Pod Save America - Trump's Mile-Hide Club

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

Donald Trump hides in a catering truck and boards a secret plane to evade an Iranian security threat, leaving reporters, White House officials, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio alone aboard Air Force One to fend for themselves. Dan and Jon discuss the President's profile in courage and the rest of the latest, including a series of shocking new developments with ICE, the discourse around electability after David Crowley's unexpected primary win in Wisconsin, and Nate Silver's new midterm model, which is uncharacteristically optimistic about Democrats' chances of taking back both the House and Senate. Then, the guys bid farewell to press secretary Karoline Leavitt and debate which MAGA-world figures are most likely to replace her.Hate listening to ads? Become a Friends of the Pod subscriber for ad-free episodes of Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett or Leave It, Runaway Country, Offline with Jon Favreau, and more—plus exclusive content, including bonus episodes of Pod Save America. Subscribe now at crooked.com/friends, on Apple Podcasts, or through the Pod Save America YouTube channel.You can request a transcript by emailing [e-mail]. Include the podcast name, episode title, and air date. Please allow 48 hours for delivery.

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Plus, when you order, write in our show name in the How Did You Hear About a survey to let them know we sent you. Don't forget. There's no safe, like Simply Safe. Welcome to Potsave America. I'm John Favro. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Donald Trump catches a ride on a catering truck to escape the Iranians

who are trying to kill him and or cause him to lose the midterms, which ever comes first. We'll also talk about how your tax dollars are being used to buy brand new. gloves for ice agents that can deliver an electric shock to anyone they touch. That is true. Also, a wild story about DHS spying on everyone from labor unions and climate groups to random citizens just because they can. Then with the last of the major contested primaries behind us in Wisconsin and Minnesota, we'll talk about why the polling was so far off and why that won't stop us from speculating about November. Finally, we'll bid a fond farewell to White House

Press Secretary Caroline Levitt and compare our rankings of who we think is most likely to get the job next. Can't wait to hear your list, Dan. It's really outside of the box. I like that. I like that. One quick note before we start, Friends of the Pod tickets for this year's CricketCon are going fast. They're going even faster than last time I said they were going fast. I mean, just by the time you hear this, they could be gone. You're going to want to go to CricketCon.com to grab yours if you haven't already. And of course, if you're not yet a subscriber, discounted CricketCon tickets, that's just one of many reasons to become a subscriber. You'll also get ad-free episodes of all your favorite crooked shows,

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They're starting to use the keyword to describe Trump's disastrous war in Iran. You know what the key word is, Dan? There are all kinds of jokes I was going to make, but none of them seem to work, so I'm just going to go with the right answer. Is it Quagmire? That's the headline in one of the most read Politico stories of the week, The Iran War is a whole new level of quagmire for the U.S. Both Trump and the Iranians are claiming that they're in control of the Strait of Hormuz, which can't be true.

And the Strait remains functionally closed. I think only 14 vessels went through yesterday. Gas prices are higher than they have ever been at this time of year in the United States ever in history. The war also continues to deplete our military. the Washington Post reports that we've lost about a quarter of our supply of Reaper drones. We're using up our limited supplies of both Patriot and Tomahawk missiles. And some of our service members have been deployed so long that on the USS Abraham Lincoln, which is an aircraft carrier that's been in the Middle East since November,

several of the 5,000 sailors and Marines on board have tried to jump overboard due to the stress and horrible conditions. That's according to both the military times. and Stars and Stripes. But nothing better illustrates just how badly Trump is getting his ass kicked by the Iranians than the story of how our president was forced to hide

in a catering truck and board a secret plane to escape a potential assassination threat involving Iranian proxies in Turkey launching surface-to-air missiles at Air Force One. When Trump was asked why it was too dangerous for him to fly on Air Force One, but not any of the reporters and White House officials

who weren't told they were flying home on a potential target, the president said the dumbest thing possible. I think actually the plane that I flew on was at greater risk. I think it was at greater risk, because that would be the plane I think that they would be more likely to go for. Fucking idiot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they'd be more likely to go for the plane you were on. Of course, which is why they tried to put you on,

another plane that they didn't know about, you fucking moron. Yes. I don't know why I say that in such a shocked way, but like, that is, it's just like new levels of Trump being a dipshit. Yeah, what did you make of the whole, the catering cart caper? On one hand, it is very, very funny that he hid in a catering cart, that he flew home on a secret plane, that he handpicked the people who would survive with him, like Pete Higsef and the woman who prints all of his documents.

But he said, And Dan Scamino is former caddy. And Dan Escobito. But then he sent Marco Rubio to die with the press. And Marco Rubio was the only one on that other plane who knew what was happening. Scott Bessent was with Marker Rubio, none the wiser. And there's no protocol here for the reasons. Like maybe, Hagsat, you could possibly fabricate some reason.

But the fact that he picked Dan Scavino and Natalie Harp, the once again, the woman who follows him around and prints his documents for him. were the ones who got seats in the life raft. And Marco Rubio didn't. It should be a real tell to Marco Rubio. Also, how do you even process information? You get looped in and you're like, which way to Trump's playing? They're like, you didn't make the cut.

I mean, well, what were they? Where did they think Trump was? I mean, they just assumed he was in his cabin, I assume. Oh, yeah. I mean, I know that's what the reporter's thought, but I was wondering about the, like, Scott Besson. He's just sitting there, has no idea with his buddy Marker Rubio has no idea. He's just a sitting duck for it. Normally, you would see the president walk up.

Well, I guess they saw him walk up the steps. And there were plenty of times we've been on the plane when we used to fly on it where the president would just be in their cabin. And we would be seated where we would sit, which is not in his cabin. You would have no idea until the plane landed. And he did not walk down the front steps. Who do you think was making it in the secret plane with Barack Obama? Definitely wasn't me. I don't know.

It might have been you. Quick, I need a speech. Well, how so we would have done it by actual protocol? and not by who he likes most. There is like a more serious thing to this, which is... That the Iranian proxies in Turkey were potentially going to take down Air Force One? Yeah, that's a... Well, I mean, that, yes, that, that.

But there's something like, this probably sounds really quaint in like the dystopian fucked up world we live in. But there is just something terrible about the fact that the president lied to the press, lied to the country to hide a threat to him. no one knew where he was. He could have, that plane could have landed anywhere in the world and no one would have ever known. And the only reason we know about this now is because the Washington Post did some really great reporting. Like there is a world where obviously his security, the president's security, whether it's

Trump or anyone else comes first. So you could, I understand the ruse. I don't really understand why you would take Air Force one off. You would just fly the other plane that he, they don't think he's on. Right. It definitely seemed like there was a need to protect Trump, even if it was now, we should say too since this story was first reported. There's been more reporting that suggests that this intel about a potential assassination plot came from Israel from the Israeli government.

And then the CIA, our CIA judged it as low confidence, meaning they didn't think it was, they didn't think it was like a serious, serious threat. But clearly they thought it was serious enough to put the president in a catering cart and send him on a separate plane. it's probably not surprising that Israel is one who told this to Trump because if you read regime change the Maggie Hayrim and Jonathan Swan book like one of the themes in there and Maggie talks about this interview with Ezra Klein a few weeks ago is that Trump is singularly obsessed with the idea that Iran wants to kill him and so you tell Trump Iran wants to kill you at the same time you're trying to keep

Trump fully focused on the war in Iran right not a bad idea right because that yeah BB did not want him to reach any kind of peace agreement clearly. So, yeah, I thought it was, I thought it was, so it's wild to me that like, it's one thing to protect the president. It's another thing to unnecessarily put yeah, the rest of the people on Air Force One in danger. Yeah, you just hold Air Force One on the ground. You take the president, let him fly on this other plane. No one knows what is. Right. And then after he lands, you say, Trump has landed,

the Iranians know he's not on the plane, then you fly the other plane home. Right. And we're not in the CIA. We're not in Secret Service of the CIA. You know, we could figure that out. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's crazy. It's also crazy they didn't tell anyone afterwards.

Like, that's also, no. That's the, well, yes, thank you. That is the biggest problem. Like, you could do this whole thing, and then once everyone lands, be like, oh, by the way, this happened, and we couldn't tell you at the time or whatever, whatever.

But, like, that is, it's wild that it had to be broken by the Washington Post. and that the administration subpoenaed New York Times reporters for the leak about them not taking the new Qatari Force one home because it didn't have like the right defensive maneuver capabilities that they might need if if proxies on the ground were shooting surface-to-air missiles at Air Force One. Like this is entirely a hypothetical. I just want to point this out there. But in a world in which, uh-oh is right, in a world in which the president can get on a secret plane without the press and have no one where he is. That plane could land anywhere. It could land on Epstein Island, theoretically. Oh, my God. What, you're really looking for a viral clip, aren't you? I do not want a viral clip.

I do not want this posted. I do not tell the social team. I do not want this posted. I'm making a point just to our listeners, the people who tune into this podcast that I'm just using the extreme example to make a point that if when the press is not with the president, the president can do lots of things we don't know what are. He could have stopped in UAE and cut a crypto deal. He could have stopped in Moscow to hang out with his friend, Vladimir Putin. He could have picked up the pee tape. He could have picked up the peat tape, right? Yeah. All these things were possible. A lot of possibilities. Because he broke protocol. Okay. Well, bigger picture, there's new reporting this week that Iran is tracking Trump's political problems very closely.

I guess they're just, they're looking at the, looking at the RCP average. So the silver bulletin, Trump approval rating. And they're looking to continue pushing negotiations far off past November so that Trump pays a maximum price in the midterms. Seems like if we're just going by political strategy, it does seem like a smart strategy on Iran's behalf, no, on Iran's part. Yeah. I mean, there's no question that they are correct to understand that Trump has very, very

little leverage during election season. because the things that would allow the sort of military maneuvers that would allow him to gain an upper hand over the straight, over Iran, would raise gas prices in a way which would hurt his party in the midterms. So they figured that out. Now, I think the question for Iran is what happens when Trump doesn't and no one Trump cares about has to face the voters for two years? Like if you're counting on Democrats to pass a war powers resolution to stop the war, I don't think they're getting to a veto-proof majority of that. No. Could a Democratic Congress make it harder to fund the war?

Possibly. But this idea, but Trump may feel like this is bad. I'm going to stipulate this is bad. But it's not clear to me that Trump, it's not clear to me and maybe it probably shouldn't be clear of the Iranians, what Trump does after the midterms. Well, let's talk about what's after the midterms. It is the beginning of the 2028 presidential race. And you've got presumably J.D. Vance, who wants to be president.

Maybe Marco Rubio, maybe both of them together. And so there is an incentive at that point for the administration to finally give Iranians what they want to get this off the table so that they don't have it. Or win the war. Or win, well, how are they going to do that? Well, I mean, that's ultimately what Iran is trying to forestall right now is more, like, not that I think any of these things are going to happen per se, but like Trump taking Carg Island, for instance, one of the things that was on the table earlier, doesn't happen in the midterms. Could that happen in 2027?

Maybe. Trump launching all the other bombing. Yeah. Like those sorts of things. Like the right now, Trump won't use the military stick against Iran to the extent he has the the capacity to do so because of gas prices the election. In the calendar year of 2027, he is relieved of that political, the restraining nature of politics, potentially.

So the thing is, I don't know when Iran doesn't know either. So like this works in the short term. What happens in the medium and long term? Who the hell knows? Yeah. Horrible story, though, about the USS Lincoln and all those soldiers. And, you know, the families have been describing like moldy showers and broken toilets and shortages of hot water and food. They've been trying to like figure this out.

The sailors and Marines have been sending messages. Like just to, and then, of course, I'm going to ask Pete Higgsath today about it. And he's like, oh, it's all overblown, overblown. I respect all these guys. They're great. They're doing a great job. It always makes me feel bad that we talk about the war purely in terms of gas prices and oil prices because of the. fact that it's having on politics here. But it's also like, there's a lot of fucking U.S.

forces deployed in the Middle East who are in harm's way and who are also just have been away from their families forever. And for what? For what? And the military did not prepare for this, hence the conditions on the ships. Yeah. Because they had no, they never believed because they gave this zero thought that many, many months later, they'd still be in a conflict with Iran. missile stockpile estimates are that it won't recover until 2030. That's a whole other thing. Like, God forbid, someone else attacks us, there's another war. Like, we're not going to be ready at all because we have now depleted all of our military.

We've sent soldiers for long, long deployments. We don't have missiles and drones and all that kind of, all those capabilities. Because of this stupid fucking war, it is a, like, I kind of think that this is, what do you think about, like, Democrats, like how they handle this over the next couple months between now and the midterms. Because to me it seems like it is the main issue and it's not your usual. It's like it combines both forever wars, which people hate, and it's causing high prices, which people hate. So it's like I feel like the whole, you could run the whole campaign about Trump's disastrous

war and what it's doing to prices and all that. Yeah, it should be the centerpiece of the campaign. Obviously, it's best when. to affordability and gas prices. And that, you know, like one of the messages that you've tested is the, you know, they told us there was enough money for health care and food assistance, but now we have money, we have billions of dollars for bombs in the Middle East and for wars and billies, like that tests very well.

Yeah. It is, you know, so I think absolutely hammer it. Democrats should have no fear. There's a lot of sort of anxiety at the outset of this that what if we get on the wrong side of the conflict and, you know, we, and we must begin every statement with a long throat clearing about how bad the mullahs and Iran are. Like, we are past that. This is an incredibly unpopular war. It goes at affordability. It goes at Trump's incompetence. It goes to Trump's weakness. It goes to the chaos of his leadership style. And I think really importantly, it goes to the broken

promises. And when you see this in both focus groups and then in polling of people who regret, who voted for Trump, who are now disapprove of him. One of the top things that comes up is that he broke his promises and one of those big promises is the war, which is tied to the other big promise, which is lowering prices. Right. Today's show is sponsored by Strawberry.Me. Have you ever written a review about a product or service you've used?

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and it won't shock you to hear that the news is really bad. Here's what will shock you. I apologize for that. That's just... Do the joke and then apologize. The new electric gloves, ICE plans to spend $20 million on so that agents can deliver a painful jolt to whoever they touch rendering the person

powerless to move or even stand. Now, Tom Homan, you know, he was on Fox talking about this is a, this is, you know, we don't want to shoot everyone now. So this is supposed to be de-escalation. This is a de-escalation, right? Here's a compilation of the gloves being put to use from some of the videos that were circulating on Twitter. Oh, God.

I scream like a little girl in pee myself. Go back with the gloves. Hide your hands. Go give on your hand. Stop resisting. Resist. What's this? Thank you.

Damn. He's turned a red. It's fucking insane. A bunch of men just shocking each other for fun. I know. Yeah. That is right. Yeah, it's a whole separate conversation.

The manual, this company that makes the product that they put out, the manual says no more than two. gloves on one person, generally no more than 15 seconds, never against verbal defiance, never as punishment, and not on the elderly children, pregnant women, or people with serious disabilities, guess what ICE has done already? Like, violated all of those things with how it has handled people before the gloves and the people that it has assaulted, injured, detained. And so, I don't know. I think this is fucking awful. Well, I mean, it's just so redacted. that Tom Homan's, he like, it's a binary choice.

Look, we have only two options. We can kill them in the street with our guns or we can electrocute them. Those are only two things, guys. You pick, you choose electrocution or bullets. Also, this is one that leaves not a lot of evidence. And so the idea that ICE is just going to be roaming the streets. And if they see someone who they don't like what they said, they, you know, sort of made fun of or criticize them, whatever, they can just walk over and just put hands on them and shock them.

And then, like, no one's going to know, I mean, like, who's word against who's word. I mean, it's just, it's the, the potential for abuse on this one is vast. Yes, that is very, very true. And as Elijah pointed out in production meeting today, it's only a matter of time till one of these ice guys goes pee with the gloves on. In this administration, that will almost certainly happen. Yes, it's guaranteed. And also with the kind of people. recruiting now at ICE, which is people who meet no standards whatsoever.

Yes. Meanwhile, there's been a new uptick in terrifying videos of people being confronted by ICE agents. On Monday, a mass agent pointed a gun at a U.S. citizen named Carolina Molina at a shopping center in Virginia. ICE and DHS accused her of trying to run them over with her car, an assertion that's not at all backed up by the video evidence. Afterwards, Molina told the Washington Post that it felt like a Renee good situation.

Here's some of that scene as well as other recent ICE confrontations that are making the rounds. You almost ran us over. I didn't almost run us over. You're full of shit. Stop playing. You are full of shit. All right? You're not funny.

You're not funny. I won't arrest you. Keep it up. I'm a legal citizen. I don't care. Oh my goodness. I'll lock you up. The Domingo family, self-recording the tense moments when Border Patrol pulled them over Sunday after

The couple complying with the officer's orders, then hugging during this emotional goodbye when separated from their five children and detained. I know there's not a lot of new things to say about this because it's just horrific, but I think it is worth noting that it is still happening. It is happening all over the place. ICE has not de-escalated at all. they are still trying to meet Stephen Miller's dumb fucking quotas. Mark Wayne Mullen, the new DHS secretary, is already in trouble with like MAGA activists and the base. You know, Laura Lumer and Steve Bannon already have said he should be fired because, you know,

he's not detaining and arresting and deporting enough people. So he's already feeling pressure to be even more aggressive in order to keep his job. So this is all happening still. Yeah. And it's just the only thing that's changed. is they're not setting on a press release before they do it. They're not inviting the MAG influencers along for it. They're not inviting the Fox News crews.

They're just doing it and hoping no one videotapes them when it happens. Did you see, I heard Tim Miller talk about this in the bulwark pod. The letter in the nation that this woman wrote, she is, so this Iranian family, there have green cards, legal residence, a couple of professors. Yeah, the husband and. wife or professors, and then they have a child as well. And because the husband is the son of a woman who was an Iranian official during the hostage crisis, I believe she was the spokesperson during the hostage crisis in 1979. And her son and his family moved to United States, became college professors,

had a kid, our permanent legal residence. And because people online decided to make an issue of their association with Iran, then the State Department just decided to, on their own, revoke their visas. They picked up the husband. They also picked up the wife and the child. And they separated them and they have shipped them to Texas where they've been in detention facilities for the last four months. four months with like just just just just holding them holding them hostage for no reason no due

process not even deporting them not doing anything just jailing them just because of an association a family member because some fucking idiot online decided to call them out terrible it's just the whole thing is so just a gross and morally bankrupt I don't like I get that this won't be you know I think when Minnesota is happening we probably thought maybe this would be a big issue in the midterms. I'm guessing it will not be as big of an issue in the midterms. But is the best play here? The Democrats have to just hope we get Congress back, be able to conduct some kind of oversight over ICE, hold hearings, subpoena officials and documents, and then just change everything if a Democratic president wins. Like it doesn't, what else can people do at this point? So you are right that this is not going to be the biggest issue in the midterms.

And it probably shouldn't be the voters we need care about immigration. They absolutely do. But it's not their top issue. But it's not as complicated as I think a lot of people make it. Trump is 11 points underwater on immigration right now. This is not an issue of strength for him. He doesn't win by shifting the issue terrain to immigration. It doesn't help him.

The videos like this hurt him when you track his. approval rating drops since 2025. Some of the biggest ones happened during both first the Kilmar-Obraco-Garcia-C-Cat stuff in the spring of 2025 and then after the killings of Alex Preddy and Renee Good in January of 2006. So it matters when these things come up. So no one should shy away from talking about it. Absolutely not.

It's also worth pointing out to voters that once again, not only is ICE bad, but we gave ICE billion dollars and we paid for it by cutting health care and food assistance. Like that's what the priority is. People don't like that. But when we you, so let's say we get to, we get a majority, right? And we'll talk about the prospects for that later in the show. People should be realistic. We cannot, we cannot realistically abolish ICE, but we can hold hearings.

We can, you know, shine a light on this. There can be accountability. We also have, if we have the House and the Senate, but even if we have just the House, we have real leverage in budget negotiations if Democrats are willing to use it. So the one challenge on that one. is because they passed so much ice funding through reconciliation, like they could shut down the government. We went through this, right?

Like the Democrats could theoretically, like, shut down the government if we control Congress again or hold up the whole budget over ICE funding. But because they have so much funding left over from reconciliation, like they can still do everything they want to do. Yes. I mean, we're right back in the same spot. But you have a couple options here. One is you can take, I hate to use this terminology, but you can take a different hostage and the ransom is changes in ice.

Other things Trumps want. You cannot give them. You can shut down the whole government over it. You can put real pressure on them. Once again, ice has money. Like there is a limit to what you can do here. Up until the moment, you have a trifecta where you, well, you have, if we have a trifecta, you can do the following things. One, you can take that money and redirect it elsewhere.

you could, with the trifecta, abolish ICE in some way, shape, or form. Oh, yeah. Yeah, if we have a Democratic president. Yeah, you do all those things, but yes. But for the next, it'll be even winning back Congress, it'll be hard for the next two years to do anything outside of threatening to shut down the government over ice. But, you know, like you said, take a different hostage. Or probably the most likely path is to hold all kinds of hearings and oversight. And you can get, I mean, which will hopefully sort of tilt.

the ground for the battles to come when you have the trifecta. But you can't like some of the policy changes we did not get in this time. You can make another run at in 2027, 28. I also think it's worth saying that just from a, and we talk about politics and campaigns and what's most likely to help win an election. But when these stories are in the news and when public officials, whether they're local, state or national, talk about them and lift up the stories, like the politics are bad for the Trump administration. Usually when they are, when Donald Trump's approval rating is in

the shitter, he turns to immigration to try to get his mojo back. And it is telling that they have chosen, you know, the Democratic, socialist, communist threat over immigration this time around, because they just went through a cycle back, I don't know when it was earlier this year, last year, when their immigration agenda was underwater and became pretty unpopular, not as unpopular. is how he handles cost of living or jobs or through around war, but still unpopular. Yeah, it's not an advantage for him anymore, which is a huge change in the political firmament. Yeah. All right.

This week's Democratic primaries were one of the last contests before the midterms. A week after Abdul El-Sayed defeated the establishment-backed Haley Stevens by just under a point in the Michigan Senate primary, the more moderate David Crowley eeked out an upset over Democratic socialist Francesca Hong in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary. In Minnesota, the more progressive lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan, beat Congresswoman Angie Craig by 20 points. In Connecticut, the center-left mayor of Hartford, Luke Brunen, knocked off 78-year-old Congressman John Larson, making him, making Larson the 7th House Democrat to lose a primary this year and the fifth past his retirement age. 2026 is now tied with 2012 as the worst year for Democratic incumbents in primaries this century. When you step back and squinted all the primary results this year, do they tell to you any kind of cohesive story about Democratic voters and the Democratic Party?

It's complicated, but yes, if you look at all the results, all the ones we've had, all of the DSA wins, the incumbents who got elected, the incumbents who got defeated, I think you can take a couple of things from this. One, Democrats are furious that Donald Trump is president. Two, Democrats are incredibly skeptical and distrustful of their own leaders, their own institutions, and the way the party has done politics in the past. Democrats are incredibly fired up about voting. They are turning out in huge numbers. Like in Wisconsin, this is a statistic blew me away. Nearly 250,000 more people voted in this Wisconsin primary than in 2018.

the year of the big blue wave. I know. That's wild. Now, what I think is, when you look at all of this, it sort of belies the overly simplistic narratives that people who talk about politics for living and try to jam this through. DSA versus centrists, left versus right, institution versus anti-institution, even generational. Like, it's a lot of these races. And the thing is, the Wisconsin and Michigan races combined.

If 18,000 votes between the two of them had gone a different way, we would have been like, DSA is dead. Long live the moderates. Or like, go comrade. The socialists have won. And it's all more complicated. And voters looked at it and made decisions. And there was some local factors in all of them.

I think the one thing that is true is that voters are looking for fresh faces. And those fresh faces are often younger. And we saw that. And all the incumbents you mentioned, it is a fresh face who has come in. and beating them in almost always a younger one. And, you know, and I think that that, like, Democratic voters are done with the gerontocracy. To your point about how many more voters are participating in this year's primaries versus 2018 or at least in Wisconsin?

Yeah. Is part of that that people who usually just vote in a general election but not a primary are now voting in a primary? I thought I saw somewhere that, like, just the interest is so high that even a lot of Normie Democrats, quote, unquote, who usually just turn out in a general but not a primary or now, like, interested enough and engaged enough that they want to participate in the primary. Yes, that's definitely happening. Wisconsin is particularly impressive. You have the run up because Wisconsin is one of the highest turnout states in the country. Right. But, yeah, I think the stakes of these primaries feel very high to people because I think there is a real question about where our party is going and people want to have a say in that. So they are turning out.

And it like it does, it felt that way in Wisconsin, felt that way in Michigan. in these races, I think that to the people in New York, city, in those races or in the Colorado one, it felt that way where it's like, our party is going to go one or two ways. And I want to have a say in which way it goes, because the direction we choose is going to matter, not just in the 2026, but in 28 and beyond. Pod Save America is brought to by ZipRecruiter. With everyday interactions becoming increasingly impersonal, someone going just one extra step can be huge. Like when my doctor takes the time to call me with test results instead of sending them electronically.

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That's ZipRecruiter. com slash crooked. ZipRecruiter, meet your match on ZipRecruiter. Pod Save America is brought to you by BombBombard. us, summer's coming to an end, so we're soaking up every outdoor moment we can. You've got to go to the beach, get a backyard barbecues, you're going on runs, you're just being outside in the nice weather. Bomba's makes your comfiest footwear staples so you can enjoy the end of summer and the transition to fall. You might be thinking, what's a comfy footwear staple? Sox. They've got a whole line of

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What else is on the list? Let's see. Motivation versus persuasion. Motivation versus center left. Let's see. Orange Man Bad is the best. Is the best political strategy? Is that a discourse or?

Yeah. Okay. How much should we focus on Trump? Right. Right. Wokeness. That's kind of a relatively new one. I don't know.

I'm just kind of shooting from the hip here. How are Democratic voters judging? Which candidate is more electable here in 2026, based on everything that you have seen thus far this year? I think like the pundits, the voters don't know who's more electable. And that is showing up. these races as people are making different choices. What I think is interesting is electability.

There's been this big discussion like in the Trump era, Democratic voters care a lot about electability. And that is true, but it's also always been true. And it is also an axiomatic thing, which is you want, do you want someone who can win or do you want someone who is less likely to win but agrees with you? People always pick the one who's going to win. You even look at the even before Trump in 2004,

when the Democratic primary that you were working on was going forward. people all of a sudden were like, wait a minute, we're going to run the anti-war governor of Vermont against George W. Bush. That's not a good idea. And then they immediately shifted to John Kerry the war hero. Didn't work out great, but you understand the thinking that got them there. In 2020, electability drove Biden's nomination. Six in 10 voters in a Gallup poll at that time said they'd rather have someone who was more likely to beat Trump than someone who they agreed with on policy issues. In the exit polls of the primary states, six in ten voters in most cases said electability was their top issue. People care about it. What is different now, and I believe you see this

in both Wisconsin and Michigan, is that the voters no longer trust the Democratic Party establishment and the experts to tell them who is most electable and they have to see it with their own eyes and make their own judgment. Because you have in Michigan. Unless it's Tony Evers. Well, I mean, I think we can debate Tony Evers obviously played a huge role in this, but this is the difference between Michigan and Wisconsin is all of the voices were saying, Abdul is less electable. Voters looked at that race. They looked at him. It was not patently obvious to him to enough of them that he was less electable than Haley Stevens. Wisconsin, Evers made electability number one issue down the stretch by announcing that he thought Hong could not win or was unlikely to win if she was.

the nominee. But then Hong went on a media tour where she did not acquit herself great and sort of amplify the questions that Evers had raised. So voters looked at that. I think if Evers had said she can't went and then she had done fine, they probably would have still picked Hong. But because of that, enough of people changed their mind in the final days to do it. And then in Minnesota, where Angie Craig made electability of the centerpiece of her issue, no one thought we would lose that seat. So they didn't care. I think that's a really important point that's getting lost in the Minnesota example because I think it sort of like I think a lot of voters, especially like highly engaged voters who pay attention to this, who are the voters that vote in primaries. They try to make rational decisions about who is going to, who they think is going to win the race, right?

And if you're in a state like Minnesota, where it just seems like the Democrat is going to win, and now Minnesota is not like a deep blue state, but you could make a good argument that Angie Craig or Peggy Flanagan, whoever won that nomination was going to be a heavy favorite. Like a likely DEC. And so in that scenario, as a voter, you look at the choices and you're like, well, now I am free. to just support whoever I want to support that I believe in the most. And, you know, Peggy Flanagan wins by 20 points. In Wisconsin, you have to imagine there were a bunch of Francesca Hong, people who really liked Francesca Hong and probably agreed with her more on the issues or found her campaign more inspiring or whatever it may be than David Crowley,

but looked around, looked at polls, looked at her performances, maybe looked at their governor that they like very much, even though he's older in establishment, and said, you know what? Can't do it. Can't do it. It's too important to win the state. And like that seems to me like an entire, like I know everyone always says like,

electability is all subjective and it doesn't matter. But like I do think there have to be some sort of objective standards by which to judge electability that I think voters are trying to sort of figure out on their own. There are, I think the way I like to think about it is no one knows for sure who is electable and who isn't. And the political environment is much more important than the quality of any individual candidate. But there are things we can look at. They give us an idea on people's electability. One of which is how they, what is their history of winning tough races? Do they have is their actual evidence of them winning over swing voters? This is quantified by split ticket and

their wins over replacement model, but you can just, like, we know that Andy Beshear and Josh Shapiro can win over Republican voters. They have proven that on multiple occasions. Do we know that Gavin Newsom or AOC can do it? We do not know that. Can they? Maybe, but they've never proven it before. So that's an untested proposition. We should say, because it's actually very useful for people, I think, is the wins above replacement sort of calculation. Basically what split ticket has done is, and other people have done anything similar, but what they've done is they come up with like a baseline, right? So if like the baseline...

How would a generic Democrat do? Right. How would a generic Democrat do? So what was like the national sort of was the national house vote? And they put a whole bunch of factors into it. And so if a regular Democrat or if a generic Democrat would win this race by two points and ex-candidate wins it by four points, then they're plus two win above replacement. If the other Democrat still wins the race,

but only wins it by one point, then they're minus one wins above replacement. And you can do this with all the different House candidates and all the different. Now, what was interesting in the case of Michigan is, first of all, a dual had run once for governor and lost. In a primary. In a primary. So he didn't have a long record there. Haley Stevens was sort of the lowest wins above average of any of the Democrats in the House in Michigan, which I hadn't realized.

So in that scenario, you actually didn't have, like, it seemed like Haley Seedons was like because she was more moderate and backed by the establishment, like maybe it thinks she was more electable. But in terms of the objective measures you had, that wasn't necessarily the case. Sure enough, the argument, which is, you know, Lacha Jane, who's the pollster for the argument and does the, and also is split ticket, does the wins above replacement. He said that they had in their model, if they have Abdul is a 70% chance. of winning the general, and Haley Stevens would have been 80% chance. So it's like 10% difference is it's something, but it's not. It's big. It's actually, I mean, the difference between 70 and 80 doesn't feel huge. The difference between 50 and 40 feels quite big when you get there. Well, but I think, well, that's my point. That gets you to the other, that gets you to the other measures, which not the, then you

get past data, right? Yeah. And so then there is the question of extremism. And it is a, there is, it's not always true, but it is mostly true that the candidate who is seen as more extreme loses. This is the thing that always makes people want to throw their phone in the ocean, but Donald Trump was seen as more moderate than Kamala Harris in 2024. And Joe Biden was seen as more moderate than Donald Trump in 2020. And so you look at that and you say, does Abdul, like if you take Michigan, for instance, you would say, does Abdul have positions in statements that could be used to make him seem more extreme than Haley Stevens.

Possibly. I think that's probably where you get to that net difference for them. Then the third thing is candidate quality. And this is all subjective, where you're like, does this person seem like they can stand? This is going to be trickly true in a presidential debate, the presidential election. Can they stand on the stage with J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio or Tucker Carlson, whoever else and like hold their own? Do they, can they go on podcasts?

Can they give a good speech? Can they do those things? And that, I think, is where Abdul seemed like he could, like he really showed a lot of candidate skill. And Haley just ran a campaign in the end where she was just not very present in the media. So people didn't see her. Although I would say her post-election media tour, she has crushed. Yeah. And then Hong went on this huge media tour, did every interview, seemed ill-prepared for a lot of them.

And that people saw that with her own eye. So it's like, yes, Eva said that. But then everyone actually saw clips that made them say maybe this person cannot win or is less likely to win. Well, that's why, too, it's like, yeah, it is subjective and no one really knows who's electable or not is technically true. But all of this exists on a spectrum. And there are some people where you're like, who's the more electable candidate? Well, they're both kind of good on TV and sometimes they make mistakes, but one's inspiring for this reason. And they're like, that's a close call.

With like, when Francesca Hong goes on TV and is like, well, let's. It has to talk about canceling Thanksgiving and why, you know, police exist to uphold white supremacy. Most people, most people who don't pay attention to politics, if you showed them that clip, they'd be like, yeah, that's weird. No, no thank you. So, like, that's an easier. Or, or, let's take another example, the Biden-Trump debate, right? Like, and Biden does perform so horribly that afterwards it's like, okay, yeah, there's, like nitpicky debate, you know, figure-skating judge, quality to analyzing debates, but that's an easy call. Most people would be like, that's awful.

Right. See, these are extreme examples, but the problem, it gets harder. Like, because we get to the presidential election, right? And so imagine you're down to at the end, I'm just picking these sort of randomly, Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, AOC. Oh, like they're all. That's a tough one. Yeah. Say they're all, like, you can make a case for all of them. And then it becomes more subjective. And then the thing that I think is important to note, and this is like a huge problem in 2020 is the electability discourse is very racially and gender coded. And there is just like there is this was particularly true in 2020 where it's just we filter the election through the mind of a white dude in Wisconsin and like, who do they want?

And people, but you hear this in focus groups all the time. People project onto voters they do not know biases. It's like Kamatharis did with people. Pputtejedge is the VP, right? You say, well, he's a gay man. That's too much for America. And that's like that very, and if you take that, but if you take that, you never, like, you would have said, you also would have said Barack who said Obama too much for America.

There are time, like, it's just, it is, it's just, I think the discourse is, there are some things you can look at it very real. There are some things that makes it quite complicated. And, and so it can narrow the aperture of what you're looking at. looking for. You're not even doing it based on data. You're doing it of perceived biases of the electorate or small sample sizes of women losing presidential elections. Sometimes I think we confuse in the electability discourse the very real perceived biases in the electorate, right? And the fact that a lot of this electability discourse is absolutely gender and racially coded with, okay, but that's

that is true. That is how people think. And what does a candidate in the campaign do to overcome that? So yes, people thought that Barack Obama couldn't be president because how are we going to elect a black guy named Barack Hussein Obama from Chicago as president of the United States when we just lost with the war hero against George W. Bush. And even black voters in South Carolina at the beginning of the campaign did not think that Barack Obama was ready. to become president. So what did Barack Obama do? He won over a bunch of white voters in Iowa and proved that maybe it's not so crazy to think that a black man named Barack or St. Obama could become president. So part of this is realizing the biases that exist in the electorate and then putting together a strategy to overcome those biases and prove yourself, unfair as it may be, it is the world that we live. Yeah. And what makes it more unfair, and this is where it played in 2020, is

there's a lot of the campaign that ever happens before you get to actual voters. Yeah. And so it's like you need money. You need attention. And when people like there was a Elizabeth Warren was at the top of the polls. And so there was a New York Times story about how Elizabeth Warren probably couldn't beat Trump. And she really tanked after that because the hyper-engaged Democrats, particularly ones at Iowa and New Hampshire, we're like, oh, wait, we love Elizabeth Warren. We like her policies.

But she probably can't beat Trump. well then we, six and ten of us would prefer to have someone who could beat Trump. And this is going to absolutely shade a lot of the discourse going into 2028, particularly because we have lost to Donald Trump two times now. Yep. You know, and so like, you know, unfairly or not, it's going to be a huge part of it. It's going to be, I think, hard for a lot of these candidates to overcome it. But, you know, stranger things have happened.

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Check out Whataday, now dropping in the PM on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. The polls were off by a decent amount in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota for different reasons. As the host of Polar Coaster, you are therefore required to defend this witchcraft that you keep telling us will predict the future with near certainty. Yes, that is, as all listeners of polar coaster know, that's what we say, the polls are not a snapshot in time. They're not an imprecise measure. They are perfect su-sang.

Now, look, I think if we look at these, the polls were very wrong, but let's talk about what that means in this case. One, it's worth noting that primary polls are often quite wrong. Yeah. Like they have a long history of being wrong. That has become more true. in this era where it becomes almost impossible to get anyone to take a poll. Because polling is now looks much more like election modeling where you're guessing what the electorate looks like

in advance and then waiting your very random sample to match that. And so if you guess the, if you model the electorate wrong, you are going to miss everything. And that it's easier to model in a general election, particularly now we've had a bunch of them in the Trump era, which is why the polls were more accurate at 2024. So, but that's even harder in a primary. It's particularly hard in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota, because those are open primary states where independents and Republicans can vote. It's one of the reasons that even it appears that the internal campaign polls were all

wrong because in those states, you can't even go off the voter file to poll. You were basically doing your either, these media pollsters are relying on self-reported party ID and the campaigns are using modeled support where they sort of guess whether someone's Republican or Democrat. But you go into it, you have no idea how many independents are going to. Like, they walk in to the voting booth and they pick a ballot. They get to choose right there. And so it's very hard to know.

It also seems very clear that in these states, the pollsters oversampled young voters. And these young voters tend to be more progressive. They're the one supporting Abdul and Flanagan and Hong. And that's a misjudgment of how many people vote. and they are undersampling working class voters, and particularly in Wisconsin and Michigan, black voters. And then the other thing I'd say is most of the polls that we saw were not high-quality polls.

We don't have New York Times-Syenne polls of these races. Marquette did poll. Markett is a highly pollster. They did poll in Wisconsin and were wrong. But their poll is actually more than a week old by the time the election happened. And one thing is that we, you know, we'd get a poll a week out, and it says the race is tied.

And then one candidate wins by three. everyone says the poll is wrong. It's like, well, it's also possible, addition to that just being the margin of error, people change their mind, undecided's move. And in Wisconsin, in particular, it seems very clear that there was real movement at the end. You had like in that, the state Navigate did a poll that was like five days out that ended up being quite wrong. But in that poll, so you had 9% of undecided voters. So all those voters seemed to have gone to Crowley. You had a bunch of other candidates in the field,

including two in Mandela bars and Sierra Rodriguez, who had dropped out of the race. And they had supporters. And some of those supporters went to David Crowley. And so what poll, like, we have to her polls. She hit her. Francesca Hong was basically polling around 40%, which is what she got.

Like in some of these polls, she was over it. She was four or five points over 40. But yes, it basically got her within a reasonable polling error. Right. They got her number. And what happened is everything else moved towards Crowley. And he had momentum. She was struggling down the stretch.

He spent $4 million, like in the last week, a week, 10 days or so, on broadcast in linear television, which I think made a huge difference. And so we have to remember that people change their minds, undecided voters decide. And that is what affects the final margin. And that it's certainly a huge factor in what happened, at least in Wisconsin, probably to some extent, Michigan as well. Minnesota's a little more confusing to me because in that one, the polls towards the end showed it kind of close. And then instead, Peggy Flanagan, the more progressive candidate won by 20 points. So they underestimated the more progressive candidate in Minnesota. Yeah, those polls might just been wrong.

It just goes to show you, I think, that like, it's a number of different factors. And it's like, I wouldn't think to ourselves as we go into the midterms and you tell me if I'm wrong that like, oh, no, they're always going to, oversample younger voters and the polls are all going to be off because that didn't happen in Minnesota and it hasn't happened in other places. It's possible. It's also worth remembering that in 2025, they polls in New Jersey and Virginia were off. They were very far off in New Jersey. And they undersampled Democrats in that case or over sample Republicans.

And it's going to be interesting. This is the, I mean, we're getting super nerdy here, but they're in, they were wrong in 16. The polls were right in 2018. 2018 behave like a normal midterm because all of these low engaged Trump voters did not turn out in that one. 2020, they were incredibly wrong. 2022, they were actually quite right. No one believes that because everyone thought the red wave is coming, but the polls were historically accurate in that race. And then in 2024, the polls were right again.

But the pollsters, for the most part, there are some exceptions, and Nate Cohn of the Times included. But they used basically like statistical sledgehammer to jam more Trump voters into the polls. which worked, how they're going to factor in and model Republican turnout in this election and how they're going to try to accommodate. Like, what the, what is the baseline? Are you, if you do it, what are you waiting? They waited, basically in 2024, they waited the poll to the 2020 vote chair. I don't know how they're going to do this here.

It's going to be very interesting to see. I should probably bring this up since it's sort of breaking here as we're talking. But Fox News released two Senate polls, Michigan. Mike Rogers 51, Abdul 47. And then Sherrod in Ohio is up by the same as he was last time, which is 53, 45. I don't know if I buy either of those to tell you the truth. I mean, Sherrod Brown is not winning Ohio by eight. That would be a 19 point overperformance of 2024.

That to me seems further off than the. Yeah, I would say that both of those races and. end up being closer closer and are like two point races. I think there's a world where Abdul could win by four or five. I find it highly unlikely that Mike Rogers could win by that much. Yeah. But I think there's work for Abdul to do. I think he has real work to do.

And it like he in all of the polling, even the ones that showed him doing the same as Haley Stevens against Mike Rogers, he was dramatically underperforming the political environment. It should be, this is it. it's 50-50 state, it should be, he should be starting with six points in his pocket. Right. Because, yeah, so everyone knows, even though Michigan's close, if the national environment is six points more favorable to Democrats than it was in 2024, then, yeah, that's how you get that. Speaking of election forecasts that promise 100% accuracy, Nate Silver dropped his midterm model this week called forecast with leading indicators, polls, and expert ratings, or flipper for short.

You want to call it flipper. So Nate's forecast have historically been closer to the mark than I think most other models. He's not known as someone who's biased towards Democrats or Republicans in his modeling. But it is notable that he gives Democrats, as of this recording, an 86.1% chance of winning the House. And I said as of this recording, 56% chance of winning the Senate. But I bet once he throws in that Michigan poll, that might go down a little bit. Yeah, the Fox is an A-rated poll. And so that will bring that down.

And since it just came out, I'm sure he hasn't updated it yet. But by the time you listen to this, it will be updated. What do you think of Nate's forecast and what should people know about what goes into that besides just polling? Because I think some people probably just assume that it's a polling aggregator where you're just throwing a bunch of polls together and averaging them out, which it's not. Yes. For a long time, the real clear politics polling average was what everyone followed. And that really was just math where they added all the polls together and then divided by the number of polls to get the average, as if the, They were in fifth grade math.

What Nate does, and others like Laxha Jane do, that's much more complicated, is they build a statistical model that takes in polling. They then, Nate at least weights the pollsters based on quality of the poll. He actually has in the past, I don't know if he's doing this in the case, he's established what it calls a house bias that some pollsters over time are tend to be more Democratic or more Republican, and then he will factor in that house bias into it. He will also includes fundamentals, like how much money the campaigns have raised, the larger political environment.

There is a benefit to incumbency in these races and fits that in. And then this time, actually, he has three versions of his model, the deluxe model, if you will, actually factors in the expert ratings from like Cook Political Report and others. It's, you know, it's interesting, too, if you read his methodology page, because the polls have been so wrong, he's overweighting towards fundamentals this time. Or he's putting, not overweight, he's putting more weight on fundamentals than he has in the past.

Interesting. Which is, which is interesting. And I'm going to be very, very interested to see what the Michigan poll, which by the time you guys are listening to this, you may be able to go to his site and check it out. But how that changes it.

Because if I recall correctly, I think maybe this was Laxia Jane, but I don't want to, I don't want to smear him in case it was an incorrect take. But basically, in some people's model that if Democrat's chances of winning the House, the Senate are, you know, let's say they're 57 or whatever it is. If they lose Michigan, that number drops to like the 30s. Yeah. So that if Michigan is a, you really need Michigan to take the Senate. And if we are a poll that shows

us losing Michigan badly, we'll probably move, move the Senate forecast a little bit at least. I also think the Senate forecast started even higher than 56 percent and it went down to 56 today because Yeah, it was a 57 on the first thing. Yeah, there was an Emerson poll that shows Tellerico down one in Texas. I'll tell you what, though, that poll shows Teller Rico was 70% of the black vote. And if he is down one with 70% of the black vote in Texas, then he is going to be, he's going to win by a fair amount. I think that I think that is a bad, probably not enough voters to actually have it. But he's going to get a lot more than 70% of the black vote.

Now, we're not in the prediction business. And, you know, we always warn you about these things. So what good is an election forecast for all of you? I do think that one of the more interesting parts of Nate's forecast, Nate's model, is for the house races, they show you, like, what are the closest house races in the country? And that can, like, that list can update. And I think if you're, you know, if you want to volunteer, if you want to donate money, it is kind of helpful to look and see the closest house races, the closest Senate races. And then, you know, you go to Votesave America. and we can make sure you're connected with the right people so you can have something to do and

someplace to donate. So I do think that is very helpful to have like what races are the closest and to kind of see it updating over time. It is emotional management for most people. They're going to live and die with several point drops in the forecast. Yeah. Yeah. Don't do that because it's going to be quite a polar coaster, if you will, from now until November.

All right. last thing before we go, White House Press Secretary Caroline Lovett announced on Wednesday that she's leaving her post at the end of the month to, quote, embark on a new chapter and spend more time with her kids. She will, of course, be missed. And as former White House comm staffers, we thought it only fitting to say farewell with a tribute to some of her finest moments. She's become a star. It's that face. It's that brain. It's those lips. They way they move. They move like she's a machine gun. Hatred has no place in the United States of America under President Donald Trump. The president's been spotted out in about a number of times with bandages on his hands. Could you please explain what that is about? The president is literally constantly shaking hands. Why was Renee Good unfortunately and tragically killed?

Are you asking me my opinion? Because an ice agent acted recklessly and killed on the testify. Oh, okay. So you're a biased reporter with a left-wing opinion. What are you wanting to do? Yeah, because you're a left-wing hack. The president had a feeling again based on fact that Iran was going to strike the United States, was going to strike our assets in the region. At this moment in time, of course, the ballroom is really the president's main priority.

He believes that Canadians would benefit greatly from becoming the 51st state of the United States of America. It's well past time that President Trump was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Because it was 2011 when Barack Obama and Seth Meyer said you'll never be president, Bloppity Bob. Here we are with President Trump going on state. as a two-term president. For the first time, this speech tonight will be classic Donald J. Trump.

It'll be funny. It'll be entertaining. There will be some shots fired tonight in the road. Very, you know, just North Korean propaganda through and through. Yeah, died, dead Bob. Yeah, big time. I love the Canadian. He does believe that Canadians will benefit

for being the 51st state. Just said with a straight face. Which was a thing that actually happened in American politics. Well, kudos to her for saying that all with the straight face. As for who might replace Levitt at the podium, names are already being floated all across the MAGAMedia ecosystem. Lots of exciting possibilities, and it's a wide open field. So each of us, without sharing with each other yet, has ranked our top five most likely picks.

So I think we should each go 5, 5, 4, 4, 3, 3. Okay, that's what I was hoping for. Okay. They really kind of miss up the punchline of mine, but we'll do it this way. Okay, that's fine. You want to go for, who's your number five? Who's your number five? Number five is Marco Rubio.

That's funny. That's funny. I already saw some of the Rubio on the couch memes where he's got a blonde wig on. So yeah. Yeah. I use those. My number five, Erica Kirk. Now that is an interesting suggestion.

You think it's crazy, but you're like, wait a minute. She's, you know, she's, there's a lot of public speaking. big favorite of the MAGA world. Who knows? Number four? So before I gave number four, I would like to just point out my thinking here, which is Donald Trump has had five press secretaries. Can you name all five?

Whoa. Oh, because we have to go back to the first term, huh? Yeah. I can do it for you. Sean Spicer, Katie McEnany. Yep. Oh, what's his name? Scaramucci.

Never press secretary. He wasn't for 14 days? Communication structure. Oh, he didn't step in for the, oh, yeah. He might have in some briefings. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Yep. Caroline Levitt.

And so now I'm just one, I have one, right, that I'm missing? Stephanie Grisham. Oh, Stephanie Grisham. Yes. Okay. Okay. So five prescriptories, the last four have been women. Mm-hmm.

I don't think Donald Trump's going to pick a man. I don't either. So my number four is. Although I have one man on my list. I did too, obviously. obviously. But my number four is Anna Kelly, who's currently the deputy press secretary. You know, I keep seeing that around, but it's like, I feel like he always wants to go for someone who has been on TV a bunch. He's also lazy. So, yeah, that's true. He's a man so lazy.

He wouldn't even pick a new national security advisor. Yeah, that's true. That would be the, that's the lazy route. I don't think it's obviously what I'm not what I think is most likely, but I think it's on the table. My number four is my favorite in yours, Trisha McLaughlin. Oh, God, that's definitely not happening, but that is a good suggestion for content purposes. You don't think it's, I think, well, I did read somewhere that she might be pregnant, so that would be tricky, at least if it's happening soon. I don't know how pregnant she is or what, but like, but I could see, I mean, she was clearly auditioning for White House Press Secretary her entire time at DHS, and she has not taken a new job

yet. Okay, look, it is on the table. All right. My number three, number three? Carrie Lake. Yeah. Carrie Lake is, it's a possibility. Trump loves her.

Trump loves her. She's a loyalist. She is crazy. She'll fight with the press, which is what he cares about most. She's very, she's a former reporter. She's good on TV in a Trumpian way. She's good on TV. Right.

Right. Yeah. I thought about her. And I was like, as she, you know, Trump likes his spokespeople, like, young, like Fox news anchors. Yeah. That's the only thing that. Yeah.

Well, then my number three, same thing that's is a departure from this, which is Scott Jennings. Interesting. See, I was thought about Scott Jennings, but then I went with my whole man thing and then I had to do the very cheesy and funny Rubio joke. I would not put the money on Scott Jennings, but I put them on my list because I could see. Because we are betting all of these on Calci, right? That's, yes, of course. Yes, obviously.

As we do with everything. Okay. My number two, Katie Miller. So I was going to have Katie Miller. on there. And then I, of course, did some research for this segment. And in one of the Politico stories about the search, a source close to Miller said, not happening. Absolutely not. That's exactly. Oh, now, you think that's a thing? Miller's word. Yes. Maybe what was she? She has a wildly successful podcast. What's she going to do with that? Maybe she

just do the podcast in the briefing room. Yeah, that's probably probably good. She likes attention. she's very combative. Yeah, I mean, she would, yeah, I could see it. Yeah. I have, isn't my number two? No one. Just doesn't fill the role, continues to have a bunch of dipshits, jump into the briefing room once in a while and says,

fuck it, I don't even want the press, I don't want to deal with it. He's the press secretary. Yeah, I thought about putting that on my list too. And then I thought that was maybe like a little, a little trying too hard for a viral clip, if you will. What? That no one? If I said Trump.

If I picked Trump. Number one choice is Donald Trump. Yeah, that is a little. That seemed like a bit much. Yeah, no, that is. I think he really cares about the briefing. He wants to watch something. He doesn't want to watch stuff all the time.

It is a law on the Fox schedule during the day. I think he does not watch Will Kane. So usually the briefing is during Will Kane. And so that solves that problem for him. Will Kane? Too dumb. Yeah. All right, number one.

Number one. This is a totally out of, left field. It's a crazy choice. Rachel Campos Duffy. She's on Kalshi. But she fell, she started at like 40%. Like, I don't know how they bet there. I think it was like 40% or something. And then she's like falling down to less than 1%. Yeah, I think I'm not sure the people who are betting Calshie. What we have to watch for is if all of a sudden there is a surge behind one person. Yeah. That's the only thing you can trust Cali. She's a Fox News anchor. She is very, she's reality TV star.

She's married to Sean Duffy. Married to her cabinet. Yeah. Loyal. Trump likes her a lot. He talks about her a lot. Back when before Sean Duffy was in the cabinet, he used to tweet in truth about her all the time.

Oh. Oh. I could see that one. She was on my list. Yeah. I should have, I should have kept her on my list. Um, I have Alina Haba is, is. That's, yeah.

And she's, I knew, I knew, I knew. I knew. I knew. I knew it in my soul, you were going to pick Alina Haba first. And so for content purposes, I took Alina Haba off my list. I know. I almost didn't want her first because I was like, I think it's more, it's boring as a selection. But I actually think if we're just doing most likely, I would put money on that.

Yeah. So you were taking this as a serious game. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Just like I take it terminally online, you know. I was doing this for totally content purposes. Of course. Of course.

Yes. Of course. Yes. Well, good luck to everyone on our lists. And hopefully it was good to do some outside the box ones that are not. not on Calci like Erica Kirk and Trisha McLaughlin because maybe if we say them, you know, the Magaverse listens to us. So we just, if we put it out there, maybe we can build some buzz behind these people.

If you are listening to Positive America and then you think that we said something about who Trump might hire as his press secretary and then you went and put money on that, get help. Well, that might describe Elijah. he's so far behind help. I can hear us still laughing. All right, Dan. Well, that's our show for today.

Tommy will be back on the feed on Sunday with a conversation with tech journalist Casey Newton about the terrifying AI moment we're in. Exciting and what we can do about it. Casey's awesome. That's going to be a great conversation. And then John and Tommy and I will be back with a new episode on Tuesday.

Have a good weekend, everyone. Bye, everyone. Pod of America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Ferris Safari with Reed Jirlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt De Groot, Ben Heffcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Carol Pellev, David Tolls, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. The What a Day podcast you know and love is shaking things up. You already know that five days a week, I, Jane Koston, bring you the need-to-know news and expert analysis on the big stories shaping today and tomorrow.

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