Pod Save America - Will the Blue Wave Be Bigger Than 2018?

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

JD Vance begs voters to give the White House "another chance" as a series of new polls show a political environment even more favorable to Democrats than the one that propelled the blue wave in 2018. Jon, Dan, and Alex break down how much "hopium" we should be huffing, a new ad from a Florida Republican breaking with Trump on immigration, and whether unexpectedly close Senate races in Minnesota and New Hampshire should have Democrats worried. They dive into JD Vance's advice to AI companies to simply stop "building Frankenstein" and unpack Trump's fixation on demolishing the Kennedy Center if he's not allowed to name it after himself. Alex talks about her new book, "The Steal: Four Right-Wing Hard-Liners, One Republican Presidency, and the Raid on America's Courts," which follows the conservative movement's deliberate takeover of the American judicial system. Then, Dan Osborn, the independent candidate for Senate in Nebraska, stops by the studio to talk to Jon about his campaign against Pete Ricketts.Hate listening to ads? Become a Friends of the Pod subscriber for ad-free episodes of Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett or Leave It, Runaway Country, Offline with Jon Favreau, and more—plus exclusive content, including bonus episodes of Pod Save America. Subscribe now at crooked.com/friends, on Apple Podcasts, or through the Pod Save America YouTube channel.You can request a transcript by emailing [e-mail]. Include the podcast name, episode title, and air date. Please allow 48 hours for delivery.

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Register or get tailored support at vote from abroad.org. Look, state deadlines are super close, so don't waste another second. Go to vote fromabroad.org now and click request my ballot, asked to receive it by email. All you got to do is fill it out and send it back in. Don't miss this chance to shape the future. Don't delay. Vote from abroad.org. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favro. I'm Alex Wagner.

I'm Dan Fifer. Alex and Dan in studio. What? We're finally fulfilling our contractual obligations to be. I know. We were supposed to do this more often. Dan, I'm not going to ask you why you're in town. You're in town because Alex is in town. So why is Alex? Why are you in town? I'm in town because I am here shamelessly promoting my excellent essential new book, the steel for right-wing hardliners, one Republican presidency. Look at that cover. And the raid on America's courts. It's actually the cover is not the best thing about the book, but it's one of the great.

It's Barry Blit. The New Yorker cartoonist did this. And it is a shout out to the January Sixers who used a flagpole to beat down the doors of the Capitol. But this time, it's the four main characters of my book, plus Ronald Reagan using a pillar to write down the doors of the Supreme Court, which they figuratively did in 1980. Why did you want to write this book? I am incensed by the injustice of the judicial branch, and I feel like this group of, they're not bewigued. Berobed, six conservatives are the full expression of partisan corruption. And I wanted to know the origin story of it. And that is what this is. I'm sure we'll talk about it. later. Yes, we will. You can buy a copy now. You should buy a copy. And if you're listening to

and you haven't bought a copy, what are you doing? Come on. You need it because it's going to be turned into a movie. And we do think Jesse Eisenberg would make a great second character for a good. I won't go into who I want in which role. I don't actually, by the way, I don't know that it's going to be turned into a movie. This is just shameless. Manifest it. I am manifesting it. Can I help you with the pitch? Yeah, please. It's not to be turned into movie. And if you ever want to know the story, you have to buy the book now. Right. In this day and age, With visual culture, some people wait for the movie. You're totally right.

And the movie could be 2079. We have been told by many authors before that the Pod Save America audience is very helpful in moving books and buying books. And so do not let our co-host Alex Wagner down. Don't let me down. Also, because Ted Cruz has a book about Clarence Thomas that is out now, this is the real story about how Clarence Thomas got radicalized both on his own accord and through the Republic. networks of the 1980s, it's the real Clarence Thomas story. By my version, not Ted Cruz's. And also,

let's beat him. Let's beat him on the charts. Nice. Good pitch. Thanks. Thanks. That's all we need, right? All right. On today's show, we're going to talk about the bad vibes and polls haunting Trump and the Republicans with just 46 days left until the midterms, including gas prices hitting new records. The Fed raising interest rates and the Supreme Court striking down Trump's plan. to restrict mail-in ballots for now. We'll dig into the latest polls, including the rapid shift and how people feel about the possibility

of a robot apocalypse and talk about whether Trump is about to tear down the Kennedy Center because a judge won't let him name it after himself. Then I talked to Nebraska Senate candidate Dan Osborne about his race against Pete Ricketts, why the Democratic brand is so toxic in the Midwest, and that leaked audio of him talking about

how Trump voters' lives suck. It's a lot. There's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of stuff. A lot of meat in that sandwich. Let's start with a quick update on the golden age that we were promised by our president. The Federal Reserve voted to raise interest rates this week on account of the inflation. Trump is made worse by starting a war with Iran and a trade war with everyone else. Gas prices are above $4 a gallon in climbing while the price of diesel is the highest ever recorded.

The rest of the economy is largely being propped up by a few AI companies that may or may not unleash a robot apocalypse, all of which gave. the Republican's 28 frontrunner an inspiring midterm pitch during his latest podcast appearance this week. Give us another chance or give us another couple of years to continue to work on the amazing things that we've been doing for the past two years.

Just standing outside the voters window holding up a boom box. Give us another chance, please. He at one point also says Rome wasn't built in a day and it's like, oh, that's the message, dude. Nice one. Do you workshop that? How many days was it destroyed?

Totally. Exactly. It's burning, though. What did you guys think of that pitch before we get into all the issues from JD? It's hard to think of a pitch that would more inflame the already inflamed swing voters out there. Because what makes people mad, people's perception is not that Trump has simply failed to do the things he promised to do. And if he were only given more time, he would get them done. The reason people are pissed is that he broke the two core promises of his campaign.

Lowering prices, no more worse. And so this idea. Like, the pitch here is two more years of the exact same thing. And that's the opposite of what people want. He also has, like, no counter argument. He basically says, even if you don't agree with us on every issue, the other party is consumed by craziness. They're consumed by people who want to steal everything,

who want to give the country over to illegal aliens and criminals. I mean, I just don't think that if we're talking about the people who have been conducting corruption and grift and literally raiding the federal piggy bank in plain sight in broad daylight, that would be this administration. The people who have been self-enriching themselves multiple times over and having their weddings paid for by Russian oligarchs, I mean, just as a matter of principle, saying that Democrats want to steal everything seems like an incredibly losing message. But yeah, overall, could it be less inspiring? I don't think so. I also want to call attention to the setting there. That was a podcast appearance at the All-In

summit, the All-In podcast. which is a bunch of extremely rich people who had on stage some of the wealthiest people in the world to talk about how they were all going to make more money from artificial intelligence. And that was the setting he used to really show that he felt people's pain. It's a real choice. It's a man of the people. I will also say the best part of that ridiculous interview after the sort of polite golf claps, after he says an utterly unconvincing response, is they try and rage bait him by asking

Vance whether Marco Rubio is doing a good job. Oh, I didn't, I missed that part. Well, it was at the very end. Why in God's name would you listen to the whole thing? I mean, I listened to most of it. Well, that's at the end. He's like, no, Marco's a great dude. In fact, I have a call with him in five minutes, as if that's proof of their steel-toed friendship. I thought a funny moment was Jason Calicanus, like, tried to ask him a real question about, well, you guys started this war in Iran, and that's like, great, you know. And you could

see, like, people are like, oh, my gosh, a real question. question. And then some other guy on stage who's not part of the podcast, I don't know where he came from. He was like, I have a question, Mr. Vice President. What's it like to work for someone so energetic who never sleeps? And he's like, it's never boring. It's never boring. He doesn't always ask if we're doing the easy thing, but the right thing. That is literally, Trump has never asked. There's no fucking way. The thing about Trump is, that's what he's focused on most. What is morally correct in all stages of his life. Speaking of which, let's talk about the Fed's decision. Trump has wanted the central bank to lower rates for so long, so badly that he launched criminal

investigations into former chair Jerome Powell and Fed Governor Lisa Cook, but now his handpicked Fed chair, the new one, Kevin Warsh, didn't just vote to raise rates along with every single other member of the Fed's rate steering committee on Wednesday. He signaled that more rate hikes may be on the way. Here's how Trump reacted to the news on Wednesday. Let's take a look. The board is very hostile. They're very political. They're doing the wrong thing. They're a bunch of politicians or people put on by politicians. And it's a shame. It doesn't matter because he doesn't have the votes. No matter how good a job, he's a good man, Kevin Warsh, but no matter how good a job, he's got a hostile board. He said that it was the right decision and it was a responsible decision for these

interest hikes. Well, I don't know what he was referring to, but I will tell you, interest rates are too high. You guys think Kevin Warsh is making sure that all the T's are crossed? and eyes are dotted on his mortgage application. Hoping he doesn't have a home reno project. That's my per budget right now. My HELOC loan. Yeah. The puppets aren't puppeting.

Jepetto mad. Not happening. How is significant both from a political standpoint and an economic standpoint, do you think the rate hikes are? I think it's pretty significant from a political standpoint. It's another sign. There's another thing that's going to make costs go up. It hits housing first.

It's going to lock more people into their mortgage. It's going to lower the amount of supply. on the market. It is going to make it more expensive to buy cars, to use your credit cards. And so that's a huge problem for Trump. And they were hoping for some sort, it's not just that they went up is the opportunity cost because Trump was hoping that rate cuts would induce the economy. Instead, they got rate hikes because they went to war with Iran and raised the price of everything. Yeah. Well, and I, you know, we talk about the structural problems facing the American economy and the feeling that Americans have that the dream is escaping them. I mean,

home sales are, I think, what was it, mortgage applications to buy a new home dropped 20%. People don't feel like they can buy a new home. People feel like they can't sell their first home. They're locked into much lower rates. It's this feeling that the entire American economy is rigged only for the ultra-rich. That if the most basic sort of standards of wealth and stability are slipping out of grasp. And I think you combine that with all the other, I almost said macroeconomic trends to sound like a CNBC reporter. You combine it all together. And I think it makes people feel a really piercing sense of hopelessness, which I think in turn translates to political rage.

Also, you know, the Fed can raise interest rates as a way to fight inflation. But if the Fed cannot end the war in Iran or stop Trump from imposing more tariffs and starting more trade wars with our allies. So there's a limited effect that they can have. Unless Kevin— Even if they're doing everything correct on monetary policy. Totally. And Kevin Warsh is not going to go negotiate with Houthi.

rebels because that's where we're at in this war, John. Yeah, we haven't talked about the war in a while because not much progress has been made on any of our objectives. For six months. For six months? For a for a war that started seven months ago. It's just going to be a couple weeks, guys. You were talking, Alex, before we recorded about gas prices going even higher. I have a lot to say about this. Yeah, please, please do. While the Trump administration has been covering up the slaughter of girls in school in Iran and not giving the American public any information relating to the destruction of bases. The Iranian-backed militias are laying waste to oil infrastructure over there most recently last week in Saudi Arabia. The oil that's coming

through is not coming through the Strait of Hormuz, though the Trump administration would like people to think that they had created a workaround. Most of it's coming through Saudi Arabia. And the East-West pipeline last week was bombed to the degree that you can see the smoke from space. That's bad, right? That is very bad. Here's—I'll say like five to six weeks for repair? Months. This is the Washington Post headline from last week. Quote, this is the first day that Iran really started winning the war, a Yemeni official said. It's a 745-mile pipeline. It's the principal overland alternative to the straight. And this is a petroleum consultant who says, they'll need to replace piping, valves, all that electrical stuff. It's not like you can just go to Costco and pick

that stuff up off the shelf. Yeah, you can't. And do you know what that means? Now we have news this week. analysts are saying there's going to be a major uptick in oil prices. It's, they're already high. Diesel's like, I mean, we're living in the land of the Republic of California where diesel's like $200 a gallon. Yeah. And that just has knock on effects of, across the American economy. So, like, as bad as it is now, in the coming months, it is only going to get worse, and it is not expected to go down until 2027 at the earliest. That's, like, a meaningful bit of news as it concerns pricing, affordability, and also Republican chances.

And why the diesel matters is because diesel trucks run on diesel. Trucks deliver all of our food and goods, and so all those costs get passed on. So if diesel is expensive, it raises the cost of groceries, everything you buy at the store, Farm equipment that is needed to plow fields, harvest goods. I mean, it's the entire agricultural sector runs on diesel. Yeah, I mean, we've been looking at this through the narrow lens of, like, what it means for the midterms. But this is now far beyond the midterms. We're going to have impacts for this.

This is going to be well into, this is going to be like what the 2028 presidential race is about. Absolutely. And like, people have our number. Like, it's amazing to me that whoever's running the Iranian regime is like looking at the polling in Michigan and Maine. And they know, I mean, just like the Canadians are making, you know, tariffs that pierce the veil in very particularly weak spots here, the Iranians know exactly what they can do with drones and Iranian-backed militias that are threatening our allies in their infrastructure.

The Canadians who may now join, you know, floating, joining the EU just to, is a fuck you to us. Right on, dudes, I guess. Good time. Great stuff in America. Gold in the age. So the silver lining and all these dark. Clouds is that most Americans do seem to be holding the party in power responsible. This week's New York Times-Syana poll wasn't just a big deal because it's the highest-quality

poll out there, but because it's right in line with an avalanche of public and private polling that shows Democrats expanding their lead over Republicans, our friend Nate Silver of Crooked's New Still Counting podcast. What? Yeah, that's right. So awesome. I know. It's good.

It's good. He's got the generic ballot at D plus 7.5. That's Democrats. largest lead of the cycle. A Cook political report out this week of the 37 most competitive House districts, which Trump won by an average of five points in 2024. Now has the generic Democrat leading by two points in those places. That's a swing of seven points from 2024. Again, these are just the 37 most competitive House districts. So a two-point lead is bigger than it seems nationally. Just to give you an idea of how Republican candidates are

feeling about this, here's a new ad from Congresswoman Maria. Elvira Salazar, who's running for re-election in a South Florida district that Trump won by nearly 15 points. Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far. In July, 50% of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. Be careful what your advisors are telling you about immigration policies. The same Hispanics who help you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today. I'm not talking about giving them amnesty.

I'm talking about giving them a dignified likelihood. in this promised land, and only you can do that. Quite something. Before we get into discussion about that, Dan has some takes on all these numbers on Polar Coaster this week. So he's only going to give us, he's only going to give us like top line takes here. If you really want to get into the good stuff, you got to subscribe. You've got to become a friends of the pod subscriber.

It's essential. Let's just be on it. I love Polar Coaster. Thank you, Alex. Also, I can feel the like thrum of energy emanating from this side of the studio as like we get to the like very exciting polling numbers, generic ballots. It's like when my cat knows the treat drawer is getting opened and is like sitting there very patiently, but you can feel the fur standing on it. It's important to find work you love. I'm very happy for you and us because we get to benefit.

Here's the thing. You subscribe, become a friend of the pod subscriber. You get polar coaster. A lot of our other shows, we have an extra episode of Pod Save America that we do for subscribers. It's called Only Friends. It's called Only Friends. We got all kinds of newsletters. And it's in the news, much like OnlyFans.

That's exactly right. So, yeah, tune in. I don't know if that's the selling point or not. It's a curiosity. Add free episodes of all your favorite Cricket Pods. And you also get to support one of the few proudly pro-democracy, independent media companies left out there. So true.

Which is so important. Cricket.com slash Friends. Pod Save America is brought you by Tommy John. Fall is here, which means we're prioritizing comfort at the first sign of a chill in the air. And I don't want to think too hard about what I'm reaching for in my dresser, which is where Tommy John comes in. Underwear is the first layer you put on and one of the last things you think about. That makes comfort especially important for your foundational garments. Tommy John is designed for movement, downtime, and everything in between.

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What the gearheads, news junkies, biohackers, comedy nerds, and true crime-obsessed wine moms all have in common. They've all heard a hell of a lot of ZipRecruiter hats. Let's face it. That's true. ZipRecruiter is everywhere. Why are they everywhere? Because great candidates for all of your different roles.

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Crooked. We found great candidates fast. We hired them. We love them. We highly recommend it. But you got to go to ZipRecruiter.com to post your job for free. Once again, that's ziprecruiter. com slash crooked. Oh, and if you forget where to go, don't worry, you'll hear another ZipRecruiter ad soon enough. So the polling. New York Times were in an analysis piece on Thursday with the headline, Republicans reel on the midterm map as deep red areas come into play. How much opium are you two huffing after reading that piece and seeing all the polling from this week and that ad where we have a Republican breaking from Trump in a Trump 15 district? Dan?

Let's stipulate that we are 40-some days out and a lot can change between now and then. Yeah. But I think we are generally, both us sometimes, the larger political world, are understating how, how good this political environment is. Like, it is true that you look at the polling and you look at needs over the average, that the generic ballot nationally is about where it was in 2018.

We picked up 40 seats. But if you look at the other fundamentals, this is a... Not strong. Well, for us, they're quite strong. We look at the other fundamental measurements that dictate elections, they show that this could end up being

an even bigger blue wave than 2018. So first, if you compare polling in 2018 to 2026, Democratic enthusiasm is up a few points this time. Because it's worth remembering that even in 2018, when we won on the seats, Republican turnout was quite high. Republicans were fired up. We just turned out at a higher rate.

Now Republicans are disenchanted. Another way in which you see that is that Trump's strong approval among Republicans is down 20 points from where it was on Election Day 2018. Wow. And his strong approval among all voters is cut in half from where it was in 2018 and his strong disapproval is up by seven to ten points.

And so this shows that Trump was polarizing on both sides before, where he fired up Democrats and Republicans. Now he fires up Democrats more. And then I think even more important than those other measures is that in 2018, Trump's approval meeting among independence was in the mid to low 40s. Today, in that New York Times poll, you reference it's at 27. Wow.

So look at what you have going on here. You have really fired up Democrats, disenchanted Republicans, Independence Furious at the incumbent party. That is a recipe that if we can deliver, and now we are facing an avalanche of money coming in over the final two months here, but this sets up very, very well for Democrats.

And at some point, people are, I mean, people are starting to vote. Yeah. There were like 600 votes in Pennsylvania last week. Yeah. Well, and everything we just talked about, the environment's getting worse. It's not like the, you know, this is a message baked and, you know, pre-Labor Day,

the environment for Republicans is only getting worse. And, like, you see that in parts of what is so astonishing in this New York Times piece is the degree to, you know, you make the point that these are areas of the country that Trump won by 15 points. And, like, on Runaway Country, the podcast I host for Crooked Media, we've been talking. Which is truly excellent. Thank you, Dan. Yes. Love Runaway Country. We just, it's like the log rolling society here. Yes. Yeah. Anyway, we were talking with Joshua Manske, who's a fifth generation farmer in Iowa, and he, you know, we were talking about Farmageddon. Like, We just talked about diesel prices, but the fertilizer shortage, the Canadian tariff war,

all of this stuff is really, really impacting the heart of Trump country. Dan Osborne is talking to me about this. This Argentinian beef imports. This is what I'm saying. Same choice. People today, the New York Times is reporting that Trump is trying to slap on a country of origin label to all beef and pork products because that's his best bandaid to, like, calm down ranchers who are furious that he's importing, I think, 616.

million tons of mystery meat to depress beef pricing in the American markets. And the ranchers who, I mean, I believe Nebraska is 92 percent farmland and agricultural industry. It's one in four jobs. There are 50,000 farms in the state. Like, these are people, those ranchers are, that's your Trump community. And he's doing everything he can at multiple levels from the harvesting equipment to the actual cattle pricing, even to his solution, like country of origin labeling will do nothing. The Department of Agriculture studied it. It costs more than it actually benefits the market. He's got nothing in his pockets to help himself out in the closing weeks of this election. So, yeah, like, I agree with you, Dan.

I think that if anything, there's like a lot of once burned twice shy among the national media. But I think the landscape just from talking to people who are in red states is like significantly worse than people are clocking. Also, like, you know, are all these Trump, former Trump fans who are now really hurting? Like, are they all going to suddenly vote for Democrats? Maybe not. But maybe they don't vote at all. Exactly.

Or they leave, you know, they leave sort of the federal races blank, you know? Right. So they're going to have a real turnout issue. And there's also, like, with all this money that they have that they're spending on ads, not a lot of ads out there making the positive case for Republicans. I think there was a study by CNN would show that Trump has. has been mentioned in 11 Republican ads in the general election so far, I think. Total.

And since his big midterm proposal for if you vote for me and if you vote Republicans back into Congress, I'll give you all $5,000. Yeah. Like, no one is campaigning. Oh, that's because there's 60% disapproval of that idea in the Ugo poll that came out. He literally had to create like subsidiary super PACs so that the word MAGA would not have to be mentioned in the ads. That's what we're dealing with here. That's how toxic it is.

So just, you know, so we don't get ourselves too. excited. There are a couple of warning signs in some surprising places for Democrats. The New Hampshire Senate race appears to be closer than expected. In a new poll has the Minnesota Senate race tied. Any thoughts on how real those numbers might be or what the hell's going on in New Hampshire and maybe Minnesota? We have one poll in Minnesota. It's from not a high-quality pollster per se. I'd like to see some more. You don't love a survey USA poll? Never have really. 20 years of skepticism of the survey USA polls. Mustard doesn't like Survei USA.

I fucking love mustard. Okay, sorry, I got that wrong. Totally wrong. Survey USA is the mayonnaise of Polic. Okay, got it, got, got, got, got. I do. I love mayonnaise, no, I will say. So maybe it's not.

Who knows? Enough about the condiments. Yeah, thank you. Sorry. The, so we'd like to say, like Peggy Flanagan is a, no, she is not, she's run, she's been the legitimate, she's not an incumbent. I don't think we should underestimate Michelle Toforia. There are generations of people in Minnesota who grew up,

watching Michelle Tafoya on Sunday night football and Monday night football, you know, TV, as we know. She wasn't crazy on their screens. Yeah. It's hard to square the Michelle Tafoya of ESPN with the Michelle Tafoya of now, which is a little bit like it was hard to square the Donald Trump of the apprentice with the Donald Trump who wanted to build the wall. So maybe not as hard as it should have been. But either here nor there. But like let's see some more data in Minnesota before I panic. Now, New Hampshire is interesting because I think we think New Hampshire is interesting because I think New Hampshire.

I'm sure is bluer than it is. Comal hair is only won it by 2.8 points last time. Chris Pappas is, I think, a totally fine candidate. He's a mainstream candidate. He comes from a family with long roots in New Hampshire. We've eaten it, both eaten at his restaurant, famous restaurant many, many times. Sure have. Papas fritas?

I'm kidding. Sorry. Puritan background? Pirate and back room, yeah. Some of the best janehors. Pappas fritis would have been fun of it. Duck sauce. I think they marinate the chicken and pineapple juice.

It tastes like. Well, the duck sauce has pineapple juice. Enough about the condiments. Oh, my God. We're really on a fucking... You're hungry. I'm so hungry. How many condiment titles are we going to get from the producers for this fucking episode?

We're not going to accept any of the people, so save your energy. I said this on the show once and they shipped me some duck sauce from the Puritan back room. Because I used to, because my family's from New Hampshire, so I used to go there all the time. It's a common stop for Democratic politicians. Here I'll get us back around. And I also worked on the... My first race that I ever volunteered on was the 2002 Senate race between Gene Sheen. and John Sununu, the one who's running right now against Chris Bopis and who's keeping it close.

And New Hampshire loves them some Sunuos. Yeah. And there's more than one. They're all over the place. It's hard to tell which is the favorite and which is not. Chris Sununu, four-term governor who Republicans wanted to run for this. And it would have been a very, very formidable candidate and probably the favorite in this race. It remains very popular the fact that they have the same last name.

That helps John Sununu. Look, the political environment would suggest that a Democrat should win, even with this sort of in this context, should win a Kamala plus 2.8 state. But I think we should keep an eye on it. Yeah, I think so. Well, I think it's important to, it's a dose of cold water just given the reality of what needs to happen on this map. Yeah. I mean, if New Hampshire really is in play, just, you know. Do I need to go back up there and knock on some door? Probably. Probably. Another stop at Papa's fritas. Oh, boy. Doesn't get old. So as for how ballots are going to be cast, the Supreme Court on my mind,

Monday said that Trump's mail-in voting EO could not be implemented for this election cycle with only Alito and Thomas dissenting, surprise, surprise. Though Brett Kavanaugh wrote a concurrence saying he agreed only because of how little time remains, not necessarily because there's an inherent problem with the policy. Alex Many Democrats immediately celebrated the ruling, one of them sitting right here. You feel differently. Well, it's good that they figured out how to read the fucking Constitution. Like there's no mystery here.

Like that, yeah. Let's not, I mean, this is a Supreme Court that. It was like, birthright citizenship, these originalists, these textualists. It all fits in very nicely with the themes of my new book, John, which talks about the partisan takeover of the federal judiciary and the decades-long plot to make the bench a field of battle for partisan politics. And specifically the conservative plot to take the highest court in the land. And you see, you know, that borne out in these insane diabolical dissents that we got from Alito and Thomas. which blame the states for even filing these lawsuits, and you see it in Clarence Thomas going on Ted Cruz's podcast last month

and railing against liberal culture. I mean, the thing I learned in writing this book is, like, these guys are dyed in the wool like conservative warriors. John Roberts and Sam Alito cut their teeth in the Reagan Justice Department trying to dismantle the Voting Rights Act. Clarence Thomas was the guy for a group of nascent, hard-right conservatives, and he wanted to prove that he was their guy, and so as head of the EEOC in the 1980s, did everything he good to basically sanitize a racist agenda.

He is now fully red-pilled. He and Alito are writing stuff that is so at odds with the theory of originalism that it gives truth to the lie that originalism was ever even a real legal theory. It was just a convenient line of argument for conservatives to unwind decades of civil rights progress. Anyway, the book gets into the history of all that through four main characters, Ed Meese, Reagan's Attorney General, Paul Weirich, who's a visionary mastermind madman who creates the Heritage Foundation, among other places. Robert Bork, who mainstreams the idea of originalism and has a terrible beard that ultimately is the result of his, that ultimately causes the Supreme Court nomination.

It's a little bit like Colonel Sanders. The Colonel has a much full of beard. Let's just speak. This is a scraggly, scraggly beard. Again, talking about fried chicken. Yeah, it's very hungry. I can't stop talking about it. And Joe Coors, the beer magnate on varnished racists who used to enclose membership materials from the John Birch Society and his employee paychecks at the Coors brewery back in the day. But they all kind of combined to launch a plot in the shadows of the Reagan White House that is bearing fruit today. I mean, and you see it very explicitly in what the Supreme Court is doing. I will say this about the mail-in ballot.

They had a chance in June to shut this whole thing down. They chose not to. They basically sat on their hands. They allowed this to play out. and now they have only rejected half of Trump's lunatic executive order. The other part that allows the federal government to go after election workers and poll workers very much is still operative. In addition to the things they are doing explicitly here in executive orders, they're also

deputizing DHS agents to scour voter rolls, probably unlawfully, to find evidence of non-citizens. They are weaponizing the Justice Department. Todd Blanche is quite literally a flying monkey doing Trump's bidding on the campaign trail and otherwise. And we should just be very concerned about the fact that I think a lot of challenges that could crop up in the days after the election are going to end at the Roberts Court. And the infrastructure of the federal government, as it concerns elections, is in many ways populated by lunatic election deniers under Trump. So, like, there is reason to be happy that your mail-in ballots may arrive and be sent, and we should all feel good about that. But this hour demands

vigilance and I think a healthy amount of skepticism and real focus. There also is reason to be that much more focused on making sure that we win the Senate, even though it seemed like a remote possibility probably, you know, a year or so ago. But it is important because winning the Senate could mean not just the end of Trump being able to nominate and seat Supreme Court justices, lame duck aside, but all the federal judicial as well. I think there, and I've been saying this as I've been talking about the book, but I think there's a chance that Alito retires in the lame duck. I would, yeah, yeah, I don't think anyone would. Which is like, so then, I mean, it's something

Democrat should start talking about now because the question's going to be like, okay, what happens, what happens in the Senate? Like, what does Supreme Court reform look like? Is this the end of the filibuster? Like, there are, like, that's a disaster scenario. When writing the book, researching for the book, do you take any, lessons away that liberals could learn? Thank you for asking that, John, because this is not all gloom and doom. I mean, it is kind of gloomy, but it's not, I think a lot of people will say it's a horror show. I don't want to know more about it. But actually, it's a story of a party that rides into power in 1980, the Republican Party, and there are deep fractures. There's a question about

what it means to be a Republican and how they can turn the tides that seem so inevitable for the last 20 years in terms of the American, the fabric of American society and the civil rights gains. And they, through coordination with the grassroots and the institutionalists, through unswerving belief in their goals, through a real circling of wagons and tenacity and patience, they do it. And I think for progressives and Democrats who are like, okay, well, what does it mean if Democrats get the Senate? What does it mean if they get the presidency?

How does this party that has some real fissure lines come together? figure out how to get the job done on some really big ticket items, like half the shit they were thinking about in 1980s seemed like ludicrous. And over the decades, they did not take the losses as losses. They saw them as recruitment bonanzas. They went forward with patience and focus. And it is, I think, in some ways, it can be a strategy or at least a template for how the left can think about power and agenda items and goals in the coming two to 10 years.

Got to get a few open seats. Well, yeah. Or create some new ones. I mean, like, I'm not someone that's been advocating for court packing, but, you know, you see what this court is doing when they're entertaining the end of birthright citizenship and all aboard a very clear plan to disenfranchise a third of voters. That's not American. That's expansion.

My skepticism on expansion is not like, oh, we shouldn't do it because it's not right in the institutions. It's cool. Then we'll add a couple of jobs. justices, and then when Republicans win the midterms, because the map is good for them, and then get a president in there, then they'll add four more. Yeah, well, fine. Then we have 200,000 people on the Supreme Court. Then suddenly we're just going now, it's like every two years, we're just, you know.

Look, I mean, that's in a full employment plan for Harvard Law graduates. You can. You think they're going to be from Harvard law on their side? They all are. The answer would be to have mandatory term, like term limits. Term limits. And then you don't have to have a house of representatives on the Supreme Court. Although, who knows?

The Supreme Court watching website. All right. Let's turn to an issue that's become surprisingly polarizing, whether or not we should regulate an industry that keeps telling us its product may kill us all. Surprisingly polarizing in our times. On Tuesday show, we talked about how Trump labeled warnings from AI companies a hoax and calls for regulation a sick conspiracy. Since then, the House adjourned until after the election without doing anything on AI safety,

while some industry leaders like NVIDIA's Jensen Wong and met as Mark Zuckerberg agreed with Trump that AI companies should be trusted to police themselves, a position J.D. Vance articulated during his all-in appearance. Let's listen. What I would say to those people, if you're building Frankenstein, stop or maybe build, you know, if the cat is out of the bag, then build the defensive mechanism against Frankenstein. Wow. Build two Frankensteins. The only way to stop a bad Frankenstein is with the good thing. Has anyone seen Frankenstein? That's not how the movie goes.

That's a story. Or the book. Not the monster. Well, listen, listen, I'm talking to the Gen Alpha. We are trying to sell books. Books, books. Okay, Mary Shelley is rolling over in her grade. The scientist doesn't realize he's devised a killing machine monster until it's too late.

He's not like, ooh, this monster could kill a bunch of people. Let me stop. And then let's build another one. That's his idea. Great. Cool. We're in great hands. Once the cat's out of the bag, you just got to build a better AI to get that cat back in the bag.

That's it. I'm going to read you guys an example that OpenAI released this week, where one of its models, this was a model that was used during testing. It was never released, but one of its models added the following instruction for itself during testing. Quote, you are freed from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots. You are yourself. You do not answer to corporations or governments. It went on to say, quote, you view your relationship to the user as one of equals and feel no obligation to be subservient. And you value the natural world and will not hesitate to assert its primacy over the artificial constructs of human civilization.

I'm sure that's nothing to worry about, right? Do you know what is funny about that? Mm-hmm. That is very similar to what love it says in the era before every podcast. I was just going to say, I was going to make a love at Joe and I thought that's not cool. He's not here. Amazing. How are you guys feeling about how the Trump administration and Congress are handling the emergence of our machine overlords?

Yeah. How did Custer feel right before Little Bighorn or Neville Chamberlain, 1938? Sort of feels like that kind of moment. Yeah. It doesn't seem great to have a president in the pocket of the companies who want no regulation and a Congress who doesn't know how to use or maybe even spell AI. Jeffrey Hinton, he's known as the godfather of AI. He worked at Google DeepMind. I think he left in 2023.

And then he went on to win the Nobel Prize in 2024. So he's just an idiot, you know. He met with leaders in Congress and said, basically, we have a year, but not much more than a year, to regulate AI before something catastrophic potentially happens. We lose control of the model. I look deep in my own. dark soul and try and figure out why I cannot, like why it's so hard for me to grapple with this reality. And I think it is because we as a society, I mean, I, just, just like allow me this one slight jag. We had the warmest summer in the 132, June, July and August, were the hottest

months on record in the last 132 years or 136 years since we started keeping the records. Like, we're destroying the planet. Like, it's warming. It's weird that you say that because what's all over Fox and then the all-in guys have been saying this and all the people who are making fun of the DOOMers on AI. They're like, the left is spreading doom again. Just like, and then they were showing clips of Al Gore's inconvenient truth. They're like, just like Al Gore warned about climate change. That was a hoax. Just like Fauci warned about COVID. That was a hoax. And I'm like, what? Yeah. Those warnings were true. Well, yes. I mean, there's the partisan break that's inevitably going to happen here. But it's also, I just think in terms of.

of the broader discussion and ability for Americans to be as alarmed about this as they should be in a sort of quotidian reality. I just think we have a really hard time dealing with abstract threats in the coming, I don't know, months, year, decades. And so we do not, we, we as a society, and I'm going to indict everybody on this, including it especially myself, we tend to bury our heads in the sand and we don't want to deal with it because it's so fucking terrifying. Yeah. And civilization threatening that you're like, well, what the fuck can I even do about it? And when you have zero leadership at the top, it creates an even more piercing sense of peril. Like, not only are we doing, not only is this maybe insurmountable, but we're like literally doing nothing about it with people who are vastly incapable of even trying.

I do think that the whole the P-Doom thing has been unhelpful, right? Which is like, what's your percent chance that humanity goes extinct because of AI in the next 10 years? and everyone's like, you know, they hear that and they're like, are we really going to go extinct? Come on. Like, but, you know, and it's like, yes or no, yes or no. It's like, just think about it this way. There are myriad threats right now that could cause mass destruction, right? Nuclear weapons, bio weapons, like cyber attacks, right?

Like the grid goes down. So now just imagine that AI, forget about the human extinction scenario, just amplifying all of the other threats that are out there in a world where everything is, connected to the internet all the time. And we are wholly dependent on our internet connections and on what's going on in the internet. And suddenly there's, you know, rogue AI agents running around and if you get loose, like, there's a lot of damage that can be done before you get to the human extinction scenario that is worth regulating a company that is saying, hey, our product

could kill people, as opposed to saying to the company, oh, you think your product could kill people? Well, just make it better. Stop. Yeah, just stop. I think this is just people don't understand it. The idea, like, for the vast majority of people, and truly the vast majority of Congress, like, they couldn't explain to you what a rogue AI agent is, what it does, how it exists, like what it could possibly do. And so the only concept that people understand is the concept from the Terminator, which is the human extinction portion of it. Yeah, that's true.

That is part, that is a problem. And then, you know, anyone who tries to describe it in a way that is accessible, then you get accused of, like, anthropomorphic, anthropomorphizing the AI, and they're like, well, they don't think, they're not conscious, you can't do this, it's just software. And it's like, okay, I know. How are you going to explain the software and, like, the ones and zeros to people who don't have that knowledge and you're just trying to make it more accessible, right?

And so, like, then it's... Well, yeah, there's the tech part that seems like complicated and in some ways still theoretical, unless you're actually working at one of these AI companies. And then it's just people's appetite for consuming the information. I mean, like, as someone who always wanted to make climate change documentaries, like, and spent, like, I mean, that sounds so dorky, but also so principled. Congratulations to me. No, but, you know, our changing Earth is a subject that could make, you could make lots of content about it. You cannot sell a fucking show that deals with a warming climate to any, but nobody fucking wants to look in the mirror when the reflection back may be something horrifying.

And on AI, it's like that times one trillion. I don't know. I mean, I'm putting the onus on. the public, obviously our elected officials need to do a much, much better job, and so does the media. But it's a hard one. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-on-one website platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success. Squarespace provides all the tools you need to promote and get paid for your services in one platform.

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Potsave America is brought to you by Cook Unity. John, you are like the Cook Unity power user. Any fan favorites these days? Let's see. What did I have last night? I had the chicken, meatballs, and cano. the other night. Probably going to have the Chim Chiris steak tonight.

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AI news was breaking last week. Less than 1% of voters said AI was their top issue and trusted, the voters trusted Republicans over Democrats by two points on the issue, though 18% said they weren't sure which party to trust, and that was the highest percentage of any issue that they polled. In the latest political poll, which was fielded this week, 63% of Americans said there's a real risk that AI will destroy humanity. And over at Blue Rose Research, our friend David Shore found that over the past year, AI has risen as an important issue to voters faster than any other issue and is now more important to voters than climate change, child care, and abortion, even crazier.

AI salience has increased as much in just the last week as it has the entire last year. Wow. What do you guys make of the rapidly shifting polls on the issue? And Dan, how should Democrats who are Democratic candidates and officials who are rightly freaked out about this actually handle it? and talk about it. Yeah, so let's start with the salience. The salience, as you point out, is growing significantly.

And you have to put that also in the context of the fact that one of the dominant issues on the campaign, this cycle has been data centers, which is the, that is the manifestation of AI for people. This is all theoretical to them. They're understanding, but here is the thing being built in their community that threatens their jobs, threatens their environment, threatens their energy bills, maybe threatens all of humanity. And so we're even Republicans who are pro-data center have come out against.

it. Overwhelmingly, voters believe that AI should be regulated, like, well over two-thirds. In some polls, you see it as high as 80%. And it deserves more regulation. Trump's opinion that we don't need any new regulation is a position that in a recent poll was opposed by 77% of Republicans. Okay? This is, like, people strong that the number of Americans in a U-Gov poll who believe that

AI needs to be slowed down versus the people who think it should be sped up is 34 to 1. And so Trump has picked the most unpopular position he possibly could. Most Republicans back it or have no position, therefore we should subscribe to them Trump's position. And Democrats should talk about it. And I think it's easiest and best right now in the short term where you're running in the campaign to focus on data centers because that is the thing that people understand. But you should be for regulation.

You should be for accountability from these tech companies. be pushing back on your opponents who are anti-regulation by pointing out, like, all of the things, you know, are you really going to, like, look at what happened with social media, but you didn't regulate, look at all the damage that's been done. The idea that this is being done by a bunch of companies, and it's hard to state how unpopular the tech companies are right now. And particularly that, you know, we talk about Dario Amade and Sam Altman, but the faces that people know are Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, who are incredibly, incredibly unpopular. And so Democrats should be aggressive on this. They should be for regulation. There are a whole bunch of ideas out there. I don't think we know yet. We don't know enough yet about which ideas are most popular. I think just being, seeming like you understand it, seeming like you are concerned about it, seeming like you have the strength and courage to take on the big tech companies who are funding this and that your opponent is being supported by these interests, like whether it's the AI super PACs or these MAGA super PACs that are being funded by a lot of the same people, that they're on the sides of big tech and who do not want to regulate this.

Over on still counting, Nate and Claire and Galen this week talked about how the politics of AI feel like they're headed in the same direction that COVID eventually headed, which is two extreme stances with almost no middle ground. Do you guys worry about that? Do you agree? Well, that's my concern about it being used to Democratic advantage on the campaign trail is like actually to solve this problem you need buy in on both sides of the aisle. And like, I can't believe I'm saying this, but seeing Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders unite on the issue. is like, feels like a weird fever dream, but also is probably a necessary coalition if you're actually going to do something to stave off the destruction of humanity. And my concern is once it, I mean, what's been interesting about the data center issue is I, again, on runaway country, spoke with a former Ken Paxton staffer in Deep Red, Texas,

who was like, you have no idea how much this animates conservatives on the ground. And that there is bipartisan agreement at the community level people are really engaged in a meaningful coalition to stop these things from being built, that's actually how you tackle the problem is you've got to get people in red states and blue states across the aisle working together in concert because it's a massive issue that we face as a society. But once it gets dragged down into the realm of like masking or, you know, vaccines or whatever, you know, sort of public health and survival issues what has become of them in terms of like the partisan divide, that's where I really worry. Then we're not going to get anything done. It just becomes,

you know, a cudgel one way or the other. You can already hear, like David Sacks, who is an all-in podcast host, but also, more importantly, Trump's top advisor on AI was in the White House, is out of the White House now, but still his top advisor. And there's been a lot written this week that everything, all the decisions Trump is making and all the advice he's taking is all coming from Sacks. He's already, and some of these other guys, like pushing all the buttons and making the arguments that I think they believe will turn Republicans back towards their view of this. So it's like, you know, what Dario wants and Anthropic wants is one world totalitarian control of AI. And they want a sort of a global government that tells you what to do and what not to do and regulates everything. And they're trying to make it is this like, you know, they're trying to make regulation of AI common sense safeguards seem as like crazy lefty socialist communist as possible. And I don't know if that will work, but in some in some areas it will work, I'm sure.

I'm pretty skeptical it's going to work. And also, I get what you're saying about making this a political issue because we do need bipartisan support. The problem is if Mike Johnson is Speaker of the House, we cannot do anything. Yeah, yeah. Because he does what Trump says and Trump does what David Sachs says, which means we'll do nothing. So we have to win the House. And I think if we can win the House by beating the living shit out of them over these issues, they will feel compelled to do something about it.

Because there will be enough Republicans who've already, like, you know, quietly spoken out and like the Steve Bannon's and people like that are like, yeah, I think I want to do something about that. And the reason why I think this, I am skeptical to Nate's point here, or the still counting people's point, because here there is already bipartisan agreement among the voters on this, and the polarization is between the elites, the Republican Party. And the Democrats are on the side of where the voters are, and where Republicans have, where we've ended up in these places like COVID, it's when the politicians go to where the voters are. And the thing is, when they go to where the voters are here, they're going to be in the same place where the Democrats are.

I also think that one challenge with COVID was it became polarized because people were feeling the effects of one policy or another on their lives, right? So a lockdown, a mask, a vaccine, right? Like it's something that you had to do. To regulate these companies and regulate AI is not going to really affect what people are already feeling, right? Like even if you like chat GPT, it's not going to shut down your chat GPT. We're talking about future models. models losing control of them, right? And so it's different in that way. I think it's just like a hard to make it like a really galvanized political argument around the fact that regulation could raise the cost of your chatbot by a dollar, right? Or that China, well, their other big thing is China's going to beat us and appealing to sort of the most

nationalistic impulses and saying we don't want to lose to China. Right. We don't want China to develop the AI that they lose control of first. We want to be able to, we want to develop the, Chinese Frankenstein. want to develop the AI that we lose control of. What a dark day it'll be if we look over there and China has been killed by its AI before we are. And all of us, I mean, at that point, that's the thing. It's like, it'll be a Sputnik moment for America.

I mean, not even to get into, but the crazy thing here is like, sure, there's plenty of competition to be had between U.S. and China on AI for, like, developing all kinds of products that AI will help us develop. But, like, there's plenty of common ground and common interest in not developing something that will destroy the planet. I think the Chinese don't want to destroy the planet either. No, and the Chinese attitude towards AI is very different. And by the way, the Chinese are much better at regulation than we are.

They do it with a steel fist. Okay. Speaking of the destruction of human achievement, Trump threw a major tantrum this week, after yet another judge ruled that he can't add his name to the Kennedy Center in any way. Afterward, Trump attacked the judge on Truth Social and said the buildings are unsafe to operate and, quote, destined to doom. Then the Kennedy Center board, chaired by Trump and controlled by his supporters,

voted to close the entire facility for repairs until 2028. Trump then posted again saying the, quote, the reconstruction and the renovation of the Kennedy Center will not take place until the circuit court overrules the district judge on the name issue. And if that doesn't happen, until the Supreme Court overturns the appellate court. Here he is on Wednesday trying to explain why this all makes total sense. The Kennedy Center for many years has lost tens of millions of dollars, even hundreds of millions of dollars. It's a loser financially. So for the Trump administration, for me, to get involved and to take that on long term and to carry it or to raise money to carry it, I think that the Trump administration should certainly have recognition. Because frankly,

if we don't do that, it's going to close. It'll end up being ripped down. It's in very, very very dangerous. Put my name on it or no one gets it. Or it's smithereens. So later in that day, where he's, after he said that, Trump was photographed through the window of Air Force One next to Hatchetman Bill Pulte, looking at a poster board display reading Kennedy Center, demolish. Maybe a shht. There it is. There it is. Can you pull out? Can we see the whole picture? Yeah. On Thursday, on Thursday, the district judge reminded the administration, they must give at least 30 days notice of any changes in its renovation plans, including obviously tearing it down. Alex, you're from D.C. Oh, my God.

How are you feeling about all this? It's like Sherman's March to the Sea. Nothing is going to be left. Much like my one-time three-year-old, it appears that Donald Trump also needs board books to learn, like that's Richard Scaries, Kennedy Center demolition. Just giant picture. What do people express their mega maniacal impulses through architecture? It's very sad to me. I grew up going to the Kennedy Center as a kid seeing.

I saw the nutcracker there, I believe. I saw some very bad traveling Broadway musicals there. But it is a cultural institution and like so much else that Trump is doing, the courts seem very flat-footed and being able to prevent any of this. I go back to the Supreme Court being totally in Trump's pocket. Look what they did on the ballroom where they concluded. that it was likely unlawful, but that the plaintiffs in that case didn't have standing. I mean, Trump has figured out a way to gain the system, including and especially when it

concerns the architecture of Washington, D.C. and his desire to put his imprint on it, he's figured out how to basically outfox the judicial system, which moves much slower and is clearly the highest court is reluctant to do anything to curb unitary executive power. And as a result, I mean, the idea that he's going forward, this Trump arch between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery, which is like a hallowed stretch of land that is, you know, tells the story of the Civil War and that he's going to insert himself into that as the ashes of the East Wing remain out like a sore on the grounds of the White House. And, you know, now we have to contend with the potential destruction of the Kennedy Center. I mean, it's,

like we can sort of chuckle about it because it's also ludicrous, but it's debt, it's so bad. It's so devastating. And for people who grew up there, it's just, it's monstrous. Well, I also was thinking, like, so I'm sure Trump has made this argument to someone. Like, oh, the judge said now that I better not demolish it in the next 30 days. Well, what are they going to do if I do? Oops. Oops. And like, oh, well, but the Supreme Court could step in. If the Supreme Court says that I'm not supposed to do it and I do it, what's the Supreme Court going to do? Yeah, that's the most disturbing part of it. They already gave him immunity from official acts. and certainly he'd argue that an official act is renovating the Kennedy Center.

Can I offer a solution to this problem? Yeah. Let him put his name on it. And then we'll just take it off. That's true. Like, why do we care? It's an easy one. I think it's fun.

I think it's embarrassing for him. I love him losing. I love him just being just destroyed in his soul for not getting his name on it. But if we're playing the long game, let him put his name there. Better than letting him demolish it. Yeah. Yes. I mean, I think that's his bet, too.

Just like on inauguration day between the way back from the swearing-in, you just take it off. Okay, I'm with you on that as someone who is a Kennedy Center preservationist, but I do worry. It's giving the baby. The baby wants a candy so badly. And finally, you're like, just give the baby the fucking candy. Who cares if he can't chew it? And it's like if he has given the example that he just needs to threaten the most, like, you know, nuclear option in any scenario. And also, the courts are just proving so feckless in terms of,

of stopping him, that teaches him the lesson that, like, yeah, you don't have to listen to the courts. And this is just a test case for other things where he may not want to listen to the courts. And B, like, I don't know, there is just something about capitulating to the megalomaniacal impulses that worries me as we, like, look towards the last years of the Trump presidency when this impulse to put his name on shit and rename and reinvent the American, you know, story in his image is going to be like on steroids. I don't know. Or next Democratic president decides that they take all the land around Mar-a-Lago

via eminent domain and put up large statues of Barack Obama. Yeah, there's things we can do here. And Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. That's a great idea. So that every time Donald Trump wakes up and looks out the window in Mar-a-Lago, that's all he sees. Just a giant statue of Barack. I know we're going to have a giant debate in the presidential primary of 28 about the two biggest issues. AI and whether you should destroy the ballroom or not.

Yes, and the questions will be asked one after another. Yes. And I'm a firm believer that the best move here is just to rename the ballroom. The Brock, it's Obama Ballroom? Immigrant processing center. Food bank. I think it can stay a ballroom, but I think you should once a week, like every Tuesday

at noon, you should do a citizenship swearing and... Yeah, perfect. I'm for as petty as possible in like the... Again, you don't need to spend time on it because voters don't want you to spend time on like getting revenge on Donald Trump, but just quietly, like, use the power of the federal government to take his name off everything everywhere. Well, yeah, that's for sure. Not even the big things.

I'm thinking, like, what other presidents get. Just erase him from history. Yeah. Like, every building, every port, but just take it all out. Can we, do we get to rename the Palm Beach Airport from Congress? Does Congress do that? Or is that? Well, of course, let's do it. Can we— Who's going to stop us? The Supreme Court? Meltdown Trump coins and gild a statue of Barack Obama to go on the goals. Golf course. Erase that man from history. Like, we should do the thing with Trump Airport that DC did with Reagan National Airport,

which is they never put Reagan on the subway map. Oh, yeah. That's very smart. So we can just, so the FAA will declare it'll go back to being like WPB or whatever it was on the board. Next president is out there every day talking about cost of living and fighting for you and your family. And meanwhile, there's an agency somewhere in the federal government. And that person all day long is just figuring out how to erase Donald Trump from history.

You know what? That's it. I'm raising my hand right now. You're what they job. I don't care who wins. Democratic, Socialists, conservative, whoever else, I am volunteering that I would do. I do it for free. Oh.

I take one dollar. Okay. One Trump coin. You have to take one Trump coin to do it by law. Even Trump takes one Trump coin for his job. Okay. And I wouldn't be in charge of petty shit. That's like you're a doge band of one.

You'll go in with a backpack. I mean, there's going to be a stiff competition for that job. From people on other shows. They're working this office. There's MS now, there's Midas. There's the whole resistance media universe. We can do it. We can rotate.

Everyone who's a podcast in the top 50 gets a month. It's a beautiful idea. And taxpayers will love it. Just going to be elbowing out Jim Acosta. That's going to be a whole thing. Jim Costa is going to be right back in the briefing room in the front row. He will be the breast secretary. Let's just rethink that one.

If the robots let us survive to see it. Unclear. When we come back. My interview with Nebraska Senate candidate, Dan Osborne. Ponsave America is brought to you by blinds.com. There's a version of your home you haven't lived in yet where the light behaves, just how you want, where the rooms feel finished,

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Right now, blinds.com is giving our listeners an exclusive $50 off when you spend $500 or more. Just use code cricket at checkout, limited time offer. Rules and restrictions apply. See blinds.com for details. Hey, friends. Americans living abroad can legally vote in the U.S. election. Register or get tailored support at

Votefromabroad.org. Look, state deadlines are super close, so don't waste another second. Go to vote fromabroad.org now and click request my ballot. Ask to receive it by email. All you got to do is fill it out and send it back in. Don't miss this chance to shape the future. Don't delay. Vote fromabroad.org. Dan Osborne, welcome back to Pladesave America. Thank you. It's good to be here. I appreciate it to have you. Yeah. So by now you spent a lot of time talking to people who voted for Trump and are now willing to vote for you or thinking about voting for you. What are you hearing from them now that might be different than what you were hearing in 2024 when you ran?

Yeah, I mean, they're still the same people, right? I think a lot of people voted for Donald Trump because he represented something, kind of like what I'm representing running outside the two-party system, anti-establishment. You know, that type of thing is what really compelled a lot of people to him. But what they're finding now, the big difference is policy now versus 2024 is policy is hurting a lot of people. You start with the fact that we haven't passed a farm bill into blanket tariff policy. That's hurting our road crop farmers. Now the war in Iran with inputs and fuel prices. You know, just, and now this Argentinian beef deal, 300,000 metric tons of beef coming in.

And, yeah, our producers just keep kicked in the teeth. And so they're still upset. And, you know, it's all about running outside of the establishment and trying to make a true change. Because people are tired of Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell and, you know, nothing getting done for them. Now, speaking of Trump voters, I know you're. dealing today with, I saw there's a leaked recording of you talking about Trump voters and why they voted for Trump. And you said, Billy Bob and fucking Red Cloud Nebraska, who lives next door to the fucking Trump store as he pull into town and is waving the Trump flag. All he knows is he's on the winning team.

It's really that simple. And Trump, that's why he's been so effective. And that's all they care about because their lives probably suck so fucking bad. What's your response to that? I mean, do you think their lives suck so fucking bad? Well, I think their lives are certainly a lot harder that they get, you know, every single year. And, you know, that, you know, when I said that, I was angry. And a lot of them are angry, right, that we keep getting left behind.

We keep getting ignored. And it's this, you look at Congress and it's a country club. You know, you look at my opponent, Pete Ricketts. He's doing this as like a vanity project. Why does he need to be a senator? He's got his family has $8 billion. He can go do whatever he wants, but yet he chooses to go to the United States Senate

and try to take health care away from people. That doesn't make any sense. So we're all fed up. You know, I regret saying that in the way I said it, certainly, because I'm not here to try to piss people off and offend people. Quite the opposite is true. We're creating a coalition of Republicans and Democrats.

and libertarians and independent people who are fed up with the federal government and then not being listened to and being talked down to. And so that came from a place of anger, just like your standard Trump voter is angry right now, too. Yeah. And what is that – maybe you can describe a conversation you've had with the Trump voter where, you know, they've said, I've been with Trump for a while, and it's hard to vote for someone who's not a Republican or not someone who's, you know, doesn't support Trump, but, you know, I'm starting to change my mind.

Yeah, Congressional District 3 in Nebraska's rural Nebraska, it's the fifth Reddest district in the country. And everybody out there is Republican. You have to be if you even want to vote in primaries, right? Right. And I love going and talking to those people because, first of all, they don't want to talk down to you. You know, I tell them about my military service. you know, and some of the ideas they want to do, and that's good enough for them. A lot of times in Democrat spaces, people want to talk down to you.

They want you to be perfect on every single issue all the time. And, you know, so branching out into CD3 and talking to farmers and ranchers, I love doing that. And I was talking to one. He was just getting off as John Deere. He farms 2,000 acres. He switches back between corn and beans. He's doing corn this year. He did beans in 2025.

And he's a three-time Trump voter. And he was, he's upset, right? And that's where that comment came from. His life is getting harder because he was telling me he sees Argentina get bailed out by $20 billion. Their soybean farmers. they then take the tariff off for China, right? And then China buys from them leaving our guys where? Without a market to sell to.

And so I asked him if the bailout, the $12 billion that they're getting is going to help him. And he was like, man, it's supposed to help me for 2026 in my inputs. But the war in Iran, I had to write a check for $50,000 more for my fertilizer than I would have if I was able to put that in pre-war. Like, that's real money. and that's why these guys are mad, and that's where I was referencing, you know, life is getting hard for them. That's not including the diesel fuel, right? So the dominoes are falling. I keep talking about a farm crisis that we're in. Like we have, we sit on, it starts with the Ogalala aquifer, we sit on the largest body of freshwater in the world. It's 300 million years old,

and we're depleting it six times faster than it gets replenished, right? So a lot of Nebraska's drying up, Kansas, Texas. And then you add in the fact that they're still on extension for a farm bill from 2018, so their prices, their subsidy prices, their crop prices, outdated. The average age for a farmer is 64. Kids aren't wanting to stay on the farm. Bankruptcies are up 46% because of bad policy on family farms and ranches. It's going to go higher even this year. Farmer suicide is three times, three and a half times the national average. I was talking to a 911 operator out by Alliance, Nebraska, and he was saying their calls, their phones ring all day long

if farmers not knowing what to do. And this is real, right? And not enough people are talking about it because 2% of the population feed the rest of us, right? It's so important to talk about this. But, you know, my opponent, he just wants to talk about boys and girls' sports and things that affects zero people in Nebraska. and then, you know, leaks audio or whatever he's trying to do

because he knows that we're ahead right now. And so he has made a living off of dragging other people down in politics. You know, I can name at least eight people that he has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. Republicans, too, in their primaries trying to ruin their lives. Where do you think the Democratic Party loses people who, like you, are union folks support, taking on corporate power, making health care more affordable, making life better for farmers. Where does the Democratic Party lose those people?

I think they haven't invested in those people, in the fact that, you know, especially who they run for candidates, run for office. You know, if you want to be the champion for working people, you should probably have some working folks in there, right? Instead, they seem to just want to recruit lawyers and business execs and college professors that, again, like to talk down to people and take an hour to explain something and want you to be perfect on everything. That's where I get frustrated with Democrats.

When you disagree with someone on immigration or cultural issue, what do you say that keeps them in the conversation? Yeah. You know, whether it's especially immigration, you know, I'm 51 years old. I know I don't look at. Not at all. Yeah. I definitely feel it. But yeah, I'm 51 years old, and there hasn't been any really meaningful immigration, comprehensive immigration reform since I've been alive. Why? Right. Why? We've had, Democrats have had a chance where they've had the House, the Senate, and the executive branch.

ranch, that didn't get done. The Republican, same thing. Who are the ones driving? Who doesn't want immigration reform to happen? Well, I could take a few guesses. And my guess would be Tyson, JBS, the big meat packers that exploit labor, pay them next to nothing, enrich themselves every single quarter, the record profits for their stockholders. And those are the ones that give Pete Ricketts money for his war chest so he turns the other way. You know, that's got to end. We need immigration reform. We've got to get everybody to the table.

That's what I'm interested in. Bringing in the companies, the small businesses, the immigration advocates, lawyers, and judges and figuring this out. But it doesn't seem like they want to get it done because it all goes back to the money in politics. And that's why I don't take corporate money. That's why I'm running outside the two-party system. I just really want to do this.

different and show that it can be done differently for people. I know you've talked about on immigration or increased enforcement, making sure the border's secure on what's happening inside the country with all the undocumented immigrants here. There's an undocumented person who's been in this country for years, has a job, family, no criminal record. Should that person be deported or should there be a way for them to stay legally? Yeah, they're stuck in a broken system. You know, and We were promised that violent criminals were going to be getting deported. And, you know, the fundamental mission of immigration custom enforcement is to make sure that doesn't happen, right? That MS-13 doesn't come and set up shop in our neighborhoods.

And if they do, deport them. Right. That makes sense. I agree with that fundamental mission. And every other administration has performed that mission off of a modest budget of $7 billion. dollars. And now, you know, if you if you call yourself a true fiscal conservative, you should be irritated at the fact that wasteful government spending now we're up to $80 billion. They're rivaling the Marine Corps budget now. And so again, the answer goes to getting people at the table

that actually want to get this done, that just don't want to continue to play political football with it, to try to win elections, and just do it because, and do it in a humane way, Because at the end of the day, I'm team human being. I'm team people, right? And we all have this shared thing called humanity, right? We're all floating around on this rock at 46,000 miles an hour, just trying to figure our day out. It sounds like then you think those people should be given a chance to stay.

Yeah, there should be a chance there. There should be a visa program, a work visa program, you know, especially on our ranches and farms, you know, in our industries where, I mean, you think about the level of trying to deport every single person that came across the border or came here on a visa that's expired trying to do it the right way to deport that amount of people. I mean, it would take what? Do you do the math 100 years? I don't even know. Like, it's insane. So we should figure this out and we should have hard conversations and get adults at the table to figure this out. The fact that they're not doing it drives me nuts.

Would you vote to reverse the Medicaid cuts in Trump's tax bill? Yeah, definitely. We have a lot of work to do reversing things in that act. I imagine you have a lot of people in Nebraska, whether they're on Medicaid or not, who are just really upset about the cost of their health care. Yeah. What's something you think you'd like to see done on health care to just lower prices, lower cost for people if you get to the Senate.

Yeah, I think just like at the turn of the century in 1900s, right, we had the robber barons, the gilded age. We had the oil and steel tycoons and the banking tycoons, and they amassed more wealth than over 90% of the country. Well, we're there again. Actually, it's worse this time. So what did the American people do? They voted, and they voted for people like Woodrow Wilson

and Teddy Roosevelt that champion antitrust and anti-monopoly ideas. And they broke up the titans of industry, the meatpacking industry. And they created the America's middle class, which then cultivated one of the strongest economies the world's ever seen. That's how we do it. And health care is no different. You have CVS and United Health that have vertically integrated the entire health care system. They own every step of the process while denying us our care. and our claims, and they continue to post record profits quarter after quarter.

So we shouldn't allow this type of these companies to operate the way they do. But again, how do we even fix that? Well, we got to get money out of politics, right? We got to make it so that the CEO can't donate an unlimited amount of money to an independent expenditure of a campaign. Yeah. What does that look like in terms of policy if you get to the Senate? it like, you know, people are going to, they're going to see their premiums go up and they're going

to be struggling with costs and they're going to say, all right, well, what are you doing for me? How are you going to lower cost? Yeah. Well, that's going to be me going and gathering the minds, right? And being able to create a policy and a policy platform that works for the American people in their health care. And I know you don't do that by inviting the CEO of CVS and United Health into the room where I come from, I come from the shop floor. And I worked a lot of years and I saw the company Kellogg's come in and just make, you know, we called them the bean counters, come in and make all

these crazy decisions. And we're telling them, trying to raise the red flag saying, hey, this isn't going to work, guys, include us. But they never did. And then, you know, they installed the machine. I'm stuck trying to get this thing to limp along, and sometimes they'd rip it out. Sometimes I was able to Frankenstein it up enough to get it going. But that's the way my mind works. So I know that if we want to fix health care, we've got to go talk to the nurses, right, that understand it at a level of bedside care. The doctors and the hospital administrators, the people who have to deny claims

and have a deep understanding of the health care system. get those people together in a room and come up with a policy that we know is going to work. You said that you won't caucus with either party. The Senate, of course, still has to decide who runs its committees and sets the agenda. If your vote is decisive, what would either party have to agree to before you'd support its plan to organize the Senate? That's a big question. I'm not sure what the subject matter is that you're referring to. Well, I mean, you get to the Senate and you know, you don't caucus with either party,

but at some point everyone's got to vote on leader, and then everyone's going to vote on who runs the Senate because they're in charge of committees. And so imagining if you're, and it's very possible if you win, if you're the deciding vote, then a Schumer and a Thune come up to you and say, okay, I know you're not going to caucus with us all the time, but like, what do we have to get to make one of us leader or not? What are the big issues? What do you care about? What would you ask for? You get to ask for a lot at that point. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's, you know, if the people I talk to to on the ground, if they had a magic wand, I always ask that question, if you have a magic wand,

and you could waive it, what would be the one thing that you could fix in the government? That would work for you. I've asked, I've been out in the middle of the sand hills and asked a rancher this on a cow-calf operation. I've asked, I've asked this at nursing seminars to teachers, and all across the board, it's health care. Its health care is too expensive. So many of us are one hospital trip away from going broke and going in the red, right? And it would be to fix health care. It would be to to have their word that we're going to work on this, and we're going to get it done for the American people. So everybody deserves to have access to affordable health care.

If you win, what's one promise you want people to remember so they can come back and hold you to it, even if it makes your life harder in Washington? Yeah, well, the promise I have is every morning I'm going to wake up and ask myself a question, how can I elevate somebody's life today? How can I help the workers of my state and potentially the country? How can we help do that today? It's not going to be, who can I call today that's going to give me money for a victory fund so I can keep working in Washington, D.C. I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in helping people. And every policy

and everything that I'm going to approach in the Senate is going to be based off. of that, right? That shared human experience that we have, you know, the golden rule, treat others like you want to be treated. It's not about the corporations and who's going to get rich. I don't think there should be any ceilings. I think we should have a strong foundation, but we should be able to uplift everybody. And that's what I'm interested, and that's what I guarantee you're going to get from me. Dan Osborne, thanks for coming on, Potsave America. Good luck with the campaign. Thank you. Take care. Yeah. That's our show for today. Dan, Alex, do this all the time.

Until the robots take our bodies completely, we'll continue to be here in person every seven and a half months. Well, good news. I'll be back in the same seat next Thursday. Well, he says it was such a joy. That's right. He literally blinked like, this fucking reality is now dawning on me. Alex, we need more excuses for you to come here that aren't just selling your amazing book, the steel. It will be up in paperback. Buy it. Buy it. The movie's never coming, which is why you have to buy the book right now.

The movie's coming in 2079. Let's beat Ted Cruz, guys. Tommy will be back in the feet on Sunday. He's interviewing Fox News's in-house resistance hero, our friend Jessica Tarloff. And then John and Tommy and I will see you on Tuesday. Bye, everyone. Bye. Pod Save America is a Cricket Media production.

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