Pod Save America - Trump's War on Blue America

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Donald Trump orders National Guard troops to Chicago and Portland, making good on his promise to generals to use American cities as "training grounds." Jon, Tommy, and Lovett discuss the court order��issued by a Trump-appointed judge—that blocked the deployment in Portland, the military-style immigration raids that rocked Chicago last week, and the signals that Stephen Miller and the rest of the Trump administration are sending about what's next for blue America. Then, the guys check in on the ongoing government shutdown, react to Trump's unexpected hint that he may be willing to negotiate with Democrats on healthcare subsidies, and discuss what it'll take for Prop 50—California's redistricting response act—to pass in November. Then, Ben Smith, Editor-in-Chief of Semafor and host of the Mixed Signals podcast, joins Tommy to talk about Bari Weiss taking over CBS News, the right's attack on free speech and Jimmy Kimmel, and the future of network media.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. Get tickets to CROOKED CON November 6-7 in Washington, D.C at http://crookedcon.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today's presenting sponsor is SimplySafe Home Security. I think we all agree that being proactive is better than being reactive. Oh, boy. Being reactive is Mitch McConnell opposing pieces of Trump's policy agenda in 2025 and talking him in the press. That whole glitch thing. Being proactive would have been, you know, preventing him from becoming president again when he was the literal Senate majority leader.

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for yourself. Right now, our listeners can save 50% on a SimplySafe home security system at Simplysafe.com slash crooked. That's simplysafe.com slash crooked. There's no safe like SimplySafe. Welcome to Potsave America. I'm John Favar. I'm John Lovett. I'm Tommy Duthor. On today's show, the shutdown continues with no end in sight. The November elections are a month away, and this week we're going to talk about Gavin Newsom's ballot measure here in California to neutralize Republican gerrymandering. And then you'll hear Tommy's interview with Ben Smith at Semaphore about the impact of Barry Weiss taking over at CBS News, how Donald Trump's media filter may be impacting his decisions, and whether the ABC News Jimmy Kimmel saga has changed corporate media. But let's start with the President's War Against Blue America, which has now come to Chicago and Portland.

I'll just quickly go through the facts of what's been happening on the ground, and then you guys can respond. In Chicago, armed federal agents have been engaged in military styles. immigration raids. They're calling Operation Midway Blitz. Last week, Black Hawk helicopters landed on a south side apartment building in the middle of the night where about 100 agents in tactical gear used flashbang grenades to bust through the residence doors, dragged them outside, including legal residents and U.S. citizens, including children, some naked, and zip tied them together for hours. No warrants, no lawyers, kids crying, separated from their families, They have also deployed tear gas outside schools and on streets, not just against peaceful protesters, but people who were just passing by.

They arrested a city council member in a hospital who had merely asked to see a warrant. They've shot rubber bullets and pepperballs at multiple journalists who just filed a lawsuit. They shot lethal bullets at a woman in a vehicle they said was trying to ram them. Though just before we started recording, I said that they had the body cam footage shows that maybe they rammed her as they're going through the court proceeding. So, of course, you can't trust anything they say. Some of the raids they filmed for social media, so Christy Noem could tweet them out. She was there in person last week in Chicago, whining after local officials in one building didn't let her use the potty. Then promising that Trump would be sending in the Department of War, which he did.

On Saturday, the president announced he'd be deploying 300 troops from the Illinois National Guard over the objections of Governor Pritzker. And then on Sunday, he decided to send 200 troops from the Texas National Guard to Chicago as well. Governor J.B. Pritzker and the city of Chicago are suing to stop the deployments and the judge scheduled a hearing for later this week. Here's Donald Trump crowing about his progress on Monday afternoon in the Oval Office, followed by Pritzker's response to the takeover. We're going to make Chicago really great again, and we're going to stop this crime. Then we're going to go to another one, and we're going to go city by city. We're going to have safe cities. I believe that Pritzker and this mayor of Chicago that like to say about we have it, they don't have it under control.

Not only is it not under control, it's the opposite. And I believe they're afraid, they're scared for their lives. I think they can fool us all into thinking that the way to get out of this crisis that they created is to give them free reign. Well, that plan will only work if we let it. the state of illinois is going to use every lever at our disposal to resist this power grab and get gnomes thugs the hell out of chicago i'm not afraid i am not afraid and i won't back down so last week we had trump telling an audience of generals that they're now fighting quote an enemy within uh urge them to use america cities as quote training grounds looks like we're seeing that now we'll get to what's happening in portland in a second

But what do you guys make of the situation in Chicago, which, as Trump said, is not only not under control, but the opposite. Yeah, that could change me a little bit. Out of control. Right. It's the opposite of under control. Over control. That's not right. That's not right.

Even the terminology is kind of chilling. Operation Midway Blitz. The Blitz was when the Germans bombed the shit out of London for about a year. Yeah, I thought that was for like foreign military operations. we give we give uh names to yeah like just even you know you're claiming you're doing this on behalf of the people of chicago call it something like safe right safe dish deep dish deep deep hot deep safety yeah tavern style safety do you see the videos of the the chicago cops who were tear gas by ice too oh yeah i forgot about that there's so many of these videos that i've like forgot to

include them all and like look i just think that the political take home is this to me is the fight trump wants. He wants to call us weak on both immigration and soft on crime. And I think he wants these images on TV of like what looks like violent and chaotic. And so he sends ice into these communities in the most inflammatory way possible to try to make that happen. And like these ice raids like that Black Hawk helicopters kicking down doors at night with flashbangs, that is like what the special forces did for two decades in Afghanistan or Iraq. And they have their social media teams like filming it all and releasing it. The hype video they did release reminded me of the video Buckele released when we first sent all the Venezuelan men to Sukkot.

And so it's like clearly a strategy. I don't think it's a smart strategy. We'll get into some of the polling later, but like 58% of voters in a CBS poll, so they disapprove of National Guard deployments. I'm not sure like they want to see, you know, people getting brutalized in these communities. But Stephen Miller does. Yeah, to the point of not being able to believe the word they said.

So first of all, they're repelling into the roof. To what end? For what purpose? Like, they're trying to get out of a bottom bad, before the Pakistanis behind us. It's filled with Trende Aragua. Well, that's the other thing. They're like, we were actually doing this to get gang members.

They've released no information about that. They can't be trusted. They said a bunch of people who were innocent were gang members when they shipped them off to El Salvador. So we can't take their word for it. All we do see are images of Americans and legal residents being bound up and complaining about this happening in their building. It's a completely ridiculous outside show of force, which they're doing for the cameras to make their fascist adjaprop. and, you know, the defense, they're going to release information at some point saying, look at all these people that Democrats wish we're still in these buildings, as if it is not

possible for our laws to be enforced without a Blackcock helicopter of an American city and people repelling down onto the roof. Yeah, I mean, imagine if, let's take their word for it, that there were Trenderauga, you know, gang members in that building and get a warrant from a judge. You can, there's a million ways that you can go into the building and, you know, and arrest these people without them running away or knowing that you're coming, right? Stairs, right? Like not black hot helicopters. It's a five-story building, by the way. This isn't, this isn't, this isn't, right? This isn't

right. This isn't like two apartments buildings. Yeah, but also, like, there's a lot of people in there. They took all the residents out. And they're definitely lying, at least about some of the people, because a lot of citizens and legal residents were already, have already been released because they didn't do anything. But they were out in the cold for hours. These kids are screaming. Like little kid those eyewitness was talking to like a local television channel there and just said it was like horrifying these kids who were like some of them were naked some of them weren't like fully clothed and they're crying and they're separated from their parents and one of the ICE agents is saying fuck them kids and like they just don't care and this is also the war on terror coming home to roost because like the cops now have MRAPs because there's all this leftover military equipment from Iraq and Afghanistan ice has a black hawk helicopter in Chicago for some reason what do we? doing here we completely militarized policing in this country and they are the ice agents now are acting with impunity because they have good reason to believe they're not going to be held accountable and because they are trying to meet stephen miller's quota of 3,000 arrests per day and i guess a

million deportations a year and so they're going to just arrest everyone who they see and like this is this is what we're getting to your point about strategy to me like it's definitely it's interesting like their strategy for sure is they want people to see that this is a militarized operation and that they are happy to use force yeah the difference is like the lie is about who it's directed towards right so they want to put out keep putting out videos that tell you yes they're using it's a militarized operation yes they're using force but it's against the worst or the worst these terrible crimes again and democrats are against it and the videos that we're actually seeing are them using force against not the videos they're

putting out, but the videos that we're seeing otherwise are them using force against cops, kids, innocent people, American citizens, peaceful protests. Right. They drive a tank through the wall and they pull out Andre the hairdresser from the other side. Right. Come on, guys, this is bullshit. Yeah, it's the other thing, too, is it's like, it's all predicated. Like, they do have a siege mentality now, right? These ICE officers themselves feel like they're under siege. They've been made, they've internalized that. Stephen Miller's whole, like, there's a country under siege. Our side is under siege. And so they respond with siege like tactics. And who does that work for? Well, it works for people that are, like, it works fully for people that are only imbibing

information in their ecosystem, right? Because they see the reports about how these cities are in turmoil and in crisis, and then they see positive reports from Kristyneum and all these people defending what they're doing. If you're outside of that bubble, you see a mix, right? You see what these guys are claiming. You see the local leader saying that this is ridiculous. You see footage of Portland and Chicago being normal places. Yes, there are areas where there have been like a few blocks of protests, even unruly in protests that have turned chaotic and even violent. But for the most part, of course, this is ridiculous. And so then you end up with, like, the mass majority of Americans in these polling saying, look, I don't support this. I certainly wouldn't want it in my city,

right? They may not trust Democrats to enforce either immigration laws or to be strong on crime, right? They see Democrats as weak. That's in the CBS poll. But they certainly don't want this crackdown. money. Everybody knows there are things you can do to reduce monthly costs and improve your finances. But who has time to go through all your expenses and decide what to trim? Not me. With Rocket Money, crunching the numbers for you, leveling up your money game, it gets way easier. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions. It monitors your spending and helps you lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money shows you all your expenses in one place, including subscriptions

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Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney.com slash Crooked. Go today. That's rocketmoney.com slash crooked. All right, let's turn to Warravaged Portland, where Trump announced at the end of September, he was deploying troops to use, quote, full force. necessary against protests outside a single ice facility that haven't involved more than 20 people since June. There were about 20 people outside this one ice facility since the end of June. Like a couple weeks in June, it was pretty unruly. And I know that because it's in the court document. It's in the ruling that we're going to talk about. So like Governor Pritzker, Governor Tina Kotech opposed the deployment of the Oregon National Guard and sued the Trump administration. On Saturday, a federal judge agreed to block the deployment, at least temporarily,

saying that Trump's claims about violent unrest in the city are, quote, simply untethered to the facts and that, quote, the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claim that the president exceeded his constitutional authority and violated the 10th Amendment. The 10th Amendment, for those who don't know, is if it's not explicitly spelled out in the Constitution as a power or an authority that the federal government has, those authorities are, they go to the states. The states have. And the people, John. The people. And the fucking people. That's us, yeah. The judge also said, quote, this is a nation of constitutional law, not martial law.

I should note here that this radical left Marxist judge, Karen Imurgut, was appointed in 2019 by Donald Trump. The White House then tried to get around the ruling by sending troops from California to Oregon instead. Texas is also trying to send troops to Portland. Judge Immigate didn't think this move was all that clever. She wasn't too happy about this, and she held a second emergency hearing on Sunday night, where she clarified that no guard troops from any state could be deployed to Portland for the time being. The administration appealed that ruling to the Ninth Circuit. As of this recording, we are waiting for them to rule.

Trump had some choice words about Portland and the judge. Let's listen. Portland is on fire. Portland's been on fire for years. And not so much saving it. We have to save something else because I think that's all insurrection. You look at what's happened with Portland over the years. it's a burning hellhole

and then you have a judge that lost her way that tries to pretend that like there's no problem she lost her way she lost her way Trump also said on Sunday that he only nominated Amhergut in his first term because he got bad advice

what did you guys make of her ruling and Trump's reaction he doesn't know why he nominated her he doesn't mean he's like what a list he approved that came up came across his dad's... Yeah. Leah Littman did a great video breaking down

what happened in Portland with this ruling on the strict scrutiny YouTube. I highly, highly recommend it. But in that video, she made the point

that sending one state's national guard to another state is basically an administration orchestrated civil war. And I think that's how we should see this. And, you know,

as you mentioned, like the judge in this case could not have been more scathing. You can see these protesters. Their videos are all over Twitter. It is like 20 people. A lot of them are old. People are in hollow.

Halloween costumes. There's a chicken suit. There's a dude dressed like, like, uh, Yoshi or something. Like it's, it's, look, that lawn chairs are involved at one point. Back in June, some shit went down. Um, but like, when people are violent, they should be arrested. But like, the idea that the Portland cops couldn't handle that is crazy. If people say mean things, guess what?

That's protected speech. And that's how it goes. I talked to Ben Smith about this. I do wonder if, like, comments like what we just saw do stem from his information bubble. Because in Trump's world on true social, it's all adulation and like Antifa videos. from 2020 of people throwing, you know, bricks through Starbucks windows, and the reality is very different. And, but like, either way, the suggestion that ICE can't do their jobs in Portland without a

National Guard deployment is ludicrous on its face that Trump judge said as much. And, like, it's, I can't even believe we're talking about this. I also think that it was in Ben's piece on this on Trump's media filter bubble. It's the people around him, too, right? And so they know what his media diet is. And so Stephen Miller is telling him things are so much worse than they are. And, you know, Ben brought up that quote that Trump told Oregon's governor in late September. Am I watching things on television that are different from what's happening?

My people tell me different, which I kind of believe. There was a moment, too, where in one press conference code I talks about talking to Trump. And Trump's like, oh, well, we'll just keep talking. He's very kind of like convivial on the phone. The ruling, by the way, like, it's like just a, I recommend reading at least excerpts of it. It's like a beautiful piece of logic, and it's actually pretty conservative. It goes through the case methodically and not with any kind of grand hyperbole, but it just starts from principle.

And what I appreciate about it is two things. One uses these exact kind of words from Trump against him, where she basically says, this is not in good faith. Look at how he's describing Portland. That is not accurate. That is not what's happening on the ground. And the other part of it is, you know, there's been a lot of question about how deferential courts have to be to trump these words. They're not defined. Insurrection, rebellion, right? And she's very

careful of saying, yes, the president gets a great deal of deference. Of course. But deference is not equivalent to ignoring the facts on the ground. And I do think that's really important because even if you are being deferential to the president, no, like you do not have to be so open-minded that your brain falls out of your head. There's no invasion. There's no rebellion. There's no insurrection. The laws are still operating. The courts are still operating. This is ridiculous on its face. and you can be deferential to the executive on these matters without giving into that. It's just a very careful argument, including asking us to whether or not this fits into a permitted range of honest judgment, which, by the way, is not just about this law. It's also about the Insurrection Act, which I know we're going to talk about, but I do think is important.

Well, clearly this is all like the brainchild of Stephen Miller, who by all accounts, is the person actually running the federal government. He went a bit further than Trump in a series of tweets over the weekend that sound like a fascist chatbot. He used the term, quote, legal insurrection called the decision one of the most egregious and thunderous violations of the constitutional order we have ever seen in an attempt to, quote, nullify the 2024 election by Fiat. He also claimed that there's a large organized movement of, quote, left-wing terrorism being shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors, and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks. he just he was on a fucking tear called Sam Stein repugnant Sam Stein

like the least repugnant who was just like who just basically quote tweeted the legal insurrection quote and was like what a thing to say on a Saturday night and he's like you are repugnant you're a fucking called representative Dan Goldman vile broken clock we were all watching in our office

Stephen Miller on doing this CNN interview earlier today and you just he does every interview from the kind of a weird angle and he has this shrieking shrill like a grieved tone it's just like so clearly a performance. And it's remarkable to watch Stephen Miller rant and rave about domestic terrorism and nullifying the results of an election when like the clearest act of domestic terrorism in this country's recent history with January 6th. And he defends that. Like I assume

this is the continuation of the post Charlie Kirk rhetoric where they are trying to build a conspiracy that will allow them to pull in like funders and progressive groups and say that they're somehow providing material support for terrorism and and you know go after like the Soros Foundation the Ford Foundation or like Center for American Progress or whatever groups that they decide are their enemies. But it's it's risable. It's laughable. After all of those tweets from Stephen Miller and the interview that we saw today in the office, he tweeted something just now that he accused Democrats of raving histrionics. Okay.

It's unbelievable, right? Like that if you refer, if you refer to any of this as fascist, you're inciting violence. Meanwhile, the left is an organized terror movement. Our opponents are an enemy within. The cities are war zones and a training ground for the military. Judges who rule against us are legal insurrectionists. And by the way, these are just facts. And if you don't see that, you're the one that's being emotional.

Yeah. It's like, I can't tell what to make of, like, Steve, look, there are all kinds of members of the administration that are saying, you know, Christy Noem kind of is extreme. there's all different versions of this, but Stephen Miller does stand apart, I think, in the rhetoric that he's using, in the extremism, in the language he's using. And I really can't tell, like, is he like going to, is he the boy who cried terrorism, right? Is he like making this all feel less real, even to his own side, right? Like, is it all feel like it's not going to lead to anything? Or is this, or and or is this just a preview of things to come? That now it all

feels so crazy. And then all of a sudden they start treating these as facts. and go from there, including insurrection, like calling the judge's insurrectionist is not an accident. The language apart from being extreme and very fascist sounding is also like there's a lot of legalese in there in that he is, I think what, when you say is it a sign of things to come, it's what he wants to have happen. And he is the one who continues to push the envelope within the administration, I think, right? So remember he floated that getting rid of habeas corpus and then he sort of walked, Like he keeps, he keeps pushing and pushing and pushing. And I think that's what this is about, right?

Which is every time a judge rules against them, even if it's a Trump judge, now it's legal insurrection. We got to go after the judges. Every time a Democrat says every time there's a protest out there, it's Democrat violence, it's left-wing terrorism, all this kind of stuff. So he's trying to set the predicate for much more extreme action. Right. And he knows the bounds of what he, it is rhetorical because he knows the bounds of where he's not

getting ahead of Trump because actually one of the. these interviews, he's responding to a question about whether he should be, if the president should be ignoring or breaking the rulings that judges say. And he goes, no, I'm just saying factually accurate things. I'm just saying, I'm just saying what the facts are and these are legal insurrections. But that no is pretty important, right? Like, he's not getting ahead of the president on that. Well, notably in the Oval on Monday, Trump called what's happening in Portland insurrection. And when asked, said he would invoke the insurrection act if, quote, people were being killed and courts were holding us up

or governors or mayors were holding us up. That's quite a range of activities that would lead to the insurrection. I know. Anyone want to explain like what's going on with the Insurrection Act

and how it's different than what's been happening so far? I mean, look, there's the legal scholars for a long time have said the Insurrection Act is ridiculously broad and needs to be reformed.

Just missed it. Yeah, I wish we'd done that one. That's a real bummer. Again, can't even, the government is closed right now so couldn't do that. let alone reforming the insurrection act not our biggest obstacle but that's like when i was when gay marriage wasn't legal like that wasn't my obstacle to marriage uh in the same way uh but uh there

there are multiple parts of the insurrection act some of them require state buy-in some of them don't some of them more broader than others some of them are not i don't want to like play down the dangers of the president invoking the insurrection act at the same time if you go back and look at the warnings of how a president could use the insurrection act warnings from 2022 2021 right what you find is a description of what Trump is already doing. And it seems like what they like is the idea of signaling that the Insurrection Act is some like final boss for the lips. Yeah.

Right. But it's not. And the other part of this and Brennan Center talks about this, legal scholars talk about this, there is no martial law in this country. Even if there's military in our streets, you still have your constitutional rights. Those do not go away. And the court has held that. The idea that the insurrection act is sort of beyond traditional review is just not true.

Like I'm not saying it's a great day. But as I said, the ruling from that judge on the president deploying National Guard references the ruling that says there are limits on the invocation of the Interaction Act as well. So it's scary, but like it's not some get out of court free card for them. Yeah, no, they're just so horny to declare martial law. Like Elon Musk was tweeting over the weekend that we need to bouquet the court system here. And what that means is basically throw out any independent judges, pack the courts with loyalists and then declare what Buckele called a state of acceptance. of you called a state of emergency here where they just suspended due process and through people indiscriminately in jail with no charges, some for life. So that's what Elon Musk is advocating for on Twitter. There is a, the difference between what Trump has already been doing with the troops and what he could do theoretically with the Insurrection Act is you remember when the troops were here in LA, they were only guarding the federal buildings. And if you listen to Miller and some people in the administration, there's saying, well, we're just saying them in to guard the ice facilities, to guard the ice facilities,

protect the ice facilities because they're federal buildings. And so what he's trying to do now is basically say he's deploying troops to defend federal buildings and only to be on to defend things, right? And it's not offensive. It's not, they're not supposed to be able to do law enforcement activities, right? The Insurrection Act theoretically allows them to do law enforcement activities. Yeah. So that would be the difference. But like you said, while there may not be much courts can do to review the invocation of the Insurrection Act, the manner in which it is carried out is definitely reviewable.

Meaning that you can't just suddenly have troops in the streets arresting Americans and, you know, throwing their rights out. I'd also would just say, like, I've seen that distinction, and maybe that could turn out to be very important. But if you look at the way in which Stephen Miller and others are describing what they're already allowed to do, they've actually left behind the idea that they're just guarding buildings because now they can be there in support of law enforcement operations.

But they're defending the federal agency. as they get attacked. Sure, yes, of course. But that's what I'm saying. That's the thin reed that they're hanging in. Yes, but even still, it's like, okay, they are hiring vast numbers of new ice agents. That will be the vanguard for all of this. We're talking about a distinction.

Okay, if the insurrection act invoked, if you have troops but without the radicalized ice agents with them, is that better? Is that worse? Like, I do think they think, they probably think that the political impact of saying insurrection act is probably worse for them. Yeah, all I'm saying is that, like, we've heard. gone so far. I don't think anyone knows what it would mean for the president to invoke the Insurrection Act, but we already have troops on the ground, not just to defend federal buildings, but anywhere there's ICE, which is everywhere. Well, let's talk politics because back when it was L.A. and D.C., you know, there were all these warnings. This could be good

politics for Trump. I remember there was in D.C. There was a lot of, like, Democrats are walking into Donald Trump's trap. He wants to make everything about crime, and here we go. New CBS poll over the weekend shows 58% of voters disapprove of the Guard deployments. They also asked, you know, do you support sending active military to cities? Only 39% said yes, 61% no, including 70% of independents said no, even one in five Republicans said no. What do you guys think about the politics of all this? Yeah, his immigration handling was only at 45 approved, 55 disapprove, and the deploying National Guard was 42-58. I mean, overall, his polling is just around this 42% approval number.

It hasn't really budge for like a decade now. You know what I mean? I'm a little, like, I'm a little skeptical. We'll get to this in the shutdown too. I'm a little skeptical of some of these under the hood numbers. I just, like, think most people aren't paying attention. I don't think this is necessarily, like, I don't think the images of what we're seeing in Chicago of, like, tear gassing cops and brutalizing kids and random people is, like, a good political message for them. I don't.

I guess there was another number there, which is, like, they did a most important issue. And crime was only at 9%. And it was, you know, ahead of crime was immigration, then health care, then in front. than economy, the most important. So his whole goal of making this about fighting crime, which he'd started to do at least a little bit in D.C., it just hasn't worked. That's not what people think this is. Yeah, and I do think, like, to Tommy's point, like, he's kind of been stuck in the same

place for a long time. You look at this CBS poll, and, you know, most people view Republicans as extreme and strong and Democrats as weak. Number one word. Number one word is weak. And so maybe they don't like this, but they don't trust. And so we think it's bad for him, but maybe it reflects a weakness on us as well. By the same token, every image of Trump and talking about how we're going to liberate the city of Chicago and Christine O'm saying they wouldn't let me do a deployment at a facility that I needed to get into is another moment where Trump is not talking about any issue that people cared about.

This poll had 75% of people saying Trump is not focusing on lowering prices enough, which is correct and like a pretty devastating problem for him that is not solved by more attention on these. issues, even if this issue is better for him than others. Yeah. It's in some sense they might not care. At least they're acting like they don't care, right? That the politics are bad. They're just like forging right ahead. I mean, we're still, you know, it's important to debate politics in regard to like what

Democrats should do. I think in the Trump administration's mind, they're like, you know, somewhat concerned about politics. Clearly, they want to win the midterms. But when you get to people like Stephen Miller, he's like, no, I just want to deploy force. Yeah, scare people like, I don't give a fuck about the politics. Yeah. I really think that's, for some of them, that's what they think.

I also honestly think that they have a kind of deeper and smarter relationship to like polling than a lot of Democrats do because they understand that you can lose on specific issues and specific questions for a long time while building up credibility in a broader way, in a deeper way that's harder to measure. And like I just, how have they not been validated by that over the years? So that's what I think is part of this, too. Yeah, it's going to take an election or two for them to, at least some of them, to register. that this is not popular. Last thing before we get to the shutdown,

Nome took the time on Friday to join Maga's War against Bad Bunny as the Super Bowl halftime show, saying ICE will be, quote, all over the Super Bowl and not necessarily seeming to know that people from Puerto Rico, which Bad Bunny is from Puerto Rico, are American. And she shares that with many Trump supporters or Trump influencers. They seem to not know that Puerto Rico is part of America,

and they think that Bad Bunny is not U.S. citizen. It's like on some level, like, they know it intellectually, but they can't feel it in their bones. Right. They know it every time. It's in there. They're not stupid. They know it, but they don't feel it.

Just feel true. There's also a very funny, Shane Gillis, a comedian, his reaction to this whole latest culture war thing around Bad Bunny in the Super Bowl is quite funny. Let's listen. And I'll tell you what I'm mad about, bad bunnies doing the halftime show. That's good. Pissing me the fuck. No, of course.

Of course. Who gives a fuck? It's very funny to me that people were upset about that. Everyone's smart. The right gets it so wrong. With what they're outraged. Everybody's outraged about everything, obviously. But when it's like, dude, don't lose on this one.

Why are you mad about bad? I think it's because he doesn't speak any. Speak English. I'm trying to watch football. It's like, who does Christy Knoem think attends the Super Bowl? Do you think it's a bunch of Venezuelan migrants who left everything behind and just like made us the United States? There's like 10 grand sitting around to buy a ticket to go to a, to go to Santa Clara,

to Levi Stadium, to go. of the game. Like, it's like this, again, this was all, uh, because of a question from that bozo Benny Johnson at TPUSA to Christy Nome. It kind of like kicked off this manufactured culture war thing. And they, they, Benny suggested that the selection of bad bunny was clearly a shot at MAGA. It was a disrespect to MAGA and not the obvious answer, which is money. The NFL wants to grow the audience. So they had a big artist who might expand the number of people who watch the Super Bowl perform at the Super Bowl. That's so clearly what's happening here. And like bigger picture, though, like it's hard to imagine a more mega crowd than those

who physically attend the Super Bowl. It's like football fans, rich people. Like if you're worried about crimes in that crowd, like get some dogs that can smell cocaine and then go bust people for solicitations. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, let's not, let's not say things will regret. I'm not going to Super Bowl. The other thing here, too, is clearly a lot of of xenophobia and racism in this movement. I don't know if you guys know that. But I will also say there are plenty of, especially after 24, like prominent Latino Trump supporters now. And if the person performing at the Super Bowl was Latino and speak Spanish, but was like a big Trump fan, it would have been, you wouldn't hear anything. Bad Bunny has criticized ICE, has criticized Trump

ICE specifically. And so it is, it's like if you are disloyal in any way, if there's, they cannot broach any criticism, any dissent. whatsoever. And if there is, and it's a prominent person, then it is full war against those persons. They talk to know about this, and I think Benny Johnson asked like, what do you think about the NFL's decision? She says, they suck and will win. God will bless us and we'll stand and be proud of ourselves at the end of the day, and they won't be able to sleep at night because they don't know what to believe. They're so weak, we will win and fix it. This is about the NFL. What are you talking about? It's also like, it's like, what are you fucking

It's just a performer. I just, these people cannot. God will bless us. They cannot internalize the fact that they're winners. They're winners. Because it's grievance politics. They can't actually just say, like imagine Christy know I'm saying,

I'm not a fan. He said some stuff I don't agree with, but the NFL is free to do what it wants. It wants. It's like it's inconceivable for them at this point to like brook any kind of dissent. Like, you like you say, all right, like the media is, you just got, you got CBS, you know, CBS belongs to you, you have Twitter, you have social media, you have a lot of, you have a lot of the NFL's fucking fans, there's a, there's a halftime show. Is there not one thing for the fucking gays and days? Just mute it. It's not Gaga, you know? You realize, you realize, yeah, there's going to be an alternative halftime show on fucking rumble or something. No, TPSA would, there, there's some pitch that was going around of like TPSA having creed. Yeah, well, I did see that. I thought Benny Johnson was going to do something for only the fans. He's going to do an only, something for only, something for only, only.

Only America fans. Something like that. Only fans of America? Something like that. Yeah. I'm out. I'm out. I don't know.

I don't get it. Ugh. Pod Save America is brought to by ZipRecruiter. The holidays are upon us, and businesses are hiring for seasonal roles, everything from haunted corn maze workers, to lead elves in real bearded Santas to snowplow drivers. It is September. This means that people with certain skills experience. We're in L.A. Or even a special license are in high demand and not easy to find. Whether you're hiring for one of these roles or any other role, the best way to find the perfect match for your role is on ZipRecruiter. And right now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com

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And right now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash cricket. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash cricket. ZipRecruiter is the smartest way to hire. So the federal government's still closed, which is somehow only the second biggest story right now because of everything we just talked about, But since Alex and Dan covered it on the Friday pod, Republicans and Democrats in Congress have made no progress on negotiations to open the government, with Republicans maintaining the refusal to discuss Affordable Care Act subsidies until the government reopens. The White House has been trying to put pressure on Democrats by continuing to threaten mass layoffs of federal employees, though it's unclear, when or if that will actually happen. They're also trying to, like, cut funding for, you know, blue areas of the country, whether it's apparently, did you see the thing like, they cut lawn. enforcement in New York City.

And then... Trump was not aware of this. Yeah. And then Hockel, Governor Hockel called Trump. And he was like, again, the filter vote was like, oh, I didn't know this. And then he reversed it. So they're trying to cause all this trouble, hurt all these people. It's also unclear, though, whether Trump is not only on the same page as his staff,

but on the same page as Republicans in terms of like whether they should negotiate with Democrats or are negotiating with Democrats. Here's what Trump said in the Oval on Monday about the shutdown. If the vote today fails in the Senate, will that trigger layoffs? It could, at some point, it will. Would you make a deal with them on the ACA subsidies? If we made the right deal, I'd make a deal, sure. I'd like to see a deal made for great health care.

Yeah, I want to see great health. I'm a Republican, but I want to see health care much more so than the Democrats. Are you speaking with Democratic leaders? Well, I don't want to say that. I don't want to say that. But we are speaking with the Democrats, and some very good things could happen with respect to health care. What do you want to bet? He was think about Hamas.

I'm just confused the two. Just got confused negotiations. be a fly on the wall in Thune's office or Johnson's office when they saw that clip. Yeah. I'm kidding. God, fucking, damn it. Schumer responded by saying it isn't true that Democrats have been talking to Trump. Jeffrey said the same thing.

But Schumer said that if the president is, quote, finally ready to work with Democrats, we'll be at the table. What do you think Trump was doing there? Typical stream of consciousness moment, nonsense? Or do you think he might want to negotiate on health care more than Republicans in Congress? So, first of all, it's funny. to what page is he on? He's not on a page. That's the first. He's all over the place. I will say like that. There's been a lot of a debate about like, you know, are Democrats doing

better in the shutdown that people expect? There's reasons for optimism, the reason not to optimism. This was the best reason for optimism I've seen because whatever he's thinking, whatever's going on, he is feeling the politics around a shutdown that is now over health care and he's really helping making that true. He's acknowledging that. He said it because I think it's about health care. That was part of it. We didn't get that part. But they first asked him, what do you think He's like, I think the shutdown's about health care. Pretty valuable, pretty great.

And it's also a reminder that, like, Trump is interested in Trump. When that means standing shoulder to shoulder with Republicans in Congress, he will do that. If he views his interests as being different, he will ignore them, the damage their position. He doesn't give a fuck. He doesn't have ideological commitments. He just wants a good deal and to seem like a winner and to have as many people behind them as possible. So that's what I took from that. Could it lead to anything?

Well, immediately you have, you know, Johnson and Thune figuring out how to get out of this leading to anything. And you have Schumer and Jeffrey saying, no, we're not talking to Trump, but saying they're open to it. So I assume once this conversation, once Trump was done talking, the phone was already on, was already, it already wrong and it had already been walked back internally at least. Yeah, I had the sort of the same reaction you did is like he wants to be the hero of every story. Yeah. He wants, he does not want a huge cut to ACA subsidies that he thinks would hurt him politically in the midterm. He's not Paul Ryan. Like this guy hasn't been dreaming of cutting the social safety net since he was at the keg party or whatever that weird quote was from 2012.

About right. And so, like, if Schumer and Jeffries could just talk to him directly and try to cut a deal, he would ice out Speaker Johnson in a heartbeat. Which is, but to our earlier conversation about his filter bubble and the people around him, the reason I think it's less likely to lead to anything is at what other point is he going to get information that Schumer and Jeffries want to make a deal that the polling is really bad on health care, that it's time for him to do so. Like, you know, Stephen Miller's going to walk in there and all the rest of them. A Breitbart online poll of, like, Twitter users. or something. We're going to have to, like, do a paper drop like it's North Korea. Like, they're trying to get information to Pyongyang. Set up giant speakers. You mentioned all the, you know, the back and forth by, like, who's winning this?

What did you guys make of the polling so far? There were some of these questions in the CBS poll. I would characterize the CBS poll results as, like, mixed to positive for Democrats. I think I characterize all the polling like that. But I don't know. What do you guys think? Here's what I think. I think the polling is good if you thought Democrats were going to be blamed the way Republicans were

blamed in a previous shutdown. If you didn't come to it with that knowledge, I don't know you'd feel super great about a poll that says Trump, congressional Republicans and congressional Dems all are around 30% in their approval for other handling a government shutdown. Like a poll where half the country thinks you're making a mistake. And by the way, only half of Democrats think your position is worth a shutdown. Like, I think that's better than it could be. And I think we're in a better position than we should be and then Republicans should be at. But it's not like great. Yeah. And the big takeaway is people don't like the shutdown. They're worried it will hurt the economy. A big majority is where it'll hurt the economy. I'm a little skeptical when you start

comparing the kind of like under the hood numbers. Like, who do you blame? Because I just think most people like don't have an opinion on it. But it's a little better. Like the Democratic Party's rationale is a little better than Republicans. Nine points. By about nine points, people blame Republicans over Democrats. So that's good. But then the thing that like in that poll that would worry me if I was Trump is 75% of voters say you're not focused enough on lowering prices. Like that's bad. Yeah. We know there are probably, you know, a handful, if not more, Senate Democrats who were worried about making this decision, kind of thought they had to do it because the base was mad. I think if you're looking at the polling now, you'd say at the very least, it was right to say, I'm not voting for this funding

bill. And now that we're in it, now you've got to stick to it. Right. So there's definitely nothing this polling that would tell me if I was a Senate Democrat to like cave anytime soon. So it is, I think going well for them. I still, and look, good thing if premiums don't go up, for sure, right? I think at best you're not going to get a permanent extension. You're going to get an extension that is qualified with probably not as generous as it was. And then surely for the time, we'll probably like take them right past the midterms. I do have this fear that Democrats will have done the right thing, stand up, help people with

health care, and then help Trump take it off the table. You know, honestly, we've tried losing on issues for a while. maybe we try winning for once. It's better than losing. I would say I would I go further than just to say like oh, Democrats shouldn't cave. I like you look at this and we we talked about a briefly earlier, but like if you ask people, 64% think Democrats are weak and 59% think Republicans are extreme. Healthcare is an issue right now where if we hold the line like we are painting Republicans as extreme. And if we cave, we are giving into the idea that we are weak. If we hold the line, there's an issue where we can prove our bona fida to say that we fought for something. Maybe we win. Maybe we don't.

But I would risk, look, the benefits on policy plus, like, proving to people that we're willing to fight, take a stand, and actually get something for people, like, I think that is worth taking an issue off the table. Maybe that's bad politics. I don't think anybody knows. But given that nobody knows, wouldn't we rather, like, have a win than not? Am I wrong? I don't know. I agree with you. Yeah, I just don't see a path, like, I don't see a path to getting a win in this negotiation.

I think that's the hard part. There's no end game that's clear here. And, like, nut cutting time is coming on October 15th when 1.3 million members of the U.S. military will miss a paycheck. Then November 1st is open enrollment for Obamacare. Um, so there's a bunch of like challenging moments where like this could really go from a thing that's like maybe you heard about on the news or saw on your TikTok to a thing that's like messing up your life and making you really mad. Coming from the other direction, there's also the fact that these notices from insurance companies are going out too. So it could be, and you're sort of seeing this in the polling that if you

talk to the average person about whose fault it is like all of them. They're not, they all suck. And now the premium increases go out. And now the troops aren't going to. getting paid. And the feeling in the public could be they have to negotiate and figure something out, which is probably good for Democrats getting something at that point, as opposed to just caving. And then maybe the Republicans, if they're getting some of the blame too, then maybe Trump's like, you know what, guys, just figure it out. Just give him some kind of short extension. And let's just call it, because we don't want to get blamed. They're getting blamed. It's not helping anyone. Yeah, I also like. So that's the only, that's like my optimistic case, but I also

take what, take your point. Yeah, I don't think we know what the world's going to feel like a week from now. right now, like, there's a lot of alarms not going off. Like, I am, like, Democrats feel like they're on offense. Republicans feel like they're on defense. That is like the feeling when you look at like the stories coming out of the lack of negotiation. You have Mike Johnson saying if a, if a deal comes from the Senate side, we won't take it up, which is something you have to say to kind of like guard your flank against something coming out of the Senate. Like there's just, Trump taking these questions and saying he's open to a deal. All of that puts Thune and Johnson on defense in a way that like, I think is like, you know, shows Democrats playing a pretty

week hand better than you would have thought a week ago. So where will be a week? I have no idea. I think they should ask for more at this point. Oh. I mean, having seen, I know I've made this point before, but it's just driving me nuts. Having seen, and maybe it's, I'm just crazy, but like, having seen the last weekend unfold, like, there is a way.

I wouldn't even do it with the troops, but it's just like, ICE should be able to go about and do their jobs and do immigration enforcement, but like, you need warrants. No more just, like, raiding fucking apartment buildings. No flashbang grenades and militarized assaults. Like you could put all this stuff. There's plenty of ICE reform proposals out there. You could put it in a bill and demand that shit. And I get why they have not done that,

but it is still really off to me that this is happening and then the funding fight is about healthcare. Yeah, I like, I go, we've gone back and forth a million times, but I like, I look at this and it's like, it's a core question, right? Do you want to pick a fight? You have a possibility of winning? Or are you trying to pick a fight?

you cannot win because you think it's important for the long term. And right now, we've, the Democrats chose, right? They chose the other. They chose the fight over something they can win. I, my view right now is play that to the end. Try to get a win on health care. Let's, let's prove to people we can fight and win. Like, you look at what happens with Kimmel, right? There's all these, it's, it's, there was a kind of almost organic protest and had a simple demand. Put Kimmel back. We'll have, we'll get Disney plus again, right? And it's a win. And it shows people that we're a political force. We got Kimmel. Well, it's small. I know. The monologue continues. I know, but in the face of kind of like, kind of a morph, I know, it's just sort of, like,

we have to be a political force that has power and leverage, and that does mean, like, we're not just casting about for a kind of a year's long fight. Like, we're going to find a hinge and we're going to use it. And, like, to me, we've chosen that already, so let's play it out. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. The other way this could end that I feel like as being under discussed is if it keeps going and going and going, they just, they change the rules and get rid of the filibuster.

Yeah, they could do that. Again, make my day. Yeah. Yeah. Go for it. Yeah. Because you know what? We're never getting 60 votes in the Senate as long as we're living.

Well, they've already, they've already eroded. So we might as well, if we ever want to, if we ever take power again, we ever want to pass anything, we're going to need to get rid of the filibuster. So, might as well do it for us. They're already eroding a bit by bit while claiming it's still there. Yes. Anyway. For sure.

So the only way to start making real progress here is winning the House back in 2026. That would be at least the start of progress. And the first chance we get to help make that happen is actually just a month from now, because here in California will be voting on only one ballot measure in the 2025 off-year elections, Prop 50, which is Governor Newsom's initiative to temporarily suspend our nonpartisan congressional map so that Democrats can partially neutralize the partisan gerrymandering. Trump ordered in states like Texas and Missouri to pick up more Republican seats. Ballots are already in the mail.

Some of you, if you're in California, may have gotten yours already, or if you're a registered voter in California. And the drop boxes to return those ballots open today, October 7th, when you're hearing this podcast. Early in-person voting starts on October 25th. What do you guys been seeing? How optimistic are you feeling? I mean, the Democrats, you've talked to the kind of Gavin orbit. They feel like they're winning the argument and that they're up, but they're very worried about voter suppression. That could be like Trump messing with the postmaster general about mail-in ballots, a community intimidation at the voting booths. The real like X factor is

there's a lawsuit in court right now challenging Texas's plan to redraw the maps, which is the reason Gavitt is doing this in the first place. The thing, uh, there's a scenario where the plaintiffs win a first judgment in that lawsuit that will almost certainly be overturned, but kind of complicates the argument because it looks like maybe Texas won't go forward, uh, during the period where Californians are voting. Um, so that's always the way of the tension of that really. Well, yeah, it's just a way of saying, um, call my bluff. If that happens, just know that like, it's almost certainly Texas is going to happen. It's going to happen. We might win like one step in the process, but we're going to lose long term. So we need to do this in California.

So everyone vote yes on Prop 50. Get your ballots in and do it soon. Yeah, and I would, yes, the polling has been reassuring, but also California is a big place that's hard to poll. And I like just worry about money coming in at the end. Yeah, a bunch of like a dark money is scary. A ton of mailers coming in. So just on new coefficient poll, 54% of California voters support the Prop 50, 36% opposed. And the all the ad spending is, having an effect to 51% said they were very familiar with Prop 50. And obviously Democrats currently have a big spending edge. That's good news. But also, again, it is a talk about not being able to model an electorate, an off-year election where there's no statewide races where there's, you know, candidates running for stuff. So you just have, and not even other ballot measures. So you have one ballot measure.

So you have to remember, okay, the ballot's coming. I got to fill it out. What is Prop 50? It's just, you know, tell your friends. If you're living California, tell your friends, make sure you do it. Put on your calendar and tell at least five people in your life who live in California that this is coming because I think it's really, really important. One more thing. The big focus of the Prop 50 campaign is relational organizing, basically just talking to friends and people in your network about the issue, why they need to get out and vote for it.

You can get all the info you need on that at VoteSafeamerica.com slash Prop 50. Tommy, I understand that you're hosting a VSA event next Wednesday, the 15th, where everyone's going to get together and reach. out to their networks together. And that's in the Action Hub. We're all going to have relations with the people organizing before. Stick with it. Stick with it. Stick around. You're the end. You'll find, you'll understand. So you're going to get together and reach out to your networks together. What a cool

way to talk about it. What a cool. That's cool. That's all ready? On the count of three, we're going to reach out to our networks. So what we're going to do, we're going to hop on a live stream. We're going to have some fun. We're going to hang out. We're going to make it a good time. We're going to text our friends in California to make sure they're voting guests on Prop 50.

We know that friends, family, the best messengers. And you're doing this for the fans? Yeah. And only the fans. Only the fans. And the cam will be on. We're going to make sure everyone understands the stakes involved here. It'll be important.

What are you going to wear on your feet, you think? Sandals? Oh, okay. Shoes? That's exciting. Can I quickly plug my Riyadh comedy festival players? Oh, yeah. Headlining.

It's good money. It's good money. at the, well, yeah, it's the anniversary. Anyway, jump on the Prop 50 live stream. It will be Votesaveamerica.com slash Prop 50. It's really important. We've got to do this. So reach out to your friends. Where are we on whether we have the chance to sort of counter Texas and other states? Yes. So I talked to our buddy, Brian Tyler Cohen, about all this because he is way deep on all things redistricting and subscribe to Brian's YouTube if you want to learn more. So the states that are screwing us right now, Texas and Missouri, if California redistricts to, Indiana, Ohio, and Florida are

preparing to screw us. So get excited for that. We then Democrats could retaliate in Illinois and Maryland and then longer term New York and make some changes, but that wouldn't go into place until 2028. Then if we win the governor's seats in Virginia and New Jersey, maybe we can do make some gains there. And then there's the states that are kind of hoping this conversation goes away are Colorado, Oregon, and Washington. The dumb governors there just like won't step up seemingly. So that's the state of play. I don't think it's a net benefit for us if all those Republican States go, though. Also, one issue that's happening in California, too, is, look, redistricting is great, but also states that California have been losing population to Texas and Florida and

others, and we can't redistrict our way out of California not building enough affordable housing. And so I'm very glad Gavin is pursuing Prop 50. He has not yet signed as of this recording on Monday night, SB 79, which will allow people to build more housing near transit and help address our housing crisis. So if you were hearing this and you think Evan Newsom should sign it, I would to just posting about it or giving him a call because I do think it matters here in the home stretch. What's going on there? I haven't been following why there's been a pause and he hasn't signed it. So there's a lot of pressure, especially from LA, especially from our mayor, Karen Bass, who wants Newsom to veto it. She claims she's for affordable housing and we've got to build more

housing, but this law will go too far and it doesn't allow for historical buildings and all these exceptions. Los Angeles currently is not even on track to build half of the housing we've promised to build the state. It's actually about a third. We said we'd build 456,000 units. We are nowhere near that. We are just completely failing. I'll get the stat slightly wrong, but we've seen the lowest number of housing starts and construction in Los Angeles in more than a decade. We're just, the city is failing and does not deserve the trust. But he's under a lot of pressure. Look, I think prop 50 fighting Trump, those are unifying and galvanizing issues. This is a slightly divided issue because this is about taking on parts of your own coalition and saying, you know what, I get

that there are problems. It's not a perfect law. But we got to- Klein. Derek Thompson. Yeah. Right. All the abundance pros. Got to fight them. All the fascis. But like, yeah, there are, there are, there are, there are, there are, there are, there are democratic interests that want this to be vetoed. And so the goal is not just from to sign it. I believe he will sign it is to sign it unequivocally without any kind of using bureaucracy to

limit it anyway. And that that that, that to me is what is important. And it's actually I think an important test for him because like, oh great, you're tough when you're fighting Trump. Like we need somebody that not just doesn't just want to fight Trump, but understands that Democrats have to. like be willing to take on our own to like actually do hard governing you might think it's progressive to make sure that every person can have a roof over their head in this country but i think it's progressive to keep those historic buildings preserved just right and maybe have just a little bit bigger yard first they came for the historic buildings and to make sure just you know a little extra yard

and i don't want i just don't want a tall building next to my train tracks because then it's just too much historic parking lots you got to preserve these historic parking lots you know what's progressive a beautiful view it's uh progressive it's been infuriating and like and and and karen bass fucking nimbies karen bass who has like like i would say like a mixed record on housing she signed some good eos then she watered them down like she's done some stuff some of the best some of some of the building that is happening in los angeles is beyond some of these affordable housing executive order she signed but still like this is such an abdication the city council most of them nithia and others did vote against the city council, which was great, but they are just completely abdicating their

responsibility and hoping somebody else solves it. This is the way to solve it. He has to fucking sign the thing. So that, and also prop 50. And if you want more info about prop 50, vote saveamerica.com slash prop 50. You can go get all kinds of information. It'll help you go, you know, try to get as many friends as possible voting the same way. Okay, after the break, you'll hear Tommy's conversation with Ben Smith about Barry Weiss taking over CBS News and lots more. Two things before we get to that. You may have heard that Crooked Con sold out faster than we ever expected. So big news, we decided to move to a bigger location. And that means more panels, more guests, and more tickets. The new venue is the Ronald Reagan building. You know, I don't think. It's honestly a dream

for me to be in the Reagan building. I feel like it would have been funnier 10 years ago to have us in the Reagan building. Now the Reagan building seems like a potential natural ally for this movement, you know. Important a storm. Yeah, win one for the Gipper. The most scorching opinion about Trump so far just came from a Reagan judge, a judge appointed by Reagan last week. So, yeah, of course, makes sense. Your favorite crooked podcast host will be there. Plus, Ruben Gallego, Andy Beshear, Janelle Bynum, Sarah McBride, Yasamon, Ansari, Anderson Clayton, Sarah Longwell, Hassan Piker, Maurice Mitchell, lots more. The full list is up atcrucid.com. We'll be announcing even more great guests soon. We're adding a Votesave America Action Hub,

a space where our partner groups will be hanging out and focusing on activism so you can leave with the tools you need. Action hub. What kind of action? Doing karate? I don't think it's going to be...

What are you thinking? Oh, I was talking about intercourse, Tommy. I was talking about fucking. That's what I was saying. You know where the action hub's going to be? His hotel room. Yeah. Those pants.

That's for the action hub is. And you know where... It's what says right here. With all these panels? You can leave with the tools. You need to fight democracy. That's right. There you go.

Head to cricketcon.com. before this last batch of tickets disappears and we'll see you at the Action Hub on November 7th in D.C. Also, become a friend of the pod. It's important. It's fun. Independent media is more important than ever right now.

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I'm interviewing some of the biggest icons in reality TV. That starts with Dr. Terry Dubrow of Botched and the Swan and Real Housewives of Orange County. I've obviously been turning off my brain at night and watching Bravo and other reality shows. shows, and I do think you really can't understand politics in this moment unless you understand the world of these shows and why it is more important to be interesting and hated than boring and good. And the insurrections? None so far.

But so DeBro is really interesting, and he talks about the parts of filming Bravo shows, including Real Housewives, that he's fucking hates. And he's a pretty shockingly honest about his take on some of, uh, The Real Housewives, which was interesting, but more than that, like this series is about figuring out reality TV, how it changed TV, and then how it changed our culture, and then how it changed politics. It actually, one of the reasons I wanted to do it is because when we talked to Sarah McBride, remember she talked about feeling as though these Republicans want to be on a Bravo show. And obviously, Trump is a reality star. I'm also one as well, famously. Of course.

Shine bright. Stars. It's like I'm stretching the term. Some stars. Guest star? guest star also featuring we have Terry Dugro who's great I talked to

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amazed by what we've been hearing from some of these people about what it's like to be on these shows and what they've learned. And so please check it out. Cool. Cool. listened and help someone take a step forward. Moments in therapy, like the right question, a safe space to cry or a small win can change lives. This World Mental Health Day, BetterHelp is honoring those connections and the therapists

and make them possible while showing them how easy it is to get guidance from a licensed therapist online with BetterHelp. Look, we all wish that Donald Trump had seen a therapist just one time. It would have saved us. Boy. So much trouble. We might not be here. You probably wouldn't be president. We might not be here.

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the world's largest online therapy platform, and it works with an average rating of 4.9 at a 5 for a live session based on 1.7 million client reviews. This World Mental Health Day, we're celebrating the therapists who've helped millions of people take a step forward. If you're ready to find the right therapist for you, BetterHelp can help you start that journey. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash PSA. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P-S-A. My guest today is the editor-in-chief of Semaphore and the co-host of the excellent Mixed Signals podcast. He's also a man who tends to be on the bleeding edge of changes in the media business.

Ben Smith, great to see you. Thank you for having me, Tommy. So on Monday, Barry Weiss was named the new editor-in-chief of CBS News and Paramount CBS's parent company bought her startup, the free press, for $150 million in cash. stock. My first question to you is the question that everyone is asking, Ben, which was, how much do we think Barry cleared off this deal? Do you know what her ownership stake was by the end here? You know, I don't, but I would say that the nature of these deals is usually they don't just say, here's a pile of money, buy. They say, if you work really hard for us for a period of four, five, ten years, we will, you know, we will compensate you gradually in stock.

So, like, I would say whatever the actual terms of the deal, I would think this is a pretty long-term arrangement. Like, I think Barry West will be there for a long time. Yeah, yeah, it struck me as an aqua hire, which is basically they're purchasing her entire company to get her to work there. You're right. She probably did have a long earn-out, but I bet she did okay off it. Yes. If next time you see her, you should make her by dinner. Okay, that's what I'll do. I've never met her, but I'll do that. So help me understand why this hire makes sense for CBS. As far as I know, Barry West has no TV news experience. Her print experience was more on the opinion side. I find CBS news to be kind of like the textbook example of the just-the-fax-ma'am, kind of old-school journalism,

but she has been better known, I think, recently at least, for more activism, for being kind of anti-what-she views as woke, for being a full-throat defender of Israeli government policies. So why do you think CBS decided she's the person we need? Well, I would say there's a couple of different things here. One is, I don't know if you are a regular viewer of the CBS Evening News. If you are, you are very unusual for our age group. But, like, you know, CBS is a broadcast television network that, for complicated reasons, kind of missed out on cable and then kind of also missed out on digital. So this is the Titanic, like, well after it is hit the iceberg and a place that has been in a kind of state of real crisis and decline for many, many years.

So it's not like, I mean, so I don't really, the idea that, like, these guys were just doing fine and these maniacs are coming and changing everything. What are they doing? That's ridiculous. I mean, I think CBS is sort of a poster child for a company that really failed to figure out the digital transition lost most of its value and is getting swallowed by some billionaire's kid, which is at a discount as a result. And that's true of CBS, which is a tiny, tiny portion of a bigger company that is now called Paramount, that includes all sorts of other things that used to have a lot of value. and Sherry Redstone, who owned it, managed it gradually downward over a period of years. And so in the new ownership, David Ellison, whose dad is one of the richest guys in the world, Larry Ellison, I think both seem authentically to share Barry's politics, which are, I don't know if you'd call them center right.

They're eclectic. They're very pro-Israel, very upset about the direction the media took in the last few years. And, you know, and I think Allison obviously kind of shares those to some degree. And CBS News, by the way, is a single-digit percentage of the business of CBS, which is mostly the movie business. And Allison has spent his career in the movie business. And that people say, you know, the news is like 4% of the revenue and 95% of the headaches of these businesses. But, sure, this is like kind of the first big, big, flashy things he's doing is bringing in Barry, is the editor-in-chief, not the president, a nude title as editor. and chief of CBS News to direct the editorial back to the center. That probably is what the owners want in terms of their own political views,

although that's not going to, like, rescue a dying broadcast operation. It also comes at a time. Donald Trump, you know, loves to rage against these networks. He's very focused on CBS and others and feels that they, you know, treated him unfairly, already extracted a big settlement for them. And I think this is a company that's looking for another wave of regular. regulatory approval to buy Warner Media and doing things that Donald Trump likes seems like a pretty good way to get regulatory approval. And honestly, I think if you told one of these companies they could pay $100, $150 million to make a big deal go through faster, they probably would.

Yeah, like I'm with you on the problem and certainly wasn't suggesting that like CBS, everything was going perfectly. I guess I'm just still not there on the solution. Like, is Barry Weiss viewed as like a Trump whisperer that can get, you know, deals through the FCC or whatever? right? A lot of the reporting is focused on kind of coverage about Israel generally being a big point of tension between the new ownership and, let's say, 60 minutes. But I just can't tell how central this is to the acquisition itself. Yeah, there's a lot of, there are a lot of different things going on here. And I think that's what you're seeing, which is CBS has one problem, which is its business is collapsing. That's not because of where it stands on Israel.

There's CBS News. And in fact, isn't going to be fixed by tweaking their political stance because it has to do with the fact that they're a broadcast television network with a massive cost structure. There's also people, you know, and I think there is also a sense of like, it will please Donald Trump to stick it to the old, the people at CBS, whoever they are. And like that probably is a good way to, good, like, if it seems like they're giving some kind of human sacrifice to Donald Trump in order to get regulatory approval, like that doesn't, I don't know, in the cynical world of big media, that seems like a decent idea. Do you have a prediction for how it's going to go? Any sense of, like, what this is, how this is being received internally?

I mean, you know, CBS, it's like, I don't know if you've ever worked at one of these institutions where, like, which has been, like, rocked by a scandal after scandal and leak after leak for longer than you've been alive. But everything always goes badly there. The only story. So, and I think people underestimate the extent to which, like, yeah, like, you know, she is being given the job, maybe not as captain of the Titanic, but as first mate, post-idential. iceberg. And like, that's a very, very challenging situation. And I don't know, we should all be rooting for them to succeed. Because I think the most natural thing here is that they cease to exist. Like just, that's the course that they've been on for a long time. Yeah, no, look, I want CBS News to succeed generally. I really had not thought of it that way. This is being first made or captain on an iceberg that, or on a ship hitting an iceberg, that does suck. When Barry Weiss

quit the New York Times, she cited bullying by colleagues. She said the New York Times to become an illiberal environment. She said there was a quote, civil war inside the New York Times between the mostly young wokes and the mostly 40 plus liberals. You worked at the New York Times from 2020 to 22. Was it illiberal? Was Michael Barbaro bullying you in the lunchroom? Like what was the scene there? So it was a look, there was no lunchroom. It was all slack, which did make it certainly totally insane. And, you know, I guess I knew Barry there at the time. And I think didn't, maybe I didn't take these things as personally. Like I think, you know, people react to things. differently. But I do think of it, you know, the Slack became some rough equivalent of

Twitter. And I do think the culture was more dominated by younger people who were more comfortable in social media. And sometimes really did take on some of the crazier features of social media. Like there was a 2,000 person. I wasn't allowed in most of the Slack because I wrote about the New York Times. And so like I got tossed out of slacks and Taylor Lorenz created a Slack called Ben Chat where people could come talk to me. But there was one giant slack with everybody in it. And, so, like, I got tossed out of Slack. And, And that was the one where when James Bennett, there was a controversy that I feel like we don't need to revisit involving the opinion editor. But people were reacting.

You can react with emojis and people were reacting with guillotines. Oh, boy. Like, intended ironically, perhaps, but not, I would not say that as collegial. And when I, at some point, somebody complained to the executive of Dean Bacay that my being in the Slack made people unsafe because I might write about it. Okay. And he, I thought quite reasonably. And this is a sense of like, I don't think, it was not just. totally homogenous culture. He told them that's ridiculous. This is a slack with

2,000 people in it. Of course it's going to leak. But yeah, I mean, I guess I think that maybe I don't have as, I think it was quite that straightforward, but certainly there was the kind of like left-wing political waves and social waves swept through there, swept through all of society. And I do think it was pretty. Yeah, I think it was, I think the management has spent the last couple years pushing that back. It's interesting. I mean, look, what I'm taking what I'm inferring from your very delicate answer is that you saw some illiberalness, you saw some cruelty maybe in this like. It's just interesting with some people that radicalizes them. And then there's people like Matthew Iglesias over at Vox who kind of just tweets through

the most vicious attacks on a daily basis. It seems impervious to it. Doesn't, you know, kind of just like does this thing regardless and just has a very different reaction. Yeah. I think you're probably, I think if you've spent a lot of your career being attacked by strangers on the internet, as I have, you develop like a kind of pathologically thick skin to it. But I don't think you can actually expect other people to act that way. Like, that's not normal. If your colleagues are being mean to you, like, probably you hate it and you're going to quit. Like, I don't think that's an unreasonable reaction. No, I don't think it is either. I'm a huge baby. And, you know, I've had exchanges on Twitter ruined an entire weekend. And my wife looking at me like, why aren't

you parenting our children right now? Are you really? a fight about the JCPOA with someone with like a Twitter egg and I'm like, yeah, that's actually who I am. That's who you married. So I'm sorry about that. But I do think like the question asked for like what is like what is the, I think I think what this means like what is Barry's rule CBS means like very, I don't think it's decided. I think it's very open to interpretation. I think it a lot depends, you know, in particular on how they decide to cover Donald Trump because I mean I talked to somebody who was involved in the deal and who was very aware that like they're just now dealing with this shadow of this sense that, well, like, oh, they've made some secret

corrupt deal with the president in exchange for, you know, to get regulatory approval for their real business, which is the movie business, the entertainment business, in exchange for favorable coverage on this tiny little, you know, news thing that they have to own. And how do you deal? And I ask them, like, well, how do you deal with that impression? And they said, well, we're going to have to cover Trump really, we'll have to be really tough and adversarial and do great journalism that the White House doesn't like when that's fair. And I think that, you know, that is ultimately the test. Yeah, well, you're right. And we should not prejudge her tenure there. It is challenging, though, because it comes in the wake of some

major departures at 60 minutes and a pretty high profile dust up over, you know, that show feeling like they were being censored by corporate execs, and then the lawsuit and caving to Trump. So a tough, challenging time to go into that job, like you said earlier. You have a great column out this week in Semaphore about Donald Trump's information filter and sort of information bubble. Can you explain how Trump's information diet has changed from the first term to today and why that might have some of his supporters a little worried? Yeah, I mean, one thing about the White House, and you worked there and you know this, is that just inevitably the president is a little bit a prisoner of the building, a prisoner of what kind of information he's getting

who's talking to him, like Eisenhower, Nixon's AIDS were referred to as the Berlin Wall because they were German, Haldeman and Erlichman, and they wouldn't let anybody through. But in any case, Trump, in his first term, like, almost uniquely among presidents, like, totally busted out of that and was just on Twitter engaging everyone. He was, like, reading, like, the rage bait from you. He was, like, soaking up the adulation from his fans. But he was just seeing the same stuff everybody else was on Twitter. And now, I think, actually sort of like everybody else, he's retreated into much more comfortable spaces in his case, Truth Social, where he sometimes goes on the, sprees of like re-truthing really weird memes and where he posts stuff and where he sees

adulation but and he's also he does watch tv mostly fox fox is more pro-trump more sort of consistently pro-trump than it was in his first term he what and there's also these other right-wing networks he can watch he does you know he reads the papers he reads the new york post and other papers but um but but i think people around him but both people who like him and don't like him have started to think like oh maybe he's not seeing everything there was this odd instance where he had talked to the governor of Oregon and he got off the phone and said, yeah, you know, she said one thing to me

and I've been seeing this other thing on TV and hearing things from my staff. I'm like, I'm not really sure what's going on. And then I've said the other day, but Kathy Hockel, the governor of New York, I guess, told him that the federal government had cut off funding to New York, and that was news to him.

And it is just, and I think in some sense, the biggest question is, like, what is he hearing about the economy and, like, how good is the information he's getting? And I think that's, I mean, I didn't, like, I don't really know, But basically the core of this situation is that there's an A named Natalie Harp who follows him around with an iPad and that people who really, really, really want to get his attention, particularly in the conservative movement,

have her number and text her things and hope that she will go then play the video to him. And that's like the key key gatekeeping function. God help us all. I mean, yeah, he tweeted this video the other weekend or other week about medbeds. I don't know if you tracked this controversy. It's just like QAnon thing. Yeah, I was assumed that's why you look. so ageless, Tommy.

Yeah, that's, it's a filter. So that's Barbara Walter's filter. Medbeds, like, basically they think it's alien technology that's being hidden by elites that could cure every disease. All of a sudden, Donald Trump, like, tweets or truths, this AI video that AI renders his own voice of a made-up technology. And I would just kill for some deep reporting into how on earth that actually happens. Like, how does that go from creation to his feed to shared? You know, I think he's just on true social seeing memes. And if you look through, he's, like, re-truthing some, like, really terrible memes that, like, I think he's just seeing, like, oh, here's somebody who likes me saying something nice.

And I assume that's what the med-bed thing was. It seemed vaguely positive. It said that he was giving everybody special med-bed cards. So, like, but I don't know. When you were in the White House, did you, like, how did you think about kind of controlling President Obama's access to information? Well, he famously kept his Blackberry, right? That was sort of an early battle he won to get information. And, you know, I think he certainly would go on at night in whatever, you know, a mean David Brooks column would post.

Dan Pfeiffer would get an email being like, we need to deal with this or whatever. The other way he spent a lot of time was playing words with friends with Reggie Love and other people. So he had his own ways sort of getting around us. But you're right. Like when you're president of United States, all your jokes are funny. Everything you say is brilliant. People stand up when you walk in the room. So that's got to just kind of fuck with your thinking, whether you're Donald Trump or anybody else.

Yeah, and I do think in a weird way this is a return to a more traditional kind of presidency where he is trapped in an information bubble. Yeah, and probably more so than before, right, given the security challenges that come from multiple assassination attempts. But didn't he used to hate watch TV all the time? Like, I feel like he used to routinely tweet about Morning Joe. Yeah, he used to hate watch more because I think there was like, it was just Fox and then a bunch of stuff he hated. But now he's got OAN and Newsmax and all sorts of stuff on social that he can watch. And once in a while, like a Democratic senator, like, made their way onto Fox yesterday morning, and he freaked out about it on truth social and demanded that they not let Brian Schatz back on there to lie about him.

But I think that actually almost is an indication of what you said, that, like, he's not rage tweeting the sort of, he's not hate watching anymore. Which, and in a way, like, I mean, I guess it seems like like he is all of us, right? Like, like, the sort of experience of the media between 2015 and 2020 was that this social, media machines were so good at finding the worst thing that you're the people you dislike had said and just like shoving it in your face. And the new TikTok world is that like, no, you just get like pleasing stuff that affirms your prejudices all day. That's right. Yeah. The biggest surprise in your piece, by the way, was seeing Laura Lumer of all people kind of talking about Trump's information diet and sounding like a voice of reason. She's very concerned. Is she really?

Okay. For those who don't know who Laura Lumer is, she's like a far right nut, in my opinion. She once tweeted like an applauding emoji over an article about 2,000 migrants dying while trying to cross from North Africa to Europe. She changed herself to the Twitter office door in New York while wearing a Yellow Star of David to compare herself to the treatment of Jews in the Holocaust. My point being, it doesn't always, you know, sometimes seems like she's got to screw loose, but she was, seemed reasonable there. How did that come to be? I mean, I think, you know, she is somebody who thinks a lot about how you get information to Donald Trump and, you know, and has seen herself boxed out a bit by White House staff, although she finds her ways to get to him directly.

I mean, but the one thing is it used to be that, like, influencers, like right-wing influencers who had, like, a really good fastball could just sort of, like, get in front of him by tweeting stuff and, like, getting retweeted and going viral. And now you have to be, like, the only two people, I think, can really do it, just because by just absolute, like, intensity and velocity

and saying such intense stuff on social media are her and the kind of mag-legal figure, Mike Davis, who denounces judges very heatedly. And I think that stuff makes its way to him. But I think the rest of the sort of right-wing Twitter sphere is like really having trouble kind of making their way into Trump's personal consciousness. Interesting.

Bigger picture. Like a couple weeks ago, we were all talking about ABC News and Jimmy Kimmel, Kimmel got pulled off the air. And then FCC Chairman Brendan Carr made all these threats that he would hurt the network or we could do the easy way or the hard way. If Kimmel wasn't punished for comments he made about Charlie Kirk. Kimball's now back on the air, but Trump threatened to sue ABC again. Now that the dust has settled a little bit, what do you think the impact was of that whole ordeal? Are networks

rethinking things or it's just, I don't know. I mean, I just think that the big kind of corporate media executives are really wary of angering the president. They're thinking about it all the time. And it's a matter. It's not that they wouldn't ever do anything, you know, publish, you know, an accurate, important story that was, that didn't make the White House happy. But it's if they're thinking about picking your battles. And this really is familiar to any journalist who's worked in, like, complicated places. I mean, I think, you know, for instance, if you're, you know, major, I once talked to somebody who had been a correspondent for a great newspaper in Tehran.

And, like, you kind of know at some point you're going to get booted because you're going to write a story that angers the regime. But so you think, like, all right, like, is this one worth it? Like, this is kind of a dumb story about somebody's family being corrupt. Like, let's skip this one. Let's wait for the one that really, you know, that really gets them. And so in situations like this, you just start to pick your battles and decide, like, look, we're not going to do this story about the president's family. It's going to annoy him.

Let's, like, wait until we – and it does change the shape of the coverage and means that there's less criticism. I think the other thing that happened at ABC, though, was that I think you saw that there are these other stakeholders in these companies who they have to deal with two. And in particular for ABC, it's A-List actors and directors, and for Disney. And I think you saw that – you saw – I don't think it ever really was a public protest, but people – clearly called up Bob Iger and said, hey, we're going to start polling movies. We're going to refuse, we're going to publicly refuse to work with you. And, you know, these media companies are very, very, very dependent on talent. And talent does have leverage. Yeah, you got to imagine Iger was getting some, um, some rude texts from some real A-listers over that weekend.

Seems like it. Yeah. Final question for you. Um, I just don't think Democrats have fully internalized kind of the, what the new media landscape looks like. We have, you know, Barry Weiss leading CBS News, TBD, if that matters or not. But Elon Musk, owns Twitter, a group of Trump allies are going to run TikTok. Fox News is not just the dominant cable player, but like the dominant news channel period. And then I think conservatives, I mean, tell me if you disagree, but they seem to be dominating the independent media world and the podcast charts. There's not necessarily a question there. It's more just like an observation of how grim things seem for progressives. Well, I actually think that, I mean, if you look at

the sort of new media charts, you're starting to see left-wing voices dominate more. I mean, like Midas is the, I think, often the biggest channel on YouTube. And it follows, to somebody where is the most engagement, where's the most energy. And, you know, I think a lot of these, particularly a lot of the really kind of independent podcast sphere is really built around this, like, profound suspicion of power, but also of government and of truth and of anything. And you saw with the Epstein stuff that there's just this like intense tendency to eat their own.

But no, I think there's a real kind of like conservative control of the mainstream media now. And it's not exactly MAGA conservatives. I think people like David Ellison and Jeff Bezos are kind of, I don't really know what their politics are. Kind of like center, I guess what's what you'd call center right. And probably, but, you know, I don't really know. But I think that, like, the thing that is, actually,

I think there are two things. One is that you have people with right of center views, owning and running some of these media properties. But I think the much more important thing is you have people who are scared of the government and of Trump making decisions. Definitely. Lots of scared people making.

decisions for financial reasons. Ben, thank you for joining the show. Everyone should check out Semaphore and subscribe to the Mix Signal podcast. It's excellent. Who do you guys have recently? You had the new head of MSNBC. Yeah, we had the new CEO of Versant, which owns MSNBC and he spent the whole time talking about how he wants to buy Crooked. So watch out everybody. Come on in. I'll be your berry, sir. Whatever it takes. Ben, thank you again. Great to talk to you. Yeah, good talking to you. That's our show for today. Thanks to Ben Smith for coming on.

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