Pod Save America - Trump's Explosive Diarrhea of the Mouth

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

Trump delivers an incomprehensible prime-time address to push election interference conspiracy theories, both old and new. Dan and Jon attempt to make sense of the speech and discuss what Trump's focus on election interference could spell for the midterms. They check in on three major corrupdates from the last 48 hours — Kalshi teleprompter bets, early access to Trump's Truths for Wall Street, and JD Vance using his helicopter for his son's golf lessons — as well as Vance's awkward appearance on Joe Rogan and Pete Hegseth's attempt to get the military on testosterone supplements. Then, Abdul El-Sayed talks to Alex Wagner about his heated primary for Michigan's Democratic Senate nomination.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast, episode title, and episode date.

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Right now, you can get 50% off your new system by visiting Simplysafe.com slash crooked. that's half off at simplysafe.com slash crooked. There is no safe like SimplySafe. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Fabro. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Donald Trump unloads recycled election conspiracies and an impossible to follow primetime address.

His teleprompter operator was apparently making money betting on his speeches. His media company is selling Wall Street access to his truths, and his vice president is demanding taxpayer-funded helicopter rides for his kid's golf lesson. We'll dig into those stories. J.D. Vance's attempt to win back Joe Rogan and Pete Higgseth's obsession with testosterone. Then Alex Wagner talks to Michigan Senate candidate Abdul Al-Said about the intense primary in that state that's heading into the final home stretch.

Speaking of Alex, we're always adding new perks for Friends of the Pod, and now subscribers can listen to Alex Wagner's runaway country ad-free. Welcome to the ad-free group of pods, Alex Wagner. It's the inner circle, if you will. And to everyone else, if you haven't subscribed already, now you get Alex's pod ad free, as well as this one, as well as Pod Save the World and offline and love it or leave it and all your favorite crooked pods. And you get subscriber only shows like Polar Coaster with this guy that I'm doing the pod with right here. Which never had ads. Which never had ads because it's subscriber only. Pod Save America Only friends.

And you get to be supporting independent media. So when Donald Trump, you know, screams at Brendan Carr to pull everyone's license, can't do that with us because we don't have a broadcast license. Cool. Silver lining, that's what I think. Cricket.com slash friends if you want to subscribe. All right. Let's get to Trump's big primetime address, which he built as really big news. Really big news.

It doesn't get bigger. It's so big that we are recording this at 7 p.m. on Thursday night because we wanted to bring you our analysis of this speech which is why we're here late because it was so big

just like a table of nine people at CNN dozens of 2020 election deniers got called to the White House for a top secret preview Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno said it would be the most important presidential address

since the Cuban Missile Crisis and at 9 p.m. on Thursday night. This is what we got. Though this might be news to you unless you're a Fox or CBS viewer, since those are the only networks that carried it live. CBS really only did like half the speech. And then they sort of like gave context stranded. But anyway, here's what you missed. Tonight I'm announcing the immediate declassification and release of critical intelligence, revealing shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure. This evidence shows that the election system we have dangerously exposes and really exposes like levels never thought possible

to hacking exploitation and foreign interference. Just as disturbingly, this vital information has for many years been covered up and hidden from you. They wanted to just make you sound like your president wasn't so hot when actually your president has done a great job. Recently, we We found significant numbers of burn bags, members of the deep state. Very, very famous group of people, many cases. They did not want, and they just didn't want it. They fought like hell not to have it, Donald Trump, to win in a rare move, NBC, and ABC fake news have both said that they would not cover this speech.

They knew what it was about. They and others in the media are part of a plot. They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason. They want to keep it going. Addressing this crisis of election security demands that Congress must pass the Save America Act. Wow. So that was something. You know, in our meeting before the speech earlier this week, you said it would probably just be a bunch of rambling, nothing that no one would pay attention to and think about more than 24, 48 hours afterwards.

And I kind of think you nailed it, Dan. Well, I had to get one right eventually. Let's get to Trump's actual claims, which honestly, I mean, we played that supercut, but it was hard to follow. And we had followed this stuff for like 10 years. And also, like before the speech, while we were waiting around in the office to record tonight, I was like going back and reading things about the 2020 election and what had been debunked just so I could prepare for this. And still it was hard to follow. That stuff wasn't even really helpful.

You didn't even have being an expert in the conspiracy theories up to this point. Was that helpful? Because these were new-ish conspiracy theories, I guess. Let's go through his actual claims. Starting in 2020, China allegedly acquired 220 million U.S. voter files. And the deep state hid this from Trump. now all the documents that the White House released also confirm what they intelligence agencies and the government found back in 2020 when Trump was president that not a single vote was changed

and also the voter files voter information voter registration information is public in most states you can just get the information so anyone can get it the idea that our names and addresses are somewhere sitting in China. They're also sitting out there on the internet. Anyone can get it. Every campaign has it. It didn't require any hacking or an nefarious moves to get it. What do they want to do with

it? Were their intentions good? Probably not. But Trump tried to make it sound much scarier than it actually was. Our voting machines are vulnerable. Didn't really give a lot of evidence for that. That was all recycled stuff that the intelligence agency had said. There's like potential for vulnerabilities in some electronic voting machines, but nothing has happened.

And, you know, other nefarious actors and other countries may have been looking at ways to hack into or interfere with voting machines, but no one has done it. And so there's no news there. There was a random episode in Michigan in 2020 where a bunch of suspicious voter registration forms were flagged to the police, and then nothing happened. And no votes were changed and no people were registered. and I guess it was never prosecuted and now Trump wants that prosecuted. Yeah.

And it's, I mean, the thing about that is this has happened in the past. It actually happened on a race I worked on many, many years ago where people were doing a registration drive and they just filled out the forms in order to get paid, which is fraud, but it's not voter fraud because the people who got registered, if they either don't exist or if they do exist, they don't know they're registered so they don't vote. Yeah. So that's an old one. It's been public.

It's not, that wasn't anything new. DHS apparently found a bunch of non-citizens registered to vote, but didn't find any non-citizens who did vote. Also, it can't really be verified. Who knows what the non-citizens registering to vote are? We haven't seen those documents yet. And then, big one, there was some election meddling. There were some votes changed in Venezuela by Nicholas Maduro. Someone's got to get that Maduro guy.

That guy should be serving time. One of the revelations tonight was that Nicholas Maduro meddled in Venice weightless elections. And somehow that ended up in Donald Trump's primetime address at a time when we are at war with Iran. The straight is closed. Inflation is high. People are struggling. There's wildfire smoke that is making half the cities in the northeast in the Midwest, unbreathable. Can't even go outside.

You can't eat wetter without getting explosive diarrhea? That's forgot about that, right? There's a lettuce explosive diarrhea. And yet, the president went out tonight to talk about random, recycled voter conspiracy, election, fraud conspiracy theories, and let us know that Nicholas Maduro meddled in his own elections and that the Chinese have access to the voter file data that we do, too. I mean, a couple of just key points here. I just want to hone in on. First, you said it. I'm going to say it again.

it's very important. No one has presented any evidence that votes were changed. Including the Trump administration, this time around. They could not find that. They went digging into the rural Intel. This time around as well. They cannot do it. The second thing here is that they, China apparently acquired public information. Don't love it, but nothing you can really do about it. You make it public. Next, the idea to the extent that there's allegations, although this is very much to speed by the intelligence community, that China was going to be involved in some sort of misinformation campaign. They're going to try to get involved with, like, higher journalists or media influencers or bill bots or all of that. All of the things that Russia did on Trump's

behalf in 2016, to be noted. Not a ton of evidence that they actually did it, but that they thought about doing it. But we also know that in every election, foreign intelligence agencies try to interfere in our elections. Russia tries it. Iran has tried it. The Chinese have apparently tried it. Nothing new there. No evidence had actually changed any votes. I think, the most important thing here is if there were huge gaps in our election security infrastructure that allowed China to penetrate, to do these things that Trump claims they did do, the person who was in charge at that time should be held accountable. And that person was Donald Trump. No, careful on that because he got ahead of that tonight by basically saying that everyone,

that this was all uncovered. It was all known in 2020, but it was all the deep state and the deep state hit it for him. So this is like he's going to go after his own. That's my next. That's my next point. His big complaint where he spent a lot of time here is that the people who work for him didn't tell him things. Right. Well, that seems like a management problem. And I would also point out that the guy who is the director of national intelligence who would have been overseeing the people are hiding things from Donald Trump as a man named. Has he been, has he been like shamed out of public life? No. He's Donald Trump picked him to be his director of the CIA. Look, these people are these, these are not incompetent public servants. These are victims of a deep state plot, Dan. No matter who you're talking about, there's always a deep state operative

responsible for pulling the wool over their eyes. And then also, if you were someone who is deeply concerned about our election security going forward, would you have gutted many of the agencies and eliminated much of the funding that goes towards election security? Because that's what Donald Trump and Elon Musk did do.

One thing that's funny is, As everyone is reading all, you can go to White House.gov to look at all these docs that they're really, that they declassified and released. As everyone's looking at the docs, they're not really matching the president's claims in the speech. No, John, stop. His own documents, his own documents. Sam Stein picked up this one here. Docs released by Trump tonight confirm Russia tried to spread claims Biden was engaged in criminal activity vis-a-vis Burisma. And that it advanced those narratives with U.S. officials and planned to high. high-profile corruption scandal at the peak of the 2020 presidential campaign, you might remember that that scandal turned out to be the subject of Donald Trump's first impeachment.

Yeah. His perfect phone called his Olensky. So that stuff's out there now. There was a lot of stuff just about Russia in the docks that Russia tried to interfere on behalf of Donald Trump. They put all that out there too. Fucking idiots, man. Yeah, it's so stupid. And apparently, like, there was an administration official told MS Now before the speech,

because this was a speech that was cooked up, by the way, by John Solomon, the pretend journalist who then has become a special government employee and also Bill Pulte. And an administration official told MS Now flatly that the intelligence doesn't show what Pulte and Solomon claim, quote, the intelligence just doesn't say what you wanted to say, I'm sorry. So they just, they cooked up some stuff for the president to say in his speech and get all mad and, and please him, please grandpa, who's getting old and, you know, grumpy and wants to talk about election conspiracies. And then they just threw that in the speech and then they put it a bunch of dogs that don't really say any of that. Cool. What a great use of everyone's time. What a great use of everyone's time. What's your level of alarm after listening? Because, you know, on one hand, it's all stupid and they didn't really prove anything and they didn't even make up any good.

story. They didn't even put out a good lie. On the other hand, it's clear that his intention is to sow doubt among Americans and are in the sanctity of our elections. And clearly, as sure as the sun comes up, is going to cry foul if Republicans lose the midterms. I mean, this is a man who cried foul at an election he won in 2016. Right. So it's like, you didn't need a speech or declassifying a bunch of documents for that, but sure. I think we should be very vigilant because Donald Trump is going to try to interfere in these elections. Like, we know that.

That is obvious. I think he has less power to do so than he believes. And a lot of Democrats fear these elections are run by the states. States decide how they're run, how the votes are counted, how they're certified, those things are written in law. The courts to date have been very skeptical of any of these Trump efforts across the board from 2020 all the way through here. But he's going to try and we should be vigilant.

I am no more worried after this speech anyway was before. This was just stupid. This doesn't, this is like, I think people thought he was going to, you know, there was reporting early on that he was just going to declare that John Assoff and Raphael Warnock were illegitimate senators. I don't know what power he has to do that, but that, or that there, he would call for the seizing of something or the confiscation of this thing. He did, none of that.

He just vomited a bunch of things that did make a lot of sense in a very tired, monotone voice that was felt aggrieved the whole time and then moved Burn bags. Burn bags. Yeah. I mean it was we can get into the performance level of this but it was I mean I would actually he may need to talk to Pete Hacks at the book and some of that tea. Yelling about the burn. I couldn't follow that one either. Something about Obama and burn bags. We knew about these burn bags was the thing. I was trying to remember this because we've actually talked about it because the

this is the cashmattel thing. I think these are the cashmattel burn bags. It's so hard to keep all these episodes. I know. It's literally our job is to keep these things straight. And we can understand what the fuck he was saying. Like, what would a normal American think of this? I mean, we should talk about the FCC threat, the

networks who didn't cover my speech, my election fraud speech where I spout conspiracies are now going to lose their license. They should lose their license. Is that a real threat? I mean, I think it's a thing that Trump really would like to see happen, and I'm sure Brendan Carr will try to do some things. I don't think he really has the ability to do that.

Just to make this very clear, it is not unusual for networks, not to air speeches. If the topic of the National Television Address is not sufficiently newsworthy, this happened with Obama. None of the networks covered Obama's 2014 speech about immigration, where he's announced immigration and executive action whether actually was news in it, but they all thought it was too political to cover. In 2022, you remember the Joe Biden speech on democracy that he gave. None of the networks covered that one either because they thought it was too political. And newsworthy, this was very political and not newsworthy. And then when you went on top of it, it was funny watching Fox's coverage because Fox is so afraid of getting another three quarters of a billion dollar a lawsuit like they did in the Dominion suit.

And so they promoted the speech without ever talking about what was in the speech. And then after the speech, they had to repeatedly say, Fox can't verify these claims. Like the lawyers were really all up in Brett Bear's ass, which was amusing to watch. So it's not like they can, the networks are well within their rights to not cover this. And it's not unusual. And it's not Trump derangement syndrome or anything like that this is a speech that was not, did not merit that level of coverage, even if the things he were going to say were not possibly litigious lies.

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Wow. Yeah, whenever they're the three and ones, it's like, what's going on in that bottle? I don't know. What's going on in that bottle? Yeah, just like sequence itself. Anyway. We all have our own time saving hacks for everyday life, but if you're a business owner, how can you save time hiring?

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get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash cricket. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash crooked. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. So Republicans had some thoughts on this whole thing before the speech. Politico hopefully captures three different outlooks here. First, the Dumers, like the anonymous former Trump administration official who said, quote, the people I talk to are scared shitless.

This is about what it will do to their midterm chances. Next is the, what can I do? just a simple member of Congress cohort, represented here by Senator John Kennedy, quote, when moms and dads lie down to sleep at night in can't, what are they mostly worried about? I would say cost of living,

but he's the president, and he can talk about whatever he wants. Finally, freaks like Steve Bannon said that the, quote, revelations in the speech, quote, will be the exact tonic the MAGA grassroots base need to fire them up, to remind them of what they're really fighting for in these crucial November elections. Dan, who's right?

I don't think Steve Bannon is right. Picture this. Is there a group of January 6ers who live in swing districts who are just, like, tapped out on Trump, or just waiting for a call to arms to go vote for Mike Lawler in New York? I don't think so. I think that is COPE from Steve Bannon. All the blood has been squeezed from this stone. There is just nothing.

There's nothing. I totally agree. I just don't understand how this gets anyone motivated, especially since it's so hard to fucking follow. It's just, yeah, it's so stupid. And the bigger political issue here and the reason why that first group of scared shitless people are correct is it's not just the crazy things he said. It's what he chose to talk about.

We are in a world where this is an election entirely about affordable. Large majorities of people, including Trump voters and people thinking about voting for Republicans in this midterm, think that Trump is not spending enough time focusing on learning people's costs. So what does he do? He has a nationally televised address to talk about declassified intelligence that's unintelligible about a six-year-old election. Yeah.

Like it's just you're waving a sign that says, I do not care about you. I do not care about your problems. I care about me and my problems. And that is bad for Republicans. Yeah, I don't think it's going to, I don't think it's going to fly. I mean, unless they combine, you know, as we get closer to the election, he'll probably do a, you know, the communists and socialists are trying to steal the election to take over America so they can, you know, so there can be Sharia law and, you know, they can take all your property.

And, you know, it'll be something like that. Like the left is scary and the left is scary. And the way they're going to win is to steal the election. And so that's why you have to be vigilant. That wasn't even the gist of this. No, no, that was. This speech was, from what I can tell it was China tried to steal an election in the past. And then a bunch of people in the government didn't tell me about it.

Vote for Republican. Like, it's not a good message. Yeah, that's about right. All right. Well, that's enough of that. Trump had the added challenge of delivering that speech tonight with a new teleprompter operator. And that's because his former prompter guy, Gabrielle Perez, was placed on unpaid leave Thursday morning after it was reported that Perez made more than $100,000 on Calci, placing bets on words that would appear in the president's speeches. Calci apparently flagged Perez's trades back in March. the same month the White House published a memo warning staffers against trading on prediction markets

and eventually referred his case to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is conducting an investigation. Think of how rich we could have gotten if Kalsi was around 20 years ago. Is that your first takeaway on this? Missed Opportunity? I mean, we're talking about a teleprompter and knowing about a speech. Yeah, of course that's what I'm going to think about. I mean, that was your chance. Perez, who often makes, this is from the ABC story that broke the news. Perez, who often makes final edits to Trump speeches, including changes from Trump himself. Oh, my God.

I would kill a teleprompter operator who was making the final changes to the speech. That's terrifying to me. Backed out of Betts mid-speech when Trump went off script, he was live hedging the atlas. This is very inside baseball. But the thing that was most stunning about this is the teleprompter operator has the rank of deputy assistant to the president. I know, I saw you. Which makes them essentially the diplomatic rank of an ambassador and one of the highest paid people in the White House. Yeah, that's a lot of money.

Yeah, usually think about this way. The deputy director of the NEC has that same rank. The deputy communications director may have that rank, doesn't always have that rank. The, you know, just very, very high level people make huge decisions have the same rank as Trump's favorite teleprompter guy. And that's your taxpayer money going to pay this guy. And that wasn't enough for him because he was. was making $100,000 extra off Cali. I have a question.

Why only $100,000? Yeah. I mean, this guy, he had all the goods. This guy could have just, maybe it's just trumping off script so much that he couldn't. He was, he was operating. I mean, also, it's like, talk about the multitasking. You're operating the prompter.

You're doing that. You're watching that. But also, now he's going off scripts. And now you got to, you have your phone in your other hand. You're on Cali. You're trying to change the bet. No, you're not changing the bat. You're changing the speech. Right. That's true. That's true. Yes.

Oh, my God. Ahead of tonight's address, CalShe traders, it's just a little fun fact, a side note here, already waged more than, earlier today, they had already waged more than $800,000 on whether Trump says words like Hormuz or rigged election. He did a, he did an accomplishments topper? Boy, did he. It's about how horrible everything was before he became president, now how wonderful everything is, and go to Trump RX, and here's your Trump accounts.

gave three websites. The best part was this is so funny. He says and if you want to read the documents, you can go to Whitehouse.gov. Again, that's whitehouse. Dotgov. It's like, yeah. Yeah, you've never heard of that one. I mean, this is very, I mean,

obviously he's a boomer, but this is a pre, essentially pre-Google way of doing this, which is people just Google it now. You don't really have to do the website, but yeah, that was his his accomplishments list was part like he likes to show that a winner and take care of everything. But you could have tell it was also like the consultants and the

political people or the Susie Wiles, wherever. It's like, you got to talk about this. This polls well. You got to talk about this. You got to talk about this. And you know, you can talk about all your election conspiracies as long as you do this list at the top. You know, that's what was the third website he did. Whitehouse.combe rX. And I think he did one other one, didn't he? The Trump accounts. The Trump accounts. Trump accounts. Yes. Yeah. Trump accounts for all your kids. So believe it or not, the teleprompter operator, that's just one of three corrupt dates we have for you from the last 48 hours. If only we could ever get that corrupt date sting, we've been asking for for years. Whatever, someday.

On Thursday, the Trump Media and Technology Group, the company that owns Truth Social, announced that it will sell Wall Street banks and investors, quote, a direct licensed, real-time feed of the platform's most market-moving truths, including, of course, Donald Trump's. In other words, the president's family company is now charging Wall Street for early-ish access to the market-moving statements of the president, who will then profit. Why don't they just start asking the Treasury

to print money for the Trumps? I don't know why we're going through all of these schemes and this and that and everything's so complicated. Just go to Scott Besson, ask him to start printing money, put in your pocket, walk away. This is truly one of the most wildly corrupt things that has ever happened. And that's saying a lot.

I don't know. That's saying a lot. But just think about this. A truth is a presidential statement. we laugh about it because they go out on this stupid fucking platform that no one pays any attention to. Well, I was going to say, it's funny because the platform is so bad and it's such a poor product and badly designed that it's so slow that they, that basically the fix to make it like Twitter is something now that Wall Street has to pay for. Well, they basically, they're going, they're saying, think of it this way.

I'm going to dumb this down for people. This would be like if Wall Street was paying the president to get a, presidential statement before the rest of the people so that they can make instantaneous trades off of that information. There's an example. President announces a new ceasefire with Iran. You can use that to buy oil futures. He says the end of the ceasefire, you can sell your oil futures faster than anyone

else because you have paid money to the president to get access to that market moving information before everyone else in this country. And it's not like everyone, it's not like it's a pay to play thing where it's open to everyone. No. Like, it's not like, you know, Twitter pro versus Twitter or whatever, you know, whatever the fuck it is, where you can just pay more and now your tweets will come faster. It's only available to banks and investors. Yes. Yes. It's basically as you're getting information on your terminal before the public. And in this day and age with the way trades are made, a set five seconds is worth millions and millions of dollars a second is worth millions of dollars i was trying to think about is there a law what is it just a thing that presidents shouldn't be doing uh is it in that

category or is there some kind of regulation i mean i don't know yeah it's the abuse of power i guess yeah it's a high crime and a misdemeanor i was going to say the the the core of the problem lies in the fact that the president's market moving statements aren't first released by the White House, but by the president on his own private media platform. That is the core of the issue. Yes. That it goes out on truth social first and then the federal government, which is supposed to be responsive to the people.

Then they put the truth out a couple seconds after Trump does it on Trump bleats. There are some obvious things the founders missed. This was one that I understand why they didn't foresee happening. Finally, last one. The Secret Service is apparently fed up with the Vice President's travel demands, which last week included a request to fly his son to a golf lesson aboard Marine 2. That is the VP's military helicopter, which would have cost taxpayers up to $25,000 per hour around that, though the trip was scrapped due to high winds. But such requests have become so common that the Vice President's security detail are reportedly now exchanging stickers and challenge coins among themselves that read, Bobcat OTR Survivors Club.

Bobcat being Vance's Secret Service codename. OTR is an off-the-record, so it's like a movement that's not planned in advance or that's not announced to the public in advance. Fun update to this. After MS Now broke the story, Vance canceled another planned helicopter ride for his son's golf lesson.

John, where are his son's golf lessons? Are they in Philadelphia? How did he get there? Oh, they're on the other side of town. You remember when Marine One used to take Malia and Sasha to school every day, right? Yes, yes. That was the thing that happened. They just, they'd hop on the helicopter.

That is, what the fuck? I've said this before, but I worked for politician once who did something that was so fucking stupid that one of our advisors said, that is an A plus answer to the policy one-on-one question of how to lose the presidential election. This is that. You were getting taxpayer-funded helicopter lessons for your son's golf lessons. It's not even like baseball game, boy scouts, charity work, it's fucking golf lessons. Boy, are we a long way away from hillbilly elegy, huh? Yes. What would me ma and papa say about this?

Up from your bootstraps right into the helicopter. I mean, it is, like, he is so fucking lucky that that trip was canceled by the wind. But then he just, it was canceled by the wind, but then he planned another one and then canceled another one because of the story. It is. You know, it wasn't like, oh, close call. It was, let's charge ahead. It's stunning in it.

And just beyond just this specific one, can you imagine the Secret Service is in charge are the Trump's and the Vance's. That's their job. And out of that, the biggest asshole is J.D. Vance. You're a more demanding, worse boss than Donald Trump.

How fucking. high and mighty is J.D. Vance going to get when someone asked him about this and what kind, he's going to do some kind of how dare you talk about my chill, like he's going to, I just, I imagine that's what we're going to get from him. I can't wait before we shoot an emergency pod because I'm going to have so much to fucking say about it. It's going to be so bad. He's going to, he is right now watching footage of Richard Nixon's Checker's speech to try to do this, and he's going to fuck it up. I'm, I'm even too, too young to. I mean, obviously, I am. too that was in fucking 1958 or something.

58. Like I learned about the checker speech at some point in life and it is a piece of information that has now gone out of my head. Pod Save America is brought to you by Willys. How does Willys fit into your routine? I'm going to have some Willies tonight. It's Friday. I'm not leaving the house. I got no plans.

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I'm excited to take home. Yeah, it looks really cool. I mean, I don't know. You want to use non-stick, but then you read about it, and it, like, makes you feel bad about using nonstick, but the ceramic nonsticks are safe and great. I wouldn't use anything about ceramic nonstick, personally. That is, that's where I'm at. So excited to try it, mix some eggs for the kids over the weekend.

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that's F-R-R-O-M-O-U-R-A-C-E dot com slash C-R-O-O-O-K-E-D and use code Crooked for 10% off-site-wide. With a 100-day trial, you can try it completely risk-free. Speaking of J.D. Vance's travel, he did make the trip to Austin this week to sit down with Joe Rogan for nearly three hours because nothing else is going on. It was pure awkwardness, sprinkled with occasional attempts at political maneuvering. some of the highlights. If people want to say we mishandled the Epstein release guilty. We did mishandle, especially the communications of it. What do you think should have been

done? I think that we should have just dropped everything at the very beginning. So what is going on with Iran where it seems like the president keeps saying that a deal has been reached, negotiations have been successful, and then it all falls apart, and

we start bombing them again. Yeah, so how long do we have here? Because we have as much time as you need. So, If it was your call, would you have done exactly the same thing? Well, what did the president said publicly that J.D. was less enthusiastic about it? I think it was the exact phrase that he used. I mean, my attitude towards this man, as you know, is the vice president, I'm not a public commentator. Like, my job is to give the best advice I can to the president of the United States.

Republicans still fundamentally have a cool problem. The thing I couldn't get over Biden is just bad staff work, man. the way that he ate ice cream. I mean, it's like, you know, we could bring some of the stuff up, but it's like they would get him eating ice cream in the most ridiculous, suggestive way imaginable. What? Suggesting what? It's very clear.

What is he thinking about when he sees Joe Biden eating ice cream? Sex. He thinks about sex. He thinks about sex? It's a cardinal rule of this podcast that we do not kinkshame. We've always believed that. No bullshit. No kinkshaming. But I would say it's weird that J.D. Vance watches Joe Biden-Need ice cream and he thinks it's suggestive. That's weird.

We can bring this up. We can bring this up. What are you talking about? He's so awkward. So here's one review from The Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro. I tuned into Joe Rogan yesterday and heard Bernie Sanders economics, Barack Obama's foreign policy, and Rokane's conspiracy theories. And then I realized J.D. Vance was talking. I want a candidate in 2028 who doesn't mirror the Democratic. Democrats and who can win. Mr. VP, this is not the way. So, Vance tried to tiptoe away from Trump on Epstein and Iran. He also did the, Jeffrey Epstein had connections to Mossad and the highest levels of intelligence, CIA, Mossad, all that kind of stuff. So do you think it worked? And what does it tell you about how Vance sees the 28 race? it did not work. Also, how excited is Rocaona to be on that list?

You definitely tweeted that out. Definitely. Huge win for him. Also sounds like a pretty good candidate to me. Obama's foreign policy, Bernie's economics, and Rose take on the Epstein files. Well, I mean, his takes on the Epstein files are pretty good. Yeah, they are good. It's not going great for him.

And he is trying to tiptoe through a minefield. but he is very clumsy and he's not very good at it. And that is his problem. I'm not here to give JD Vance political advice, but you really have to pick a side. And he's trying to be all things to all people. He's trying to be Trump's most loyal soldier to the MAGA people. He's trying to be Joe.

He's supposed to get it with Joe Rogan about Epstein and he wants to be the anti-war guy, the anti-war people. You can't do all those things without. And even if you could, he's not clever enough to pull it off. Yeah. Maybe some political genius could pull it. that off, but he is not that. He is not deft enough to do that. He is awkward. He is uncomfortable. He doesn't, he can't really do it. Like, even in this, when you watch the, I didn't watch all of this,

obviously, because I have self-respect, but I have watched a lot of the Rogan-Bance interview. Throughout the whole thing, he's trying to, like, be like, you know, Joe, I get, you get it. And so he goes to this thing where he brings up the M.MA fighter at the White House, say, and Michelle Obama is a man. And he thinks Joe Rogan is going to be on his side, because what he wants to say to appeal to Joe Roken is these fucking woke liberals trying to cancel jokes. They don't even get comedy. You just laugh and move on. And even Dr.

Morgan was like, I don't know, man. Saying that the White House wasn't a great idea. Like, it's the White House. Like, I don't know why you'd make that joke.

He's just like, he just can never get there. He just cannot do it. He can't read other people, which is, he's very low EQ for a politician. You can tell with interviews because he doesn't know he's always uncomfortable with the audience with the interviewer because he's trying to read what's going to make them laugh or

nod or whatever and he doesn't know he is a little bit of Al Gore running for president 2000 you're like overthinking everything you're doing and it's and you can't and you're missing the connection people you see it with crowds too well and the other parallel there is going to be like Gore's relationship to Clinton and how Gore tried to separate himself a little bit from Clinton and that was a hard thing to do yeah this is going to And Bill Clinton is not Donald Trump. And Bill Clinton did not take that well either. He did not.

But was also, and despite his scandal at the time, still popular. And Donald Trump was not going to be so popular. I don't think Donald Trump's approval me in the 60s like Bill Clinton's was. Not going to be popular, but also not going to be like, hey, J.D., if you need to criticize me, don't worry. Go for it. Yeah, yeah. No, I suspect not. So that's going to be tricky for him.

All right. Last thing before we get to Alex's conversation with Abdul. It's been an extremely busy week in politics, so you could be forgiven if you missed this major announcement from Secretary of War, Pete Higgs-up. Today, I'm authorizing a new screening program for testosterone deficiency for our service members, ensuring you have the right testosterone levels to operate at your absolute best, because it's well-established science that as we age, testosterone levels often naturally drop. This initiative, it's not about artificial enhancement. It's about restoring and optimizing your natural capabilities, protecting your longevity, and ensuring you have the biological foundation required to sustain the fight. So if you visit high-teed Department of War.com, you can get 20% off your next testosterone treatment by using the code Pete at checkout.

We are like three minutes away from Pete Hexeth offering penis inhaled. to service members. It's so, what? That was fucking nuts. He's so down some weird rabbit hole born of his own insecurities. I was looking into this because I was like, where did this come? Because you're aging. Because I'm aging.

No, my tea is fine. Don't worry. That's what everyone says. IT podcaster. Until it's too late. I was like, is this just a random. Maha thing and it is, but like there was some report a couple years ago and this was a thing in Congress where like long deployments can sometimes reduce testosterone levels in military.

But like, so you take as usual like a kernel of something and then you turn it into this like, like all these doctors are like, no, of course you don't, you don't screen for this unless someone's having symptoms and then you look at it and then also test out and like the idea that you're just going to test everyone once a year, testosterone levels like can. can jump just based on the hour of the day and age. And so it's like it's a weird thing to do. And also if you do have, if you do have lower testosterone,

apparently, like the first move isn't always just hormonal replacement therapy, which is what Pete Higg said is offering. Like there's some doctor was like, you could just go to a bed earlier and drink less because apparently excessive alcohol consumption can reduce testosterone. So I don't know, but a little close to home for Pete.

Yeah, I think Pete maybe it was, doing a little of his own research. I thought what was good for his goose was good for the gander. So testosterone testing is now mandatory if you're over 30 in the military, but the flu shot is optional. Did they bring the flu shot back? It's optional.

It's optional. Optional. Who's to say? If you want the flu shot, great. If not, whatever. You're getting your T-screen. It's important on the flu shot because it's not like the largest flu pandemic in world history started at a military base.

Wow. Just look, it's another reminder that hiring the weekend anchor from Fox News to run the military was a suboptimal choice. Gender affirming care. We're ruining the military. Gender affirming care for our troops. Great job, Pete. Who would have thunk from Pete Hexoff? Well, comes for them all eventually.

All right, Dan. That's all for the news. When we come back, Abdul El-Sayed. Pod Save America is brought to you by Tommy John. Summer can be rough on the body. Public transport is a sauna. Your walk to work feels medically unsafe. And sometimes it feels like there's not enough air conditioning in the world to save you.

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Pod Save the UK is a no bullshit, unabashedly progressive conversation about politics, focused on the issues that matter most of the people of Britain. With all the changes in our government, including the fun, revolving door of Prime Ministers we have here, there's always lots to talk about. And there's lots of fabulous guests to talk to journalists, politicians, experts, comedians and activists. Yeah, we've had great comedians on as well, like Rosie Jones, Stuart Lee, Ashling Bee.

We've also had Tommy Vitor on, who may be our boss. We still don't know. We're not quite clear on who our boss is. I thought it might be Tommy Vitor. I thought it might be John Favro. I don't know if it's John Lover. It's hard to say. It's not clear to us who our bosses are. Some of our listeners call us irreverent but not stupid. I object to that. I'm deeply stupid. It doesn't sound too bad. So look, come check us out.

Come join us. Pod Save the UK every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. Alex Wagner here. I just wrapped up a great conversation with Michigan Senate candidate, Dr. Abdul Al-Sayed. A couple things I just wanted to know. We were originally going to host a debate with all three Senate candidates, but we ran into last minute scheduling issues. Not surprising. And then Mallory McMorough dropped out of the race. So with the August 4th primary less than TikTok three weeks away, we decided to proceed with individual conversations and interviews. We have, of course, invited Abdul's opponent, Congresswoman Haley Stevens, to come on the show. And we are hoping that she will say yes. Once again, please come on the show, Congresswoman Haley Stevens. We'd love to have a

conversation. Also, as many of you know, Abdul used to host a podcast here on Crooked, and John, John and Tommy are supporting him in the race and have contributed to his campaign. Dan was supporting Mallory McMorrow. Everybody had a dog in that fight, but me, I'm Switzerland. I'm neutral territory, which is why I had the pleasure of doing the interview with Abdul, and you can see, I did not pull any punches, nor did he, not that it was bloody. So with all of that throat clearing and housekeeping out of the way, give it a listen. Here's my conversation with Michigan Senate candidate, Dr. Abdul-El-Sayed. Joining me now is Dr. Abdul-Said.

I started this conversation offline saying I wanted to call you doc, but I'll just call you Abdul because you've given me permission. Thanks for joining me today. Honored to be here. As you know, there is a live conversation about whether or not I am actually a doctor, despite having spent a lot of time in grad school earning both a PhD and MD. So, like, I just prefer Abdul. It's unambiguous. But then even then, people are probably like, but his whole name is Abdrahman. So I don't know. I don't know. What can we even say?

I mean, just casually dropping PhD and doctor in there is something my mother wishes that I could have done. I never will. So thanks for doing the work for both of us. Well, hey, you know, for children of immigrants everywhere. Also, all that means is like I- You're ruining it for the rest of us. Well, no, I wasted away my 20s. And here's the other side of it. Like, I'm unemployed and I ask everybody I know for money. So, like, look how that turned out for me. Just trying to get a job here, folks. Okay, I just want to caveat this.

I want to timestamp our conversation because we leave in News Hurricane Hell. We are recording this on Wednesday when you had a very rare open slot in your campaign. So thank you for doing that. And just go forth with that knowledge, everybody who's listening and watching to this. Our chummy, lighthearted conversation is now going to take a pivot for the very serious, because, well, we live in 2026. Yeah, that part. Yeah, right?

Real talk. I want to start with ICE. On Monday, ICE officers shot and killed a 25-year-old legal resident of this country, Joanne Sebastian Guerrero. They shot him in front of his wife and daughter. That was about a week after killing 52-year-old father of three, Lorenzo Salgado Arrajo in Houston. You are running on abolishing ice. And on one hand, the polling shows that public opinion has moved pretty dramatically on this issue.

It is a strong one for Democrats. On the other hand, it is about 50-50 overall. And we really just haven't seen continued national outcry and protest and mobilizations after the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good. ICE is still capturing 2,000 people a day. What is your message to the other 50 out there who might be? a little reticent slash hesitant about abolishing ice? We can have a safe and secure border. We can enforce immigration policy, but we don't have to do it while shredding our

constitution to the interest of Stephen Miller and Donald Trump. And maybe it's just that I ran government agencies. There are not that many people who run for Senate who've actually worked in the bowels of government. And anybody who's ever run a government agency will tell you that once you have a culture of impunity set in, it's almost impossible to, take that out. You can't reform it. You can't retrain it. And for most of our existence as a country, we've been able to enforce immigration policy without having to have ICE. ICE is, what, 25 years old,

not even. We don't have to have this. And let's also understand what ICE has become. ICE is not about immigration. Ice not about the southern border. Think about the places where ICE has been the loudest. You're talking about Chicago in Minneapolis. Ice is about normalizing paramilitary force in contraposition to the constitutional order itself. So I think we can win a future where we have a coherent, thoughtful, peaceful, immigration approach. But that doesn't start with ICE. That starts with a pathway to citizenship and protecting our southern border and enforcing

policy without tearing apart the basic constitutional rights that people are losing left and right. When they're shooting people in the streets, it should tell you that this is not about the thing they tell you. It's about it hasn't been under Donald Trump. And frankly, we should have known that after the first Trump administration. But the last point I'll make on this, Alex, is that as Democrats, we have to decide that we actually want to be in the business of persuasion. And I think too often we're afraid of issues that they tell us we're going to lose on.

And we don't do the work of actually having the conversation that's persuasive. They tell us the same thing about health care. They tell us this about immigration. They tell us this about so many issues that we could win the argument on if we had the courage to have it. And I'm just not willing to do this without having the courage to have it. Help me understand, though, practically what that means, though. You're talking about peaceful immigration policy. Is there immigration enforcement?

And who does it if it's not ICE? Yes. I mean, before we ever had ICE, we had INS. But the point here is that you can't enforce immigration policy to the breaking of all of the other laws, including our Constitution itself. Like, when they're trying to pursue warrantless policy where they don't actually have to get a warrant to enter your home to pursue immigration detention, what that tells you is that this. This is actually about lawlessness, not law enforcement. And so there's an approach here where you abolish ICE, you fire the people who've been hired without the right vetting or training.

You start again with a very particular kind of force with high training where you are enforcing at the edge of cases that really are about somebody who has come and broken our actual laws rather than blanket enforcement that is supposed to be loud and in your face specifically to weaponize the idea of immigration against a political party or political movement. Like, that really is what this is about. If you think about Donald Trump, you think about Stephen Miller, you think about J.D. Vance, the thing that they want to tell you is that immigrants are bad. It's the same reason that they are trying to get people to move abroad when they're applying

for permanent residency in a green card, right? This is not about immigration enforcement. This is about immigration itself. And I'm so sorry, I happen to believe that immigration has been a very, very good thing for this country, not just because it's been a good thing for, you know, people like me. it's been a good thing for this country. We in this country, we're struggling to build public policy that gets people to want to have kids. And if you believe in capitalism, then you should know that capitalism only works because the economy grows. And part of the reason the economy grows is because

we've immigrated our way out of this problem. The problem here, though, is that these same people who are trying to weaponize ICE against the idea of immigration itself don't also want to pass policies like, I don't know, paid family leave and free child care and free health care and investing and housing so people could actually imagine having kids. So all of that is to say, we actually have to win the fight around immigration itself, that immigration is a good thing. And that ICE is against the Constitution itself. Like, we have to go and have that conversation. We really can enforce that policy if we thought from scratch about what the immigration system is supposed to look like. But again, we're not willing to have nuanced conversations because we're so afraid of our own

shadows. Yeah, I mean, reaffirming that immigration is a good thing seems like the big work ahead of us, given how vilified immigrants have been, and then making the case for permanent residency for people who've been here illegally for sometimes, you know, decades, that's a big shift in sort of the way America writ large thinks about immigrants and immigration. But Alex, I'll tell you this, right? I've been up and down my state now. And I live in one of those states that everybody says, oh, well, you can't possibly win the state of Michigan talking about immigration.

I'm sorry. But, like, you know, Michiganders are open-minded and they're good-hearted. Donald Trump sold this lie to us that the reason that the economy is not working is because an immigrant took your job. The reason that you're out of health care is because an immigrant took your health care. The reason you're out of home

is because an immigrant's living in your home. That was the whole, they're eating the cats. They're eating the dogs. And the problem with it is that we're so busy running away that we forget that we too have mouths that we can use to be talking about what the real problem is. If you're out of a job, it's because some corporation's trying to figure out

how to automate your job right now. If you're out of a home, it's because we have not invested in housing for a very long time because the banking industry ran amok and then collapsed the entire housing infrastructure and then we stop the building housing. If you're out of health care, well, it's because a huge corporation has figured out how to buy up all the hospitals in your location and then squeeze the money out of them and then shut down the ones that are not making them money. These all have answers.

And if you're not advancing the answers to the actual problems and you have nothing to say about those actual problems, what you're basically saying is, well, his answer is the best available one. And then we wonder why we're losing. Now, why are we not talking about corporations? Why are we not talking about how unlivable it is? Well, it's because too often Democrats take money from the exact same corporations that are part of the problem. And so, like, we've got to get serious about actually thinking about how we advance an argument about what's wrong and how we fix it. And when we do that, I actually think we can have winning arguments about immigration too. But you can't leave his argument sitting there without advancing an alternative argument that's

That's not, oh, Trump bad. Yes, of course, Trump bad, Trump heinous. But like, why are you good? That really is the question we have to answer. Okay. On that same topic, areas where Democrats have, it feels like the rug pulled out from under them by Republicans, I want to talk about police and law enforcement. There's a whole lot of back and forth.

And without getting into the minutia, the idea of defunding the police, right? You told the Detroit news that you never, ever called for defunding. CNN then uncovered old statements from, I think, 2021 and 2020, where you did affirmatively say, we do need to defund the police, though you were clear that you didn't mean completely defund. Then you also deleted a lot of old posts and old tweets may be old news, but it does beg the question, what is your actual position on whether or not police departments get too much funding? So, look, I've in the interim worked in Wayne County. In that role, I worked very closely with law enforcement.

And of course, when you get life experience, you get a lot more nuance about how things actually work. I'm going to venture this idea that it shouldn't really be that controversial, that everybody really just wants to get home safe at night and stay safe at home. And the question we should ask is, how do we design a system that does that? Right now, our current system is, anytime there's any sort of social unrest, we answer that question with somebody with a gun. And that has led to a lot of harmful circumstances and it isn't always efficient to stopping the thing that we actually want. So what I think is that we need more

investment in recruitment, retention and retirement for law enforcement. We need those things. Why? Because too often the people who work in law enforcement in urban communities don't come from those communities. And that's partly because the people in those communities don't believe that they can have a good life in those jobs. And so I would rather have people from those communities who say, hey, I'm here to keep my neighbor safe rather than I'm policing against this whole community. But on the other side, we need a lot more investment in the things that actually keep people safe. It's not always a person with the gun. It might also be behavioral health response. It might be preventing violence through community violence intervention programs. And I think we need those

things too. And then there's the question of the poverty that tends to drive all of it. How are we investing in public services, public schools, public wellness. Those are things that we need, too. So rather than start with this one question about defund or not defund and play into, again, the same unnuanced, cynical approach to politics that Republicans want to play, how about we talk about what we want to build? So look, I get why. Now everybody's sort of dragging this out, but I've tried to be nuanced about what I mean, even when I use that word. But I do think it's important for us again to go and win the argument. And I'll tell you, I've been up and down the state. You go to communities in the rural parts of my state and you say those things. Most heads are like, yeah,

actually, no, that's kind of what we want. So let's do that. You know, in the context of a podcast interview, right? There's space and time and bandwidth to talk about the nuances. But unfortunately, politics right now is a caricature of itself, but also makes a caricature out of candidates. and the reality is that Donald Trump won your state by, I believe, a point and a half at the same time that Alyssa Slaliken won her seat by about a third of a point. And I sort of wonder, you know, extrapolating from your complex answers to issues that I think really trigger the right and are easily packaged to stoke fear among swing voters and independence, are you of the mindset that you need to win over people who voted for Trump? and more broadly, folks in the middle? Or for you, is this a turnout election? I think there's a third way here.

He's using that word. Yeah. Be careful, dude. You're running as a Democrat. Let's step back for a second, right? I want us to think about what Donald Trump teaches us, if there's anything to learn from his experience. You're right.

Politics turns people into a character. Donald Trump, in theory, should be the easiest person to caricature, and yet he won elections. But you know what he did. He went everywhere and said the same things everywhere. And Democrats play this defensive style of politics. We're so concerned about what they're going to say about us that we forget the fact that we too have mouths and voices and ideas that we could be advancing anywhere and everywhere.

And I think if we do those things and we're faster about defining ourselves and defining others, that we can win both the kinds of voters who voted for people like Donald Trump and also those folks who have sat out for a very long time. And the reason I believe that is because, you know, our internal polling shows me up pretty substantially, despite the fact that outside spending has hit $50 million in my race, $50 million. Now, if it was all about what people are going to say about you or what they're going to say about your opponent, I shouldn't have a prayer in hell in this race. And yet, what we've done is politics the old-fashioned way. I go everywhere. I talk to everyone. I do

not shy away from booking these conversations or any conversation because I know what I believe and I'm willing to talk about it. And when people actually, you give them the opportunity to listen in nuance. People are really smart. And so I just reject the idea that I'm going to be turned into a character. And the way that I reject it is to make sure that you have heard me and that I've put myself anywhere, whether that's a town hall in your local community or on the radio or on a TV spot or campaigning with us on Piker, God forbid, or listening and talking to you here on Pod Save America. And the last thing I'll tell you is this, right? So I'm proving out that this tactic can work, just like Donald Trump did, ironically. But also the last thing I'll tell you is this. The real divide in our

politics is not around some left-right spectrum. Like, are you a Democrat or Republican or right-wing or or left-wing or blue or red? And that there are these people in the middle who walk around wondering where they sit on a left-right spectrum. Most of the time, people are like, yo, I can't afford my health care. And steak is so goddamn expensive. And I'm really, really worried about the quality of my kids' school. What are you going to do about that? And so I don't play the game where I hugh to a particular set of talking points. I try to talk out what I think we need to do and be completely honest. And I stand up around these, you know, third rails you're not allowed to touch in politics. You know, every time I, and we haven't got into yet, I'm sure it's, it's on your question set.

But like, Israel, I'm like, look, the question about Israel isn't about the theoretical right to exist of a country that exists. The question about Israel is, do they have a right to our tax dollars? Because I live in a community here in Michigan where there are places not too far from where I live, where the median income is $14,000 a year. And those people send their kids to school. that haven't changed for 50 years. They can't afford basic infrastructure. It's like you're traveling on gravel roads in the middle of a city.

And then you want to tell me that the best use of my tax dollars is send them somewhere else. And you know, when you say that and then people hit you on it, people are just like, yeah, actually I agree with what he's saying. And I'm not so interested in a theoretical question

about the right of a country to exist. I'm wondering what you're going to do with my tax dollars and why you're sending them there when I could be using them here. With all due respect, I mean, the question of whether Israel should exist or not is essential when you're answering whether a U.S. tax dollars should go towards protecting that right to exist. And it sort of raised,

let me just ask you the question because, I mean, I think you've made it a zero-sum game between, like, funding for, for example, schools and aid to Israel. The U.S. budget is large. And there's a question about, you know, to what degree Congress should prioritize spending on Israel, which gets at the central question for, I think, a lot of Jews in this country and a lot of Jews in your state is, you know, the Jewish identity and the Jewish statehood is essential to them. And they may think the war is a genocide in Gaza and they may completely disagree with Bibi Netanyahu, but their Jewish identity is as essential to them as their American identity. So I wonder when you are thinking about those people and they may support you. How do you help them understand where Israel

exists on your list of priorities. Is it immoral to support Israel at this point? Or is there some other, is there some other avenue? Look, I grew up, I was really grateful to grow up in a community with a large Jewish community, 40% Jewish. I had the privilege of being welcomed to Shul and being welcome to Seder and going to Bar and Bat Mitzvah's growing up. I learned a lot about the Jewish faith. I learned so much about the Jewish contribution to America. culture in society, and I will do everything I can to protect Jewish Americans in this country from anti-Semitism. I also, in as much as I love the Jewish people and Jewish culture, I love and revere Palestinians and Palestinian culture. And most importantly, I love and revere the people I am

running to serve here in Michigan. So the idea that Michigan tax dollars should be sent to a foreign government that wants to foreclose on Palestinian rights to peace, dignity and self-determination, which I hold equal to Jewish rights to peace dignity and self-determination. But the idea that our money is being sent to a government that wants to foreclose on one community's right to self-determination and being misused away from solving the needs of the people I'm actually serving is a pretty crazy thing. And in setting up this question about Israel's right to exist, you rightly point to the idea of whether or not there is American intervention that ought to be spent to enforce that. And I think the vast majority of Americans would say, whatever you think about Israel's right

to exist, our tax dollars should not be used for the interests of a foreign government when they need to be used for the interests of the people living in our community on its own. So I believe in equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination for Palestinians and and Jewish Israelis alike. But I also understand that in an era where people ask you, how you're going to pay for that when you want to give people health care or how you going pay for that when you want to give people good schools. It's pretty crazy to be sending our money over there when it could be used over here. So no funding to ensure the survival or future of the Jewish state. Well, I turn that back around on you, Alex, and say, why is it our

responsibility to ensure that? I'm just asking because I think people want to clear understanding. But hear me out, hear me out, hear me out. Why is that the essential frame from which we work? Like, why is it assumed that the United States ought to be in the business of backstopping a foreign government? Like, I'm just saying, like, I don't want ill will for, uh, for Jewish, Israeli people at all. I really don't. I just want equal rights to peace dignity, self-determination for all people.

But the notion that somehow our tax dollars ought to secure the interests of a foreign government, like, this is the United States and our own kids don't have good schools. And you're telling me that that should be a primary concern over there. Like, imagine we said the same thing about any other country, any other one. Like, my family's from Egypt, okay? Like, would it be crazy if somebody was asking me like, hey, do you think Egypt has the right to exist? People would like Egypt exist. I'm like, well, if somebody wanted to change the nature of Egypt, do you think the United States

should be spending all of its money to make sure or any of its money to make sure that that happens? People like, I don't know what that seems like a different country's issue. But like, I'm just saying that, like, you can both say that Israel exists, but it doesn't have a right to my tax dollars. And it is not our responsibility as American taxpayers to take. money away from kids who don't have good schools and give it to a country to buy bombs and tanks. Like, the idea that that our conversation even questions that is itself a big question we should be asking, like, why is this the frame of the debate?

I think A PAC affiliated Super PACs have spent about $15 million so far to defeat you? 30. Okay, I'm wrong. Sorry. Updated stats. And your opponent, Haley Stevens, is their preferred candidate. You've called her a sort of Trojan horse for the pro-Israel agenda. You've accused her of failing the moral war shock test by not calling what's happening in Gaza,

the atrocities, a genocide. Here's my question. There's only one Democrat that's going to win this. If she wins her unit campaign for her? I'm going to make sure that Mike Rogers never sees the inside of the U.S. Senate. But here in the lines the important question, here's an important question. I'm going to campaign against Mike Rogers for sure. And look, I've already said that like, I'm committed to making sure Democrats win and Republicans lose.

Do you want her campaigning for you if you're the nominee? But here's the bigger question. I just want to go back to this point that you made because it's a, it's just a really, really important one. You rightly pointed to the reason why the frame of the debate is always about the theoretical right to exist of a country and where we put our money. Because if you say what I just said, which I think the vast majority of Americans, I'd be like, yeah, that's just conventional wisdom that we should be more worried about. people in our own country than the existence of another country. If you say what I said, there is one super PAC that's going to spend tens of millions of dollars to annihilate your political existence. I mean, that's why most politicians sit in this political consensus that says that you cannot touch the third rail of Israel. Meanwhile, people in their own communities are like,

why not when my own kid goes to a school that looks like it did 50 years ago? And so that exactly is it is that you have a particular super PAC that has become the biggest spender in our whole race, $30 million to try to put my head on a pike to show every Democrat that thou shalt not say the conventional wisdom that maybe the interests of kids in our own country matters more than whether or not we think about the theoretical right to exist of another country. Do you feel like there's some opportunity to work with Trump on this? I know I just bear, bear, before you receive, before you receive, bond, let me just remind people. I mean, it's Donald Trump, right? But, you know, this is someone who is

increasingly at odds with Prime Minister Netanyahu, even though he also bear hugs him from time to time and has effectively fought a war with him for him. But they now have divergent interests in terms of the war in Iran. And I'm old enough to remember when Donald Trump called BB Netanyahu fucking crazy. That's a quote. That was like four weeks ago. Exactly. So is there, I mean, is there an opportunity for Democrats to try and take advantage of that opportunity and move the needle using Trump on Israel? So I'll tell you this. I'm less concerned about Trump himself and more concerned about voters in Michigan who Trump lied to. And I can't tell you the number of people who've come up to me at town halls and been like, I voted for Trump three times and I'm voting for

you. I'm like, why? And the answer is usually two things. Number one, you really want me to have health care. I really want you to have health care. Number two, it's you really want to keep my money here. So we're running a pretty simple campaign, money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all. And the thing about democracy is if you can win the debate, you can win voters over, you can

win the conversation, you can start to change public policy. So look, I think Donald Trump has been burnt by the Israeli government and he's feeling the burn right now. He got duped into fighting a war that. But frankly, Bibi Netanyahu has been trying to find an idiot big enough to fight for the better part of 40 years. He finally found the dumbass who would do it. And now Trump's in the situation where he's like, damn, I'm trapped.

All for what? So Israel could try to annex southern Lebanon? You know, like who wins out of this war? Certainly not the American public. Not even Donald Trump. I mean, maybe the Iranian regime who now figured out how to control the flow of the world's energy supply. and certainly Bibi Netanyahu, who is annihilated southern Lebanon.

So I think there's an opportunity here to prove out that people in this country are sick and tired of being told what we can do from a foreign policy standpoint by a foreign government and to point to the obvious policy failure that has us paying $5 gas here in Michigan to get to a point in our politics that actually says, look, maybe this is not the right approach here. and maybe we could actually have a politics for our people, by our people, and in the interest of our people. Right. But you are not running to be, you know, the mayor, right? You are not running to be an executive. You are running to be in the Senate, which is an increasingly dysfunctional body where the term is six years.

And if you have the majority, it's going to be a slim one. And you're going to have to work with people like. Mary Paltola and Roy Cooper, who were backed by Chuck Schumer and are much more in the centrist swing of democratic politics. How do you think about making common cause with them? If it's, you know, if it's a new Democratic majority, how are you going to work with the people that come from a pretty different ideology than you? Yeah.

You know, I think part of the reason there's so much attention being paid to this particular race is because Michigan is unique. not only is it the greatest state in the country, hands down, way better than Ohio, who produced Ramoswamy and J.D. Vance, like, bad record for Ohio. God bless you, Sherrod Brown, but you're doing the Lord's work. Ohio Diggs. I'm, I take, I'm not involved in this. I just want to say for everybody in Ohio that's listening, that's all on Doc. It's all on me. I'll take it. Like, I can't stand Ohio. But I'll tell you, I'll tell you this. The reason people are paying attention is because a lot of folks have often said that a politics that really centers in on the

needs of everyday people can't win outside of, you know, these, these, these, these, these, these democratic bastions like New York. And the point that I'm often making to folks is that people need the same things wherever you are in this country. And a politics that delivers on getting money out so that we can finally put money back in people's pockets by like standing with unions and keeping our money here and taxing billionaires their wealth and standing up to big corporate monopolies and oligopolis, that kind of politics, it can win anywhere. And so in winning the race itself, we are shifting the conversation about the kind of politics we can have nationwide.

And so, look, I'm looking forward to working with folks like Roy Cooper and Mary Peltola and building strong relationships. But I also think that they operate from a standpoint based on a flawed set of assumptions that I'm trying to upend in this race. I know that we can deliver for Michiganders if we actually get corporations out of our politics and start standing with the people. I know that Medicare for All is broadly popular

if you're willing to reject the influence of big pharma and big insurance corporations in trying to dominate what we can possibly talk about. I know that keeping money here rather than supporting a foreign government over there is broadly popular. And I want to prove it out. And when we do in this race,

I want to be able to have conversations with folks and think, hey, look, we did this in Michigan. I think you can do it too. And I think we can actually build a politics that actually get stuff done. Because here's the problem with it. Look at my own race. DTE, our local utility. Blue Cross Blue Shield, our local health insurer, Big Tech, A PAC. They're funding both my Democratic opponent and my Republican one.

So if either of them win, guess who wins? Big Tech wins. Blue Cross Blue Shield wins. A PAC wins, DTE wins. And we're all out here being like, well, the body is so dysfunctional. We never get stuff done. Well, because we never really have a contrast that's about getting stuff done because guess what?

Either way, the corporate lobbyist is showing up with the same bill. And then, and then they tell you, oh, look, you have a bipartisan opportunity to get legislation done in bipartisan because corporations have bought off both parties. And then you pat yourself on the back for being bipartisan to do the thing that helps the corporation and not the people you got to like. to serve. And I think we have an opportunity here to actually win the debate and then actually start doing things that deliver for people. Because none of us got into this work. Like, this is a shit job. I just want to be clear. Like, it's just a shit way to live your life. None of us got into

this because, you know, you don't want to deliver for people. And the hardest part for me is, like, I carry people's stories with me. I mean, I trained as a doctor and I learned how to listen to people in pain. But people bring you their stories hoping that you can help. And I know, I know, I know, for every single person in public service, like you're doing this because you really want to help those people. But the system has rigged it so it's almost impossible to do. What if we actually took it on in one? So that's the conversation I'm hoping to have with the 99 other senators in the country.

I think some of them will go better than others. But I think we can prove out that we can actually win on our morals if we can do that here in Michigan. Now here's the hard part. They're spending a shit ton of money, right, to stop us. $50 million already come in, $50 million. We're being out spent eight to one. And yet, you know, we're still leading the conversation.

So it's got to be people coming together around a politics that is of the people by the people and for the people standing up to the power of the corporations who are keeping us from having the things that we need and deserve. I have two quick questions. You can make a long question if you want. Okay. You talk about taking power. You talk about democratic control.

The president this week is focused on election interference, not his own. which is measurable, but on alleged election interference, all of this is a bid to distort, if not steal the results of the 2026 midterms. Are you worried about a peaceful transfer of power? Is there something Democrats should be doing that they're not doing? If, in fact, they win both houses, one or both houses of Congress, are you worried about a peaceful transfer of power? And is there something Democrats should be doing that they're not doing? I am. I'm really worried about it. Donald Trump understands the stakes of this. And he basically told the Republicans as much, he said, if they win, I'm going to be impeached. And, you know,

there is nothing about that man that is about the dignity of his office. It is entirely about self-preservation and self-enrichment. And that's how he's used to the office. Now, he understands that our winning is the single biggest threat. And he's acting accordingly. Now, the problem that we so often have is that we don't actually meet the demand with the right level of urgency. So I think it's incumbent on all of us to be. narrating exactly what's happening. Look, here's what he's doing. Here's where he's mobilizing ICE. Here's where they're buying detention facilities. Here's what he said he wants to do. Here's where he's sending election interferers. And here's what they say they're going to do.

We need to be very, very clear about that. And then we need to mobilize people past it. The way to make the elections unrigible is to overwhelm them with the power of a message that gets people out to actually win. Like, we can't keep winning these. razor-thin elections anymore when they want to steal them because razor-thin elections are way easier to steal. And so, you know, people talk about like, are you going to win the middle or are you going to bring people out? It's like, we don't have a choice, but to do both. We've got to win people who are disaffected by him. And we've got to win the people who've been disaffected by the political process itself. We've got to win in massive waves. That is the way we

protect our democracy. That is the way we take back power, hold him accountable. And finally, finally get the kind of democratic process back that allows people's actual will to reflect in government. When you talk about people's will being reflected in government, I would assume that means also having people that represent different generations of people, different generations of Americans. There's been a lot of criticism about the gerontocracy, the aged seniority in Democratic and Republican ranks, but especially in Republican, well, I won't even say especially in Democratic and Republican ranks. Do you think Mitch McConnell is alive? I mean, do you think he owes the public? As a doctor, that's an empirical question that I don't have the data to be able to answer.

Do you think, well, do you think he owes voters a video? Do you think the fit the photo of an unhealthy looking video of a photo? I'll just say that photo is unconvincing. But let's step back. Like, the idea that politicians should die in office is crazy. And, you know, let's not be the pot calling the kettle black. Like, we had our whole Diane Feinstein situation too. I just think, that it's important to have Well, I think people would say Joe Biden is case number one of someone perhaps being too old for office.

That part. Diane Plainstein. But, I mean, we're just this week we're dealing with one person who passed away and another who, like, we don't know if he passed away. And so I just think that like we do need to reinvigorate our politics. I think that that's going to naturally happen with time.

But I also think that part of the problem right now is that the way that we do politics makes it so that it is too easy to accumulate and hold power once you've already gotten it. And part of that is a filibuster. Part of that is campaign finance law. Part of that is the role that's played by like television and media. Like I just think we're not actually having a robust debate about who we are and who we want to be that reflects a whole half of of the voters. And so part of what we've tried to do in our campaign is rather than, you know, talk down to young people, I'm 41, so I don't even know what that means. Like, I'm, you're young. You're young. We're going to count you as young.

But, but, but, but Alex, I'm the oldest I've ever been. Um, so all of, all of that is to say that, like, part of the way that you engage young people to bring them back to the process is to actually ask them what they want for the future that they have the highest stake in and to center them in the campaign and to make policy around what it is that they say they want. So when we focus in on a affordability of housing when we focus in on education affordability, when we focus in on AI, this is about reflecting the need and the urgent fears of young people in our society who are saying, look, I just took a $60,000 plus dollar loan for the opportunity to have a job that an AI looks like it's about to take. What the fuck do I do? And if we don't have an answer for them,

then we're not serious about governing. It's interesting. I was talking to, you know, to some folks and they're like, well, you know, this AI thing, I think it's overblown. I'm like, not if you're under 30. And this is the first era in which you have a, the people who are who are the most afraid of a new technology are the youngest people. Most of the time, the people who are the earliest adopters and who like it the most are young. But like, it's because young people both use AI and understand the danger of AI. And so, you know, we put AI front and center. We have an AI for democracy plan, which is about putting democracy ahead of AI and making sure that at least 50, percent of the board representation of every AI hyperscaler is democratically selected.

And we're doing that because I take seriously that young people are going to have to live in the world that we legislate in. And that means centering them in these campaigns. And I think once we do that and young people make a habit of it, I think we're going to start to see a lot more turnover. Will there be a day when the 41-year-old actually feels old in the U.S. Senate? TBD on that one. I'll be 42 by that point, but I'll let you know.

Keep us posted, Doc. I will, I will. Dr. Abdul Aoussaid, it is a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you for entertaining my numerous questions. We will be following the race very, very, very carefully. Good luck out there. Thank you. And look, if for folks who want to get involved, go to Abdul for Senate.com.

I hope you'll chip us off, five bucks or ten bucks, or we're phone making. This is an opportunity. It's literally the money versus the many in this race. So I hope that folks are listening will get involved. Alex, thank you for a really thoughtful conversation. I'm really grateful for it. And I'm looking forward to the next one, okay? Definitely.

That's our show for today. Thanks to Abdul for coming on. Dan will be back in the feed on Sunday with a conversation with Run for Something's Amanda Lipman. Dan, what did you guys talk about? Amanda and I had a great conversation about what's happening to Democratic Party right now, where the party can go from here. And the really inspiring story she's hearing from the 100,000 people

who have signed up to run for office since Trump was elected in 2024. If you want to be inspired, you just talk to Amanda Lipman. Works every time. All right, everyone, have a good weekend. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Ferris Safari,

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