Pod Save America - Trump's Ballroom Reno Derailed by Epstein

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

Democrats release a new batch of Jeffrey Epstein's emails—including messages suggesting that Trump knew what Epstein was doing and spent time with one of his victims. Republicans fire back with 20,000 more pages of documents, Trump insists it's all a hoax, and Congress moves toward a vote that could force DOJ to release the full Epstein files. Jon and Dan break down how bad this is for Trump and his vanity building projects, the government's belated reopening, the lingering shutdown hangover, the future of ACA subsidies, and a sneaky provision that would let eight GOP senators sue the federal government. They also discuss Trump's disastrous interview with Laura Ingraham, his baffling affordability pivot, and MAGA outrage over Kash Patel using an FBI jet as his own private shuttle service. Then, Texas State Rep. James Talarico stops by to talk about why he's jumping into the Democratic primary to unseat Senator John Cornyn. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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by using code, Crooked Free, or going to cookunity.com slash crookedfree. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favro. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, guess who's back? A trove of new emails from Jeffrey Epstein's account alleged that Trump knew what the guy was up to

and spent time with at least one of his victims in Epstein's house. The government is also officially open, but the battle over the shutdown and the fate of Obamacare is still raging. We'll also talk about Trump's disastrous interview with Laura Ingram, of all people, that even pissed off his MAGA supporters, who are also angry with Cash Patel for the time in government. money he's spending on his girlfriend. Then Texas State Representative James Talariko stops by to talk about jumping into the primary to unseat Senator John Cornyn. But let's start with the big Epstein news.

On Wednesday morning, Democrats released three of Jeffrey Epstein's emails that were part of a huge batch they received from his estate after issuing a subpoena. The most damning, I think, is an email that Epstein wrote to his convicted co-conspirator, Galane Maxwell, all the way back in April of 2011. This is after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting sex from girls as young as 14. Epstein wrote this about Trump in the email, who at the time was contemplating a run for president. Quote, I want you to realize that the dog that hasn't barked is Trump. A victim whose name was redacted in the release, quote, spent hours at my house with him

he has never once been mentioned. Galane Maxwell replies to this email, quote, I have been thinking about that. Okay, the second email exchange is from 2018 when Epstein was under investigation again, this time by Donald Trump's Department of Justice. A friend whose name was redacted also wrote that the new attention on Epstein

was really part of an effort to take down Trump. Epstein wrote, quote, It's wild because I am the one able to take him down. Jeffrey Epstein on Donald Trump in 2018, I am the one able to take him down. Then, in 2019, Epstein had an exchange with the author Michael Wolfe, where he wrote about Trump, quote, of course he knew about the girls as he asked Galane to stop. After the release, Oversight Committee Republicans said that the unnamed victim was Virginia Joufrey, who said publicly that Trump never abused her and she never saw him do

anything bad. Jufre died by suicide in April. The Republicans also released their own 20,000 pages of Epstein emails, ostensibly to muddy the waters or get ahead of whatever Democrats were going to release next. Those emails show Epstein discussing Trump and all kinds of other topics with various people in his social circle like Larry Summers. For his part, Trump, responded on truth social with some rants about the Epstein hoax, accusing Democrats of trying to change the subject from the shutdown ending. But when he was asked about the emails during an Oval Office press event on Wednesday night, suddenly, he didn't have much to say at all. Let's listen. Mr. President, can you respond to these Epstein emails that were released today?

Yeah, I mean, you know, he's just the normally, normally quiet and reserved Trump not taking questions from anyone. That's notable, I'd say. All right, you wrote a message box about this. On the substance, what's your take on these emails? I mean, they're quite damning, right? They go at the core question of what Trump knew and when he knew it and undermine his argument that he never knew anything about Epstein and that he, well, it's hard to know what Trump's actual story is.

For a long time, he never knew anything. Then the White House contended that he ended his relationship with Epstein because of concerns about Epstein stealing. these girls like Virginia from Mar-a-Lago, suggesting he knew about it a long time before. We don't know. Here's, to me, the main point is the details are less important than the essential truth here, which is that the President of the United States had a long-time, very close relationship with America's most notorious child sex trafficker, and now is using every lever of power

at his disposal to prevent disclosure of information about that relationship. Right. That in and of itself is one of the greatest scandals in American history. I know that sounds hyperbolic, but it truly means just take down the name Donald Trump out of it and think about what that would be like in any other scenario. And every time we get this information, it just fills in the details. It further undermines his arguments about what he knew and when he knew it, etc. But it just reminds everyone of the truth that the guy sitting in the Oval Office pout around with a child sex trafficker and has prevented. the release of the information that could theoretically clear him of these allegations. And now keep in mind, obviously, you know, the extent of Jeffrey Epstein's crimes were not fully known until, you know, first Julie Brown reported this big series out in 2018, which then sort of led the Justice Department to start looking again at Jeffrey Epstein. And then, of course, he was arrested in 2019. But before that, between 2008, when he gets the sweetheart deal from Alex Acosta, who would go on to become Donald Trump's secretary of labor, between then and 2018,

what is known publicly about Jeffrey Epstein is that he was, you know, he pleaded guilty to soliciting underage girls as young as 14. So like, it's not like, oh, well, all this stuff came out in 2018, 2019. It was, it was out there. there, it was public. So if you were Donald Trump or if you were someone hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein between 2008 and 2018, it's pretty easy to find out that information. This is like being the most generous interpretation of all this. Let alone when you get into some of these emails, you know, at one point Epstein offers to send New York Times reporter Landon Thomas, who has also reported on the Epstein drama over the years. He wrote the famous New York Magazine

profile with the Donald Trump quote in it. Yeah, where he's. He says, I know that Jeffrey likes girls young, and he offered to send Landon Thomas in one email pictures of Trump in his kitchen with girls in bikinis. Mr. Epstein also told Landon Thomas about a time when he said, Mr. Trump, this is from the New York Times, Mr. Trump was, quote, so focused on watching young women in a swimming pool that he bumped the swimming pool at Jeffrey Epstein's home. Important factored there, yes. Right, yeah.

On watching young women in a swimming pool that he bumped into a door. leaving his nose print on the glass. Trump was mentioned thousands of times, not hundreds, thousands of times in these documents. Again, you know, none of us have memories anymore, but remember there was the whole thing, is Trump going to be in the Epstein docks? And then there was the reporting that when Pam Bondi

and the rest of them found out that he might be mentioned a few times in the docs, that's when they kind of said, okay, we're not going to release the docs. And she told, reportedly told Trump in the Oval Office. and, of course, everyone always denies this and all the shit. But yeah, clearly, now that we see the 20,000 pages, he's all over the documents, all over the documents. But here's the thing.

Let's say if this was the worst stuff in the documents, why is Trump working so hard to prevent the rest of them from coming out? Exactly, exactly. That's the thing. If the thing they were worried about was this email, then it's over. Just let them all come out, but that's not it. They have reason to believe, and we know this because thousands of FBI agents combed through those documents, that there was something much worse in there.

And as of, in regard, the picture of Trump with women and bikinis or girls in bikinis, you remember, because no one has any memories, but Michael Wolf brought this up on a podcast a couple months ago. And everyone thought it was bullshit because Michael Wolf, I think he claimed, I could be wrong here, that Epstein went to his safe and took the picture out and showed it to him. I don't even remember this. Yeah, I think, I think this is correct. One of our producers can tell me if on the wrong, but I'm pretty sure he said that. And it should have been a much bigger deal, but, you know, Michael Wolf is a bit of a fabulous in a lot of people's eyes. And so it didn't get a ton of attention. But here's it. Now we have a second potential source on the Donald Trump with Girls in McKinney's photograph.

Look, one of our challenges here is we got a lot of characters involved in this scandal, none of whom are all that trustworthy. Their credibility has been thrown into question numerous times, whether it's Jeffrey Epstein, Glein Maxwell, Donald Trump, Michael Wolf, who in these emails is like plotting. with Jeffrey Epstein over, you know, how to use the information he allegedly has on Donald Trump to benefit himself and, like, trying to help him formulate responses or have a strategy on, you know, when to use this against Trump and how and all that kind of shit. So like, could Epstein be lying? Could Maxwell be lying? Could Wolf be lying? Could Trump be lying? Yes, all of them could be lying. But you just got to ask yourself, why in an email in 2011, is Trump is just potentially thinking about running for president in 2012, would Jeffrey Epstein in an email just

to Galane Maxwell feel the need to lie about Donald Trump spending time with one of the victims in his home? Also, what would the, what would the incentive be there? Also, Donald Trump is someone who is famously a cat. He also very famously talks about how much he likes young women. Right. He pout around with Jeffrey Epstein for a time. Like, we don't know if he did anything, but he's certainly, we, you know, we have this email about him running into the window. We also know from multiple sources about the time that they brought that bikini team from New York to do a show at Marlago and the only two people in the room were Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. Like there's a lot of just very sketchy behavior in this arena that raises real questions.

And it's just you have to ask yourself, what is it in the documents that Donald Trump is so afraid would come out? Think about how they dealt with Lauren Beauret on this. This is just a vote, right? And they brought her into the situation room and basically tried to do, twister arms with senior Justice Department officials reportedly including the attorney general and the FBI director because they're that scared of something, which is an insane thing in and of itself. It's like a massive conflict of interest in a hundred different ways. But just that is

that that is the behavior people who are scared shitless about disclosure of what is in these files. And I want to know what's in these files. And these are people who, before he became president it again, he and, uh, you know, all of his goons who are now in positions of authority and running law enforcement were like, we're going to release the Epstein files. We're doing it. It's great. And then all of a sudden, now, uh, nothing, we're not going to do anything. Although, to be fair, and this shed some light on one of the potential theories here, which is cash Patel, Dan Bongino, all of them were out there saying, yeah, and JD Vance, we've got to release the Epstein files, got to release the Epstein files. When Trump has asked whether he's going to release files related to the

Kennedy assassination. Yes, absolutely. For the get, there was a couple other ones. Absolutely. Absolutely. It was, I think it was UFOs. UFOs. Kennedy assassination, maybe also MLK assassination.

And then we got to absolutely, absolutely. I don't know about that. Yeah, well, not when we don't want to get, you know, when I want to release any names of people who may not have been really involved and get them, you know. So that's telling, telling. As far as the broader Republican reaction, again, these are the people that, for years, we're the ones saying that the government must, the government's covering something up, they must release the Epstein files. This is some kind of a, you know, Democrats scandal. They're all

involved in this child trafficking ring. And as soon as Trump wins, we're going to get rid of the, we're going to get at least these files. This is now the Republican reaction in response to this, to this latest story. Let's play some. How convenient was it as the shutdown ended, out comes the Epstein files. Why didn't you bring this up during the four years of the vitamin? administration when the Biden DOJ had all these records the entire time. Nobody ever said a word about it. They didn't care. Now it's the biggest thing in the world.

He never did anything. It's a lot of innuendo and they're going to smear him with that just like they did with the Russia hoax. And my gut feeling is that if there was something in there about Donald Trump, the Biden Justice Department would have released it. It's so funny that like they can't even get on the same message about the Biden administration. Like Mike Johnson's like, why did no one care during the Biden administration? and then the last jackass

I think that was Andy Ogles no who is that oh Andy Harris whatever they're all the same the last the last guy there was like Andy Harris was like

oh well if if there was something in there the Biden administration would have done the shitty scandalous corrupt thing that Trump would do and just release all the files I'm not going to defend

just to screw Donald Trump I'm not going to defend Merrick Garland a lot on this podcast or ever in life because he's really a historical villain who is very culpable for where we are right now. But there is no question that there could have literally been a videotape of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein talking about their crimes together. And Merrick Garland would not have released that. Merrick Arlen to this day is just he's got the pee tape with him. He took it with him. Where is Merrick Island? That is a joke. That's a joke. Just so everyone knows. Well, you referenced what's going on in Congress. Let's talk about what's happening there.

because they are by no means done with the Epstein scandal. Now that the government's open and Adelaide de Grohalva was finally sworn in, the discharge petition to force a vote on legislation that would compel the Department of Justice to release all the Epstein files hit the required 218 signatures. This was, as you said, despite a very intense last-minute push, they got Bobert, Broadhart. They're trying to strong arm her with most of the people who run federal law enforcement in the situation room because nothing else is going on in the world. They tried to get Nancy Mace to take her name off the discharge petition. I believe Marjorie Taylor Green's name was on it all. They've probably given up on March at this point. They couldn't do that. Trump failed to get anyone to take their names off the discharge petition. So it did pass. Mike Johnson now says he's scheduling the vote for next. week and word is that a lot of House Republicans are going to vote yes once it comes to the floor. However, say it passes the House, still needs to pass the Senate, no guarantee that John

Thune will even take it up in the Senate. And then, even if it passes the Senate, Trump would have to sign it into law, which seems unlikely. So what now? What do you think the goal is? Is it just to embarrass Trump here by forcing him to veto this and show that a bunch of Republicans broke with him on this. Do you think Trump wouldn't sign it? You think he would veto it? Yeah. I don't think he'd veto it.

I think it would be, here's what I'd do if I was in Trump's mind. I wouldn't do, I wouldn't do. Do tell. I wouldn't do like a big veto where I would. Do you pocket veto it? Yeah, exactly. I would pocket veto it.

I would just try to avoid it. I would have other news that I'd talk about. Someone would ask about it. I'd say, your fake news. Caroline Levitt would say, oh, the president's talked about this before. It's a hoax. So what's he going to do, Karen?

Is it going to veto? Is he going to pass the legislation? He thinks it's a hoax. Next. I think the president vetoing with a pen or a stamp or pocket vetoing would the legislation that would be passed with a bipartisan group, right? It would have to get 60 Senate votes. So we assume it's going to have a pretty big house.

Because all these MAGIF folks want, they don't want to be on the wrong side of this. And it's going to pass anyway. So they're going to vote. So you're going to get a big number in the house. Let's say it got through the Senate, so it's going to get at least 60 to do that. And then Donald Trump's going to veto the bill that forces disclosure of information about his relationship with a sex trafficker. That would be a cataclysmic political event. Also, wouldn't it be his first veto of the second term?

Yeah, it would have to be. Yeah, I mean, it would be truly, like, what is in those files would have to be so fucking bad that they would end his presidency on the day they were released to veto that. Like, that would be... And does he even know, is the question. Like, I think one possible explanation is he feels like he did something bad or there's something bad in there, but he can't exactly remember what because he's done so many bad things over the course of the last 80 years. Yes. Because, you know, exactly, and he's really old. So, you know, that's a possibility as well.

I mean, there is this, it's, it's, I saw that Andrew Rager at the bulwark wrote this, which he's like, you know, with most people, if you're trying to cover something up, you think, oh, that person might be guilty. With Donald Trump, his, like, default setting is cover everything up, try to, you know, try to stop all bad news. And so, like, you sort of understand that he could just be doing this anyway. But the persistence and the length that he has gone to to cover this, like, it's really, even the, even the person that's, even the kind of person who's most resistance to conspiracy theories, it's, it's tough now to really, to want, to understand why he would go to such length to do this. Like in the 90s, when Bill Clinton was dealing with a fallout of the Ken Star investigation from his extramarital affair and lying about it under oath, no one in the White House knew the truth. He told no one.

So he was operating on its own. So the White House had no idea what was in there. And so, like, you can understand some of the decisions they make as they're operating entirely. Some of them were believing their boss, who was lying to the staff, too. Here, you just have to imagine. Like, maybe Trump, like Trump obviously hasn't been through the files, but someone has. There has, like, he has the, and it's not even like the Justice Department. He's walled off from the Justice Department.

Like, he would be in a normal world where he just, you know, he just trying to call Pam Bonnie and she won't pick up the phone because of ethics. So, like, whether it's his White House counsel or it's Stephen Miller or someone else or the Justice Department staff alone, have been through the files. And so they must know, because if it's not that, but someone should tell him it's not that bad if it's not that bad. And there's nothing preventing them from doing this. that. So, like, maybe he doesn't know there's something bad there, but someone does.

Also, let's just, let's keep in mind now, now that we know that Jeffrey Epstein in his emails was telling multiple people that he could ruin Donald Trump, that he has, he has compromising information about Donald Trump, that he could take him down. Jeffrey Epstein is investigated then by Donald Trump's Department of Justice in 2018, goes to jail. and dies in jail, right? Dyes by suicide in jail. For the audio listeners, John did kind of half-hearted air quotes there. Under circumstances that, you know, we still don't know.

We all did the footage of the, if this were a fucking low-budget movie plot, what do you think people would guess happens next? that the guy who went around telling people that he had blackmail on the president and the president's Justice Department then sends him to jail and then he dies in jail? Like, I mean, I'm going on on record here. Like, I don't, I'm not saying I believe the conspiracy.

But you kind of do. I don't even know if I do, but like, how fucking ridiculous is that? If it was anything else, if it was a movie, it was anything else, you'd be like, oh, yeah, obviously. Obviously, we know what happened. And then we haven't even talked about the fact that there's all this reporting now But not only did Gleine Maxwell, the person who could share all this information with the public.

Oh, right. Yeah. And is preparing a pardon application or a commutation application to the Trump Department of Justice has not only just been moved to a low minimum security prison camp. She's now getting special privileges at that prison camp, according to reporting from CNN, not available to anyone else, including all the toll of paper she wants, which is obviously in short supply in prison. And it's like it's the amount of, like you, I try very hard. not to be a conspiracy person. I try, you know, usually, we talk about this all the time, that in Washington, it is almost always, the answer is always is incompetence, not conspiracy. But the amount of information here, whether we don't know what Trump did, but the lengths in

which they're going to prevent the disclosure information is so damn it. Like, if he was guilty, how would he acting differently he is right now? Maybe it's just, it is like, just like, use your brain, people. So, I guess, put it to say, he, he, is something he is scared shitless of coming out. What that is, I do not know, but it is enough to make him act very much against his own short-term political interests. Remember when Glenn Maxwell sat for an interview in her cushy new jail with Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, who was Donald Trump personal lawyer. Exactly. And he asked her about whether Trump was around Epstein and these girls and if you know Trump asked about Trump's conduct and her quote to Todd Blanche was quote I never witnessed Trump in any inappropriate setting in any way fast forward to the email that we all just read when she said instead oh yes I've been thinking about that time when he would now could Donald Trump have been at Jeffrey Epstein's house with Virginia Joufrey in an appropriate way

I guess. Perhaps Jeffrey Epstein had Virginia Drew Frey at a dinner, as he was also sex trafficking her and abusing her and all the horrifying things he did to her. So I guess there's a possible explanation where Galane Maxwell's answer to Todd Blanche was technically true. The very least, it seems a bit incomplete. I saw George Conway tweet about this. Yes. And then Todd Blanche responds to George Conway on Twitter, and he was like, well, I didn't have these emails then. when I interviewed her. And then George was like, well, then maybe you should go back and interview her again and see if she tells the truth now. Just we'll be waiting for that interview to happen.

What is this? What is happening right now? The fact that this whole thing comes down to a way in which we're getting information about this scandal is a Twitter fight between the Deputy General and George Conway. Everything is just so stupid. Yeah, it's so dumb. On a quite a serious subject, frankly. Very serious. Very serious.

So, like, politics of this, like, we, I was ready. I'm like, okay, the Epstein thing has faded away. I get it. Whatever. Trump has not covered himself in glory on this one. But it seems like the MAGA base was ready to move on. All the MAGA influencers, the MAGA media types are all, like, they're all covering up for him now. They don't care anymore.

All the people that had showed, like, a little bit of independence from Trump when this first broke. They're all back on board and they're pretending nothing's there. Like, is this something that Democratic politicians should still be talking about? What do you think? Well, we kind of have to. Like we know, we knew before the 2025 elections, affordability is number one issue. If anyone had any doubt, elections made it crystal clear. If we could only talk about one thing, we talk about affordability. But we don't get to pick the topics.

We're not in the White House. We don't have the bully pulpit. Even if we did, we don't have sort of the messaging throw rate or the media machine to allow us to do this. As long as you've got to talk about the things that people are talking about. And this is one of those things. It has political advantages for Democrats. two ways. One is there is a way to take this. Like, you can't be incredibly awkward and be like he's talking, he's covering up for the Epstein files to cover, to distract from his high prices or anything

dumb like that. And you don't need to be going like just, oh, he's Trump's a petto. Like we just don't, just don't say more than we know. Stick with what we know. It's bad enough. The most politically appealing way to talk about this is to lay out the facts as straight in a straightforward fact-based way as you can, and then make the point that Trump is covering this up to protect himself and his other rich friends. And this is part of the corrupt, broken political system. He said he was going to fix. Those are not the words to use, but that's the gist of the story. I always said this is my you got to have that disclaimer now, because otherwise we'll just hear, we'll hear a statement exactly like that. Just a shout. These are stage directions. The second way that this matters is Trump,

you may remember, launch an affordability campaign like five days ago. You know when you can't talk about affordability when you're in the middle of a royally national scandal over relationship with America's notorious child sex trafficker. And so it does block his ability to deliver message on anything helpful to himself. And so like this, if we can, if we had a scandal where we found out that Trump was personally raising, working with Jeffrey Epstein to personally raise egg prices, that would be better politically. But this is what we got. And I think it can be useful. This entire second term also is about like Donald Trump himself personally delivering a damaging narrative about him and his presidency to us on a silver

platter like every day. You know, like you don't have to think too hard about how the Epstein scandal fits in with the rest of what he's doing is that like all of the corruption that people were just angry about in Washington, not just Democrats or independents, but Republicans, people in Trump's base, like the money he's making, the crypto, the Qatari jets, the Gatsby parties, the ballroom the like all this shit that's all the piece yeah he's the the pardons for all of his rich friends and all the fucking violent uh january six people right like if you're a friend of trumps if you're connected to trump if you can do this you're you're you're all set you can break the

law you're going to get rich Trump's getting rich the family's getting rich everyone else fuck you yeah your costs are going up you're going to bear the brunt of the tariffs you're going to bear the brunt of the shutdown we don't give a shit we're going to kidnap you off the street whether you're undocumented or not like it's a whole it's it's right there it's right there i don't you know he's delivering it right to us it's just it's so easy POTTA America is brought to you by Nutrafol. If you're dealing with hair issues like thinning or shedding, you might feel totally stuck on what to try next. There are so many products out there, it's hard to know which ones are actually going to do anything.

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Yeah, it would have been good for everybody. See, thicker, stronger, and faster-growing hair with less shedding in just three to six months with Nutraful. For a limited time, NutraFol is offering our listeners $10 off your first month's subscription and free shipping when you go to NutraFol.com. Enter the promo code crooked. Find out why Nutraful is the best-selling hairgo supplement brand at NutraFol.com, spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L-L-com promo code crooked. Let's talk about our new open government, which will stay that way until at least the end of January. What a luxury. The Departments of Veterans Affairs and Agriculture, along with some military projects, are now fully funded through all of 2026.

So are SNAP benefits, which people should start getting again on Monday. Federal employees are back to work and paychecks, including back pay. We'll start going out in a few days. One problem that's still lingering is air travel. There were nearly 1,000 flight cancellations on Thursday. the administration says it's going to keep cancellations at 6% of total flights for the foreseeable future. I imagine this is untangling all the delays that sort of built up in over the last couple of weeks and the fact that we have been suffering in air traffic controller shortage

for some time now. So I'm sure that former real world road rule star Sean Duffy has this under control. Also unresolved, the future of the Affordable Care Act subsidies, that 20 million Americans rely on, and the bitter recriminations among Democrats over the deal that eight senators struck with Republicans to end the shutdown. We'll get to the Obamacare subsidies in a second, but Dan, you can get to join our group therapy session on Tuesday's pod about the deal, though you have written about it. Where's your head at now that we've all had a few days to process this? Like you guys and so many other Democrats, I was quite pissed at the way in which the shutdown came to an end, that it was these Democrats who did.

did this at this point in time. This was the point of maximum leverage for Democrats. It's very possible that the Republicans were just never going to give. And their advantage was they didn't give a shit about any person they hurt. And they would starve people. They would destroy air travel. They destroy the economy. Do anything to gain leverage. And we did like that. Democrats do not have the stomach for that. We have a just Obama used to call it. We have the responsibility gene. And but even knowing that, I think we had to let it play out for a couple weeks more because there was a lot of polling issue, the people were now just at that moment in which we folded, beginning to pay attention. And that's when the real political pressure

would have come on the Republicans. And because Democrats, to their credit, had won the messaging war and people were blaming Trump and the Republicans, when all the pains started, particularly around air travel at Thanksgiving, they were going to blame the people. They already blamed for the shutdown, Trump and the Republicans. And so we should have let that play out. And so very frustrated by that. I thought the eight senators who caved here sold everyone out. And I think they did an absolutely miserable job of explaining their position. You know, Angus King saying we shouldn't stand up to standing up to Trump didn't work. People calling it a win. Angus King went from saying that we had a, we went from no chance

to 50% chance to get the Obamacare subsidies to the next morning. We're down like 20% chance. You know, it's, they basically caved for one vote that is really kind of bullshit. Having said that, it's happened. It's over. I don't think it's going to matter in the, midterms. No one's going to remember this cave 11 months from now and people are going to vote. So, like, I think there are lessons we should learn about how to go about these fights in the future, about what it takes to actually win them and whether we have the stomach to do it collectively. But it's time to put it behind us and time to focus on making the Republicans pay the price for being so committed to raising health care premiums. Because I do think in

the end, if we play our cards correctly, Republicans will have won the battle but lost the war here. Well, let's talk about ACA subsidies because, you know, that fight's not done yet either. Senate Democrats are supposed to, as part of the deal, get a vote on legislation of their choosing in December around extending the ACA subsidies, though there has been some talk about a compromise with Republicans in order to get it passed through the Senate. Some of the ideas that have been thrown out or do you want to means test the subsidies? So, like, I heard Gene Sheen say, like, if you make over $200,000, you shouldn't be eligible for the subsidies because then that would get more Republicans on board in the Senate. It all seems a little silly to me because the big

problem is the House, but that's what's going on in the Senate. In the House, Mike Johnson still won't commit to a vote. Democrats are trying to file another discharge petition like they did with the Epstein files to force a vote in the House on a three-year extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies. I was looking to hear from some of the more establishment Republicans or the retiring Republicans on whether they'd go for that. Don Bacon, who's retiring, he said he would not sign a discharge petition on this, so that's not a very good sign. Mike Lawler, it's like a front-line Republican who's very vulnerable. He said he'd be maybe for a one-year extension, but nothing more. so we'll see on that, but can you think of any way that this could actually get done and signed by

Donald Trump? No, I really can't. I think it's highly, highly unlikely that Republicans will do this. It will split the Republican caucus. Mike Johnson does not want to split his caucus at this point. I think it's highly unlikely brings it to a vote. I will say that I completely agree with you. And that is Why, in the last couple of days, the more I have thought about the shutdown, the first thing in my mind is the chances that they were ever, even with all the pressure, going to ever pass an extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies, I thought it was, I started off when the shutdown started by thinking it was relatively high because I know how popular it would be to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies, even with their own base, right? something like 50%, 51% of MAGA voters said that they are supportive of this. So I thought, then I thought, then it was like, yeah, I guess I'm like Angus King. Then I thought it was like 50%, you know, because then they lost the election over it. It's like, I don't know what other kind of pressure would have forced them to give on the subsidies as opposed to just given on getting rid of the filibuster for opening up the government.

That I could still see if they held on. I just, I could not, I still cannot see a scenario where they're going to do anything on ACA because they feel, they seem so fucking dug in now. And Donald Trump and a bunch of Republicans are all talking about not just not extending the subsidies, but hey, let's take this opportunity to just like dismantle the rest of the Affordable Care Act. Give, they keep talking about, we don't want to give money to the insurance companies. We want to give money to the people who are then going to give it. Yeah, where are you going to fucking buy the health insurance from? Who do you think you're going to buy it from? Fucking Santa Claus?

Like, what are you talking about? Just doctors who take cash. Well, and they're talking about these like health savings accounts, which by the way, it's basically like a tax-free account that you have to fund, or they'll give you, maybe the government will give you a few thousand bucks, and then you have to fund the rest and it's tax-free. You can't even use it to pay for your premiums the way a lot of them are currently written in legislation, so you can use it to pay for extra, out-of-pocket costs, I guess.

I don't know. Yeah, it's like fiscal therapy. It's fucking worth nothing. It gives the insurance, it would give the insurance companies so much more power to deny you coverage for preexisting conditions. So not only now are they going after people who were relying on the Affordable Care Act subsidies,

they want to go after people who would get denied preexisting conditions. So these are all their ideas right now. And you mean to tell me that this is the group of people who would be like, all right, all right, we'll extend the subsidies. I just, you know, look, we're going to go through this again in January and there's going to be another government funding deadline. at the end of January, and I think Democrats should fight like hell. But at the end of the day,

Republicans are on the losing end of an 80-20 issue, and they don't seem to fucking care. Yeah, I mean, you're thinking about this. And I thought about this way, too, that through the lens of people understanding their own political self-interest, raising people's health care premiums at a time in which affordability is the number one issue, is they just, that is a real-world personal commitment to losing the house. Like, that's really what they want to do there. And it's not even like this is, you know, sometimes there are issues that are popular, but they largely benefit the other party. This benefits their voters more than anyone else because it is primarily...

Which is the only reason I thought they would have done it, you know? I mean, no one has less regard for their voters than Donald Trump and the Republicans. Like, we could go through like many reasons why this happened. Part of its negative polarization before the shutdown was over this or a lot of Republicans who really wanted to solve this problem, but once it became part of the shutdown, they could never give on it. there's the fact that they are immune from political pressure because they live inside an epistemic media bubble that doesn't allow them to know how bad things are going.

It's just, this is really a fundamental change in how the world worked between when we dealt with the shutdown in 2013 and now is in 2013, most Republican members of Congress got their news from the Wall Street Journal, Politico, New York Times, even they watched CNN. They watched Fox, of course, but they knew they were in on the joke with Fox. And so they saw all the bad coverage. Now they live in a world where they're winning all the time. And so they don't even know when they're losing. So they just keep losing in this case.

And even if they see coverage that tells them they are losing, the only person that matters is Donald Trump and keeping Donald Trump happy. Because even if their voters are pissed at them, even if they're getting bad coverage, they know that if they cross Donald Trump, they'll get a primary challenge and he'll come down hard on them. And so then they'll lose their job anyway. So they are, you know, I think they probably, some of them probably realize they don't have good options either way. But the scarier option for them is to piss off Donald Trump.

And this is a fundamental change between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0. And Trump 1.0, he would have wanted to sit down with, at the time, Pelosi and Schumer and to get the big four together and cut a deal. And he wanted to be in on things that seemed popular. Yeah. Here is just like it's a presidency based entirely on owning the lips. the way to defeat Democrats here, not to help Republicans, but to make Democrats lose was to force them to cave here and not to actually do what's in the, like, the guy should, especially if you're so fucking afraid of the Epstein finals coming out, the guy should really, really want the

Republicans to win the House. And I know he's doing things like trying to redistrict in gerrymander of the world to get it done. But one way to help them win the House is to solve this massive political problem. And he just made it worse. speaking of political problems they don't really give a shit about there was one provision that got snuck into the final funding bill in the Senate that would let senators sue the federal government for as much as half a million dollars each if their data is accessed without notice what is this all about the provision benefits eight Republican senators who were recently found to have had their phone records accessed during the investigation by Jack Smith into Donald Trump's 2020. election subversion. Mike Johnson, a bunch of Republicans in the House, including some pretty conservative Republicans in the House, said they had no idea the provision was in there. And now Johnson says he's planning a House vote to undo it, which is kind of wild. What the hell?

It's really one of the most bizarre things because it's incredibly, it's obviously unpopular. It seems insane. It's basically just a potential cash grab for eight members of Thune's caucus. or they can just, like, it's already been established that this happened to them. Like, they wrote the rules to, to ensure that the eight members of Republican Senate caucus could sue and get up to a half a million dollars. Like, it's already done. Like, they wrote the rules to ensure that they could win because they already knew the evidence in this case.

And then the members of the House probably pissed because where's their chance? Where's their half a million dollars? And, I mean, it's just, it's, it's, it's. It's nuts. It's truly, truly nuts. I, there has been not, everyone is very quiet about how, like, we know Thune asked for it, but who asked Thune to ask for it? What was the thinking here?

Even Ron Johnson was asked about it because he was one of the senators and he was like, well, I didn't really want it, but some other people wanted it. And he wouldn't say who. I want to, it would be very interesting to see which of any of them actually sue. The whole, it's, it's so fucking crazy, though, when you think about it from a, again, just blatant corruption kind of standpoint is that if the FBI and the government, if they have a target of their investigation and they're looking into that and the target of the investigation is making phone calls with a bunch of people, then they're not going to pull up your phone

records. Like they didn't they didn't pull up their phone records and know what they were saying. They didn't know the contents of their phone calls. They knew numbers that they were calling Donald Trump and potentially Donald Trump's co-conspirators in this. So they knew the numbers that they were calling in the times that they called those numbers, right? This is like standard investigative procedure. And what these senators have decided is for anyone else in America that this happens to, that's standard procedure within the confines of the law. That's how investigations are conducted. But for these eight senators, they get special treatment, such special treatment that they get half a million dollars each potentially if they sue over this. But everyone

else in America this happens to, including the members of the House, they don't get that special treatment. Yeah. It's just wild. It's just wildly stupid corruption. And I think that the only reason that Johnson and them are willing to

try to strip it out, obviously, the most obvious is because it doesn't include them. But also, this wasn't a Donald Trump thing. So they're not worried about pissing off Donald Trump. It's just like a bunch of fucking unnamed jackass Republican colleagues in the Senate. Pod Save America is brought to you by Article. We love article furniture here at Cookett.

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But President's gut tells him that life in America has never been better. He's reportedly planning a series of speeches on the economy in the coming weeks, fan out across the country, take it to the people, make his case for all his accomplishments, definitely should do the trick, right? Always does the trick. If you want a preview of how Trump's version of Bidenomics is going to land, even with his friends, take a listen to the president. interview with Laura Ingram on Tuesday evening.

Is this a voter perception issue of the economy, or is there more that needs to be done by Republicans on Capitol Hill or done in terms of policy? More than anything else is a con job by the Democrats. So are you saying that voters are misperceiving how they feel? So when I took over, you remember? Because you said Biden did that too, because he was saying things were great. Let's say it's synonymous, Biden and Kamala. Your housing director has proposed something that has enraged your MAGA friends, which is this 50-year mortgage idea.

Is that really a good idea? It's not even a big deal. I mean, you know, you go from 40 to 50 years, and what it means is you pay something less, from 30, that some people had a 40, and then now they have a 50. Why are people saying they're anxious about the economy? Why are they saying that? I don't know that they are saying. I think polls are fake. We have the greatest economy we've ever had.

You can't imitate gold, real gold. There's no paint that imitates gold. So these aren't like from Home Depot or something? No, this is not Home Depot stuff. No, not stuff you buy. This is not Home Depot. Could not be more perfect. It's so good.

Four bites at the apple he has. She asked him four times about the economy, including one that's this fucking random proposal that the great mortgage fraud investigator over at the Bill Pulte came up with. About the 50-year mortgage, he dismisses that idea. And then the other three answers, nothing is wrong, everything is great, economy is wonderful. Laura Inger, are you sure? What about people?

It's all fake, con job, everything's great in the economy. By the way, have you seen all the gold all over the Oval Office? It's real gold that I'm putting all over the Oval Office and everyone else is fine. It really is like he wants to lose. But he can't lose. That's the thing. He's not running again. He's a lame duck.

And he's fine. That, I mean, that, the lame duck thing is very important here. But it's just, he's doing, if you were to just write out, here's ways in which you could end your presidency functionally. He's doing those things. Yeah. And he's probably, he's probably a little surprise like, and yet here I am still. It's just to have to at a time of great economic uncertainty, bulldoze the White House to build yourself a ballroom paid for by America's wealthy as corporations with business before the government to throw the Gatsby party to do this interstate. to do this interview about the economy and then get people a tour of your gold-plated office,

I mean, it's great. It's great stuff. I do think it's what you were saying earlier about. It's just the bubble has become even smaller. And he's just not getting any bad news from anyone. He's got more sycophants in this administration than the last administration, which is really saying something. And he's not, so any kind of bad news he hears, he's just dismissing his fake, doesn't believe. it, doesn't believe bad polls, doesn't believe anything else. You think that maybe the results of the election might jar him a little bit, but not so much, it seems like. It did briefly.

I mean, he did seem quite rattled in the immediate aftermath. He's like yelling, he does those weird advance. He's yelling at the Senate. He wants the house. They want to shut down over. He's going to do affordability. But he just, you don't really have the stick tutiveness to get it done. He, you know, that we played the clip earlier of him not answering the question about and he was signing the bill to reopen the federal government. He did like a little topper when he was there at the desk. He was like reading something and it was all about affordability. You can tell that like Susie Wiles or someone in the White House was like,

we got to be a little bit more on message here with affordability. So he tried it out there. Didn't seem happy. He's never happy when he's forced to be on message. He was at an event today with Melania about foster children. And he started doing a whole affordability thing there, which again, heart wasn't in it. So they are trying to get through to him that affordability matters, but he doesn't give him, he doesn't believe it. He doesn't believe it. I think he genuinely

believes things are fine. He can't, well, to say that affordability is an issue is to admit that he has failed to lower costs. And he is incapable of admitting fault. He is psychologically, chemically, physically capable of admitting fault. He's been the whole, he's been that way his whole life. That's not going to change now. That's why this affordability push is doomed to fail. It's, of course, it's doomed to fail, but I do wonder at some point, probably not till the summer, spring, Republicans in these races in the Senate and the House are going to start being like, hey, I'm losing. And maybe you should take that affordability thing a little more seriously. Like, do you think that happens or do you think they're just grin and bear it?

His solution to that is to try to change the subject. Right. This is just when everyone was saying, More troops in the streets, invade Venezuela. Think about 2018, right? Where health care and taxes for the rich were the number one issue. Instead of trying to deal with that, what he did was he did the caravan and immigration at the end. Yeah. Yeah, maybe that's his. I don't think it's particularly good stretch.

You don't think it's going to work, especially it's really hard to make it work when people are looking at their grocery bill every week. But I think that's what he's most likely to try. As bad as those Trump answers were, the one that the MAGA base is most persistent. about came later in the interview when Ingram asked the president about accepting Chinese students at American universities and the H-1B visa program, which his Silicon Valley buddies love, but the MAGA base hates because it means immigrants coming to the country, whether they're high-skilled, low-skilled, doesn't matter. Immigrants coming to the country.

Maga-Base is upset about it. Here's what Donald Trump had to say, though. There's never going to be a country like what we have right now. And does that mean? The Republicans have to talk about it, love. Does that mean the H-1B visa thing will not be a big priority for your administration? Because if you want to raise wages for American workers, you can't flood the country with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of foreign workers. But you also do have to bring in talent.

Well, we have plenty of talented people here. No, you don't. No, you don't. We don't have talented people here. No, you don't have certain talents and people have to learn. A lot of MAGA folks are not thrilled about this idea of hundreds of thousands of foreign students in the United States. You've said as many as 600,000 Chinese students could come to the United States. Why, sir, is that a pro-Maga position when so many American kids want to go to school and there are places not for them and these universities are getting rich off Chinese money?

If we were to cut that in half, which perhaps makes some people happy, you would have half the colleges in the United States go out of business. So what? We're dependent on China to keep our university system going? No, not China, but I think it's good to have, I actually think it's good to have outside countries. Don't forget, MAGA was my idea. Maga was nobody else's idea. I know what MAGA wants better than anybody else.

And MAGA wants to see our country thrive. Didn't think the leopards would eat my face, right? Oh, man. What a callback. There it is. 2017. Here's my question. Do you think it's still true that nobody knows MAGA better than Trump?

Absolutely not. Like, you brought up the term about Trumping a lame duck, and this is lame duck behavior. It is, he has. He has lost the touch. Because I found myself in that exchange, siding with Donald Trump over Laura Ingram. And he wasn't because he's not used to answering that way. He couldn't really handle it very well. But what he was trying to say is, yeah, we need H1B visas because we have plenty of talented people in this country.

But for some jobs, in certain high-tech jobs, you need people with skills. And people can't fill the jobs. And so you bring in, so immigrants come to this country and they do those jobs. jobs like they have for the last several hundred years in this country. That's what America is. It's a nation of immigrants. Same thing. International students are partly what make our university system the envy of the world. And so we like to have international students in this country. And we don't want our colleges closing down, which Laura Ingram thinks like doesn't care about because now they've attacked colleges and universities for the last 10 years in the Trump

administration, tried to take down institutions of higher education, try to attack immigration. And Donald Trump's sitting here trying to be like, well, yeah, well, there's some immigration that's good. And Laura Ingram and the MAGA base that's really pissed about that answer are like abs a fucking lootly not. I mean, this is the all-in podcast version of Trump. Like we went on their podcast and said we were going to staple a visa to the diploma and do all these things and expand the H-1B visa program. And then Steve Bannon went fucking ballistic over it and it became this huge thing. What I think is going on here is twofold. One, Trump has lost his fastball.

He's lost touch with the base. He doesn't have the pressure of re-election over him to force him to make certain decisions. And he now also thinks it's all about him. Like he believes the talking points. He doesn't fully understand that there was an entire political movement of which he is the head of, but it's not all about him. And you have the movement itself beginning to the organizing principle of a movement that includes people like Mike Johnson, evangelical Christian, you know, anti-LGBQ, anti-gay marriage groups, and like full-born American nationals, the thing that kept them all together was Trump.

Trump is no longer going to be on a ballot again. So now they are beginning to jockey for what a post-Trump future looks like, and that's going to lead to a lot of dissension, a lot of mess. And Trump doesn't have what it takes or even the interest to try to ride hurt over that process. He's too busy putting gold on the walls, trying to make crypto dollars and building ballrooms to actually worry about coalition management. And J.D. Vance was to do that, but he is an imperfect person to do that because it's all

self-interested for him, and people realize that. And he is a point of leverage for various parts of that movement to try to gain influence. So I think it's going to be very, very, this is not about just the Epstein Files or the things. I think it's going to be very, very messy in the Magna movement in the coming years. I mean, it's sort of a little bit like how things ended up playing out the Democratic primary in 2019 when Obama as the organizing principle was no longer there, right? What is a, what is the post-Trump portion of the end? And ideologically, I think the MAGA movement is more conflicted than the Obama coalition was from 2009 to 2017. Yeah. I mean, I think that for the last decade, this has been a cult of personality. And we've

talked a million times how there's, there was no like sort of, there were few guiding philosophies of the MAGA movement other than whatever Trump wanted. And whatever Trump wanted is what's good for Trump and also whoever's like the last person in his ear, right? You could imagine after that exchange with Laura Ingram that Steve Bannon calls him up and the next time we hear him talk about H-1B visas and Chinese students suddenly he sounds like Steve Bannon, right? Like you could so Donald Trump you can you know you can sort of play him either way. But I think what he doesn't quite realize or maybe he does and he just doesn't care is how extreme that hit that faction of his movement is becoming. And that's just, I mean, we just started, that was just scratching the

surface with the H-1B visas and the Chinese students. I mean, we've been talking about the Nick Fuentes. Yeah, that's a normal policy conversation. Right beneath that is a debate within the party about the acceptability of Nazism. I mean, I talk about this in the, in my interview with James Taylor-Riko, but Rod Dreher, who's like a, you know, long-time sort of post-liberal conservative J.D. Vance friend was with J.D. Vance and Victor Orban over the weekend in D.C. And he wrote this, like, long substack afterwards where he spent a lot of time in D.C. talking to all these young Gen Z Republicans who are working in government, working in politics. And he's like, as right wing as you get this guy. He's J.D. Vance, pal. And he said that he thinks 30 to 40 percent

of these young Republicans who work in politics right now are like Nick Fuentes fans. and that they are very anti-Semitic, and that they are very open to fascism, and they don't really have any actual policy demands. They just want to burn everything down because they're also very nihilistic. And it's just like this very dangerous movement afoot in MAGA right now. And that is where the energy of the party is going to be, or that's where the energy the movement's going to be. The question posed Trump is, in which direction does the party itself go? And everything you just said about like jaddy vance being an imperfect person for this certainly i don't think they're going to think marco rubio is a true believer but these are people who look at the

more diverse multiracial coalition that trump has built over time and wish that it didn't exist and really do just want a coalition with white people basically uh and no immigrants not not just no immigrants, but like native-born white Americans. That's this faction of the movement. And, you know, I think people who probably ran Trump's campaign know that the only way you have a Republican majority in the future is if you continue to make these gains with non-college working class, black and Latino Americans. And if you don't have that, then you're not going to be able to win a majority. But the sort of the Nick Fuentes faction doesn't really give a shit about that. It's going to be a real problem. One other Magistar, who the base is fed up with right now for different reasons.

FBI director Cash Patel, who it turns out has been spending tens of millions of taxpayer dollars taking the FBI jet to places like Scotland, Nashville, where his country singer-girlfriend lives, to his parents' house in Florida, and during the government shutdown to a hunting lodge in Texas called, wait for it, the boondoggle ranch. You just can't make it up. Can't make it up. This is all according to records reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, which published quite a story, headlined Cash Patel's effing wild ride as FBI director with the subhead. In just one week in October, he ticked off his bosses with premature comments about a terror investigation and squeezed in a trip to the boondoggle ranch on the bureau jet.

Where would you like to begin, Dan? The botched terror investigation, taking the FBI jet to a wrestling match to watch his girlfriend sing the national anthem. the amazingly named Boondaga Ranch. I'll let you go here. I think I'll start with the botched terror investigation where he woke up one morning, tweeted about the arrests, except local law enforcement did not know. The investigation wasn't done yet, and two of the terrorist associates got wind and then attempted to flee of the country.

Yeah, that's a big no-no. And not the first time that he's been sort of live tweeting investigations. Yes. And live tweeting sort of inaccurate facts about ongoing investigations. He did this shortly after Charlie Kirk's assassination as well. So yeah, and then people are not happy. People are not happy with the FBI said, oh, he's only taken. So just so people know, by law, the FBI director, when they take personal trips,

still has to take the private plane that the government has for the FBI director to be, you know, to have access to secure communications. And if you take it for personal reasons, then you have to have. have to reimburse the government the cost of a commercial flight, not necessarily a private jet flight, which is like, you know, $20,000 at least if you're flying all the places that cash is flying. And then the FBI in response to the story is like, he's only taken 12 personal trips this year. And I'm like, 12 personal trips. He's the FBI director. It's not the year isn't even done yet.

We're in the 11th month. He didn't start in that office until like February, maybe March. So he's averaging like three trips a month here. I haven't taken 12 personal trips last year. And I'm not the fucking FBI director. I'm just a podcaster. I'd like to take some more personal trips. Well, you know what a podcaster is?

A future FBI director. That's true. So maybe I can finally get some R&R and take a private jet places once I'm in the government. It's just fucking wild. And then he fired this guy on Halloween, an FBI agent, Stephen Palmer. He's a 27-year agent who ran the FBI's critical incident response group, which is the unit that responds

to high-risk situations like child abductions and hostages why is he firing this guy also oversees the agency's use of its government planes and Palmer tried to explain to Patel staff that the more he used the plane for personal travel

the less it could be used for other bureau operations and then he got fired the FBI says nothing to do with that though nothing to do with that I've got a lot of questions there seems like the guy in charge of responses to child abductions shouldn't also be managing the private plane logs.

Weird overlap. Weird overlap, yeah. Yeah, it seems like you could find someone else for that task. But it is, there is something gratifying about this, which is a relatively dim, thoroughly unqualified person was put into a position of great powered influence and has done just as poorly as you would have expected. Like it's just helpful to know that that's how it goes. not even not even relatively dim i think i would take issue with the relatively just dim just you want to go

with dim i'm okay with that people are very mad about the the girlfriend uh Alexis wilkins um and uh a because cash patel keeps flying to nashville where she lives now flying to state college pennsylvania for a wrestling match where she's singing the national anthem he got very mad about this criticism and he said that she's not just a country singer he was on twitter saying that She's a country music sensation who has done more for this nation than most will in 10 lifetimes. Ten lifetimes. Also, she's suing everyone now because... Five million bucks, I think.

Well, all these crazy, back to what we were talking about, all the Groypers and the Fentes fans and all these right-wing racist influencers, anti-Semitic they think that she's like an Israeli spy that she was somehow working with Epstein and Epstein was working with the Mossad too and that this is a honeypot trap

and all this like just complete bullshit conspiracy like even for them a crazy fucking conspiracy but she just keeps suing them all for defamation even and there's like this one guy she's suing who didn't even make a claim that she's a

a massad agent or whatever, but just sort of like put up a picture of her in cash with the honeypot or something. I don't fucking know. But like then Will Summer wrote all about this is the ballwork. You gotta go check it out. It's so good. It's an amazing piece. But then like, because she's suing him and the lawyer, she's using his cash Patel's

lawyer so they think he's behind all the lawsuits. Now all the right is like defending him, this right wing influencer. He's getting sued by Alexis Wilkins. So he's got the base mat on him over his girlfriend. Everyone else is wondering why he's spending $20,000 a pop flying all over the country for personal reasons, tweeting out fucking investigations and screwing them up for the FBI. What the fuck? He's not good at his job. Just it's pretty clear.

Seems like one that at some point Donald Trump might be like, I don't know if I need this. Once again, require him to admit fault. Yeah, he would have to care about anything that's going on, huh? Well, that's all we got for now. When we come back, you'll hear my conversation with James Talley. about the increasingly competitive primary for the U.S. Senate in Texas. Two quick things before we get to that, message box. We got another message box pitch right here. Dan.

Here, I would encourage everyone to sign up. Here's what we've been covering on message box in the last couple of weeks here. We have written about how Donald Trump is a lame duck and what that means politically. We got near instant analysis of the 2025 elections, including a breakdown of exit poll data. After the Democrats caved, a just talk about why that happened, how it happened, and where we go from there. The argument for message box is if you want to get real-time analysis of what is happening, that offers context, not hot takes, hopefully not clickbait, although I do like it when you click, then that's what message box is for.

It is to dig deep into the issues that are happening, provide context about why it's happening, and talk about where we all can go from here, whether you're a elected official, an activist, someone who's just worried about democracy. See? So, and because like Donald Trump, I too have an affordability push. If you go to the website that kills me, crooked.com slash yes we, Dan, and you sign up there. You will get your first month free. Amazing. Amazing. Support my affordability push. That's what I would say. Look, I do not miss a message box. It's like the first thing I read every morning that there's a message box out. So I would read it every morning if you did it every, if you wrote one every day. But I wouldn't want you to do that because you have

some pods to do as well. There's so much content. I got polar coasters. I got Pod Save Americas. You're doing a lot. You're doing a lot. Also, new merch in the Crooked store, including new friend of the pod and Crooked Hoodies and CrookedCon merch in case you bailed on the line in D.C. Or we didn't have your size there. Head to store.crucid.com to shop and get some merch. When we come back, James Talarico. POTT of America is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. What if you could consistently find whatever it is you're looking for right away?

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And right now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Crooked. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash crooked. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. James Telerico, welcome. Thanks for having me. Good to be with you in person. It's so nice to meet you. You too.

You too. I've heard so much about you. I've been following you for a long time now. Well, same. Start with some news of the day. You said the deal to end the government shutdown. It wasn't a compromise. It was surrender. I certainly wasn't a fan either. But I guess my question is, if you were in the Senate, like, how much longer would you have held out knowing that Donald Trump clearly has a higher tolerance for inflicting cruelty on people than we do? Well, I'm a proud Texas Democrat, but I already have a religion and I already have a sports team. So I have no problem sharing hard truths about our party. And as a Texas Democrat, I'm always working.

with a losing hand. You know, I'm in a Republican-dominated legislature, and my job tends to be losing in the best way possible. But national Democrats in this situation had a lot of leverage to fight for the people of this country. And I felt that they gave up that leverage far too easily. And, you know, Donald Trump certainly has a higher tolerance for inflicting pain on people. I agree. But he's also very sensitive to other people's opinions about him. We know that's true about Donald Trump. And we saw that he had hit a record low in his approval ratings because of his actions in this government shutdown, literally taking food out of the mouths of hungry children to fund tax breaks for his billionaire donors. And so the fact that national Democrats let him off the hook and didn't get anything in return, to me just feels like political and legislative malpractice.

Do you think maybe they should have held out for like another couple of weeks, another. I think we should have held out until we got what we wanted, which was not only reinstating the snap cuts and making sure that hungry kids and working parents had enough to eat, but also making sure that health care premiums weren't going to skyrocket for millions of Texans and millions of Americans. That's our job as Democrats is to fight for working people. And if we're not doing that, then we shouldn't wonder why voters don't trust us at the ballot box. So I very much look at these positions as jobs. We're being hired to be the people's voice and the people's champion in the halls of power. And if we're not doing that, then we should find work elsewhere.

So a growing number of House Democrats have called on Chuck Schumer to step down as leader. A number of your fellow Democratic Senate candidates have said they won't support Schumer as leader if they win. Would you? I think this problem is a lot bigger than Chuck Schumer. I think it's a lot bigger than any one senator. And if we want to just, try to put the blame all on one person, I think we're missing the bigger picture, which is that our party has forgotten how to fight at the national level. I do think that national Democrats could learn a thing or two from Red State Democrats, because we have to figure out how to use every tool in our toolbox to fight for our people, to fight for our values. And we develop a thick

skin, and we develop certain muscles in the halls of power. I think you're going to see in 26, red state Democrats, Texas Democrats, starting to step up into these leadership positions and hopefully steering our party in a direction where we can fight effectively and actually win for working people all over this country. And I honestly think that's the discussion we need to be having. There's a temptation to find one person and say, that's the problem. Let's get rid of that. Yeah. That senator or that minority leader and all of this will be solved. I don't think that's true. And I do think we've got to have a conversation about how the party as a whole at the national level has to change if we're going to transform this country so it works for regular

people again. One thing that every Democrat, even some Republicans, even some people in the White House seem to agree on coming out of last week's election, is that life in America isn't affordable and the government needs to do something about it. What ideas do you have on this issue that you'd want to fight for if you get to Washington? Yeah, I do agree. That was the the big lesson across all these different races, all these different kinds of candidates, too. It's that affordability is the primary pain point for Americans and for Texans. So I've served for four terms in the state legislature. I've actually passed a lot of bills as a Democrat in a Republican-dominated legislature. And a lot of those bills have been focused on

bringing down costs. Obviously, grocery store prices are a real pain point for people. But I don't think we're talking enough about the structural aspects of our economy that prevent working class, middle class people from getting ahead. So the cost of housing, the cost of health care, the cost of childcare in Texas, I don't know what it is in the rest of the country, but in Texas, child care is now more expensive than college. So for young working families with young kids, this is pricing them out of the American dream. And so I've passed bills to bring down costs in all of those areas. I want to do that at the federal level. There's even more that we can do in Washington to start to restructure the economy so that working people, middle class people can finally build a life,

build wealth for themselves and their families. Housing seems like one of the biggest costs that has been a pain point for people now for almost a decade, whether you're not able to buy a home, whether you can't afford your rent, young people thinking they're never going to be able to buy a home. Right. And they're not wrong. Right. I mean, I saw a staff that 90% of baby boomers went on to earn more money than their parents. For millennials like me, it's 50%. It's even lower for Gen Z. And owning your first home is such a key part of that dream. And there's kind of a sequence because if you can't buy a house, then it's hard to start a family, hard to have kids, hard to get rooted in a community, hard to build wealth. So these things build on each other. And if we're robbing young people

from the ability to afford their first home, you're really locking them out of the American dream. And I don't think older generations understand the damage and the harm that that's doing to young people all over this country. What do you guys have been doing in Texas about that? Because I do know that it's easier to build homes in Texas than it is, at least here in California. Yeah. Well, a few things. I actually just passed a bill a few months ago in the Texas legislature to allow for single stair housing. This is kind of wonky. But this is a form of how housing, many times condos, that's very popular in other countries. But for some reason, we have this outdated building code in Texas and a lot of other states that doesn't allow for these

smaller housing units with just one staircase. It's usually the blame is put on fire safety, but all these other countries have figured out how to keep people safe and also build these smaller units. And so we just repealed that part of the code. And Democrats were excited because it was going to allow for more young people to afford a home, either whether they're renting or whether they're buying a condo. And then Republicans loved it because we were repealing regulations. And so it was kind of this match made in heaven where we had bipartisan buy-in on a housing bill in Texas. And then in the Austin area in central Texas, we went through some dramatic zoning reform, which makes it easier to build housing in the urban core. And Austin

is one of the few metro areas in the whole country that's seen rents decline. And recent months. And so some of these solutions are right there in front of us. It's just going to require building the political will to actually get them done. So being from Texas, spending a lot of time in South Texas, you've seen both the successes and failures of our immigration system up close. Of the many injustices committed by the Trump administration, what has been most horrifying and enraging to me are the mass detentions and deportations and outright violence targeted to people who merely look like they might be immigrants or are peacefully protesting or are just bystanders. I also think that the one reason Trump was put in a position to do this is because of our collective

failure as a country and as a party over decades to actually fix our immigration system. What did that failure look like to you in Texas during the Biden years? And if you become a senator who's in a position to do something about it, what would you do? So I'm an eighth generation Texan. My family's been in the state since it was Mexico. In fact, my family's from South Texas. My mom grew up in Laredo right there on the Texas-Mexico border. I feel like Texans understand immigration better than other folks across the country, both its challenges and its benefits. What I've said is that our southern borders should be like our front porch. There should be a giant welcome mat out front and there should be a lock on the door. You can do both of those things at the same time. Most people in this country, most people in Texas, are pro-immigrant and pro-security. But they really feel like they've been failed by both parties because they've had one party, particularly in the Biden era, that was pro-immigrant and seemed to not be very concerned about security

and seemed to have a high tolerance for chaos. I remember talking to my colleagues who served border communities and they were talking about just the incredible toll that that policy on our southern border was taking on people in South Texas and all along the Texas-Mexico border. And it was unsafe, both for native-born Americans, but also for migrants and for immigrants. People also see from the Republican Party folks who seem to be pro-security, but very anti-immigrant, right? Donald Trump is literally sending masked men in unmarked vehicles to kidnap people off our streets,

tearing parents from their children, waiting in school pickup lines, lurking in hospital waiting rooms. I mean, so what I think what we need. is finally a political party, and I hope it's ours, that can both welcome immigrants who are coming here to contribute, to live the American dream, to make us richer and stronger, and also keep folks out who mean to do us harm and ensure that there is an orderly process. I really believe the Democratic Party should be the anti-chaos party. We should be the ones trying to make government work for people. And immigration is a classic example where we have failed as a party. And if we hope to earn people's trust and their respect going forward. We've got to rethink how we approach

this issue. So you become something of a national figure because you know, you've impressed a lot of people outside of Texas, a lot of Democrats based on your ability to speak about faith and how it informs your politics. You went on Joe Rogan, something that not many Democrats have done. He tells you to run for president. Barack Obama says he's impressed with you. You got a New York Times headline asking if you're the savior the Democrats have been waiting for. Meanwhile, you're just trying to win a Senate primary in Texas. Does all that national attention make it easier, harder? Like, how are you processing it all?

Well, I already have a savior. And I think this is a problem in our politics where we hope that one candidate or one politician is going to fix all of our problems. And it's a terrible way to approach politics, one because it robs you of agency, right? If you can put all your hopes and dreams into one person, then you don't have to do much. When in reality, I am one small part of a solution, but it's going to take. all of us, whether we are candidates, whether we're podcasters, whether we are ordinary citizens, it's going to take all of us transforming this broken political system and making it

work for all of us again. But I will say that I'm thankful we've got folks interested in Texas because Texas, I think, will flip in this upcoming election. And once we do that, both with the help of everyone in Texas and our honorary Texans in other states, it will fundamentally change the politics of this country forever. And so I think this is the most high stakes Senate race in the country. Not only does it hold the key for winning a Senate majority, but it does hold the key, I think, for saving this American experiment. And if we can figure out how to win in Texas, it'll mean that the Democratic Party has figured out how to win America. And I am so thankful and so proud to be part of that effort. And I'm really excited that people around the

country want to help. Yeah, I think a lot of people had hope for Texas, and then over the last couple cycles, it seemed like it was slipping away. Yeah. I think, look, people don't quite get the national election, like a presidential election, the electorate's different than a midterm election. Beto came, what, within like two and a half, yeah, right? Two and a half points, a couple hundred thousand votes. That's right. How are you looking at the strategy? I know you're in a primary right now, but everyone in Texas right now, obviously, you know, it's, like I said, it's become tougher in presidential elections, the last couple cycles. but how are you looking at the state strategically on how to how to flip it this time around?

Yeah, I think people are sleeping on Texas. I really do. When you zoom out over the last 15 years, competitive, statewide elections have gotten more competitive. I remember when I was growing up in Texas, Republicans would win statewide elections by 25, 30 points. Now they consistently win by single digits. You mentioned Beto O'Rourke coming within two and a half points in the last Trump midterm. We're about to have the second Trump midterm. It feels like we've been in the Trump era forever, right? life. But this is the only, this is, this is, this is only the second Trump midterm we've ever had. People also forget that in the next election in 2020, Joe Biden only lost Texas by five points. It feels like we've memory hold that stat. If Republicans were five points away from winning California, they would break the bank, right? They would go all in, right? They have that killer instinct. The Democratic Party doesn't always have. But I think it's going to require a couple things to win in 2026 in Texas. It's going to require a candidate who can inspire and energize people. That's what I'm trying to do all over the state. But it's also going to require

a grassroots army to meet voters where they're at, whether it's on their phones or at their doors or on the phone or writing postcards. It's going to take thousands of Texans stepping up and doing their part to win the state and engaging with their neighbors who aren't with us yet, which is not always easy to do. But I am so excited that we've already had 8,000 Texans go to our website and sign up to volunteer. This is without us asking. These are just folks who are so fired up about winning Texas that they are taking the initiative to sign up, to knock doors and make phone calls and write postcards. And then some of them have already started their own volunteer meetups all over the state. In fact, something I'm really proud of is during this snap crisis where we have

families in Texas going hungry our volunteer teams have taken it upon themselves to go to food banks all over the state and and they're organizing not just to win an election but to serve people which is I mean we forget that's what politics is supposed to be about it's supposed to be about helping others and loving our neighbors and I'm I'm so thankful that we are building that team together and I will just say anybody who's listening if they want to join they can sign up at james tallorico.com and join this volunteer army because it's going to take all of us to pull off this this this this feat of winning texas so i worked for someone whose uh career in national politics began in a similar way suddenly get like launched out of a rocket there a national scene and the

strategy that opponents used against obama once he was put on a pedestal was to knock him off the pedestal you're saying he's not what you think he is yeah yeah you're already getting some of this there was an axiose story this week about you following back some women who followed uh on instagram and happened to be only fans, models, and escorts, even though you wouldn't really know that from their accounts. My reaction was, so who cares? Like, what's wrong with that? Of course, the intended suggestion is that this is somehow inconsistent with your Christian faith.

From a campaign perspective, how have you thought about handling this and just this kind of stuff that's certainly coming? Well, I very much believe in fighting back when you feel like, Your neighbors are under attack. And we welcome the support of all Texans, regardless of how they make their money. And I didn't know what these women did on their own time, but I'm not going to judge them for it. I'm also not going to participate in an effort to smear them for clickbait. And that's exactly the kind of senator I'm going to be if I'm elected.

And I will just tell you, I feel like Texans are not interested in this kind of media junk. They want a senator who's going to bring down costs, who's going to. to clean up government who's going to take on this broken political system. And I think they're going to see right through these media games. Yeah, and I didn't realize your campaign was saying this, that it's like you go on Joe Rogan, suddenly a whole bunch of new people know who you are. Yeah. They then follow you on Instagram. You're a nice person. You follow them back and say, thanks. Well, it's not even not being a nice person. It's how new media works. Right. Yeah, exactly. You engage. Well, we, again, as a state rep in Texas, we have built one of the largest Instagram

followings of any national Democrat. And we've done that by collaborating with big accounts and working with them to get our message out. And so we follow back all kinds of people. I mean, actors and musicians and athletes, I even follow back like a really popular bulldog, which I don't know much about. But you know what? They share our content. And they're helping get the message out. So I think this is also an example of how legacy media is just kind of clueless on what new media looks like and what it takes to win in this current environment. So you've talked about people. wanting politics of love yeah you've also talked about a few times in this conversation people

wanting democrats to fight yes what does fighting with love yeah look like and sound like yeah i i feel like people think that these are two different things um i was born to a single mom who um was working at a hotel in austin uh she met my birth father a 21 year old high school drop out who had a drinking problem And that drinking problem sometimes led to violence. And one night he became abusive again. But that night, my mother's love rose to meet it. And she packed all our stuff into her little Ford Escort. She drove me to the hotel where she worked.

She begged the manager to let us stay in one of the rooms until we found this little apartment in East Austin. And there wasn't room for a nursery, so I slept in a crib in her closet. And she was so proud of that closet. She decorated it with toys and pictures. No one was going to tell her it wasn't a nursery. And to me, that's what love looks like. It is sometimes confrontational. It is sometimes aggressive. It does whatever it takes to stand up for the vulnerable. And so this idea that love is passive or love is weak or love is neutral doesn't align with what I've seen in my own life. It also doesn't align with what my faith teaches me. I started off this campaign with the Bible story of Jesus flipping over the tables in the temple. Because we oftentimes, whether you're Christian or not, or whether you're religious or not,

we all think of Jesus as this very gentle, nice guy, right? Which he certainly was. But when his neighbors were under attack, when there were powerful people picking on vulnerable people, he didn't stay in his room and pray. He walked into the seat of power and he flipped over the tables of injustice. To me, I started off the campaign with that story because it exemplifies what love demands of us in these moments.

and it doesn't demand passivity, it demands action, it demands fighting back. And you can do that without dehumanizing your opponents. That is the critical line you can't cross over. In my faith, we're called to love our enemies. One, that acknowledges that you're going to have enemies, right? If you speak truth to power, if you stand up for vulnerable people, you're going to run into opposition. You're going to run into opponents. But we're also called to love those opponents too, which is so hard to do.

Again, as a Democrat in the Texas legislature, I struggle with this. I'm not saying it's easy. But if we can get to that point where we're not just fighting for our neighbors, we're also fighting for our enemies, I think that's when you see true transformation. It's what I try to do and it's what I want this campaign to be about to is fighting back, but rooting that in a deep love for our neighbors, for our communities and also for our enemies too. James, thanks for sitting down with me. Yeah. And good luck out there. It's exciting to hear what you're doing. I appreciate you. Thanks. That's our show for today. Thanks to James Talerico for coming on.

A longer, more extended interview with James Tilerico you can find on offline Saturday. An excellent podcast. An excellent podcast. A must listen, I would say. Yeah, we said he came into studio. We did a little bit for PSA and then we did a longer interview for offline and talked about his faith, talked about social media, algorithms, companies. We did all. We covered the whole landscape.

So check it out. Love it, and Tommy and I will be back with a new show on Tuesday. But before then, we're going to have some more cuts from CrookedCon coming your way on Sunday. Dan's great panel on what the polling is telling us about next year's races. I went myself in person. It was the one panel I saw that I didn't moderate myself. Loved it. Great panel.

Great group of guests for this panel. And you'll hear, we'll also on that episode, you'll hear Alex Wagner's conversation with Governor Andy Bashir. So lots more CricketCon content coming out on your feed. Check it out. everyone have a great weekend Bye everyone If you want to listen to Pod Save America Ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts

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