancy Mace actually surprised them by this was like they didn't know this was coming. And then they were just like forced to make a decision, which I think is probably pretty hard for these Republicans to make a decision on the spot. But there is something about where they are trying to find places to where Trump's weakness is like is now becoming more manifest and how they respond to his cabinet secretary's at least.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, on all the rest, the failing to, you know, bring an indictment or even a case against Biden, Lindsay Halligan, all the other failures of them trying to indict people, the grand jury failures. Like, on one hand, it'd be fun to see Bondi go the way of Christina. On the other, I do think that the fact that her incompetence has led to such an epic losing streak for Trump's political revenge tour that, I don't know, maybe we might be better off if he keeps Bondi at DOJ. I don't know.

What do you think there? Yeah, there's no good person he's putting in. He's not appointing someone who's not going to do bullshit political vengeance investigations. Like that's not. I'd rather, I don't want someone more effective. Yeah. I'm not sure that any person who. could effectively do what Trump wants.

At the end of the day, he's asking his attorney general to prosecute people for crimes they did not commit. And in some cases, for things that are not actually crimes. Yeah. His problem is the juries and the judges, really. Yeah. And like that is, that's what is stopping it. And the problem is Trump, not the person.

Like, I think she's particularly bad at her job. If she stays or, who cares, like, I don't really care if she stays or goes because, as we see with this Mark Wayne Mullen situation, so you're just going to get someone who shares Trump's odious views. it is maybe slightly more effective at implementing those odious views. Right. And it's still reporting to Stephen Miller, essentially. So somehow Tuesday and AIDS primaries already feel like ancient history.

It's Thursday afternoon, as we're recording this. But we haven't had the chance to talk about the results on this show. In Texas, MagoWorld has already started previewing how they're going to go after James Tala Rico, who beat Jasmine Crockett. This includes resurfacing Tala RICO's old tweets. It's always the old tweets that. get you about Black Lives Matter, where he said that racism is a virus that white people spread everywhere we go and a video from 2021 on the Texas House floor where Tala Rico said God is non-binary.

He also talked about how there's technically six genders. There's a whole bunch of them, a whole bunch of tweets, a whole bunch of, what do you make of the attack so far? How do you handle them if you're Talley Rico? They don't actually worry me that much. Every Democrat is going to face some version of this. I think Tala Rico is particularly. If you were alive between 2017 and 2021.

It had access to the internet. Every Republican has a similar. It's like a lot of Democrats should just try to take a mulligan on all those tweets. And every Republican had like the things Republicans have tweeted about January 6 and a much of other stuff also problematic. I think Tala Rico handles it the way he's on this whole campaign, which is don't hide from it, take it head on, be out there all the time, always be communicating, go into unfriendly territory to talk about it, take questions about it. Go on right wing radio. Go on Christian radio. do, you know, do that Jubilee debate again.

Do things where you're just, like, the worst thing you can do is just is abandon the strategy that got you the nomination, which was to be sort of someone who was always available omnipresent. It just stick with that. Like, he won this nomination, but he's still an underdog in the Senate race. And so he's got to always play. You know, he's got to embrace risk and do things and just like be out there and talk about it. I really don't think it's, I really don't think it's that hard because he is someone who is

be very hard to paint as a radical if people get exposed to him because he comes off as such like a down-to-earth common sense conciliatory person. It is honestly an advantage Obama always had was they would paint him as this like radical Muslim who's coming to like implement Sharia law in your neighborhood. Then you like see him on TV and he just seems like a pretty normal guy. And I think Tala Rico has that same asset in this race. I do think the added challenge. Tala Rico faces that someone like Azoran Mamdani or maybe... Is he's in Texas? Or a Graham Platner.

Right. You know, doesn't face as much as that he's in Texas. And in a smaller state or city or somewhere like that, you can sort of pierce people's perceptions of you by just meeting them in person. And in Texas, you know, you can meet a lot of people in Texas, but it's going to be ads that do it at some point. And it's going to be what he's been doing, which is organic social content.

I think a little bit in this race, although he did not win, I think a little bit about our old friend Jason Kander. And they tried to paint him as a giant radical in his Missouri Senate race in 2016, but he doesn't come off that way. And, you know, in Tala Rico, I think it's particularly good to finding high-profile ways

for people to see him. And I do think the way he talks about his faith is very, is inoculation against some of these attacks. I also think him saying, which he does quite often, that, you know, what most people care about is, you know, making a living, trying to afford things. And, you know, the right uses these attacks to divide us. I think that is both true and the right political message. I don't think you can just say, well, I'm not going to focus on any of that other stuff and just ignore it completely because I think, and I think we've been. I've learned this over the last several years.

Like there has to, and however you want to describe, however he wants to describe his views on trans issues or racism or whatever it may be, he should do it and he should do it on his terms and he should do it confidently, but like you still have to, you have to answer people's questions on this kind of stuff and you should do it on your terms and not only lean on, well, people actually don't care about this,

they only care about cost of living stuff. because while true, they still do want to know if they have questions about, like, well, what did you say? What did you mean by that? Like, you need to have some kind of answer there. In a red state in particular, but in kind of in politics generally, you have to reach a threshold of acceptability culturally. Right. Is this person, do they seem like they have my values? They have someone I would, you know, trust, you know, someone, you know, just like there is a level at which are they like me? Can I relate to them? And if you ignore the critiques that go right at that strength of yours, then you leave yourself quite vulnerable.

Yes, I agree. Let's talk about who Taylor Rico's opponent will be. Incumbent John Corny and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton are headed for a May runoff. But things got interesting on Wednesday when Trump announced that he'd make an endorsement, quote, soon and demanded that the non-endorsed candidate drop out. Reports say Trump is expected to endorse Cornyn. And on Thursday morning, Paxton announced that he would, quote, consider dropping out, but only if Senate leadership agreed to ditch the filibuster. order to pass Trump's voter ID law, the Save Act. Paxton also called Cornyn a coward and said that, quote,

no one has been more loyal to Donald Trump than me. What do you think of that strategy by Paxton? I think he's, I talked to Jonathan Martin about this a lot, which you're going to hear shortly, but it seems like he is trying to maybe find a fig leaf to get something out of dropping out if he feels like he has to. I mean, I think the assumption is that if, whoever Trump endorses will win this primary. I'm not entirely sure that's accurate,

but everyone seems to believe that. And it would probably very hard for Paxton who raised money if Trump says, I'm endorsing Cornyn and I want Paxton to drop out and Paxton does not drop out. That's probably a challenge. You know, I don't know. I don't think that, you know,

I guess the grand fear is the Senate takes them up on this offer and passes the SAVE Act. That would be pretty bad for the world. But I would be surprised. I don't think Thune has, I don't think he has the votes for it. Yeah. I think he...

I wonder if then Paxton wants to say, because what he's hoping is that Trump then says, oh, God, this Thune and Cornans just like Thune. They're established men who've been in leadership, and they won't do this for me. And maybe... Because I'm sure that there's part of Trump that really wants to endorse Paxton,

or at least not endorse Cornyn. And so I'm sure... I think he's probably playing the best hand he has here, Paxton, but I don't know if it's going to work. Yeah, I mean, like what Trump says is to be what matters here. And if Trump doesn't endorse, then because Trump clearly does not want to endorse John Cornyn. It's not entirely clear why, but he, I talked to Jane Warrid about this, but I mean, he's the incumbent senator. He could have endorsed

him at any point, and he hasn't. And so there is something there that's preventing it. But in the end, I think he's going to be convinced that Cornyn is the better shot to beat Tolerico. Right. One more piece of election news in the Senate. On Wednesday, just before the filing deadline, Montana Republican Senator Steve Danes announced that he would not seek re-election, clearing the way for late-entrant Kurt Elmi, who currently serves as U.S. attorney for the District of Montana, a role he also held in Trump's first term. Trump quickly endorsed Elmi on truth social, calling him, quote, exceptional. CNN's Manu Raju reported on Thursday that Dane's last-minute switcheroo was intended to keep Democrats from fielding a top-tier candidate like former Montana Senator John Tester and that Trump and, Senate Republican leaders were aware of the strategy. Pretty, pretty shocking that this happened last minute and no one expected Danes to not run again. What did you think about this whole thing? It is crooked as hell, as it was when a House Democrat did this a while back. And it does, it's both screwing any other

Republican who wanted to run for the seat, but as you point out, Democrats' opportunity to run a potentially more high profile candidate for it. Like, there is something, states to try to fix this because this is now going to become a real trend. It's yet another way in which democracy is getting curtailed in this country. It should be the incumbent has to, like an incumbent, like I saw someone tweet out this idea, but there should be a rule or a law that is if you, like, obviously it has to be state laws, but the incumbent has to make their decision first. And then the filing deadline comes after that, right?

So it's like, there's like two weeks between when an incumbent says, I'm in or I'm not. and then when there's two weeks after that in which other people could decide to run based on it. Because this is like this is really going to be something that happens a lot in politics now is a way to for the party establishment to avoid messy primaries. Because that's what this was. The Chui Garcia thing was Chui Garcia working something out with his chief of staff to ensure his chief of staff got to run and essentially win because it's a safe time. here within seconds of the announcement, the entire Montana political establishment and the White House endorsed the guy. Yeah. Yeah. So shady. I mean, I am interested in, there's a couple Democrats running the Democratic side. They haven't raised much money at all. They're not like big names. Again,

the big names would have been like tester, former governor Brian Schweitzer, Steve Bullock. But there is the former president of the University of Montana, Seth Bodner. He's also a former Army Green Beret and a road scholar. He has filed to run as an independent. And Tester had apparently said some nice things about him. And I don't know too much more than that, but I'm kind of interested if it's going to, if it could possibly shape up to be like a Dan Osborne in Nebraska situation where maybe because he's got such broad name recognition in Montana, if he has more democratic leaning positions, which I don't know, or even if he's more centrist. That would be a lot better than a Trump Republican running.

And I don't know. It'd be interesting to watch. There's some interesting of happening in Montana, too, because Ryan Zinky, who was Trump's Interior Secretary and had to resign for some sort of corruption scandal that I can't remember what was at this point. He returned to Congress, but he just announced his retirement, too. And that is a district that Trump won by 11. I think it's 11.

And it's like, it's in the zone of the kind of states seats that might be competitive with the right candidate in this political environment. Didn't we win Montana in 08? No. No? We came close. We lost by three, I think. Yeah.

I remember thinking that Montana was... There was a big debate at the end about whether we were going to compete in Montana. And we ultimately decided it was... The juice was not worth the squeeze because it was... Because it's only what three electoral votes? I think it's four. Okay. Yeah.

Well, something like that. But it was... But the reason I bring this up is because Montana is not as deep... deep red as you might think for where it is. Of all those states out there, it is one where you always think like, yeah, someday maybe right number of people move to Montana. Could it be something? So yeah, I don't think it's, I think if you had a really strong candidate there, clearly we just had John Tester's senator. You know, it's a shot. All right. One last thing we had to get to, and this one is, this is personal. RFK Jr. last week at one of his eat real food rallies, he previewed a crackdown

on a beloved staple of many Americans diets. Here's some of what he said and here's some of the reaction from my brethren. We're going to ask Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks, show us the safety data that show that it's okay for a teenage girl drink an iced coffee with 115 grams of sugar in it. I don't think they're going to be able to do it. Bostonians seem to have a clear message

about changing their favorite orders. Don't try it. Is not the promise and the beauty of the freedom we get in America to get however much fucking sugar you want in your Duncan's ice coffee? The guy that snorted coke off a toilet is trying to take my Duncan. And I'm not going to let him. Bobby Baby must have done a few more lines because he's crazy if he thinks me and the rest of the nut jobs who live here are going to let him take the only joy most of us miserable mass holes have left. RFK Sleep with one eye open bitch

I love Boston It's the best What the fuck Come from my fucking Duncan Do you know what's the only drug More powerful than sugar? What? Polarization

Because Here's the thing He's not wrong He is wrong He's not wrong He's not wrong in this way you should know, you should be able to know when you walk into Duncan if you order one of the more ridiculous fucking things on that menu exactly how much sugar you're getting. I think that's totally fair.

And they also, by the way, put the calorie counts up there. You know who did that? Yeah, Michelle Obama did that. Yes. Which I think it's good. I think giving people more information, more transparent, forcing companies to be transparent about what they're putting in their products. is a good thing. And then you give people the choice. Because guess what? This, this right here. Talk to me about what's in that cup right now. Oh, yeah. Oh, I will. So it's an ice coffee.

There's a splash of half and half in here. Maybe a little more than a splash. It's quite a shade of a crew for it to be just a splash. It's a, it's a Duncan splash, which is a little heavier than your Starbucks splash. And it's got five pumps of sugar, free vanilla sugar free. Oh, see, RFK approved coffee. And a couple splendos. Couple splendos. So again, so wait, wait, you have five cups of sugar free. How much, how many chemicals, how much chemicals am I having because I'm having sugar-free, all kinds of whatever sucralose, whatever the fucklose it's called? Lots of it. Lots of it.

Which is how I like it. Okay. All right. I would say, I'm glad you're on board with the calorie counts. I'm concerned about your coffee artist in general as someone is concerned about your health. Yeah, you know, and I do think, and like the quasi-serious part of this wholly unsurious part of this podcast is like, you know, we're probably going to look back on sugar and in ultra-processed foods as like the nicotine of the cigarettes of our time. And this is like, it's this stuff that has always been RFK Jr's gateway to the anti-vaccine lunacy is like that stuff makes sense to people. I will say when we were in Australia, New Zealand,

nine or ten days, you would think that when you were traveling, you're like, oh, well, I was traveling. And so my whole routine is out of whack and I didn't feel great because I'm eating on the road. I felt better on the road than when I came back and started eating the shit that we have in this country. And I saw what you ate drank in Australia, and I'm impressed. I hate some, I great. We ate great in Australia. We had a lot in Australia. We did eat a lot. But, like, I also think it's, you know, you're in a house, there's snacks everywhere. It's just, it's a lot. It's a lot.

But I'm with RFK on the processed foods for sure. I'm just also all about choice. And I'm especially, you know, I'm especially into my Duncan. Look, if this is going to turn people against RFK, I'll take it. Yeah, that's fine. Look, he's wrong about everything. This is another thing he's wrong about. So go back to your toilet seats.

All right. When we come back, Dan's interview with Politico's senior political columnist, Jonathan Martin. Pod Save America is brought you by Hymns. HIMS can't help you fold a fitted sheet, but it can help you with your performance in bed. Take control of ED with personalized treatments made with doctor-trusted ingredients prescribed by licensed providers 100% online.

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joining me now is the chief political columnist for Politica and the host of the fourth coming series on the road with Jonathan Martin. Jonathan Martin, how are you, buddy? Dan Five, Ray, buddy. Thank you. It's been a long time. I was just thinking today that I think the first time you and I met was in 2004 when I was working for Dashel and you were covering Senate races for for National Journal. Yeah, exactly. You were a Dashal guy and you and I talked about this, but there should be a political 30 for 30, well, just. period. But there really should be one for those 02 and 04 back-to-back epic South Dakota Senate races.

It's just a crime that we don't have a documentary about those two races. And I don't know. Maybe that can be your next series. Maybe in our next life. We can start the political 30 for 30. Exactly. Okay. All right.

Now, one thing I've known about you over the years is that you cover races based in part on the quality of barbecue where those races are taking place. So I know you have been in Texas and North Carolina covering the primaries that happened. this past week. Let's start with Texas, where James Tullerico, when the Democratic nomination, Republicans are now headed to a, what could be a quite nasty, if it continues, a runoff between incumbent Senator John Cornyn and Ken Paxton. This thing seems to be moving very fast here in the runoff. Trump is thinking of an endorsement. He just did an interview with Politico, I believe, where he said, where he heard that Paxton said he was staying in no matter what. Trump said that

could cause him to endorse Cornyn because he wants whoever he does not endorse to drop out. Paxton then said this morning that he would drop out if the Senate Republicans dropped the filibuster to pass the SAVE Act. What do you hear about what's going on here in Texas on the Republican side? I mean, talk about fast-moving events, as they say in the news business, but also a sort of need encapsulation, Dan, for the internal GOP politics of the Trump year. Or it's really one man's decree more than anything else. And that's the way he wants it. I was in South Texas with Senator Cornyn, and I wrote my column from there. And the lead of my column was basically, here's this, you know, almost 40-year career as a judge, state AG, and senator pretty distinguished.

And Dan, his entire fate rested in the hands of, you know, Trumpus Augustus in the Coliseum, doing the thumbs up or the thumbs down. It's a hell of a way to live your life as a senator. Who, by the way, it's like most incumbent senators of their own party get the endorsement of their president. That's pretty typical in American politics. The fact that he's had to work for this tells you everything about this moment that we're in. But as for the president, all signs point to Trump endorsing Cornyn. Trump's top lieutenants from the 24 campaign are working for Senator Cornyn. That's Chris Las Alita and Tony Fabrizio.

They're very close to Susie Wilde, who, of course, is Trump's chief of staff. And now that Paxton is sort of dragging his feet about whether he drop out, Dan, that's just going to, I think, ensure that Trump doesn't in fact endorse Cornyn. What does that do? Well, it's a sigh of relief for Senate Republicans. It probably means that they'll have to spend less money on the Texas race. And if they have to give Paxton some face-saving pledge to a vote on the Save Act, they'll probably do it.

But you can't make that up. Like Ken Paxton is looking for some thin reed, some fig leaf here. to drop out of the race and I'll do it if they vote on a voter ID bill or they drop the filibuster for a voter ID bill, which is all just sort of a charade for he just needs a cover, right? Here's the question. What did Cornyn do? Like, why, like, I'm sort of unfamiliar.

I don't really understand why. What was Cornyn's mortal sitting against the MAGA movement? Yeah. Yeah, it's a great question. And I wrestled with this too. When I was down there, he's like, look, Bill Cassidy, the senator from Louisiana. He did something, right? it's clear as day. He voted to impeachs Trump in February of 2021. Like, okay, I understand that from a

political standpoint. But you're right. Like, what is Cornyn's sin? Like, what's his, his fireable offense, if you will? I actually asked him that question. I said, like, Senator, do you have a fireable offense? And there's really not one. Now, what folks on the right in Texas will point to is the bipartisan deal they did after Yuvalde, which was a fairly modest set of gun control regulations. But it was pretty small beer. And I think the bigger issue is he's just not MAGA. He doesn't come off as MAGA. He's a bushy. Everybody in Texas knows it. And he doesn't really fake it that well. And so I think it's more just he's not where the party is today, sort of tonally and culturally, and therefore he's got to go. Now, where it gets complicated, Dan, is that Trump himself isn't that MAGA, right? I mean,

Trump is MAGA when it's convenient for him. But he really wants to figure out, and determine what MAGA is. And this is why people like MTG have had this sort of loss of faith, Dan, because Trump himself is like conveniently MAGA, right? And so, you know, they can coax Trump to be for corn in here. It looks like Trump is going to side with a traditional wing of the Republican Party. You know, in some of these other races where Trump got involved in 2022, they were sort of like fake MAGA candidates. He made MAGA like Herschel Walker, Dr. Oz. Ken Paxson is Maga through and through.

He is sort of canary in the coal mine on a lot of issues that become cause celebs on Fox News or right-wing media. Is there any potential consequence to him for sort of for picking the Bushy, the establishment guy over at a time when there's division on the Iran War, there's division on the Epstein files, etc. So I think it's at the margins, but the margins matter in midterms. Like nobody knows that better than you. I mean, look, you know, he's going to alienate, I think, very online, extremely ideological figures who come from that Bannon-Tucker MTG wing where they actually believe in this stuff when it comes to a policy agenda that is very different from the traditional wing of the party. I don't know how big that is.

I think the bulk of the party is with Trump on whatever Trump decides he wants to do, whether that's politics or policy. But yeah, I mean, I think there's definitely a faction. I don't know if it's 15% or 30% of the party base, but it's real. And those folks matter. And if they stay home in November, that's devastating. Because if you don't get that crowd out and you're a Republican, there's nowhere to make up for it, you know? Based on what you said about the Republicans think, if Cornyn's a nominee, they'll spend less money.

Is it the, from what you're hearing from the Senate Republican types, is their assumption that this is a safe state if Cornon is a nominee? I don't agree with that. I'm going to stipulate that. Yeah, yeah. No, it's that it's that Cornyn is not going to alienate the center-right, suburban, indie or Republican woman especially in a way that Paxton would. And that we can basically, you know, spend less money. I think you're right that it's still a ball game. I think it favors the Republicans more heavily, but they can't go to sleep on it because obviously Talarico is going to have a ton of cash.

It's a good cycle for Dems in Texas obviously is changing. But I just think it makes it a lot easier for the Republicans given the nature of Cornyn versus Paxton. And looking at the general election, one of the things I think was notable in Tala Rico's victory was his performance with Latino voters, not just in his margins with over Crockett, but the number of votes he got out of the wall votes. Yeah, right. That he got out of the Rio Grande Valley. like that has to, like, and I think this is particularly important in Texas, not just because the size Latino vote, but the entire principle underlying their redistricting was that there was this shift among Latino voters. And it seems like they're at least real evidence of a

snapback in Texas, if not nationally. Well, I think there is a modest realignment along education and class lines among all working class voters, no matter of their ethnicity. But this assumption that suddenly the working class Hispanic had become MAGA is totally unfounded. They were voting in a one-off election against Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and, frankly, against inflation and open borders. They weren't voting for the MAGA party and embracing Donald Trump as their political icon. It was a momentary vote. And I think that the redraw in Texas that you allude to made a mistake because they assumed those voters were theirs. And they were just leasing them for one cycle.

And I was there. With Cornyn, I spent some time down there with a Democrat running for a House seat named Bobby Polito. Yep. Who's this Tejano Seniors, like an icon in the Valley. And, you know, he's running in a seat that's drawn for a Republican. But I think he's got a better than even chance to win, in part because of his personal fame. But also in part because of what you mentioned, that snapback. There's a real backlash against ICE among Hispanic voters.

And these, by the way, are center and center, right, Hispanic voters. Your listeners should know this. Like, if you're Hispanic on the South of the Rio Grande Valley, you're pretty middle of the road, if not right. And they're up for voting for a Republican. They're just not going to do it in this environment. And you give them the right kind of Democrat, and they'll vote for a Democrat. And we saw that to your point. Just the raw votes in those counties along the Rio Grande, the amount of folks voting in the Democratic primary exceeding the number of votes Kamala Harris got.

general election. And sometimes by a factor of two or three. I mean, it's just wild. Incredible. I mean, you just don't see that kind of turn out in a primary compared to a general election. That tells you everything about the amount of energy with Democrats broadly and the fact that ancestral Hispanic Democrats who may have, you know, moved to Trump temporarily in 24 or even 20 are coming back to the Democratic Party. There are a couple other interesting races down ballot in Texas. You mentioned Bobby Polito. That's an interesting one. Another one that I was just wanted your take on as someone who, knows, here's a lot from what the Republicans are saying is, what happened to Dan Crenshaw. So Dan Crenshaw, you know, was elected in 2018, Navy SEAL, you know, loss and eye in combat,

was a real star of the Republican Party. You couldn't turn on TV without seeing him. I think probably in 2020, 2020, maybe 24 people thought he was, you know, the future of the party in some ways. And he just got absolutely clobbered in his primary by a candidate endorsed by Ted Cruz. Like, what was his sin against the MAGA world or the Trump world? Let me say before talking about the actual race, it has sort of karma-type vibes that remind me of Elise DeFonic too, which is these younger Republicans who everybody knows they're not really Trumpy. And they reinvent themselves to accommodate where the party is. And then it just ultimately leaves them going nowhere.

And so there is something that is, you know, there's some poetic justice there in terms of these folks who are faking it in public love. But in terms of Crenshaw's race, a few things happened. You mentioned the redraw of the House map. That really hurt him. But that's a choice they made. They chose to hurt him, right? Yeah, we're getting greedy. We're going to grab some more House seats,

and we're going to make assumptions about Hispanic voters staying with us, and we're going to make some other assumptions, too, about the nature of our incumbent House member. And by the way, Dan, you know this. There's no House member likes their seat being redrawn. I don't care what their party. They hate it. because they have to meet new voters, right? And it's a pain. But the Texas Republicans, they saluted Trump and they went along with this redraw. And in the case of Crenshaw, he gets tons of new voters he doesn't know. And the state rep challenging him is running in a seat that includes a big overlap of his current statehouse district. And then he gets a big, big infusion of money from a donor who doesn't like Crenshaw into a super PAC, which these days can mean a lot. You add the Ted Cruz fact.

actor in, and then Trump doesn't really get involved for Crenshaw, and it adds up to a pretty decisive loss. Let's switch to North Carolina here, which also has good barbecue, and you've been covering that race as well. Yeah, you know from Carolina, Dan, exactly. Yeah, that's right. There was, uh, they had their primary on Tuesday. It wasn't that much interesting on the primary ballot, but what was interesting was the turnout among Democrats, even though Roy Cooper was, did not have an actual ballot. There was another, there was not a big statewide race like there was in Texas. What are you hearing from North Carolina? Look, I think Democrats path to 50 starts in Maine, but it goes to North Carolina. Yeah, there's no path without 50. There's no way without

North Carolina, no path to 50. That's right. And so I mean, I think Maine is their top target for obvious regions we can go into. But I think number two in a pretty close second is North Carolina. You've got a two-term former governor, 100% name ID. It was very popular. He's a small town lawyer type Democrat. And it's uncontested in the primary. And yeah, it was so striking looking at the raw votes in both parties. Neither party had a real primary for its Senate seat on the Republican side or Democratic side. And Democrats had significantly more raw votes showing up. Now, that's in part because they had a little bit more down-balled action in some House races. But still, it tells you where the energy is this cycle. Now, it's not easy. Look, this map is tough for Democrats. The environment is

good, but the map is difficult. You know, you have to beat Susan Collins, which you haven't done in 30 years that you've been in office. You haven't won a federal race in North Carolina, Dan, since you guys won there in 08 and brought Kay Hagan along with you, and then you have to go to Ohio, which has turned so trumpy for the last three cycles. And those are your three best seats, right? So it's a tough cycle, but boy, I think Cooper may be the best recruit in America this year. And he's running against somebody, the former RN seat chair, who's just not that well-known. like a former governor is. So if you're ever going to win North Carolina in a federal race,

besides having a Obama on top of the ticket, it's going to be this year. Yeah. It's, I mean, the Wally choice is going to be, it's going to be interesting how that plays out in the end of Cooper wins to just pick the random RNC chair, Trump's RNC chair for that role. He's a Trump proxy, right?

It's just like nominating, you know, the idea was Laura Trump, his daughter-in-law, was going to run, and then she didn't want to do it. And so they found Wadley as a way to forestall a primary. And there's no primary, but I just, you know, it's just not a fair fight against the former governor. Now, that said, structurally, it's still a hard state for Democrats, right? I mean, you just look at, you look at 16, 20, and 24, so much money, so much effort. And they couldn't carry the state.

So, I mean, it has basically got the same vote share every single time, you know. That's exactly right. You put so much effort in and you get to the top of the mountain and you're almost at the peak and you're like four. 48.3, you just can't get there, right? Yeah. And it's, you know, this is the, I guess one of the questions we'll have, and I think this got to think this through is you see this, like, Democratic turnout's going to be through the roof.

We see that. Sure. Those far for Republicans, there's been kind of mixed signals on this, right? Like, even in 18, Democrat turnout was through the roof. Republican turnout was also pretty high. You know, like, there was high turnout in Texas, but the fact that there were more Democratic, but that was a, the most expensive primary in history and turnout usually follows money.

So like notable that Democrat, and they're just more Republican voters, the Democratic voters. So notable you got more Democrats voting that primary. The question will be whether. You're smart to bring up 2018, though, because, you know, that's the first Trump midterm in his first term. And it's analogous to this year in terms of the massive energy. And even with that energy, you still lose, what, four Democratic incumbents, Claire McCaskill, Heidi Hyde, Keat, Joe Donnell. You had the 2012 cycle, the last time Obama was on the ballot brought those people. Yeah.

Which, by the way, this is a longer conversation, but 2012 was really the last sort of, you know, I call it B, C versus A.D. And that's like the last election in the before times. Yeah. You know, I mean, starting after that, everything changes in American politics. Anyways, great cycle. You get a huge house pickup, take back to the house. And like, you'll lose in all these purple to red state Senate Democrats. And so I just raised that as a cautionary warning because even in a big, you know,

where Democrats have anti-Trump energy, it's still hard structurally for the party to win some of these sentences. It's easier, though, in a way of year to beat an incumbent than to defend an incumbent. Yeah. Right. That's what we have going for us. And you were playing defense in 18. And we're playing offense here.

You're right. You point out, there's no path to 50 doesn't require winning at least two seats that in states that Trump won by more than 10 points. Like, there are some unique political circumstances in those states that make it potentially either quality of recruit like Sherrod Brown or Mary Patola in Alaska or just sort of states that have, you know, probably the longest shot of those four is Iowa. But it's a state that Trump is like essentially waged economic war on with his tariffs and the sort of being stuff. But yeah, it's like it is a hard path. The question is whether Trump is going to get 18 turnout or something like Democrats got in 14, which is that like lame duck second term.

turnout where because it's not you're not just it's not a dress rehearsal for the forthcoming presidential election it's just like ugh you know and that's that's the difference between having like picking up those seats and not picking up those seats is my guess you make an important point though about how 14 you're playing defense now you're playing offense I mean it's a silver lining to a pretty damn gloomy cloud which the Democrats have lost so much ground the Senate in red America that now they're they're not we're on offense everywhere left yeah there's nowhere left there's played office now. But yeah, I mean, like the jokes that I make is when you're a Democrat and you're looking

at the possible of taking back the Senate and your 51st seat is Alaska, Texas, or Iowa, you know, it's not ideal. Yeah, no, no, no. You wouldn't draw that up in a lot. Let's talk a little bit about the upper west side of Manhattan. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about the broader midterm landscape here. You know, there is, this is like the first two and a half months of this year have been insane from a news perspective. We had a war in Venezuela, tariffs, what happened in Minnesota. But now we have an ongoing war with Iran. What are you hearing from maybe people on both sides of the aisle about the potential

impact of this, how nervous they are particularly maybe the Republicans are about this being added to the docket? I mean, everybody is holding their breath because the expectation among Republicans is this is closer to Venezuela. And it's just a different part of the world with far different circumstances. And, you know, I think Trump got emboldened by the success of Venezuela.

But, Dan, it was so clean that I think it led him to think he could just keep doing that and you just grab the joystick again. He'd do it for somewhere else. And it's not the same. So the question I have is, you know, how long does this go? Is it really weeks?

which is what you hear from the Republicans now, or is it months? And if it is months, boy, I just think that takes a toll politically if the Iranians can keep lobbying drones and missiles and response, and we're losing American service members week after week. I think that just adds to the burden the Republicans have in an already tough cycle. And I just don't think that there's a rally around the flag ethos in this year. It's just times have changed. It's a preemptive war. They haven't made any kind of a public campaign. You know, I mean, the Bush folks went to the U.N., went to the Congress, months-long public campaign. The war went south. Obviously, you know that better than anybody, given what happened in 06 and 08 and Obama's rise. But they did something on the front and at least sell it. There's none of that. So I think if this thing doesn't go well, it creates a huge political burden for Republicans in an already tough cycle.

I just don't know if that's going to be the case because you and I can't sit here and guess as to what's going to happen in the next 10 days, two weeks. So I think we have to wait and see how this unfolds. How interested is Trump? How much does he sustain this campaign? Does he declare victory, Dan, in three, four days? You know, it's sort of difficult to grasp. But he has started a war, which is easy, but it's really hard to end a war, you know. Yeah, there's like a couple of moments here.

There's like what's happening right now. there's if more troops die. And there's the, it seems like we're spending a billion dollars a day on this. The Congress is probably going to have to vote on a supplemental. That is going to be a moment. I mean, I've seen some internal Democratic polling that suggests that spending billions of dollars on this war. In the same time, you've cut a trillion dollars in Medicaid is not a particularly popular stance for these Republicans. Right.

But so then that's going to line up with some of, you know, this is a weird cycle because you really have no incumbents, right? You have Collins and you have Asoff. And everything else is essentially, you know, I guess, being on the Democratic, you have awesome. And then I, you know, I guess you have Sullivan and, um, in Houston. But the rest of it is just like how much those votes will matter will be interesting. And then you're right. If this thing ends in a few weeks, you know, um, you know, we have, it's hard.

Yes. Yeah. Um, uh, but you mentioned the lack of incumbents. And I, and I think that, that's vital to understanding this, this cycle. Because in a place like North Carolina, it's not like it's Tom Tillisup for re-election, right? It just, it changes the equation. And the same thing in Iowa.

Now, in Iowa, you know, you could argue if you're a Republican, it actually is actually better to have a new face there than it is to have Joni Ernst who, you know, speaking of having to fake it on MAGA. But, you know, this is so salient, Ohio. Who's the incumbent senator? Most of your listeners don't know. He gets no attention. His name is John Hustadt.

He's the former lieutenant governor. He's an appointee who took, who took. the van seat that was vacated. And, you know, when you're an appointee senator, historically, you're in really weak political shape. Now, he's run statewide before, but still, that's a disadvantage. We haven't even mentioned Florida here. Florida's so forgotten politically, but there's an appointee in Florida as well, Ashley Moody, who's got, you know, very light name ID statewide. And it's just, it's so different from a two or three term incumbent senator when you have these appointees. Now, I think Florida is still tough for Democrats, but this is a wave year.

Gov and Senate races there are getting no attention, but they probably should get more, I think. Well, I generally am of the view of the Democrats. We, like, I spend most of my life worrying about the 2032 redrawn electoral map. And so like, I said that's why I worry a lot about Texas and Florida because if we can't become competitive in those states, we're, we're pretty screwed as a party. If you're, if you're losing a net 14 votes between California, New York, Texas, and Florida, we're in pretty big trouble. But that's either here nor there.

Let me ask you a little bit. But this is an important point, though, because for all of the energy against Trump, and I understand, the bigger challenge is 2030. And if it's can you compete structurally for a majority in the U.S. Senate without adding Puerto Rico in D.C. And right now, you know, the answer is maybe you can get 51, but that's really about it. And then how are you going to keep a House majority if the shift in population is moving from blue to red America? Those are like the more sobering questions for Democrats going forward. Yeah.

I mean, one of my fears is, I have two fears. One is that is the map itself shifting and us not thinking about that, not thinking long-term and the investments you have to make to take some of these places that are not competitive now and make them competitive. And the other one is that Democrats will make the same mistake we did in 2022, which is to do very well in 26, think everything is all the problems are solved. Exactly. Because the bigger structural problems don't come into play until.

the less engaged voters get involved. And we haven't mentioned this yet, but I mentioned the House and Senate. But also, if they have a huge shift in population from blue to red America, that changes the electoral college. And as you alluded to, 2032 becomes harder. Forget the blue wall. That's not enough anymore. If you're not competitive in Florida and Texas by 2032, you're creating a huge challenge for yourself and holding the White House. Yeah, you basically have to draw an inside straight every year to win.

That's the only way to do it. Right. Let's end here with, I want to figure out how you convinced your employers to do what everyone wants, which is to pay to send you to places around the country to eat really, really good food. So talk to me about on the road with Jonathan Martin. Well, thanks, Dan. So over the years, friends, colleagues, sources have always asked me like, hey, I'm going to New Orleans. I'm going to Denver.

I'm going to Boston. Where should I eat? What should I do? Where should I stay? and you, you, I've had these conversations over the years, and it's like, you know, I'm happy to share ideas. So I said, like, I should actually find a way to make this into something fun. And this is a sobering moment in politics, but you've got to find a way to also have a good time. So I'm starting this road show called on the road, and the idea is basically evoke three things, food, politics, and place.

And by place, I mean history, culture, identity, sort of localism. things that aren't part of the Starbucks TGI Friday's America. And so I started this week in Arkansas with Sarah Huckabee Sanders at a barbecue joint. I'm going to do governors, Dan, for the first season. And the hope is kind of like one part, Infidy Bourdain, you know, one part nerdy almanac of American politics stuff you and I have been doing for the last few minutes here. But also, you know, like to really capture these places and localities and let folks sit in on a conversation, kind of like the lunch with the FT feature.

If folks ever listen or, you know, read the Saturday FT, they have that lunch with feature where you can sort of like eavesdrop on the lunch. I want to have that, but with cameras there rolling to capture these conversations about politics and food and history and all that stuff. So we're starting with governors. It's going to be fun for a season. And this fall, you know, happens to be football. So season two is going to be even better, I think.

When does it start and how can people get it? Dan, it starts this coming week. You can catch it wherever you get podcast, but this is also a video series, so it's going to air on YouTube as well. And the idea is we would love folks to watch it on YouTube, but if you don't want to see me with like barbecue stains on my shirt, no offense taken,

you can just crank it up as a podcast and listen to it when you're driving or working out or jogging or whatever you want. It's on the road with Jonathan Martin. It's going to start this coming week, and you can catch it wherever you get your podcast or on YouTube. Awesome. Jaymart, good to talk to you, man.

We'll talk to you again later, soon. Thanks, Dan. Good to see you. That's our show for today. Thanks to Jonathan Martin for coming on. Tommy and I will be back on Sunday with a conversation with Governor Gavin Newsom. Bye, everyone. If you want to listen to Pod Save America

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