The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3565 - Trumpflation Squeezes Parents; Populist Dem Runs in Maine w/ Elizabeth Pancotti & Graham Platner

Episode Date: August 21, 2025

It's Emmajority Report Thursday on the Majority Report On today's show: In an interview with Laura Ingraham, JD Vance spews great replacement theory racism as he threatens to withhold federal funding for states that refuse to comply with the administration's Immigration Policy. Former economic advisor to Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Pancotti joins us to talk about how the Trump administration's policies are making back-to-school supplies prices rapidly rise. Maine Senate candidate and MR listener, Graham Platner joins us to discuss his campaign and platform. In the Fun Half: JD Vance, Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller are heckled relentlessly on their way to a press conference in the depths of Union Station in DC. Stephen Miller claims that the federal invasion of DC is to protect black people and the protestors are just "elderly hippies" from somewhere else. RFK, Jr works out with Pete Hegseth at the pentagon and then later that night explains to Jesse Watters why he works out in jeans. We take a look at a 2022 campaign ad from an Israeli born acting US Attorney in Nevada who recently made news for allowing a detained Israeli pedophile return home. All that and more. The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: HELLO FRESH: Go to HelloFresh.com/majority10fm to get 10 Free Meals + a Free Item for Life! One per box with active subscription. Free meals applied as discount on first box, new subscribers only, varies by plan. MAGIC SPOON: Get 5 dollars off your next order at Magic Spoon.com/MAJORITYREPORT SUNSET LAKE: Head on over to Sunset LakeCBD.com and use code Majority for 15% off your first order. Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech Check out Matt’s show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon’s show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza’s music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder – https://majorityreportradio.com

The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Thursday. August 21st, 2025. My name is Emma Vigland in for Sam Cedar, and this is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Elizabeth Pankadi of the Groundwork Collaborative

will be with us to talk about Trump's tariffs raising prices on back-to-school essentials. And later in the show, Graham Platner, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine, will be with us to talk about his race. Also on the program, Pam Bondi ramps up her threats against blue states and cities over them, legally not complying with the ICE Gestapo. Deportations hit a new high, 180,000 so far. Uganda is the latest country to cut a deal with Trump

to take abducted immigrants. Texas Republicans officially pass their deeply gerrymandered map. J.D. Vance is booed in D.C.'s Union Station, as Stephen Miller promises that more federal dollars will be wasted on this display. They are spending $1 million a day on the D.C. occupation. Vance, fresh off his eighth vacation in seven months, will travel to Georgia today to sell the administration's deeply unpopular, big, ugly-ass bill. The DOJ is demanding that hospitals hand over sensitive information on trans kids receiving care, including addresses and private doctor's notes. A Reuters poll finds that a majority of Americans, 57%, think democracy is in peril, as Newsom's redistricting plan gets Obama's approval. After accomplishing nothing, Trump is reportedly taking a step back from Ukraine-Russia peace talks.

Doing nothing, as check the I am, by the way. The Israeli government officially approves its most extreme West Bank settlement project that would divide up the land in a way that kills the prospect of a Palestinian state. And lastly, a judge rejects the Trump administration's efforts to unseal the Epstein grand jury testimony and calls on them to just release the files. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome to the show, everybody. It's an M Majority Report Thursday. Hello, hello.

I just need the, I can't see the screen on your computer. That's what I'm alluding to, the internal camera. Yeah, the live feed. I'm not seeing it oddly. That could be a problem on my end then. But we're fixing that. Don't worry. Yeah, I don't see it here. You see, well, we don't need to do this right now live. It's just... Oh, it's the small one. Oh, it's the small one. Okay, but it is my fault. Sorry. Sorry, guys. All right. Well, a bit of an inauspicious start, but we're rolling with it. I'm excited for the show today, though. uh grand potner seems like the real deal and i heard through the great vine that he is a majority report fan so that means his politics have got to be good um let's uh let's start here then so last night laura ingram had jadie vance on her show for an interview and this answer here from him to one of her questions uh about trying to force the states and cities to comply with the federal government, I think, kind of encapsulates

really the overarching theme of this administration, or one of the many ones. For people that don't know, the federal government does have control over, you know, immigration law that is in their purview. But there's this thing called the 10th Amendment, which says that states and local governments do not have to be forced. They cannot be compelled to enforce laws by the federal government. They can't actively thwart them,

which is, I think, what they're trying to argue in the administration. But this has been a precedent that has been reified and reasserted multiple times, including by one Antonin Scalia in the case in 1997, Prince v. United States. the quote, which I read this morning in a conservative publication, said the federal government may neither issue directives requiring the states to address particular problems nor command the state's

officers or those of their political subdivisions to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program. So that is the case with immigration law. Cities don't have to be, don't have to comply with ICE. And that is in the Constitution. And yet, that is what this administration is obsessed with. So here is Laura Ingram asking the vice president about that dynamic. Given the fact that they're endangering the lives and killing American citizens, as we saw with that horrific crash in Florida. Literally killing Americans.

Literally killing Americans. I mean, these are not made up statistics. Can you pause it? These are not made up statistics. They are referring to a truck driver who was an immigrant from, India, who I guess was in Florida and he had a driver's license, God forbid. And he made an illegal U-turn and it killed three people. What do you mean these are not made-up statistics?

You're not citing a statistic, Laura. You're citing an anecdote about a car accident. Yeah, like, and you know, people always point out ad nauseum that immigrant communities are typically, like, commit less crimes and violations than do citizens. of this country, but because they're immigrants, people like this, fascist, demonize them. Well, I mean, I was going to get to that later, but now that you brought it up, we can just read this briefly from NPR last year. Some of the most extensive research on this comes from Stanford University. Economist Ran Abramitsi found that since the 1960s, immigrants are 60% less likely to be

incarcerated than U.S. born people. There's also state-level research that shows similar results. researchers at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Libertarian think tank looked into Texas in 2019. They found that undocumented immigrants were 37.1% less likely to be convicted of a crime. Beyond incarceration rates, research also shows that there is no correlation between undocumented people and a rise in crime. Recent investigations by the New York Times and the Marshall Project found that between 2007

and 2016, there was no link between undocumented immigrants. arise in violent or property crime in those communities. It's also important to note that since the spike in the two pandemic years and also it crossed over into 2023, but crime in general in the country has been precipitously declining. So there is no data that backs up their racist claims, even as Laura Ingram comes up with an anecdote that she says is data. Right. And I mean, to be fair to libertarians, like Chase Oliver, the candidate

that was on their ticket, had probably the best immigration platform of anybody on a ticket. But, you know, somebody like Dave Smith had to package up libertarianism for Donald Trump to win. But, yeah, we're going to go back to Jay. Yes, we'll start the question from the beginning.

You get better policies that actually serve the American people. Given the fact that they're endangering the lives and killing American citizens, as we saw with that horrific crash in Florida. Literally killing Americans. I mean, these are not made up statistics. Not just happening.

Like, how about say that about the gun industry? Sorry. I mean, federal highway funds, that's leverage that the federal government has over the states that refuse to do the basics. Would you consider advising that DOT and the administration pull back on federal highway funds for these states? So I don't want to get ahead of any administration announcements, but we are looking at a whole host of points of leverage.

we can exercise over California and other states to make sure they comply with the law. Sanctuary cities are killing people because you allow these violent criminals to set up shop in your cities. Obviously, you saw this case with a person who murdered people on the road, three people on the road, because he couldn't even read the road signs. We have a lot of points of leverage here, but fundamentally, I think, the American people have to stand with us here. Because when we go and tell the governor of California or the governor of New York, that you have to stop putting the interests of illegal aliens over American citizens. We need the American people to stand with us. And I think that they will. I think that

they are. But we're definitely not going to let this slide, Laura. You can't do it. You've got to stop putting the interests of foreigners who don't have the right to be here over the interest of American citizens. That is the entire point and purpose of the Democratic Party. If you go back to the election of 2024, what was the big issue? The big issue was illegal immigration. They were actually defending the rights of illegal immigrants to come into our country, to vote in our elections, to collect Social Security and Medicaid that ought by right go to American citizens to say nothing of housing. This is actually the biggest driver of housing costs in some of these big blue cities is that they flooded the zone with illegal immigrants. As we've kicked illegal

aliens out of our country, you actually see housing costs start to level off. So fundamentally, the difference between Republicans and Democrats is we care about American citizens. They actually don't like American citizens and want to replace them with low-wage foreigners. It's a very stark difference. And I think the American people are going to continue to reward us because of it. All right. We'll pause it. All right, or end it there. I just wanted to get to that housing piece because of how disgustingly cynical it is. When I say that that clip is indicative of what this administration is about, that's what I mean. When he finally gets around to the cost of living, which Trump is making much worse right now, as we're about to discuss with Liz

Pankati about how school supplies are already drastically increasing in price as Trump's tariffs begin to make their effects felt. They have no answer for the cost of living crisis except to demonize other people. They don't want to tax corporations. The people who build housing? To redistribute wealth to folks. They don't want to crack down on corporate landlords. who are price fixing, they have nothing to address the cost of living crisis except to exacerbate it with the tariffs. But when they're addressed with when they have to address something very real, oh, it's the immigrants. We're kicking them out to make your life better. That's not happening right now. It's actually getting a lot worse. And the housing crisis is no joke. There was a Harvard

study in 23 that found that over 22 million renters now spend over 30% of their income on rent and utilities. That's really the standard of like what's supposed to be affordable is if you spend 30%. That's half of all renters

who are spending more than is supposed to be allowable for your budget roughly and that's kind of considered the affordability threshold. Half of all renters right now are exceeding their means just on housing and utilities. And there was a data where you can just

look at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that prices for folks' primary residences, they've tracked this, have increased since 2015 over a 10-year period by over 50 percent, outpacing inflation, which was around 31%. So it's out of control. And his answer is, well, we'll kick out all the immigrants. I mean, we're going to We're going to see how this goes. Our rental price is going to start to go down across the country because of this. We know the answer. And when he's threatening also at the beginning of the clip,

withholding federal highway funds from California, if they assert their constitutional right to not comply with the federal government under the 10th Amendment. I mean, pointing out their hypocrisy is, yields nothing at this point, but God, the state's right stuff. It's just so obvious how cynical and how quickly they abandoned that. Yeah, I mean, those precedents need to be used next time the Democrats have power. But, like, first of all, the setup shop for foreigners to do criminal murders is such a lie. Sanctuary laws are passed often with the support of police departments because it allows communities to, say, report violent folks and other problems to authorities without worrying about ice.

coming and kicking them down the door and sending them to, you know, some country. And it's already the case that if there's someone who's a violent criminal, that local authorities aren't going to, what, let them set up shop, no, they go in and arrest them. That's what they've been doing this entire time. But the housing crisis caused by some sort of like Biden-era immigration influx? No, we've been, we haven't been building houses since 2008. This is a very clear pattern that post the 2008 financial crisis. America has stopped a billion houses at the rate that it had for decades and decades and

decades since then. And now it, and you know what? Who builds those houses is a lot of times immigrants. And who should just be, if you build houses in this country for a American developers, that should, you should just get citizenship and full labor protections. That's the way to deal with that. But it's not to kick people out who are actually going to be doing all the hard work. And like J.D. Vance has been a gopher for, for venture.

capitalist for his entire adult life. Yeah. And he also was making claims that they're stealing our social services. This is another insanely false claim that they rely on. It's incredible. How many lies are just in that one clip?

Like, I honestly, if they're going to let them seek asylum, which by the way, Biden didn't even do, he revoked Title 42. If you're an immigrant and you are say on a green card or you're working and you have a W2, you are paying into our social security and Medicare system, and there's no guarantee if you don't get citizenship that you're going to get any of it.

They are subsidizing our social services, not stealing from it. They are also taking jobs, J.D. Vance, that are often sub-minimum wage, exploitative, that Americans have more protections because of citizenship that they aren't often compelled to do in the same way that, like, migrant children are when we get, stories about them dying in meat packing processing plants and and that kind of thing. So it's just Donald Trump is literally the type of capitalist who uses undocumented immigrant labor to make bigger profits. He did it with Trump Tower. He used undocumented Polish workers who threatened to kill the guy who Trump had hired them because he started stiffen him on payments.

like that that is literally the guy he's the guy it's that we don't even have to be theoretical like oh capitalists like ice because it does that work for him because what happened when they threatened uh trump's foreman is uh trump threatened wasn't ice at that time it was uh whatever the deportate other border uh services was but it was yeah get them in here get them out because they're not being compliant laborers trump is the guy yeah and i i headlined this but this was, the vacation wars are kind of a silly partisan fight that happens every administration, but it is a little jarring that J.D. Vance has taken more vacations than there have been months that he's been in power. Where's he going? I mean, it's like, all across the world, I mean,

what'd you say? Didn't he go to the Vatican? Yeah. Oh, right. And then he killed the Pope, allegedly. He's on missions. Yeah. um yeah so i i just like he was notoriously lazy as a senator and in his senate run he's just the kind of guy that wants to sit on his ass with a big pile of money hollywood jd that is what gives me a little bit hope of hope with if he's the standard bearer for maga going forward like i don't know if he has the juice and i don't think he has the work ethic um they should all go in vacation for the next three years oh i'm i i hope those golf numbers for don't trump are just like through the roof here in a moment we're going to be talking to Liz Pankadi

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or watching this all right quick break and when we come back we'll be joined by liz pancati Thank you. To do, to do, to do, to, to, to, to, do. We are back, and we are joined now, once again by friend of the show, Elizabeth Pankatti, managing director of policy and advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative and former Economic Advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders. Liz, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thanks so much for having me. Of course. So you have the Groundwork Collaborative in Collaborative.

with the Century Foundation put out this new analysis of how Trump's tariffs have raised the price of school supplies an average of 7.3% more this back-to-school season. That's a huge increase when you average it out. I mean, can you speak a little bit about how you all decided to kind of look into this and what were the major findings that stuck out to you? Yeah. So the increase is more than double headline kind of overall inflation. It is almost on par with kind of the worst of headline inflation in that, you know, 2020-2-3 period where we were hitting 9%. This is a big hike in costs on families. It's obviously not just school supplies. It's, you know, consumer electronics and building materials and their utility bills and, you know, their Nintendo switches

and PS5s, right? It's everything. But school supplies are not really an optional. expense for families, especially at this time of year. It's pretty tough to send your kid to school without a backpack and a couple number two pencils along with the rest of the schools of playlists. I don't have kids personally, but we asked a couple of our colleagues for their kids' schools to playlists, and they're lengthy. And it's not frivolous items. I always had the Hello Kitty erasers or whatever, but the basics of your kid needs to, you know, be able to highlight the book they're reading or write in their notebook and have graph paper for math class. these are just kind of the basic expenses. And they're really not optional for families. And so

we, you know, had read a lot about prices increasing across the board. You know, Walmart a couple months ago announced that they were really struggling to put off price hikes as a result of their tariffs. In fact, their earnings calls this morning, we were listening to them. And they said that every time they replenish inventory on a weekly basis, they are getting hit with more tariffs and having to hike more prices on the shelves. And so we've actually been taking a look at this. a couple of times this year. We looked at, you know, Fourth of July. Their firework prices were way up this year. We looked at Memorial Day. Charcoal grills are almost exclusively manufactured in China. And so fireworks are exclusively manufactured in China. There's no firework production

facility in the United States. So we've done this kind of seasonally. And so this is back to school season. What we find is that school supply, like an average school supply list, you know, a couple packs of pencils, markers, crayons, notebooks, whatever, is up 7.3 percent. But if you look at individual items, index cards, for example, are up by 40%. So within the individual items, crayons are actually the same price. And it's really funny. I was listening to Target's earnings call yesterday. And they said that they have kept the 50 cent box of crayons from last back to school season.

Like they were bragging about that. So crayons are actually not up by very much, but everything else is. So I think kids might be writing with crayons instead of pencils this year. But it's really tough for families. And in addition to school supplies, we find that school lunchbox staples are up. And so over the course of the school year, families, like, if you just take the prices right now, I mean, they are only going to get worse. Families will pay $160 more to pack their kids' lunches this year at the same time that Trump is kicking millions of families off of their SNAP, boot stamp benefits. Can you maybe help us trace some of the supply chain areas that, like, lead us to this point?

I mean, we all know that tariffs are raising prices across the board, but why, you know, particularly index cards or why some of these other more dramatic increases? I actually haven't figured out why index cards are up. It's really bothering me because like other paper products aren't up. Oh, other paper products aren't. All right. Well, that's interesting. They are up, but like index cards specifically are up really high. And so I am, I, we're looking into it because it's annoying me personally. I think it might have to do with like the like the paper cutter. is my guess, because steel and aluminum tariffs are so high. And also, like, when you manufacture especially paper, cut paper, that is not like a standard letter size piece of paper. When you

manufacture paper, you make big sheets of it. And so then you have to cut it into smaller pieces, and there are more standard sizes for that. Index cards can be less standard, like a sheet of notebook paper, a sheet of copy printer paper. There's obviously way more of that in the world than an index card. And so my, my guess is the cutter. I'm also, I recently got engaged and I'm looking at wedding invitation prices and they are insane. People keep, thank you, but people keep telling me it's because of the cut. And I'm like, I just don't, I don't get the markup. But that's my suspicion, but we are looking into it on an index card specifically. But other things like binders, which are primarily made of, you know, plastic and metal, those are things we make some of here, but are largely

imported, either because their pieces are manufactured or created elsewhere, and then they're imported as materials, and then they are assembled here, or the entire product is, you know, manufactured and assembled elsewhere. Some things are still made here. Ticonderoga wood number two pencils are made in the United States, but there are large tariffs on the lumber that makes those pencils. And so even though they are made here, the lumber that we largely import from places like Canada or further away, that is not and is subject to the tariffs. And so it's, it's been a mix of different things. But if you think about all of the materials that go into, you know, a backpack, we don't make backpacks here. We don't make, we don't particularly

look at apparel in this, just because the data we were using didn't have as good of data on it. But, you know, tariffs are hitting Nike, Adidas, the Children's Place, Carter's, Oshkosh, Target. These places are all hiking. Children's shoes. Children's clothing. Sorry, we put something on our soundboard. Go ahead. They were really angry about kids' clothing prices. But we've noticed in the last few CPI prints that those have been up, and we've been hearing, you know, manufacturers and producers say. So we did look at a couple of examples, but Nike and Adidas shoes are getting tariffed, and we expect, you know, those to be passed through to consumers. and you can't really choose to get your kid a new pair of sneakers. That's not really a choice.

Yeah. And I mean, the nature of these supply chains, you hit on it a little bit, like even for products that are made in the U.S., we without the, say, like, inflation reduction act being followed through on or without building up our domestic capacity to make some of these things, we are, we have to rely on imported goods because we just don't have the mechanism to create them right now and that takes such a long period of time. Can you explain a little bit more about how those supply chains work as it relates to even goods that are as simple as a number two pencil? Yeah, I mean, a number two pencil is a good example of, you know,

the wood is imported. We have some domestic sources of hard and soft wood lumber, obviously, but it's not just wood like if you think of a i wish i had one but like if you think of a number two pencil there's the wood there's the lead that goes inside of it there's the little metal thing that keeps the eraser on and then there's the rubber eraser so the wood is you know processed but it's mostly a raw material um the lead is uh it has to be processed into that piece um and some you know from from being extracted like there's some kind of process there um the metal that holds the eraser on is usually aluminum. And so that requires processing. There are massive tariffs on aluminum right now. And the aluminum smelters in the U.S., as my colleague Alex, actually worked on in the

NAC, we were opening the first aluminum smelter in the U.S. in decades. And they are delaying the project as a result of Trump's tariffs and rollbacks of various other policies. And then the eraser is rubber, which has to be manufactured through a variety of chemical processes. polymers and petroleum and whatnot. So it's a lot that goes into it if you want an eraser. I guess you could simply pick up something else. But a crayon, you know, the wax has to be dyed and melted and forms and a piece of paper has to go around it. Backpacks are really interesting because they typically involve fabric, which we don't, there used to be, you know, a lot of fabric and textile mills in places like North Carolina and Massachusetts. They were largely shipped overseas

over the last 60 years, but zippers, there are like very few zipper manufacturers in the United States. So even if you got domestically made fabric, there's usually like plastic coatings on some backpacks, and then there are little components like zippers. And so it just really adds up. The other thing, like say you're LLB, for example, and you really want to manufacture backpacks in the United States, they do make some products in the U.S., but say you're, you know, you are taking the president seriously, he says he wants a manufacturing renaissance. You say, okay, great, let's make backpacks up in Maine. Right now, to build a facility to make backpacks, you will face tariffs on industrial equipment, on the lumber and sheetrock and concrete to make the facility, on the steel

and aluminum that goes into all the industrial equipment, on the fabric that you import, because we don't make a ton of fabric here, on the plastic coating that you import, on the zippers that you import. And so if you're LLB, you have to make 17 other factories to have your factory be U.S. made. And that's all, while one, all of those imports are tariffed, but also every other company is trying to diversify their supply chains. I mean, every earnings, I've listened to like 15 earnings calls this week because I'm a nerd, but every company is saying we're trying to diversify our supply chains, especially out of China or places where the tariffs are, especially high. And they are all doing it at once. And so when everybody is on the phone with, you know,

a limited number of factories or raw material suppliers or processors around the world, it's just really difficult. I think that, you know, nothing about this president's approach to a domestic manufacturing renaissance is actually going to spur one. He is bullying companies and trying to control them. I mean, Intel, for example, had a large incentive from the Chips Act. I actually worked on an amendment when I worked for Senator Sanders to add that, you know, if the U.S. is going to give these chip companies $50 billion.

the American taxpayer should kind of share in the upside of the profits that they make from those grants. I think that's still a good policy. It wasn't enacted ultimately. But Trump has instead gone to Intel said he wants this golden share and to be able to bully them into doing everything. Ultimately, you know, the issue is that the shareholders of Intel can decide if they're going to produce chips, which like investors probably shouldn't control a critical supply chain. But neither should this president. I mean, he is just completely bullying. companies. I'm not, you know, I'm not here to defend like unfettered capitalism, but he is swinging the pendulum in the complete opposite way to extract things from these companies so that they come

into the Oval Office and hand him gold bars and, you know, hand him jets and all this stuff. And that's not how we make more chips. That's just, or make backpacks in America or whatever it is. It's just how the president gets, you know, bribes from his adversaries. What are you seeing in terms of the infrastructure rollbacks that the administration is engaging in trying to just kill anything that Biden passed. Like, I mean, it's so nonsensical because it seems to me like the very folks that donated to Donald Trump or whatever, the Silicon Valley guys, would greatly benefit from a blank check, not a blank check, the billions of dollars, but like, with,

no requirement to give those some of those returns back to the American public, because obviously, as you said, that wasn't included in the final legislation. It would make sense to me that they would want that, whether it's Peter Thiel or, I mean, you were doing it. Right. So I, that was a benefit to them. Like, what is the status of some of those rollbacks? Or is it, does Trump just want to control if one of his friends gets the kickback? Is that? basically the end of it? I think it all has to benefit him. I mean, he's just like an egotistical guy. I think that he's very flattered when a CEO comes into the Oval Office and says, oh, you know, Mr. President, please come to our ribbon cutting. We're investing trillions of dollars. In fact,

I think these CEOs have realized that if they just simply go in and charm him with a big number, he'll kind of either back off of them or say something nice about them. And so a lot of these commitments, so to speak, that CEOs or other countries are making are completely false. They are just trying to woo the president and I guess more power to them. But the heartbreaking thing is that at the end of the day, that means that jobs are not going to be delivered in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania where they've been hollowed out for decades. I mean, my favorite graph, this is, I'm again a nerd, but there's an incredible graph of if you

look at during the Biden administration, if you look at spending corporate, you're spending on manufacturing construction, so how much in our economy was being spent on building new manufacturing facilities. The line is like, do-do-do, it dips in some places, and then it literally does this during the Biden administration. I mean, it's actually an incredible graph of like how effective it, like this industrial policy scheme was, between combination of the American Rescue Plan, the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Chips and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. So all of those things, plus a combination of tariff policies and other policies the administration was doing.

Like, it worked. We were building things in America, and we were going to make things in America. And so quickly, with, like, strokes of a couple of, a couple of strokes of a pen, Trump has completely reversed that between the tariff driving, tariffs driving up, building costs for these facilities. I mean, I think that's the other thing of, if taxpayer dollars are funding these facilities, wouldn't you want them to be built in the most efficient way instead were paying a bunch of tariffs back to the federal government, right? Like, it doesn't totally make sense. Right. And also, this is an example of how you do an onshoreing domestic manufacturing policy because Biden was somebody who used tariffs strategically, as opposed to using some

formula that was came up with like by Peter Navarro or whatever. That is really just about what you say, the CEO is coming to the Oval Office. Like, if you could just say, talk a little bit more about how tariffs can be used strategically for things like domestic onshoreing. You know, we had this. During the Biden administration, they rolled out a suite of tariff policies that said, look, there's a couple different things. One, we want fair trade, not free trade. So where country, other countries are using unfair tactics like forced labor or excessive, you know, emissions or unfair tax policies or unfair subsidies or whatever that are undercutting American jobs and also just the general, you know, labor and human welfare that we would like to see

around the world in manufacturing processes. Like, we are going to tariff those things to discourage the purchase of them. And at the same time, it was really a twofold thing. It was strategic. It was not broad-based. They were not on, you know, it was not 15 to 50 percent tariffs on every country in the world or an island of penguins, right? It was strategic. tariffs on particular product lines. And in part, there were tariffs that were put on certain products that we were trying to create domestic supply of. Like, we were trying to stand those facilities up and say, look, you will have a customer base to these domestic manufacturers. You will have a customer base for these things. People will buy the American made version of

these things. And you can scale them so that they are price competitive with other fairly traded goods. Like, it's just, it's basically like an incubation period, right? It just says, like while you're getting started, we're going to make it a little bit easier for you, which makes sense. That is, you know, there are lots of preferences. It's giving American companies a leg up, basically, which is what Trump pretends he's doing. It's not even a leg up. It's just a level playing field of like, all right, can you give us five years to build the fab and make the chip and like get it out, right? It's just to scale it. It's, I don't know. I don't want to like show for the pharmaceutical companies, but like in part, this is why there are, I think how far it's gone is

unreasonable. But this is why we have patent protections, right? It says, okay, You've innovated, you've put the money into a new drug, will give you the patent for a reasonable period of time so that you can recuperate that money. And then it makes it worth it for you to do it. Obviously, that gets out of hand. And they don't cut corners. It incentivizes them to basically create a better product. Right. Right. And they have a, they know that at the end of the day, somebody's going to buy the solar panels or the chips or the steel or the windmill turbines or whatever they're making. And so I think the beauty of, you know, biodynamics is that we were taking. And we were taking, taking strategic tariffs plus industrial policy. So it was incentives to build and incentives to buy

on the consumer side, both industrial consumers and, you know, typical me and you, if we want to put a solar panel on our apartment or if, you know, Samsung wants to buy a million solar panels to put on top of a factory, there were incentives on both sides for, you know, utility scale projects and residential projects for clean energy. And this wasn't just clean energy. And this is a lot of supply chains. Now, it is so expensive to build and make things here as a result of the tariffs. And, like, I think the bigger story here is actually the consumers don't want to buy anything because they think the economy is about to be in the tank or it already is, and they're terrified. I mean, we have seen so much pullback in spending. People are not going

on vacation. They are holding off on buying a new car. I mean, I was listening to earnings calls for an air conditioning company, and they were saying that they are seeing so many more repairs, like order for parts, because people are duct-taping their air conditioners back together rather than buy a new one because they're so scared to make a $5,000, $10,000 expense right now. They need that money in the bank in case something bad happens. I mean, people are terrified of losing their jobs. They are terrified of having, you know, an emergency expense because they just see the riding on the walls of this economy.

And it's only going to get worse from here, right? So, I mean, can you just, as we wrap up here, Liz, tell us a little bit about what's coming. We know that Christmas and the holiday season is going to be difficult given the fact that so many toys are manufactured in China overseas. What is coming down the road in the next few months as we wrap up the year? I think as we get, you know, Halloween costumes more than 90% are manufactured in China. if you're Spirit Halloween, you open for one month out of the year, right? And or if you're Amazon and you order, you know, inventory of Halloween costumes, that stuff sells for one month out of the year. Nobody's buying a Dorothy and Toto costume in February. And so you don't import these things until three to five months before you, this is the spoiler alert of my Halloween costume, but you don't import those things in advance, a little bit, you know, three to five months before they go on shelves or they're available online. You buy them, you put them in a warehouse, and then you sell them. And the, and the, issue of when the, especially the China tariffs, but really all of the tariffs went into a fact and they were on and off and the chaos of it meant that many companies just stopped

buying things. We saw port volumes decline by massive amounts. I mean, nobody, people were just sitting on their hand saying we can get away with the inventory we have on hand and then hopefully the tariffs won't be in place when we need to deal it. And so nobody's stocked up. I mean, Target and Walmart buy Christmas stock six to eight months in advance so that it's here when people want to buy it on Black Friday or the night before Christmas, right? They haven't done that. There are toy companies that are saying we are not bringing new toys to the U.S. because we cannot price them competitively and because we miss the window for importing them. And so when Donald Trump told little girls in this country that you get one doll instead of five dolls, he meant it because

there will not be five dolls for parents to buy on the shelves this Christmas. And if you're looking for the latest Miss Rachel or Bluey toy, it's not going to be on your target shelves this. winter and if you're looking for you know the latest uh howling costume at spirit halloween or the newest bag of chocolate candy or whatever it i really think we're going to have shortages and what is on the shelves is going to be more expensive well uh as always uh what'd you say cheery note to end up you know but you know you seriously you're brilliant i always appreciate you coming on and breaking this stuff down thank you so much and you know Now, from one nerd to another, never apologize for enjoying a graph or two.

I'll bring graphs next time for... Okay, great. You can check out Elizabeth Pankati's great work over at the Groundwork Collaborative. Thanks so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thanks. All right, quick break, folks.

And when we come back, we're going to be talking to Graham Platner, Senate candidate in Maine. Thank you. Thank you. We are back, and we are joined now by Graham Plattner, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine, hoping to take on Susan Collins in the general election in 2026. Graham, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thank you very much for having me. you are not apparently just a listener to the majority report you previously called in which is amazing so um this is in fact what's very funny is that it was a couple years ago now and i was on i would call in some days when i was out on the oyster farm and uh the one day that i actually made it through a thunderstorm hit in the exact same moment and so i was trying to talk to sam while the quality was just horrific And yeah, it was, I was like, of course, this is the moment.

This is the moment. This is a moment. This call is significantly better. So that's good. That's good. That's good. I mean, we have the power of video calls now and Wi-Fi. I really appreciate you coming on today.

I'll start off with another kind of cheeky question here. Can you promise us that you will not be another John Federman? Yes. Okay. Okay. I saw a tweet yesterday that said, Graham Platinum, God, apologize. for John Federman, which I got a very hearty chuckle out of.

Well, I mean, you, for starters, you are unambiguous in your condemnation of Israel's genocide in Gaza. You use that term. You are a veteran. You serve four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can you speak a little bit about your service, how it affected your perspective on the current genocide in Gaza and, of course, you know, America's role in the Middle East? Yeah, I mean, in many ways, it's the story of disillusionment. I certainly joined the Marine Corps. Even though I had a lot of reservations about the war in Iraq, I still felt that there was going to be a goodness and something we could do.

And it was hard for me to believe that after a while. It also really began to make me question kind of the structures of American foreign policy. I began to, like, we never. seemed to be living up to the things we were claiming to do, the tactics and the strategies that I would see deployment after deployment, after deployment, never really matched up with these kind of grandiose claims. And there was a point where I just began to wonder, like, well, if we're not doing what we say we're doing, what are we doing? And it became fairly clear that what we were doing was transferring an immense amount of taxpayer wealth into the

pockets of a fair amount of very wealthy defense contractors, all on the backs of the young men and women we sent overseas to suffer and die, and on the backs of the untold amount of civilians in the countries that we conducted these operations in. And go ahead, if you want to expand on that, I mean, I think it's... I mean, that's pretty much the core of it. Like, at this point, I've just become deeply critical. of the American foreign policy establishment and the behavior that continues to happen reflects that same criticism. We have not begun to learn. We continue to do these utterly horrific.

And in my way, my way of thinking completely, this does nothing for Americans. None of this stuff benefits working class Americans. Nothing in Sullivan, Maine, improved because of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. Nothing in Sullivan, Maine, is going to improve because of our funding of a genocide. It says nothing to do with these things. And that is not where we should be spending our money, both morally, but also just as a nation. It's a very simple answer, I think, for folks to get behind. And this is really broadly the consensus when you also cross partisan lines. I know Maine has a really independent streak. Of course, you have Senator Angus King, who is an independent but caucuses with the Democrats.

and then you have, of course, Susan Collins, who is running again, obviously. But I just am flummox as to how she has hung on for this long. Like, in 2020, she won re-election by eight points. And Biden won that race. And what is your view on the failures of the Democratic Party in your state of Maine to come up with a candidate that can challenge somebody who should be? quite vulnerable in many of these races? Well, look, I'll just be up front. I don't even think it's this Democratic Party in the state of Maine.

I think it's the Democratic Party nationally. Right. Like the 2020 race, Sarah Gideon, who had served many years in the Maine legislature, was a good, was a good legislator, but was anointed by the party in D.C. and there really wasn't much of a process of finding anyone else. They just decided that she was the best candidate. And then they ran a kind of standard campaign. Field operations were not a big part of it.

It was the raise, I think they raised $60 million in that race, and far more than Susan Collins' name to spend. And they just blew it on mail. I mean, there was a joke back then where, like, we don't have to, like, even get firewood this year. We're all just saving up the mailers. You're just going to burn them in the wood stuff. So it's a – I mean, it was ridiculous.

And both the fact that, like, I don't think she could appeal across this kind of more independent streak. I think she drove out the Democratic base, but that was it. And then it was a campaign that was – and for the record, my understanding is not their fault at all. It was driven by the national level. And it was just focused on kind of standard campaigning. And so I think Collins has held on, one, because back then there was still a little bit of that myth, even though we were seeing the truth that the myth still held on. The myth doesn't hold on now.

I mean, that's gone. I mean, I know Republicans who are my neighbors who are like Susan Collins has got to go. She's clearly just full of it. So, like, it's not even working with her constituent or her best. Certainly not working with Democrats. But I fear that the, and the reason I've jumped into this race, quite frankly, is that I fear that there is some idea floating around of doing the exact same thing as 2020, having an establishment candidate that comes out of the political machine, chosen in many ways by D.C., campaigning in the same way that these campaigns have all failed in the past. And it's, student Collins is uniquely weak right now, and yet there might be the ability to choose a uniquely bad candidate for this specific race. And I don't think I'm that candidate. I think I'm a good candidate. I think I can appeal across the divide. I spend, I mean, I live in a small town. I, in many ways, this is not a, I didn't set out to do this. I was, I was approached to do it. And I, I, I was, I was approached to do it. And I, I, I, I was.

I'm not doing it because somebody asked me to, but it wasn't my idea. I hadn't thought of it. And when it came up, I was like, you know, it really does seem like there's an opportunity here to build a kind of politics again that comes out of the legacies of organized labor. It comes out of the legacies of the civil rights movement politics. And they've run campaigns focused on field organizing, building connection across community organizations and labor organizations and political organizations. the only way that we are going to be able to survive the rise of fascism in America is to build a robust working class politics again. And I feel like that is a thing that we here in Maine are currently uniquely suited to do.

And I'm really excited to get that ball rolling. Well, it already has, I guess. Well, it's very exciting. That's pretty wild. I mean, I know that you have some progressive folks who are on your campaign, working Morris Katz joined from the Zoron campaign to help with your race, as well as Joe Calvello, who was on Bernie Sanders' campaign and then on Federman's staff, but resigned, as many did, given his turn. So you have like some progressive organizers who understand this kind of thing behind you. Did you feel compelled to kind of get out ahead of some of the rumblings about 77-year-old governor, Janet Mills, running in the race? I don't know if she's going to do it, but like, you're now, you're the first candidate really to declare, and it gives you kind of a bit of a head start, it seems.

I'll just be up front. We didn't launch when we did because of that. We launched when we did because we had put the groundwork in to build a launch day that we could get. So the, and I'm not doing this to keep other people out of the race. I mean, I firmly

believe in a healthy primary process, which I wish certain elements of our political establishment still did. Exactly. I think a primary process is good. It allows voters to engage with candidates with issues, and it can really narrow down what people really want.

I also think in many ways it's how we exercise the muscle that we're going to need to fight in the general. So I think there's an element of that too. It's got to hone, you've got to hone your skills and you can do that in a primary. But we launched this the way we want to because we could, because we had done the work to make it in. We're not on somebody else's timeline. And we're not asking anybody permission. We put together what we thought was going to be an effective start. And it's far surpassed my expectation.

So I'm feeling quite good about that. But yeah, I just, I don't, we didn't do this because of any other external input. We did this because it was our internal plan. the write-up of you in Politico talks about how you reject the term kind of liberal you're more of a say like a populist Democrat or a progressive Democrat like how would you characterize your politics for folks and I'm thrilled to see people reject liberalism and towards leftism that's very exciting to me and I like that that was even included what how would you describe your ideology overall I mean at its core it's it's a it's a working class I ideology that is built in movement politics. So I take my inspirations from the labor movement. I take my inspirations from the civil rights movement. American history is not a history of working people asking permission to get things from those in power.

Every good thing that we have gotten, quite frankly, for working people in this country does not come from writing a strongly worded letter to someone in power. then they just give it to you. We need to build power. We need to build organizational power, both the communities and workplaces. We need to build a much deeper structure of power through our political apparatus in a way that we can leverage it far after campaigns come and go. Yep.

The core of my politics is Jane McAlevy. I heard her on this show, I read her books, I took organizing for power, because my background here is a community organizer, it's not an electoral politics. It was in her kind of critique of this, the inability for much of modern American liberal politics to have a theory of power. And I believe that. I firmly believe that power, there is no, there is no strata in our society that is made to hold power. Power exists and can be taken and utilized by those who are willing to build the mechanisms necessary to do it. A lot of money means it's pretty easy to have power in the system that we have. But that can be fought against with a lot of people.

But that's where the work happens, and that's the hard part. I mean, it's easy to raise a bunch of money and just go pay some consultant to, like, drum up some lobbying thing for you. It's a lot hard to organize your community. But if we are going to build a working class politics in this country that is based on actually building power and using it to get what we need and to frankly claw back a lot of resources from those who have used horrific policy for the past 40 years at a minimum, steal it from us, that's what we need to do. So I, uh, that's, I'll just throw up, I have to throw out Jane's name because we are diminished. I think in this moment, uh, she would be a incredible force of nature to have with us. At least we are lucky enough that she could pass that all down. Absolutely. And people should read her books as well. That's, uh, totally, uh, she's

inspirational to me as well and to so many other people, um, rest in power, Jane. then like let's talk a little bit about your platform i mean your website kicks off with a critique of billionaires and how our government is bought and paid for by billionaires i mean how i should have known that you're an mr listeners that you have postal banking on your platform which i i texted sam about this already he's on vacation but he's very excited I only, I wasn't sad to hear that I was coming on on Thursday because I'm a big, a majority supporter. Yes. But, but I, but I was like at some point, I might have to talk to say it because I, I think postal banking is a spectacular program that we really need to invest in.

But it's, you know, honestly, but to me, to be just up front, that stuff, while those are policies I'm going to press, the real. things are going to be health care and housing and ending foreign wars. I mean, that's, like, those are, I don't think, Medicare for all. Medicare for all. 100%. Yeah. I mean, I'm an automatic yes vote for Medicare for all. I also think that, you know, we need to come up with housing solutions that aren't merely going to take like taxpayer dollars, put them into some developers bank account and let them build rental units to like bleed people like monthly. We need to, we need to build more

housing. But we also need to couple it with programs that are going to support Americans getting into homes that they own at the point in their lives where they want to own a home. And VA homeowners are a thing that a lot of friends of mine got to buy houses at a point where if they hadn't been veterans and didn't have access to that, they wouldn't have been able to. But we need to look at all these things like very structurally because I also, it's, you know, there are pitfalls in doing some of the stuff and say allowing large corporate landlord companies to still exist because they'll figure out ways to leverage policy to it to benefit themselves. But for me, that's the crux of all this.

People can't get health care. People can't put roofs over their heads. And all that money is going out the door to fund a genocide. That's what needs to stop first. And for me, that's kind of that's the real core, the core of the message, because that's, that's how people are interacting with this right now. And Eastern Maine, our health care system is collapsing. And the Medicaid and Medicare cuts have not even come down the pike yet. So. Yeah. I mean, the rural hospital closures are definitely going to impact, I would imagine, Maine.

And you're, as somebody, you know, who works outside, as an oyster farmer, you also have a, uh, a focus on the environment and our climate. How can you, how do you plan to, to meld the working class forward politics that you describe with a climate agenda that supports those workers, but also, uh, moves us forward in terms of trying to curb the worst effects of climate change? Yeah, I mean, I, well, one, at some point I'm going to want to talk to Matt and David about this because I listen to, I listen to, I listen to this. discussion a lot on Left Reckoning.

Love this interview. I mean, the climate, I mean, look, I'm an oyster farm, right? The Gulf of Maine is one of the second fastest spotting body, warming bodies of water on earth. And

we rely on it for a lot of our industry here, both aquaculture, but more so commercial fishing, lobstering. And so protecting it, making sure that we have a C that we can rely on for a long time to come is paramount to me. But I also want to make sure that whatever the, whatever the solutions we start to look for, they do not saddle working people with both the debt and, frankly, the guilt.

I always will find it amusing that everybody's supposed to feel bad about drinking out of a straw when ExxonMobil still exists. So it's a, there's a, we need to, we need to look into the, these solutions in ways that are going to make the people in the industries and the corporations that made the problems are the ones that have to foot the bill. It's all going to be very expensive. It all is going to take an immense amount of investment and resources. That should not be on the backs of working people here in the United States or elsewhere, for that matter. They're not the people that broke it. And when we look at these solutions, to me, that needs to be forefront in our

minds when we try to come up with policies on how to fix the stuff. Yeah, and your website, it's very detailed, which is something I really love, and I can see some of the Zoron influence there where there's no talking down to folks. You explain exactly where you stand on a variety of different issues. People should go to your site, and they can check out exactly what your agenda is. how can people help support your campaign? I would imagine that you're only taking small dollar contributions. So, of course, that's a way to help.

But tell us a little bit about your campaign contributions and how people can help you out. Obviously, your website is gram for senate.com. People can go there. But in your own words, what would be most helpful? Of course, I mean, yeah, small dollar donations. We're not taking corporate money. I mean, clearly. Yeah, yeah.

It seemed to self-evident, yeah. The, and so for that, we're definitely relaxed. So any little bit that people can pitch in, it means a lot. And I, that being said, though, on top of that, we want to build a real campaign here. Not a campaign of just raising money and spending it on consultants to buy a bunch of stupid TV ads that were modeled after the 1980s. we need people to phone back. We need people who have any connections with Maine to get your neighbors involved. Go on the website, fill out the volunteer forms.

The more volunteers we get, the more we can really start building out the apparatus of a true movement. I mean, this is all very weird for me, and I'm just going to be up front about this. I have dreamed for years of seeing movement politics return to this country. And for some weird accident of history, I find myself here being the voice for it. And it's not a thing I set out to do. A month ago, I thought servicing a couple moorings around Frenchman's Bay was the height of my stress. So it's all very odd. But I believe in this.

I deeply believe that this is the only way forward. And so I want people to come into this and get in. involved as being part of a larger movement, just like Bernie showed us the way. I mean, Bernie really, for me, is not just an inspiration in policy and politics, but as an inspiration thinking about this stuff as a movement. It needs to be a movement. And the only way that we get to do any of this, the only way we get to actually go down, if I go to when I win and when I go to D.C., my vote is not going to get us Medicare for all. We need to have a deeper apparatus. need to have a deeper movement that can put pressure on legislators around the country to make

this stuff happen. And I want to bring people in to do that. So if that sounds like something you might be interested in getting involved in, which I hope a lot of listeners to MR would be those folks, certainly why I am, it would mean a hell of a lot to me if you could go to the website and sign up and, yeah, also donate, of course. Well, Space Lenin writes in, just donated, left is best so we're getting the word out really appreciate your time today graham and of course we're going to be tracking your race for quite a while we will put a link to your site down below where people can find all of these links but it's also just graham for senate four spelled not the number way the correct way gram for senate dot com thanks so much for coming on the show graham thank you

very much and uh yeah just keep up the good work yeah what you guys do is why this is happening so be very proud i don't know about that but really appreciate what you're doing thanks so much thanks a lot all right folks with that we're going to wrap up the free part of this program i had high hopes for that interview and like exceeded it i mean brian i'm so fucking up excuse me i'm so right now. Brian grew up in Maine. I'm from Westbrook, Maine, and I have never been more proud of somebody coming out of my state. That's so exciting.

It's really cool. We're going to spread this interview to my family, and they're going to spread it. Yes, yes, yes, love it. So, if you would like to support this show, you can go to join the majority report.com, but, I mean, and

become a member, but maybe today we'll plug Graham and if you have five bucks, maybe for Graham. You can become a Majority Report member the other day, another day. And when you do, you can IAM the show. You get access to the fun half. You get access to the podcast, free of commercials. So we don't have to rely on Peter Thiel money. And we have Brandon here in just a second. So join the Majority Report.com. Whoa. Hey, wrong mic.

Yeah, I think about the wrong mic. You're on the AirPods. Oh, hello. There. Very nice. Is that a gargoyle poster new? No, it's the same one. Oh, okay.

It's the same one. Oh, God. Sorry, how could I forget? How are you doing, Brandon? What's happening on the discourse? I'm doing well. A lot of things are happening on the discourse. I took last week off to visit, as I said,

the wonderful sultanate of Londonistan and this week we're back to our normal schedule so it's a great time to go and join the YouTube channel the discourse with Brandon Sutton or the Twitch channel if you prefer tomorrow I think will be I don't know there's there's so many elements of occult lore that I just feel go under-examined in our media so

I don't know Mothman we'll do something about Mothman tomorrow a Chupacabra day Is that the Richard Gere one? I don't know if Richard Gere. We talk about the Mothman prophecies a lot when I'm on. So maybe we'll just like let it go with that. It should sort of Mothman Prophecies podcast. You should.

Yeah, it is Richard Gear 2002. I love that. I love how niche these podcast ideas keep getting. All right. Check out the discourse and say hello now to Maffinder. Math Binder, what's happening on your end? Hey, how are you? How are you? A lot. Earlier this week, I'm going to be writing about it in depth in my newsletter at

Disruptionist.com. But earlier this week, I was, I had uncovered an interesting new person who was working for the Andrew Cuomo campaign. And I'm sure you saw this unfurral online on social media. That was you that broke that? Well, I found a lot of the stuff that he had posted. Very cool. And I had saw him. I mean, I was familiar with that guy because I follow a lot of these like tech startup guys. And this guy got on my radar like a year or two ago.

And a couple of days ago, even before like he said that Cuomo was, you know, he was working with Cuomo. I had noticed that Cuomo's account was replying to a lot of other. accounts that were affiliated with his company meme lord technologies because you know how twitter has that thing where you pay like a thousand bucks and you could put the little you could like put the little like your little company logo next to um other accounts and give them like a blue check right um so i noticed that i was like well that's weird and i noticed like a lot of his replies sounded like AI generated like slop like he was just like replying with like laughing emojis or just reiterating

exactly what the person was saying like um uh like you know someone would say like one of the accounts would say like isn't that weird and Andrew Cole would reply like it is weird isn't it and it's like who he replies to no one on there why is he replying

to all these same accounts so that they got it on my radar but then I know but then he was a day or two ago it came out and said he's working with Cuomo and I had all these tweets of his ready to go because I knew this guy was a trump supporter like a hardcore trump supporter um but yeah i thought it was funny to see it uh happen and

how quickly uh quomo tried to downplay it all and uh the guy is having the greatest uh meltdown i've ever seen where he's he's literally posting photos of himself with a hitler mustache like that he added like that's his reaction to getting kicked off the komo campaign i mean i guess the The reason being because is he Jewish and people are calling him a Nazi and it's like actually this contradiction isn't so mystifying to people. The most powerful Nazi in the country

is Jewish. Stephen Miller who we will play in the fun half, his little whiny freak out at Union Station. Well, great work there, Bender, uncovering that. Binder is the thing about his mom paying for his food and rent through Venmo

for years and years. at the same time that he had on his LinkedIn that he dropped out of school because his e-commerce business was doing so well. Is that real or is that just something I want to believe? So the Venmo stuff is real, but I'm not sure. I couldn't really find out if that was his mom, actually his mom, but it does sort of add up. I mean, it's, he was getting money from somebody.

I just couldn't tell. Food and rent in July. Yeah. I mean, couldn't have been. a roommate maybe i guess but i mean i my god gates yeah yeah one of my one of matt gates friends what was telling to me was he wasn't replying to any of the people sharing that like if it was a roommate you would just be like oh that was my roommate but if it's your mom you're just going to ignore it and hope it goes away right i mean that's hilarious all right well uh we'll uh continue

our quomo bashing potentially in the fun half where we will take your calls and read your IMs. See you on the other side. And I am in it to win it. Fun half. Okay, Emma, please. Well, I just, I feel that my voice is sorely lacking in the majority report. Wait, look, look, Sam is unpopular.

I do deserve a vacation at Disney World. So, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show. It is Thursday. I think you need to take over for Sam. Yes, please. Sir, I'm going to pause. right there. Wait, what? You can't encourage Emma to live like this. And I'll tell you why. So it was offered a twerk, sushi, and poker with the boys. Twerp, sushi and poker with the boys. So was offered it

to work? Yeah. Sushi and poker with the boys. What? Tirm. Sushi and poker. Uh, Tim's upset. Twerp. Sushi and poker with the boys. It was offered a twer. Sushi and, and, uh, that's what we call this. Dwar. Right. Twerp, sushi, and polo. We're going to get demonetized. I just think that what you did to Tim Poole was mean. Free speech.

That's not what we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about it because I think you're responsible. I probably am in a certain way, but let's get to the meltdown here. Twirp? Ugh. Sushi and poker with the boys. Oh my God.

Twirl? Wow. Sushi. I'm sorry. I'm losing my fucking mind. Someone's offered a twir? Yeah. Sushi and poker with the boys.

Logic. Twerp, sushi and poker with the boys, boy, boy, twer. I think I'm like a little kid, a little kid, I think I'm like a dude, twer. I think I'm like a little kid. Add this debate seven thousand times. A little kid, I think I'm like a little kid, little care, I think I'm like a dude, I'm losing my fucking knife.

Some people just don't understand. So I'm not trying to be a dip right now, but like, I absolutely think the U.S. should be providing me with a wife and kids. That's not what we're talking about here. It's not a fun job. It's a real thing. That's a real thing. Willie Walker.

That's a real thing. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. Or that's a weird thing. That's the twer. Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rogan has done it again. Offered a word.

That's a real thing. I think he might be blowing out of proportion. Real thing. That's got poker with the boys. Offered it. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. That's a poker.

Let's go. Twirk, sushi and poker with the boys. Take it easy to do. Twosci and poker. Things have really gotten out of hands. Sushi and poker with the boys. It's an illusion. Dwer.

Deluded. Sushi. You don't have a clue as to what's going on. Live YouTube. Sam has like the weight of the world on the shoulders. Sam doesn't want to do this show anymore. It was so much easier. One of the majority report was just you.

You were happy. Let's change the subject. Rangers and Knicks are going right. Shut up. Don't want people saying reckless things on your program. That's one of the most difficult parts about this show. This is a pro-killing podcast. I'm thinking maybe it's time we bury the hatchet.

Left is best. Trump. Violet twerk? Don't be foolish. And don't fucking tweet at me and don't bitch. So don't wait. And I just cucked all of these people. Love it.

That's where my heart is. So I wrote my honors thesis about it. Oh. She wrote an honest thesis. I guess I should hand the main mic to you now. You are to the right of the foreign policy. We already fund Israel, dude. Are you against us?

That's a tougher question. I have an answer to you. Incredible theme song. I'm bumblers. Emma Viglin, absolutely one of my favorite people. Actually, not just in the game, like, period.