Pod Save America - Will Trump's Postal Service Seize This Mail Bag?

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

Jon, Tommy, Lovett, and Dan answer listener questions, diving into what they’re most hoping to learn from the 2026 midterms, their favorite political ads of all time, and the groyper takeover of the Republican Party. Then, Vote Save America’s Shaniqua McClendon returns to the pod to talk to Tommy about the Crooked Dozen — VSA’s 12 most flippable and most annoying Republican targets — and the best ways you can get involved to help take back the House and flip the Senate.

Today's presenting sponsor is SimpliSafe home security. Back to school just turned your house from full to empty for seven hours a day. That's a pattern anyone can spot. SimplySaf's AI cameras and live agents are watching your perimeter while you're out, not waiting for an alarm to go off inside. Unlike traditional security systems that only alert you after break-ins are underway, SimpliSafe is designed to help stop intruders before they get inside. Smart AI powered outdoor cameras detect suspicious activity at the perimeter

and alert live U.S.-based agents to step in. SimpliSafs agents assess the threat, intervene through the outdoor camera to scare off trespassers, and called for 911 dispatch. Here are some of our CEO's favorite features. Installation was quick and the system was up and running in no time. The app is easy to use. She can arm or disarm the system and check the cameras all from her phone.

All the components have worked smoothly since day one. The family now has total peace of mind, knowing they are protected by Simpleysafe. Right now, you can get 50% off a new SimpliSafe system. Go to Simplysafe.com slash cricket. That's Simplysafe.com slash crooked for 50% off. And when you order, please write in Pod Save America in the How Did You Hear About Us survey to let them know,

you. Don't forget, there's no safe like simply safe. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favre. I'm John Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Dan Fifer. Happy Labor Day, everyone. We took Monday off but wanted to give you a pod because we love you. And which is why we're going to try to answer all of your burning questions about the midterms, 2028, and Dan's skincare routine. What are we doing? What's our peptide situation? Peptides. No peptides. Is that skincare related? Yeah, that's not skin care related, is it? Oh boy. Guys.

I don't know what a peptide is. I feel like it could be anything. Oh, I need to know what it is now to put it on my skin every day. Well, it's like we're in L.A. where everyone's vain. I thought you injected them or something. There's topical peptides. Oh, but Dan's in San Francisco where all the life hackers are. What's that guy's name?

Brian Johnson. One is measuring is boner. I think he's pivot off longevity just being fit now. I see. It's good. Uh-huh. It's probably better for him. Great.

Anyway. Great. We'll even answer questions you didn't ask. That's part of it. And then after we answer some questions, Shinigua McClendon, our fearless leader of Vote Save America, will talk through the best ways to volunteer to help take back the House and Senate now that we are in the final midterm sprint.

Can you believe it? All right, are you ready to answer some questions? Anyone can say yes. Yes. First one comes from Vanessa on Facebook. Is there anyone that can stop this? This orange piece of shit, three exclamation points. Vanessa from Facebook.

I just thought I'd put that one first because that's just a tenor of the questions we get from Facebook. Iran's doing a pretty good job. Yeah, so far. I think the answer is no. Like heart disease. I've always got a shot. Yeah, right. Father time will get there eventually.

Sort of, you know, the hardness of the veins is sort of gets us all in the end. Anyway, you know, it's 2026. almost 2027, so pretty soon we won't be asking that question. Hopefully. You think. Then what happens? Well, then we'll... We get real jobs?

Yeah, probably. All right. Subscriber Katzo, one of our subscribers. What are going to be the main things you're hoping to learn or have tested in the midterms as we head into 2028? This is a great question. Great question. Tommy, what do you think? I think there's a bunch of things that we're all kind of watching for.

For example, data centers. It's a thing people are talking about. It seems to be really politically salient. What? No, it's funny. Data centers. A thing people are talking about. It's funny. It's what he said. It's accurate. It's a real like hot button issue in politics. And I think we'll find out if it's a thing people are voting. Yeah. I think we'll find out if there's a progressive penalty and if so, how much, whether, you know, kind of how DSA candidates or left candidates do against the national average. And then everyone will look at those numbers and then

use them to confirm their priors going into the 2028 primary. We'll figure out about online scandals, populism versus moderation, right? We have populists, something like Rob Sand out in Iowa, more of a moderate. Yeah. It's a lot of interesting things we learned from elections, I think. Dan, what are you looking for? I think Tommy hits on the real problem, which is this is a election that we hope is taking place in a democratic wave.

A lot of people who may not win in other years could win this year. that will then be used to suggest that everything that they did is right. As we know, it's obviously easier to learn from the elections you lose and then once you win, although that's never the outcome you really want. I'm interested in some more granular, nerdy stuff about like testing new relational organizing strategies, field strategies, or there's a lot of talk about Democrats out there experimenting with new ways of communicating new ways of organizing and having ways to measure the efficacy of that to see if it actually worked in move numbers.

Love it. You got any? Yeah, I mean, I think you all hit on it. There's been more discussion about ending the Senate than why Democrats can't compete in rural areas. And I do think we'll learn about whether a candidate that is, you know, center left, but not running as a Democrat. Like what does that teach us about, you know, competing?

Like, what's going to happen with Dan Osborne? How does that look versus what happens in Iowa? Like, I'm interested in that and where sort of the Democratic brand stands at the end of this. You guys hit most of the ones on my list. But I have how close Dems will be to try. to a trifecta if we win the White House in 2028, like what could a, what's the upper limit on a possible majority? What's that looking like? And just as part of that, how like, how important is John Federman? Right. And how much does he become the main character of our politics for a while?

Yeah. Turnout, level of enthusiasm among Dems, which demographic groups swung back to Democrats since 2024, if any, hopefully. Very interested to see what happens in Texas, the state of blue, Texas, to Tommy's point about is their progressive penalty, just like Abdul's performance in Michigan, I think is key. Like, does he, you know, if he wins, does he win by the same amount that other Michigan Democrats do or other national Democrats do or not? Also, if there are any new, any states that maybe are not thought of as competitive, tough states now, or competitive swing states now, but maybe long shots worth investing in for

the 28 campaigns, like if we. suddenly pull out a win in Iowa or Alaska. Ohio. Yeah, right. So I'm kind of looking at that. And then just on the Republican side, Trump's approval and the exits, Republican drop off from 22, the last midterm. And then, you know, if there are Republican candidates who surprise us and either do better than expected or outright win competitive seats, like what's their formula? What do they look like?

What should we worry about for 2028? It'll also be funny to see how much of Trump's super PAC money he spans. He has, what, 400 million? That is a good one. That's a good one. Yeah, that's a fun one to look for. Yeah, that's a fun one to look for. The thing you mentioned, John, that's interesting is what's, like, lectures like this can tell us what are the next states to come under the presidential map.

Because in 2006, we won Senate races in Virginia and Indiana, which we would then go ahead and win in 2008. So this is, this will be really interesting to watch. Subscriber shibbles and bits. Good name. Very good. A handful of candidates in states. statewide races, Texas, South Carolina, Tennessee have refused to debate their opponents. Do you think the importance of the election debate is waning? Dan, start with you.

This is a bit of a paradox, but I think the penalty for skipping debates has been greatly diminished as the power the traditional media to hold candidates accountable has drained. But the opportunity costs for not doing debates has gone way up because it's so hard to break through to have any event you do, any moment and campaign that can actually break outside the political media bubble. And debates are the best opportunity to do that. So you can definitely get away with it. Like people can dress in chicken suits and say you don't want to debate and that won't, you won't be haunted the way you have before, but you're leaving a lot of opportunity on the table if you don't debate.

Anyone disagree or have anything else to add? I mean, the argument for, it was a primary, but the argument for debates not mattering at all is that Darlene Graham won because she gave one of the worst debate answers I've ever heard, which was allow me to flip open my notepad. I don't know the foreign policy. Katie Hobbs skipped all those debates. Remember that was like she was dogged for a while? Wasn't there an issue of Katie Hobbs? My misremembering, Katie Hobbs was dodging debates and we were like, why she's not debating?

And it worked. And for Darling, the Dalian Graham one is interesting because it's a counterfactual. Like would she have won by more if she hadn't just absolutely face-planned in the debate? Because you did win by a fairly small margin in a state that, you know, in a very Republican state with Trump's endorsement. Right. You have to assume she was declining. And in fact, if he had had another week, would he have been able to kind of do it?

Of that list, I find it that Texas is the most interesting to me because South Carolina Tennessee, I mean, South Carolina, you can argue, Darling Graham is, you know, polling ahead of Annie Andrews. And that's why she's not debating. Same thing with Tennessee. But Texas, like, pretty tied race, if not Tel Rico, a little ahead. And the idea that Paxton is just not going to debate. Do you think that last?

Have you seen him speak? Yeah. I know. But like, if Ken Paxson was my best friend, I'd be like, do not debate. Yeah, right. If you're the strategist, you're thinking, huh, given my candidates, record rap sheet and face. Yeah, maybe we shouldn't do this. Yeah, look, you have your, your public acts and private acts are disgusting.

You're terrible at defending them. You're not particularly smart. You're not charming. Just wild to get away with it and a race that big and that close, you know? Mm-hmm. All right, Megan from Twitter asks, how does the party message to voters that even if Democrats win back the House and the Senate, change will be very incremental until we have a Dem trifecta come 2029 and still keep people engaged and hopeful?

Love it? Take it away. Look, we just, you know, tell people the truth and everybody will have a kind of reasonable discussion about it online and understand the limits of democratic power and not resort to assumptions around DNC being co-opted by billionaires being the reason we've not achieved any of our goals and that you say, oh, if Democrats are so good, why don't we have Medicare for all when they control the Congress? That kind of the thing will have for a while. I think we have to, I think the fight of Hakeem Jeffries and meeting which Eric Kushner

was revealing, not because I found the debate particularly interesting about that specific meeting, but because of what it says about people's low expectations of Hakeem Jeffries, right? The problem in that moment was not that he had a meeting. the problem was that people don't trust him to have a set of goals, a resolve, like a clearer kind of moral compass that's guiding his strategy. And so we have these two years. And I think sometimes it gets boiled down to like, will you fight?

Are you a fighter? Are you willing to fight? Right. But understanding what the Democratic goals are when they're in the minority, what are the investigations they're going to launch? What are the message bills they're going to pass and try to shove down Trump's throat? Or if we don't win the shenna kind of lock in the minority? the Senate, right? Like, those are the places where one lesson over the last several years is that

you can't just have a message, you can't just have even a policy, you have to pick fights and have big controversies that underscore the difference. And to me, if we can do that successfully over the next two years while Democratic candidates are campaigning and competing to develop the platform for the presidential race, I think that puts you in a position to say, if you go with us, this is the future that you can have. Don't we think voters realize that Trump is still president and there's not going to be any change. Like I feel like it's like a harm avoidance message to the midterms. And then 2028, if we win, that's when the like, you got to deliver problem gets really hard. Yeah. I certainly would hope so. I mean, that's what I've been thinking.

And look, for less engaged voters, maybe it's like an important message for all the candidates to deliver so it's not to raise expectations. But yeah, like we're not passing anything. But the issue is not right. We're not passing anything. But the question is, like who will own the failure over the next two years, right? And there will be budget bills that like, like that is the one place. The government funding budget bills is where rubber meets the road on this. And do you shut down the government and we're going to be back into the shutting down the government fight? And look, in fairness, this time we have more leverage than when we talked about shutting down the government over the last two years.

And we still, there's still a lot of pressure to shut down the government, even though Democrats clearly did not have. the leverage that Republicans had because we don't control Congress. So now we do control Congress. So what do you do? Do you shut down the government over, you know, you can't really do it over ICE funding because ICE is like now separately funded and good for several years? But like Medicaid cuts or ACA credits or, you know, do you try to demand something the reversal of some terrible Trump policy and threaten to shut the government down over it if you're the Democrats in charge? Right. Like I think the point that Tommy's making is right about why aren't we achieving the big changes we're promising to do in the future. Yes. But in terms of owning the current state of the economy,

making things feel better, not ideologically, but just cost of living and all the, and just like kind of the daily stakes in the economy, like how do Democrats avoid taking ownership of that when they're kind of sending bills for Trump to veto or sending bills in the Senate? I don't know. I actually think it's harder. It's hard. Dan, you want to jump in? Yeah, I'm kind of with Tommy that I'm not, this is a thing I'm not overly worried about for a couple of reasons. I don't think it's, possible for, and there's not a lot of history for congressional majorities in divided government to take real ownership over the economy. Like I just, like you can, the only way to do it is to, would be to shut the government

down in a very, very destructive and stupid way like Newt Gingrich did in, in 90s, 95 and 96. And I, I think you were right, John, that the cases where the pressure will rise on funding issue at the moments of government funding and where people will get pissed is, if, If budget deals are cut to avoid that government shutdown, even if it is probably in the long run most politically advantageous to us to avoid it, you know, and depending on how it looks at the moment, people will be pissed about that. And it's not about whether you can pass anything. It's about what you can stop from Trump.

The other factor that I think is worth remembering is this is a, this is not just like 2020, 2019 and 2020 where the Democratic candidates are just campaigning. And then there's a whole other show over here with Trump and the government is it's a open primary on both sides. Yep. And that's going to suck a lot of oxygen here. Like, no one paid a look of it. Once the Democrats, like the majority in 2007, there was a bunch of attention early on

on some things they did. They actually got Bush to sign a minimum wage increase. They passed some, they really pushed some ethic stuff, which Obama was involved in. But once you got to the end of 2000, once you get to the end of 2000, really to be middle of 2007, it was, everyone was talking about the presidential campaign and that will likely happen here too. Yeah. I know.

There's a discussion about like, Jeffries and. Schumer and they rate for the moment and this and that, like, no one's going to care over the next two years. It's not going to be any of the attention is going to be focused on Congress. It is going to be 100 percent Republican primary successor to Trump. The 50,000 Democrats duking it out and Congress will be a backdrop. Just in terms of not saying it should be that way, I'm not saying that's what matters, but like in terms of the attention it will get, that is probably what's going. Yeah, I wonder also the other part of this is the way Trump uses military funding.

Trump is saying, let's say Trump says, I am vetoing. any budget bill or any funding bill that does not increase funding for the Pentagon. Now we're in a fight over funding for the war. You have Democrats in the House breaking and joining with Republican. Like there is, I do think that there are some big thorny fights in which Democrats start to kind of own things. The fun of the Supreme Court Justice dies. We're all like, let's steal the fucking seat back in some moderate Democrats. Like, no, no, no.

The norms say that we need. John Fetterman right there. This is where the difference between 51 and 52 is going to be enormous. Okay. And meanwhile, as we cruise towards. saying that out loud and not knocking on wood as you get to 49, yeah. Well, because we want everyone to be healthy. No, no, because I know.

No, no, yeah. He was the majority. He's not worried. Just kidding. Nick from Twitter asks, Trump's made quite a few damaging remarks about high prices and data centers this year. Would it be worthwhile for some Democratic pack to highlight these comments and national TV ads? How much should Dems prioritize a national media message during these midterms?

Dan, what do you think? This is a little bit like, should I drive a Ferrari? It would be nice if I had the money to do it, but I don't. Right? Like we just simply do not have the money to run a national campaign at this level. But let's live in hypothetical. There would be an argument for doing it, not a always on set of Democratic ads or just running nationalized, but picking a few high leverage moments with like big football games, Monday night football,

college football games where you would run like some national ads that I think it'd be less about Trump's like trying to drive Trump's numbers down from 32 to 31 and more about tying Republicans to Trump. Like that's sort of the message you would want. You would want to have Trump and Republicans be out of touch and doing nothing about the cost of living. I feel like, Dan, do you think you could find the money to run not like a fake ad buy that's just like you run the spot once and then it's only on digital and you're just trying it's basically a glorified press release but a real national media buy that is like really smartly targeted like every cycle you read about how one campaign the winning campaign was targeting swing voters on the tennis channel and it was this great

cost effective way to have a national buy so you buy like you know you buy some national cable buy you some targeted stuff like tennis channel or bravo or whatever the hell it is and you just try to drive the conversation and the salience of this issue up and kind of force it it into the zeitgeist a little more. I feel like that's doable. I mean, you're right, though, like an LSU game. Like, that's going to be a tough, tough buy. Well, I think the hard part is the diminishing returns of linear television. And so the way you would have to do it is you would do connected TV spending. And I guess the one theory, the couple approaches here. One would be sort of national message. Other would be, you know, relatedly national branding.

or you can theoretically pick a group of people and try to drive an issue with that group of people using very, very targeted spending. I think that is probably relatively cost inefficient when those people are spread out in districts and all across the country. Do you think it's prohibitively expensive to run an ad during the like the NFL games, the nights of the Republican convention Thursday and Friday where you do like one example. I agree with you, Dan, on tying Trump to Republicans. So per Nix point, you could have Trump's comments on data centers and talking about how wonderful they are and great. And then you could let people know that every single Republican that voted for Trump's big, beautiful bill, not only voted for Medicaid cuts, but voted for tax cuts for AI companies

that build data centers in rural America, which is a fact that probably a lot of people don't know and it would educate a lot of folks. You would need to run it many times to get people to actually recall it. But you could do it and then try to, it mostly becomes a glorified press release. You only can do one of the football games because I think the second one's on Netflix. Right, right, right. It is. You have to do Wednesday night.

Yeah. That's Seahawks game. I mean, you like, this is a place to do it. You get a lot of attention for it. And then you could find, you could find like a tail effect where you're running in other places. But the big issue is here is we're going to be massively outspent. We are really like, and every, this is like we talk about the DNC and that's obviously a specific problem but the NRCC the NRSC all have more money in our companions and then the

super PAC money presuming Trump spends his money is just like an ungodly spending advantage and so that money is coming from somewhere else right that's coming from an Ohio buy in Iowa by and Alaska by damn it's just rough out there it's rough out there Pats of America is brought to you by Mint mobile we are officially at the tail end of summer when we were kids this time of year meant soaking up the final days of freedom before heading back to the classroom. The good news, adult summer freedom doesn't have to end with the season, thanks to big savings with Mint Mobile's summer sale. Right now, all of Mint's plans are $15 per month, even unlimited, so free yourself from big wireless and their gimmicks and gotchas

and switch to Mint for high-speed data and coverage on the T-Mobile 5G network. Mint Mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right with premium wireless for 15 bucks a month. All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can even bring your current phone and your number. Choose from three, six, or 12-month plans and say goodbye to a monthly bill. Ditch overpriced wireless with MintMobile. It's so easy, sign up online and get three months of premium wireless service for $15 a month.

To get your new wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com slash crooked. That's mintmobile.com slash crooked. Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at mintmobile.com slash crooked. That's it. There's no catch. Up front payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for $1,000, month's plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy includes up to 20 gigabyte hotspot capable device

required availability speeding coverage varies cement mobile.com. Pod Save America is brought you by Zbiotics pre-alcohol. I have to tell you about this game-changing product. I drink before a night out with drinks. It's called pre-alcohol by Zbiotics. Zibiotics pre-alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was engineered by PhD microbiologists to break down acetaldehyde, an unwanted byproduct of alcoholic metabolism. Make pre-alcohol your first drink at the night, drink responsibly, and enjoy your next day activities. Zbiotics has sold more than 14 million bottles and earned the trust of thousands, including us.

Love Zbiotics. I had it this weekend. I had a night with a bunch of friends, and I was like, you know what? I'm having a bunch of drinks. Before I do that, I'm having Zbiotics. And then I did, and then I felt great the next day. Try it yourself today. And if you're unsatisfied, they will refund your entire order.

No questions asked. Head to Zbiotics.com slash crooked code crooked for 15% off your first order. That's ZB-I-O-T-I-C-S dot com slash cricket code cricket. All right, the next question is a voicemail message from one of our crooked subscribers. Hey, guys, this is Ethan from lovely Lawrence, Kansas here. I am calling for the mailbag episode. I've been seeing an online trend of people posting their favorite campaign ads, and the time has come for transparency, for truth.

we need to know who is responsible for the Big Bird ad from the 2012 campaign. On the same topic, are there any Obama era ads or maybe not Obama area ads that you are particularly fond of or not so fond of? What are your favorite political ads of all time? Thanks. And I approved this message. I didn't remember this ad. Dan, you must remember.

You have a better memory. I do this. This was after the debate where the terrible debate. that Obama flubbed against Romney. And in that debate, one of the things that came up was Romney's position that we should defund PBS. And so we did an ad with Big Bird attacking him for defunding Sesame Street. And it was basically like the idea of the ad was like Big Bird is a criminal mastermind. And you don't want to like, he's he's like menacing.

And so we've got to cut PBS. The things that we made big deals out of back then, huh? Yeah. Yeah. It was just, you know, we didn't dog on a car. Right. Favorite ads, least favorite ads from everyone? You know, I was remembering today was the Mike Gravel, the rock ad for those of the

water. Mike Revelle. So don't steal my punchline. Mike Revelle stares into the camera silently for like 45 seconds. And then he walks away. He throws a rock into a lake. And then he walks out of frame. It's like a minute and a half long.

And this was Mike Ravel. all you ran in 2008 and then later you ran again. Then like later these two teenage kids took over Twitter feed. They were posting all this kind of like anti-establishment anti-corporatist anti-money and politics kind of stuff. And earlier this week we learned that they took jobs at Open AI. Oh wow. The Gravel kids took jobs.

No. That's awesome. They live long enough. Revelle teens are now. Yeah man. Working for Sam Altman. You die Mike Ravel. You live long enough to become Sam Altman.

Dan, you were saying you love the Tim Horton ad. Oh, sorry, Willie Horton. Willing was why you're saying, I love it. I love an ad about a Canadian fast food restaurant. Oh, because you were saying, I thought his favorite ad with the Jesse Helms black hands, white hands ad. That's your favorite ad. You like the white hands crumbling up a letter about not getting a job. Yes.

I don't know. I'm not unfamiliar with the ads you're talking about the best ad of the Obama era and possibly this entire modern era politics is the Mitt Romney singing America, the beautiful ad. Oh, great. Oh, good one. Really good. Is that a Super Packout or is that us? That was us. And it's Mitt Romney saying, America's Beautiful at an event.

And I would say not the appropriate key. And so it's just a video of him singing it with all these headlines of, you know, Mitt Romney's firm sends jobs to Mexico and China. Santa Massachusetts chooses outsources jobs to India. It just, he has a Swiss bank account. The sound effects. The sound effects in the ad. It was because it's him singing and then it would cut to those facts and it becomes

a sort of echoy hollow version of it. It's excellent. Empty factory reverberation. Yeah. And then it ends with Mitt Romney is the problem, not the solution, which is the exact right, like just nails the message of that election so perfectly. I was just remembering the Hillary Clinton 3am ad. Good one.

Remember that? It was so good. Mark Penn. A Mark Penn ad. Really good ad. Yeah, it worked. Well, hey, hey, everything a losing campaign does isn't wrong. All right.

Basically for those, you can all look it up, but it's someone's getting a call in the middle of the night. And you can see that they pick up the phone and they're just like it's like a normal person in a house. And then, but the whole point of the ad is like when something happens at 3 a.m. in the world, some scary thing that happens. Who do you want picking up the phone, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton? And it was supposed to be obviously Hillary Clinton. Yeah. It was in the strength plus experience equals change era. That's right.

Which of course leads to my favorite fact, which is change divided by strength plus experience. Equals one. I don't know that. The one that was most controversial. Well, from the McCain side, it was Barack Obama is the biggest celebrity in the world. And that was viewed as some. Britney Spears, Paris Hilton. It was dumb.

It was a terrible. That was so stupid. And it was just like completely uncontroversial. But then on our side, we did one about how. John McCain is old and it was like John McCain doesn't know how to use a computer and it's like him attempting to type and Joe Biden I was very involved in that one that was one that's a real pet project of mine and I standby to this day it was great right right but it turned out he couldn't use a computer because he couldn't because of the

torture he experienced yeah I can't use a keyboard because I was fucking tortured for this country piece of shit and I like oh lots of this that's a botch by us take that one down that one effective in the moment I was I was like it is when I think of like the most effective political ads though. I just do think of Republican attack ads. Like I think of the wolf, the wolves ad. That will from George W. Bush, 2004, watch that wolf's ad. It is chilling. And it is a disgusting bit of misinformation because it, it basically relies on people to not understand that there were, or not even consider that there were two attacks on the World Trade Center. So it says, it says something, I'm going to paraphrase it, but it's something along the lines of like John

Kerry didn't support security funding after the attack on the World Trade Center. Oh, that's so sad. And it was meant to be about, and it clearly meant to imply 9-11, but it was actually about the 1992 bombing of the World Trade Center. So it was just a disgusting. It's just a George W. Bush gets the kind of patina of not being Trump now. But man, that campaign is 2004. They were despicable. They did blame Saddam for 9-11 too. So we should been ready for that one. Yeah. Whoopsie.

All right. Next question. Subscriber N.H. 603er. How do you guys view the rise of the alt-right groipers that seem to be gaining popularity with younger men? The James Fishback race in Florida fizzled out, but he made real strides with younger voters. Should Democrats try to paint the GOP as a party embracing those folks going forward? It feels like a very real phenomenon, unfortunately. Tommy?

I think it's a huge problem. I mean, Nick Fuentes, the kind of leader of the Groip He was barred from CPAC maybe or maybe it was TPP USA. He was like barred from TPSA events and really ostracized from the Republican Party as recently as like 2021, 2022. And then he had dinner with Trump and Kanye and then later, much later went on Tucker Carlson show. And now that kind of like fringe Groyper right wing has been normalized. And you know, Fuentes is try to sand off his edges. But I think his listeners know it's a game and he is a big and growing audience.

I think it was sort of embodied by Fishback in Florida and his candidacy that got, what, 10% or something like that? I mean, did quite well in that primary. Fishback also, I think, openly praised and associated with Fuentes. There was that Trump aide, Paul and Grascia, who said, I have a quote Nazi streak. I think he's still employed there. I think there's a conservative journalist named Rod Dreher, who said that he believes 40% of MAGA staffers are Groypers. So I think the political piece that's important, though, is I think it's important not to paint all Republicans or all young men as kind of fringe nuts like this. I think Third Way has a poll out from a while back that has Democrats winning young men overall.

This is a problem of radicalism within the hard right and it is not one unique to the United States. in Germany, the AFD is getting like a quarter of men under 25 in the sort of similar levels. It's like in the EU, like 21% of men under 30 across the EU back right-wing populace or far-right parties, whereas younger women are breaking hard to the left. So I think we need to think about, yes, creating a political cost for Republicans being associated with these far-right fringe groups, but also think about the issues that are driving people into these parties, whether it's anti-establishment, thinking, whether it's anti-immigrant sentiment, and think about how we calibrate to better reach these people.

Unfortunately, because we're in a moment where some of these people say such extreme things, you know, fishback said during the campaign that the biggest issue Republicans aren't talking about is white genocide, just said that. He also said, if you want to set our kids up for failure, would feed them the absolute goy slop in our cafeterias. That is basically a term that neo-Nazis have made popular conspiracy that Jews are feeding non-Jewish masses by giving them low-quality food. That's what he did there. Which we haven't even started rolling out yet.

We're still testing it out. Wait, so goyslop is actual food. It's not just like dumb information. Well, it's all. It's both, right? I don't think, yeah, there's a lot of different ways you can. Crazy. Yeah.

Yeah. But I think the point. is I don't think there's a need to characterize or editorialize or label these people's. Just use their words. Just use their words to your point on me. Because I think sometimes, I think also unfortunately, you're calling someone racist, anti-Semite. Like, it has become so frequent over the last several years. And in politics, sometimes people use those terms. And like, maybe that you don't know like the severity of what the person has said. And these are so severe that I think just laying the statements out there using these people's own words is probably

the most important thing to do without just short cutting it or just editorializing it. You just put it out there for people. Yeah, I also do think sometimes, especially for people that are just hyper engaged in politics, we tend to get the direction wrong between behavior and points of view, right? We think, oh, if you persuade people that there's a climate, that there's a climate emergency, maybe they'll ride a bike. But actually, the best way to get someone to understand that climate is important is by getting someone to ride a bike and by their behavior, they come to kind of reveal their preference and kind of take in the idea that what they're doing is part of their identity. And so, like, yes, you can try to persuade people, and I think we should. But also,

the path to the, like the kind of online, right-wing extremist path is also just like a path to misery and loneliness, right? It isolates you from women who want nothing to do with you. It leaves you in the kind of the throes of the Andrew Tates of the world trying to convince you of something that just simply isn't true. And it's like, like, if you want to live a happy life, you just have to get away from this stuff. And once you start coming out and sort of engaging with the world and being open to people that you might have thought otherwise wouldn't be, you know, sort of part of your community,

all of a sudden you'll realize how stupid and terrible these other views were too. And just getting people to realize, like, forget what you, forget what your ideology is. Aren't you unhappy? Doesn't this suck? Aren't you miserable being online and angry all the time? Susan on Facebook asks, if you were advice. a Democratic presidential campaign, how would you recommend they talk about foreign policy in the world? Should they be talking about improving the United States global standing after Trump?

I'm going to go to Dan first on this one. Yeah, Dan. What do you got, buddy? This is an easy one. One word answer. Don't. I knew. It's such a fucker.

I thought I'd go to Dan first, so he would say that. Then he could respond. Dan actually drafted the Darlene Graham answer. He said, here's what you say. You say you don't know about foreign policy. You're going to win. I promise. People are going to create, make fun of you online. They're stupid. If she say, I don't do foreign policy, you're going to beat this fucking congressman.

You know, it's funny. I bet there's a version of that answer where she's like, I don't give a fuck about this boring crap. You know, that's like more effective, actually, that people would have liked, but whatever. She is current, you can't say I don't do foreign policy. You're currently a senator. Yeah, you're doing. You're not just applying for the job. No, she actually said one point. She's like, I'll read up once I get there. And it's like, once you get there. You're there. Yeah. I believe you're on some very important committees. Yeah, that's funny. I mean, really, really briefly, I think I would just, the number one thing is we got to take back the mantle of being the anti-war party.

It's crazy that we lost that to Donald Trump, especially given what we've seen him do in Iran. We need some sort of smart version of what a newly rebuilt USAID would look like. I don't think that you can just run it back the same way. It's got to be different. And then there will be, there's going to be a big conversation about what a Democratic Party trade agenda looks like that I think is very relevant to people. but I don't know what that is. It's not going to be tariffs. But will it be repealing the tariffs?

Yes. I mean, I think so. I don't know. It should be. I mean, you heard Jeffries the other day. I know. I heard Newsom the other day being like, I couldn't guarantee that I would repeal all the tariffs. Maybe not all of them, but like 50% tariffs on Canada for no reason.

I feel like there's a kind of catch-all answer for this kind of question right now, which is we're not going to do, you know, we're not going to repeal things just because Trump did them. but we're going to we're not going to leave in place anything anything that he did was dumb and stupid and destructive to the economy but there are some cases where long before Trump we all would have agreed that we need to do to something to protect American manufacturing right that's like not an unreasonable answer to your point Dan about don't I wonder if there's a political case just pure political poll driven case that this election in 28 will be similar to 2008 in that you have a president who had just gotten us into a unbelievable unbelievably unpopular war and, you know, hated or at least not liked around the world.

And we actually saw in that election that it was not just the right thing to do, but like politically useful to talk about foreign policy and like restoring respect for America and ending stupid wars and investing more in home. Like it does feel like this is going to be an election where it would be beneficial for the 28 candidates to talk a little bit about foreign policy. I don't know necessarily about like rebuilding our NATO alliance. But we don't have to. Joe Biden saved NATO.

That's right. Let me give a real answer here. I always joke about this because when we were in the White House, like you could watch it in focus groups and dial groups that every time Obama was in the midst of a financial crisis, every time Obama was doing something on foreign policy, that was it ending a war or making America safer? Like people, like people, the dials went down, people got mad. It was a constant, like you could see it in all the state of the unions.

It was just like it was a thing. It was a constant battle in the White House about how much foreign policy versus how much domestic policy you do. I think you are correct, John, that in a campaign, especially if we are still in a war in Iran, foreign policy is going to matter. And you have to, to Tommy's point, be the anti-war party. We have to, like, there is a space in a sketch front. And there is particularly in a campaign, especially given who a lot of our candidates are in the levels of experience they have. There's a threshold you have to meet to have people believe you can actually do that part of the job. And so you're going to have to talk about it.

Yeah. All right. Dr. Guy Montag from Twitter asks, what do you think the pod accomplishes, given the audience already agrees with you slash votes dem? It's nice to hear from Spencer Pratt's father-in-law, first of all, Dr. Montag. Oh, Dr. Montag.

It's actually a character, like a Ray Bradbury character. But anyway, Dr. Guy Monta, I mean, I guess I direct you to the comments if you think that everyone agrees with or likes what they hear on the show. That is not my point. Those will quickly disabuse you. I think over the years I've heard from a lot of people in real life that they're like, oh, I listen to you guys sometimes and like Tucker sometimes or Ben Shapiro sometimes or fill in the conservative blank. Because a lot of people do kind of want to hear from the left and the right.

But I mean, another big goal of the show is not just to like talk to people about what's happening in the world, but get them to get involved in politics, be activists in their own lives, knock on doors, donate. So that's a really big part of what we do here and why it matters, we think. Yeah. Also, the audience doesn't agree with itself. doesn't always agree with us and we don't always agree with each other. And I think if you turn on, say, Fox News right at this moment, you'll probably see a big picture of Hassan Piker and in between Abdul al-Azad and, you know, maybe a trans swimmer in there once in a while. But, but,

like, and even in the mainstream media, right, like, I like, I think Jonathan Martin is a great reporter, but when he is asking Rob Sands if he wants Kamala to campaign, it is, he is, he has a different interest than we do in building a big, Democratic and successful electoral coalition. And so there does need to be a place where we can have these intra-party intra-movement conversations in a way that are productive and constructive. And that's, I think, part of what we try to do with our guests here. That's what we try to do with CricketCon. And there does need to be a place for that. And that is valuable, even if a lot of the audience does largely agree and vote Democratic. Subscriber Zizi asks, best reasons to attend CricketCon. Favs said there will be

drinks, I want to hear more. What more is there? There's drinks. She wants it of their apps. Yeah. Well, they'll be it. Will there be, were there in canopies? Yeah, there'll be also K and ayahuasca. Like, what do you think? It's good. Yeah, there'll be various kinds of cocktails. You can get. Are your hands shaking? Is this a Pete Beck's F. Burner account? You could meet a cute ice officer or National Guard. Oh, yeah. Lloyd's to Washington. Yeah. To keep the peace. Yeah. Sure. Suppress insurrections. Some great panels. Everyone wants a great panel. Yeah, that's right. Good conversation.

Dan, what do you think? When I suggested this question, I said this would be a great place for an organic plug for cricket con. By the way, hitting it out of the park, Dan. Whenever you say organic plug, it really helps. I also just did an organic plug for cricket con. I fucking did. I read the brief. This would be my pitch to anyone about why to come is if you were a person who works in politics

or wants to work in politics, there is no better place to be to meet the people at all levels of politics who are working in their communities nationally on Capitol Hill to actually bring change. It's a great place to network. It's a great place to learn. You said there are going to be incredible panels. It's going to be a lot of fun. So like this is, it is a, there's a real opportunity there. So organic.

Also, I wanted some music under that. We're also like the next two months. We're all going to be going crazy about these midterms. I mean nervous, me looking at the polls, hopefully be volunteering. And what a great opportunity after the midterms to just like get together with a bunch of people and be like, All right, so we all just went through that together. Yeah, we could all be together and wait for the votes in Alaska to come. I got to say, we can talk about the ones we won, the ones we lost, the militia we're going to put together to rescue those voting tabulators from Wyoming.

Potty of America is brought to you by Bombas. Summer is coming to an end, so we're soaking up every outdoor moment that we can. From runs in the park to beach days to backyard barbecues, Bombas makes your comfiest footwear staples so you can enjoy the end of summer and the transition to fall. They've got a whole line of pro-level sport-specific socks for golf, yoga, the gym, and for every kind of runner. Plus, they're airy and sweat-wicking, so your feet will feel as good at the end of the day as they did at the start. Do you know what EVA stands for? Great, neither do I. I just know the Bambos makes their sandals and slides from the super light, cushy, waterproof EVA foam.

It's like walking on marshmallows or clouds. I wear them every day. I love them. If you're into that sort of thing. And for every item you purchase, an essential clothing item is donated to someone facing housing insecurity. One purchased equals one donated with over 200 million donations and counting. I genuinely love Bomba socks. I own a ton of them.

I periodically throw out all my crappy old socks that no longer fit or have holes in them or won't stay up. And I replace them exclusively with Bombas. You should to head over to bombas.com slash crooked. Use the code Crooked for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S.com slash crooked. Code Crooked at checkout. This one is from subscriber, not. Elijah.

Sure. Cool. What's your worst compulsive news consumption habit? Opening tabs. I would say trying to inhale news via Twitter while walking, a lot of walking and then sometimes going to the bathroom. I was going to say. A lot of tabs.

But there's a lot of times where I'm just like, well, I'm like, stop. You're walking somewhere. Just walk with the phone in your pocket. Yeah, walk with the phone in your pocket. I have too many tabs open. And I often never come back to the ones I have open. I'm just sort of always falling behind my tabs. It's the,

my biggest regret are the longer articles that I've never gotten to. Like, as I sit here, I'm like, oh, I never read that Atlantic story by the person you had an offline. Tyler Austin Harper. Tyler Austin Harper. I was like,

I had that open. Yeah, so I got the gist of it for sure. And I heard you prepping for it. Like, you were next to me prepping for it. So by osmosis, I feel like I kind of got the gist.

But the, because you like, I remember you turned to me and you, can you believe this? And that's really call you, that's the main takeaway from it. Can you believe this? and so I feel good about it.

Mine is too many Twitter alerts. Oh. Yeah, I've been with you when all of a sudden, your phone's blown up with like 10 Twitter alerts. I'm like, do you really have that many notifications from Twitter? I do because I try to spend less time in the actual feed, which I found to be very bad for me mentally in a lot of ways. And now it still sort of sucks. And so this way, I am trying to optimize my news consumption for the people or the things I care about. That's good.

That's smart. No, it's not smart because it's, you. You're constantly under fire. Under fire. B. Coletta from Instagram asks, any recommendation for podcasts, newsletters, et cetera, to better understand what's happening on the right? Tommy, I feel like you've got this.

I mean, Will Summers's false flag newsletter at the bulwark is a great way to have someone curated it all for you and explain it for you and kind of unravel and unpack all the insanity and the relationships and why they all hate each other. But then you've got to decide if you want to dive in the pool yourself and start listening. That's a different. That's a different beast.

Do you want to go down the Tucker Road and catch that monologue? I've always, I just have always enjoyed he can be an asshole about Democrats. I think he wrote a book called liberal fascist that tells you where his head was at, but I just always found Jonah Goldberg to be a really entertaining writer. I just always have. You've been consistent on this. I have and I did that. And he's anti-Trump.

He's, you know, he doesn't like us much either. He doesn't like much of anything. But I enjoy his content. Brianna from Instagram asks, I want to become a speechwriter. Where should I start? And Isabel on Instagram asks, any advice for new college grads looking for campaign jobs? So when I watched the West Wing and wanted to be a speech writer, but I didn't know real plan or understanding for how to make that happen.

As you can see from my, if you've familiar with this program, I sort of careen, do a lot of careening in my life. But I volunteered on the Kerry Edwards campaign in 2004, unbeknownst, John was upstairs as a junior speechwriter. And I just volunteered to write anything. So they needed regional op-eds in regional newspapers. Newspapers were these things they printed all across the country and people could read about their area.

And so you would always have these surrogates that would be publishing local op-eds, congresspeople, pastors, whatever. And I just would jump and sort of do the draft of them. And they'd go through up the chain and other people would edit them and fix them and make them make sense. I didn't know what I was doing. And then there were like several hurricanes that year. 2004, there was Ivan and three or four others. And so someone was always like, oh, we need somebody

to draft the John Kerry Thoughts and Prayers Hurricane Victim Statement. And I just ended up doing a bunch of those. And the people that I was writing them for remember that I could put a sentence together when they were looking for someone to be in a junior job on Capitol Health. So for me, it was like just as an intern slash volunteer, kind of just jumping on those things. Yeah, work in the press office, communications office if you want to be a speech writer, because that's usually the best way into it because they'll get a chance to write. It's hard to just like apply to be speech writer without previous writing and campaign experience. Dan, Tommy, what about getting campaign jobs out of college? I mean, I just think, like, don't think you can select your job, take whatever

job you can get. And don't worry about it not being a policy job or a communication job or the thing you want to do. Just get in the door, meet the people, work your ass off. People will notice if you are a hard worker that's smart, that's capable, that gets stuff done for them when they ask, and they will give you the next thing. If you suggest that you, you want to be a speechwriter or work in the policy office, I would immediately toss your resume in the waistband. Like you want people who are just going to come in and do whatever and then find their place and get there the way Lovett did by just taking an opportunity and being good at it. But if people, there's always a warning sign when someone says they want to do

policy as a 22 year old getting out of college going to work on a house campaign. Usually they've come right from Harvard, Princeton, somewhere like that. Love it. You have some, you have some questions. Oh, yeah. I have a few sort of hypotheticals that I'll put in front of you. And I'll also just sort of thought starting questions. There is a button in front of you. If you press it, you lose a month of life at the end of your life, but you gain a week of your life at the current age. Do you press it? And if so, how many times? Oh, oh, you can press it multiple times. Well, you lose a month in your, in your, in your, in your, in your, in your sinil. Right. You start. Well, you don't know when the end of your life is. No, but let's assume you're going to live to an old age. So this is sort of in your, in your sort of. decrepitude, your kind of declining moments, you'll have less time, but more or less time than you would gain having more time. So what am I gaining? Is it now a 53 week year if I push it once? You are younger for longer. You have more years of your current youth and vitality, be as it were. But time doesn't freeze. No, time does not freeze. Everything continue. You're just going to be younger

for longer, but not as much as you'll lose at the end of your life. If we're talking about being like Between 90 and 90 and a half, I'm hammering that button. Wow. Interesting. That's not a good time. I'm not pushing it. Not once. But, uh,

because we don't know. I'm not pushing it ever. Yeah. I went through it and I was like, yeah, I'll push that. And then I'm like, if you don't know, I don't know if I want to push it. Okay. I mean, you're, you know, you're, you're all at the point where we're likely to live deep into our 80s.

That's really based on the, based on the, based on the, based on the, based, I mean, it's just what the, the table say, you know. I mean, the hard part is if you're an old parent with young kids, you probably want to save all that time at the end. Yeah, that's a good point. Or you want to be more vital now. This is the challenge. Or, I mean, why don't you just eat healthy and work out and then live a lot to keep that extra month? Yeah, press the button in the fridge in a sense. Okay. The button is called GLP1. Are you pressing it? No, I'm not pressing it. Dan? Nope. Tommy. No. Now pressing it. Next question. Are you president? it? No. I'm committed to the idea that being old and falling apart is just part of the experience

and you got to do the whole ride. It's true. You know? Do you eat up the floor? Five second rule. I usually do a five second rule. It depends on where the floor is. If something just drops quickly. I mean, when you say do you eat off the floor, I imagine like fork and nice. I'm worried what are your rules. So for me, I think if it's wet, no. No wet food comes back up. But dry food, yeah, for sure, no problem. Inside outside, I don't care. But if it's But that's out on a sidewalk. I don't know. I don't know.

Or like if I'm in like an airport. Airport's tough. Airport's tough. But home, we're living on the floor. Home for sure. Oh, God. Yeah. Next question.

You go back in time. It's your 1907. You're in Vienna, Austria. And there he is, the source of so much pain and misfortune and death. The artist and professor who rejected Hitler's application to the Academy of Fine Arts with the following note, quote, sample drawing unsatisfactory, too many heads. Do you kill Christian Gierpengarl? Gripin.

Christian Gripenkirle. Why are we killing him? Because he rejected Hitler. Had he not, if he is dead and Hitler was accepted to the Academy of Fine Arts. Oh, so the presumption is Hitler gets accepted. Yes, he is the person. He was the reason he didn't get in. He was already given.

What if someone else wasn't going to get him in? Let's under, I'm doing the assumption that killing Christian Griepencourl allows Hitler to become an artist. John wants more information on the admissions process. Is there somebody we could call? Is there a donation? Is there a donation? Is there a donation?

Yeah. Do I know anybody on the board of the? Vienna society. Get him an NIL deal. I don't want to be killing this guy if Hitler's just going to get it anyway. Well, that's a question. That's blood on your hands. Yeah.

What if the person who spot Hitler takes becomes a worse Hitler? Right. Yeah, that's interesting. That's interesting. Too much of a bank shot. Smoke is I do it. I feel like love it's guaranteeing it. I'm saying Hitler, the rise of national socialism is certainly dependent upon Hitler,

not becoming an artist. So I think you can safely say, I also think it's a, it's quite a presumption to think that if Hitler didn't become an artist, or if Hitler did become an artist, he wouldn't have found his way to Nazism somehow. And then you've just killed a, just a persnickety. Yeah, I'm just trying to save this guy. Right. I mean, there is an argument for, I can't justify this, you know, because you'll just be going to jail for the rest of your life in Austria because people will be like, why did you kill him? You're like, you have no idea. Now I'm stuck in jail in 1908 in Austria. Yeah, that's a bummer. All right. Next. is the voice in your head in the first person, second person, third person, or does it shift?

In other words, do you say, if you say something stupid, do you say, why did I say that? Do you say to yourself? Why did you say that? If Dan does a good job in the pod, does he said, I really crushed it today? Or does he say, Dan really crushed it today? Please tell me, no one says the third person. Some people, it's not mine. I don't speak.

I don't think of myself in the third person. Pretty sure I'm a you. That's interesting. Yeah, you're a second person. You speak to yourself. What do you do, Dan? First person. Yeah.

It's funny. Love it previewed this one question to me and Tommy. And I started thinking about it and I was like, I don't think I do either. There you did. Your first person. You just did it. Now I'm talking. Right.

Now you're talking. But I was like, I don't know if I identify myself. Like, there's definitely a voice in there. But I don't know if it's saying like, John, you did this or I did the. Like I think I would lean towards I, but I'm not sure that I do this at all. For me, I think it's up. Back at Next Milbeck. It's mostly for me, I.

the I, I, but every once in a while I'll be like, God, you're fucking moron. Like, I'll definitely throw myself a punch. Yeah. Do I do? I bet I switch up between first and second. Definitely no. Never third. Tommy, hungry. Don't some people not have an internal monologue? Isn't that a thing that we know about? Yeah, they may become president of United States. Final question. A wizard punishes you for being disloyal to Joe Biden. You are, you are. You are. You are.

It's the wizard. It's a wizard. It's a wizard. You are suddenly trapped in the body of a dog in your family home. And as part of the spell, your family accepts that you are a beloved family pet and that you, and that you, the actual you are on some kind of extended work trip and fine. How would you try to communicate what is happening to your wife? And do you believe you could successfully tell your wife that you are a human trapped in a dog's body and in fact, her husband? And what would your strategy? be just I would give up there's no way Emily would ever be able to figure that out nor would Leo be able to communicate that to Emily if I was late no but you're you you're not me but like I'm trying you have your full brain like your full brain in there yeah I know and knowledge but I still have I'm still have a dog body and that's right that's right speak that's where you can bark you have the power of barking and pause mm-hmm to me I what I was trying to get to is can I get to a point where it is clear that one bark is yes, two barks is no. Because once you've got yes to know, you're off

to the fucking races. If you could do number, you can do numbers, right? There's ways it's like you're an alien trying to figure out to communicate with a person. I think my strategy would be to find paint and then use my paws to write a note. Wow, get some tomato sauce. Oh my god. That's so smart, Dan. Now you're like, you know, uh, uh, uh, you're like you're using things on the ground before you read to say paint, just like there's plenty of toys in my house. Just like move them with my paws to spell I am John. That's great. And by the way, freaky.

Emily's in a panic. Emily's like, did I take the right now? What the fuck? Am I mixing things, fuck? Yeah. What did I take? The challenge here is having Hannah be open to the universe of this communication happening. And I feel like that's far more my role that the thinking the dog would talk to me.

Well, now I'm trying to play it out because the first I would be like, oh my God, Leo just or this dog. whatever. It would just spelled out I am John so she texts me and then I don't respond because I'm on an extended work trip and then you spend the things to then the wheel start rolling. Is this a movie? It could be. It could be a movie. It could be a movie. All right. Well, that was all I've got. Well, that's food for thought. Food for thought. Great work. Great work. There are a bunch more great questions that we didn't have time to get to today. Reed is going to field a bunch of those in this week's open tabs. So that's exciting. Love it. You send something to read for open tabs?

You bet. Our substack newsletter, or subscribe to friends of the pod. If you want to access to our substack newsletter and add free episodes of all of our great crooked pods. Pots of America is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Listeners, here's a riddle. What do gearheads, news junkies, biohackers, comedy arts, and true crime obsessed wine moms all have in common.

They all have heard a lot of ZipRecruiter ads. Let's face it, ZipRecruiter is everywhere. Why are they everywhere? because great candidates for all your different roles are everywhere. Just like you, these people listen to business shows, sports shows, and yes, even this show. And when these candidates hear all these ads, it increases the chances of them going to ZipRecruiter and responding to your job post, so ultimately you meet them sooner. Of course, you can't meet them unless you go to ZipRecruiter.com slash crooked to try it for free.

Then once you post your job, ZipRecruiter's powerful matching technology finds top talent quickly. And ZipRecruiter has a new feature that shows you the most interested, qualified candidates first, so you meet them faster. wonder four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. We've used ZipRecruiter here at Cricket to find great people, and it just helps make the process of finding applicants who are qualified and interested easier, and finding the right people is one of the hardest parts about having a company, but you already know that. So you've got to go to ZipRecruiter.com slash cricket to post your job for free.

Once again, that ZipRecruiter.com slash crooked. Oh, and if you forget where to go, don't worry, you will hear another ad soon enough. The ZipRecruiter ads will continue until morale improves. I am very excited to welcome back to Pot Save America. The president of Vote Save America, Shaniquo McClendon, great to see you. Good to see you too. How you been?

How's D.C.? It seems a little steamy there, maybe? It is very hot. I think it's 90-something degrees today, and Donald Trump still loops here. It's all the takes burning up the place. We wanted to talk about Vote Save America's work this cycle, and your plan to take back the House and the Senate. No pressure.

This year you guys launched a program called the Crooked Dozen. It's an effort to flip 12 of the most beatable and most annoying Republicans in the House of Representatives. Tell us a little bit about the Crooked Dozen. Tell us about the effort. Yes. So when we were coming up with this list, we weren't just thinking about what are the most competitive races out there. We were thinking about who are the worst candidates out there, the worst Republican incumbents, who just will like that.

get their constituents blood boiling and want to get them out of office. And so we were thinking about people who might seem like they hate their constituents. Like Congresswoman Miller Meeks, she's opposed to capping insulin prices, which seems crazy. And she actually has gotten into a lot of arguments with her constituents. So she might just literally not like them. And only won by, I think, around 700 points last time. So she's someone who has made her constituents, I agree, and actually didn't have a huge margin to begin with. And so, but this is part of a larger electoral strategy that we had been thinking about for some time.

Democrats are largely expected to win the House this year. But if Democrats only have a hand, you know, a few seats that they have a majority with, that's not really a governing majority. You will have some people who might vote with Republicans sometimes and just make things more difficult. So we're thinking about how can we create a governing majority. So doing that by looking at races that maybe other people are not looking at, at fewer Democratic incumbents and seeing how we can flip more Republican held seats, which is how we got to some of the crooked dozen that we have now.

I love it. Got to hit the gas, you know, it's that year. This is going to be a good year. We've got some big momentum behind us. I love that you just, you mentioned Iowa because that's also a state where there are two big statewide races where we have great Democrats at the top of the ticket. You got Rob Sam. With your twin.

Run for governor. I want to, I just, I want to govern for a day. We got to take that seat. Got a great Senate candidate, Josh Turek. There's amazing New York Times piece. Josh Cherrick today, Friday, September 4th, that's worth your time. So I think it's really smart for you guys to focus on some of the down-ballot races that maybe you're not getting the national attention or the money, but need our help. Another one we should just talk about for a second

is Max Miller. It's pretty obvious why he's on the list. We had Brian Poindexter on this show, his opponent, good ironworker from Ohio. That feels like another exciting race where we have a good opportunity for a pickup, right? Yeah, on both sides. Brian is great, but Max, Miller is, I mean, he's just awful. He's been in the crooked dozen. We'll continue to be in the crooked dozen. We haven't gotten as lucky with him. Two of the people who are actually in the crooked dozen already have been kicked out. What happens? You know, that, it kind of sucks for us because I would have loved to beat them. Same. But one of them, Andy Ogles, he was just too extreme and he did not make it out of his Republican primary. Can you imagine being like too crazy for like the current

Naga primary base? Anyway, continue. Sorry. Yeah. Which I think says something that, could be exciting about at least just having normal Republicans in Congress again. And then in North Carolina, 11, I'm not from North Carolina 11, but I'm from North Carolina. So this got me excited. Charles, sorry, Chuck Edwards, which I guess his name is Charles. Yeah, he just had some weird harassment scandal. I think he was censured recently, and he gave some of his women staffers guns. So just a lot of crazy stuff happening in that office, but now they're not in the crooked

dozen anymore. So we replaced them. We actually ran a little competition online to see who our audience thought the next two additions to the crooked dozen should be. And those results led to David Valadeo in California 22 and Gabe Evans in Colorado, if you know, if anyone wants to see it, they can go look at the post and see some of the comments from people who live in those districts and have strong feelings about them. I love that. Let the people decide, let the masses dictate to us who get on this list. We should just say, Chuck Edwards, gigantic creep. I believe he harassed his staffers so often that he gave one of them, I think, a jigsaw puzzle in the form of an invitation to a date, like, buddy, what are you doing? But yes, no, I'm glad we removed them and added some new folks to

target. All right, so let's talk about how. Votes of America's tactics this year are not the same as they were in 2024. How are they evolving? How are you guys thinking differently about these races. Something that we have done since Votesave America was started is always make sure when we are asking people to give us their time, attention, or time, attention, or money, that we're spending it as effectively as possible. And so after 2024, you know, I think a lot of people listening to this podcast probably went and knocked doors. They called voters. But if you are existing in today's world, when you knock on those doors, a lot of people have, you know, I know simply safe as one of our advertisers. The ring cameras. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of people,

People do not want to talk to the canvassers who are coming by. And then, okay, I've gotten mixed answers on this. You have an iPhone. Are your text messages filtered now? Oh, God, yeah. It doesn't always help, but they are. Yeah, but you see a lot less of those, like, campaign texts coming through. So if you have people who are calling and it says potential spam, people don't answer that,

and they're just trying to get you to vote, same with those text messages that people aren't seeing. So we have been thinking about, like, how do we respond to that? And, you know, in addition. to kind of those changes. We also know that people, they trust the people who are in their lives. If they follow people online, they trust the people that they've chose to follow online. So the stuff that we're doing this year is really focused on how do we meet people kind of in their personal relationships, but also on their kind of like parisocial and online relationships.

And that's what we're going to be mobilizing our audience around this year. And so I won't go into a ton of detail. We actually will be having a call this evening if you are hearing this on Tuesday. And so you can go to Vote Save America.com to sign up. Or we're going to go into more detail. But generally, we will be training the audience on how to map their network into the targets that we're focused on. So they can talk to the people they know in those places and get them to vote, make sure they know stuff like, you know, that David Valadeo voted to throw a bunch of people off of Medicaid, even though he has one of the highest percentage of Medicaid recipients in his district. And so that's the kind of information we want to make sure people have to talk to the people

they know. But we're also going to go online and make sure that we're engaging with some of the content that can reach people who might not otherwise pay attention to what's happening in politics, but also make sure you can share stuff in your group chats and just are meeting people more directly. And that's not to say that door knocking and phone banking don't matter in certain places. They do. But after so many hundreds of thousands of people, over a billion dollars was spent in 2024, we just knew that there were some new tactics that needed to be in the mix when we're trying to win these elections. You got to evolve. We're like Darwin over here in the political world. You got to evolve. All right. Where can folks go to get involved if they like what you're

saying, if they want to be a part of it and they want to toss out the crooked dozen? Go to votesafeamerica.com. You can sign up for the call that we have this evening. John Favro and Abdul Al-Said will be joining me and Greta Karnes. So it will be an exciting call. And just generally you can go to votesafeamerica.com. One other thing I'll throw in there is, you know, this work requires. a lot of money. If you are paying attention to political news right now, a lot of donors are still really frustrated about 2024, but a lot of Vote Save America's work has been able to continue because of the people who listen to this podcast. So I want to say thank you for that. And if you are in a space to donate a little bit more and through our anxiety relief program, which is a

monthly recurring donation program, it really will help us in getting this work done. And if you don't have the resources to do that, your time and attention is just important. So if you go to Boatsaveamerica.com, you can find all the ways to get involved. Excellent. Well, thank you for all the work you're doing. Thanks to everybody out there who has donated, volunteered, gotten involved in some way, talk to their friends about politics, just try to encourage people to care. We've got to have some hope, people. Yes. Now is our moments. These midterms, knock on everything.

I feel like they're going to be good. Yeah, and it's step one to 2028. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, we got to get some momentum in some wind at our back, and then we're going right into 2028. Shaniqua, great to see you. Yeah. Thanks for all the work and talk soon. Yeah, bye.

Thanks to Shinika for coming on the pod, and thanks to all of you for submitting your questions. As a reminder, you can find a volunteer opportunity near you or donate to the fund to defeat the crooked dozen at Votesaveamerica.com. Dan and I will be back with a new show in your feeds on Friday. Bye, everyone.

Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Ferris Safari with Reed Jirlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroote, Ben Heathcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, David Tolls, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.