The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3705 - Trump's Economy Continues to Crater; The Significance of El-Sayed's Victory w/ David Weigel

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

It's Casual Friday on The Majority Report On today's program: The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases July jobs report and for a third-straight month the numbers are bleak. The U.S. lost 23,000 jobs last month. Director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett makes the media rounds offering a variety of excuses and justifications for the weak jobs report. David Weigel, journalist covering politics at Semafor, joins to recap the week's news. In the Fun Half: CNN fact checks RFK, Jr.'s claims that ICUs across the country were empty at the height of COVID. Sen. John Husted takes to X to call for Max Miller's resignation. Donald Trump suggests that any possibility of munition depletion is Joe Biden's fault. Stephen Crowder thinks that Abdul El-Sayed is an Islamist who wants to implement Sharia Law. Crowder than implies El-Sayed is a pervert for admitting his For You page on IG recommends him OnlyFans models. Crowder brags that his For You page is all karate guy videos. all that and more. To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com 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 AM Quickie 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: ROCKET MONEY: Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster: RocketMoney.com/MAJORITY SUNSET LAKE CBD: Head to SunsetLakeCBD.com and use code BIRTHDAY26 at checkout to save 25% on everything sitewide. Spend over $100 and get a bonus gift on top of it all. Sale ends August 17th at Midnight.  @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey 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 YouTube channel: https://ww.youtube.com/Th3Discourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here: https:/www.youtube.com/avaraiza

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Buy it direct from the farmers. Hit the $100 mark. You get a bonus gift on top of it. Sale ends August 17th at midnight eastern. See their site for full terms and conditions. And now time for the show. The majority casual Friday. That means Monday is casual Monday.

Tuesday, casual Tuesday. Wednesday, casual hump day. Thursday, casual thursday. That's what we call it. And Friday, casual Shabbat. The majority report with Sam Cedar. It is Friday. August 7th, 2020.

My name is Sam Cedar. 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, Dave Weigel, journalist covering politics at Semaphore. Meanwhile, in the wake of the loss at Supreme Court, Donald Trump signs a new executive order on birthright citizenship.

Just got to narrow it. The economy loses 23,000 jobs in July, a lot less, or I should say a lot more losses than anticipated. Lisa Murkowski will vote no on Todd Blanche. And with McConnell still rehabbing, Bill Cassidy, may very well decide Blanche's fate. Representative Andy Ogles loses its primary in Tennessee. Justin Pearson wins in Tennessee's ninth. We'll face state senator Brant Taylor in a heavily gerrymandered district.

A defiant Max Miller loans his own campaign $1 million. This as John Hussel. finally and reluctantly says Max Miller should drop out. FCC votes to lift broadcast ownership rules, furthering media consolidation. North Carolina arrest a teen girl overtaking an abortion pill. And lastly, today's Republican source of diarrhea for the day, Salmonella outbreak in 27 states from Halapenos. All this and more on today's majority report.

That's why I grow my own jalapenos. Yes, exactly. I'm a big on out today. I don't mean to juxtapose those two things. I was needed jalapinos yesterday. You were? No, she wasn't. I stay away from lettuce and spicy food.

so I've been in the clear so far. Yeah. Yeah. I'm doing my best, although I've noticed I've, I noticed today when I was eating blackberries and blueberries, like, oh, I'm right in crosshairs, but, you know. Live dangerously. Yeah.

You really are a wild card, man. Nope. We never know. We will never know. We're getting, now, of course, the IMs are like, gone to field day. They're not going to stop. on the jalapenos talk about making a run for the border okay um yep uh we'll have more on that

i mean honestly like literally every day now the the psychosopolis i can't pronounce it uh cyclospora cyclospora is still uh raging through people as it were um and oh remember that big ebola outbreak that people are worried about, it's still happening, and people are even more worried about it now. But good thing we've cut all that stuff. Looks like polio is coming back too. Yep. The free market for Ebola.

Exactly. It's just, let's just see how it does in the marketplace. If people want it, I mean, we'll just let the marketplace decide. All of those libertarian debate, I would have, or almost in every single one, I would ask the libertarian, do you have diarrhea now? And they would respond, no. And I go, well, that is because you can safely eat the foods that we have because we have a functioning government.

Well, fun times. Those, in the meantime, it's, I mean, I don't know why it would be. a surprise, but it has been a while since people were particularly worried about jobs. Now, here's the dilemma, is that inflation is still problematic. And jobs and inflation are supposed to be on sort of like opposite ends of the spectrum, at least in terms of the Fed, they have a dual mandate. One is to make sure that we get as close to full employment as possible. but the other is to make sure that we don't have

rampant inflation. When you have falling jobs and rising inflation, that's very scary times ahead. Who knows if that's going to happen, but this is what Rick

Santelli reported today on CNBC. My employment figures populating, buckle up on this one, minus minus 23,000 on non-farm payrolls. I can hear the bond yields falling right now. Minus 23,000.

That would be the second worst number of the year outside of the only other negative number, minus 156 in February. Now, if you look at the two-month revision, another whopper, minus 103,000. Manufacturing payrolls, actually a bright spot, manufacturing up 5,000. That would be, what, the best since it was up, 15,000 in March,

and that was the high water mark going all the way back to 23. Okay, average hourly earnings, big miss, up one-tenth. That's one-third of what we were expecting. Up one-tenth would be the lightest reading of the year. It would equal where we were last year in December to find a lower rate. You're all the way to April of 25 at a goose egg, unchanged. Now let's go year over year earnings. Another miss.

33.2. 3.2%. That's 3 tenths light and also two tenths lighter than a revised 3.5 that turned into 3.4 last month. 3.2, obviously the lightest of the year. I have to go in the way back machine to find this one. 3.2 would take me all the way to May of 21 when it was 2.3. This year's low as 3.4. You have to go way back to find a lower number.

Now, hours worked, 34.3. That's the first number that came out as expected. On the unemployment rate, 4.1%, and I'm sure that's because of a labor force shrinkage. 4.1%. That would actually be the lightest of the year once again. That would equal June of last year to find a lower number. You're in January of 25. Now let's look at the participation rate, and this is 61.4.

We're expecting 61.6. It's one-tenth lighter in the rearview mirror at 61.5. It equals where we were in Febba 21. You're in May in 2020, COVID-era to find a smaller number. So that's why you see the unemployment rate drop is because people have stopped looking for work in bigger numbers. and so the participation rate is down. These are bad numbers. Hard to know if we're going to get them again.

But let's turn to someone who is a voice of reason and who we could trust to explain to us what's going on here. How about Kevin Hassett from the White House? Here he is with Stuart Varney, never known as a huge as a non-defender of the Republicans in any way but here he is

I've had three months now of real weakness in the job market is the economy moving into a new phase where we're losing jobs slowly but surely because that would not be good politically for the president would it? No I don't think that's what we're seeing at all And one of the things we have to remember is that in the Biden years, you would expect to see numbers north of 100 because there are all these illegals coming in, really a stampede of them coming in and taking jobs. And what's happened is because we have a tight border and because we've been. For a second.

I don't understand. Are they taking jobs that exist or are they creating jobs? Like, I mean, if he's saying you'd expect the numbers, the positive job growth numbers, to be above 100,000, usually like 140, 150,000. But we're not getting that because the immigrants aren't taking those jobs. Where did the jobs go? Wouldn't it be Americans that are filling those jobs? The jobs? Do the immigrants cause the jobs, or do they take the jobs?

do they create the jobs or they take the jobs i'm confused but i'm sure i'll explain who aren't citizens then that puts uh downward pressure on what the sort of break even job number is that is the the job number you need to have the unemployment rate not go up and so about three or four years ago the break given number was way north of a hundred now our estimate is it's 40 or 50 so if you get a 40 or 50 thousand job number that means that unemployment rate is not going to go up. And so what I'm doing mostly, just to help myself understand the economy, as I'm looking

almost only at the unemployment rate right now, and that went down this month. Oh. He really instills confidence, doesn't he? Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm just looking at one indicator and making up. That helps me understand.

Yeah. I'm not doing anything else right now. Why would I? What's weird is that Kevin Hassett also seems to have at a different moment a different explanation for what's going on. It's not that the immigrants are no longer flowing in and are no longer taking jobs from Americans. Therefore, Americans aren't filling those jobs because the jobs don't exist because the immigrants aren't taking them anymore. It's also this one. Thanks a lot, Kevin. What do you make of the new numbers as it relates to the labor department's employment numbers, some negative growth as it relates to employment? Right. Well, first of all, the momentum in the economy continues to be strong. We see durable goods orders, capital spending through the roof.

People aren't being laid off. Initial claims for unemployment insurance are about the lowest they've had since World War II. And so when you see a number like that, it seems like it's dissonant with everything else that we're seeing. When we dug into the numbers, we saw that there were really two special factors. One is there was a big decline in government employment, which is partly because of Doge, and partly because there was so much snow over the winter that there were extra school days at the end of the year. And so the normal time when teachers would take the summer off was June, but a lot of them got pushed into July, and so that they show up as a layoff in July. And the end of the World Cup meant that a lot of hospitality workers were that laid off.

off after the World Cup ended. If you take those two effects out, it was about 100,000 job number, which is about consistent with what we expected at the market. Let's say, so all these people, all these teachers are laid off in the summer? Yeah, I've never heard of that. I've never heard of that either. But we're to believe that there was so many snow days. Where was all these snow days? I mean, New York City didn't go into July. New York didn't go into July. Post-COVID, I thought there barely were snow days anymore. Don't they just go virtual, usually?

More often than not, that's the case. Like, this is like something that would affect the Icelandic economy. We're a giant economy. I don't think it was a few snow days that met teachers had to go a week longer. But also, teachers are salaried. They're not laid, they're not independent contractors who are laid off for the summer. In terms of the World Cup, restaurant and, uh, hiring dropped 12,000 in June.

It dropped 26,000 in July. It more like sounds like just restaurants are doing poorly. Yeah, that's the World Cup, Sam. The World Cup. There were so many people who are hired for the World Cup in restaurants. Hospitality. I mean, why weren't those people employed before the World Cup? What's fascinating is,

all you read about prior to the World Cup was all these hotels going like, we have no reservations. Nobody's coming. We've driven everybody away. But yet they went on a hiring spree, apparently in June, even though the numbers don't reflect that. And then they just decided to fire them in July.

It's going to turn around this month, though. Fascinating. I don't know if I believe Kevin Hassett, but he has an interesting perspective on, you know, well, let's put it this way. We know he's not lying to impress Donald Trump because he's told us that. Play this clip. Dr. Hassett, you know, it's often that great leaders need to be ones who surround themselves with people who can deliver them hard truths.

And it's a strange time in this economy. Many things are changing, be it AI or impact of higher oil prices. I wonder what those conversations are like. How often are you coming to the president and delivering him advice that's maybe hard to take that parts of this economy maybe need various efforts? How often are you having those difficult conversations? You know, I obviously can't talk about specific conversations with the president. I was in the Oval with him last night. We talked about a wide range of issues.

And he doesn't really have much patience for yes men. And so when you go into a meeting in the Oval, what the guy can say is that you cover a wide range of topics. totally I don't want anybody just telling me I'm great give it to me like it is

I disagree with the premise there's nothing that's hard for me to take I can take anything just ask Jeanette Perot or

or Hegson or everyone else in my administration It's hard for her to take that it was vandalism in the reflecting pool

I had to bring her around. She's very emotional. Folks, in a minute, we're going to be talking to Dave Weigel, get a sense of this really massive, or how massive this victory was in Michigan this week and other

electoral questions. First, a word from our sponsor today. Rocket money. With rocket money, you can use it for budgeting. You can use it with keeping track of your of your bills, get a sense of where you're spending a money, that, that and canceling my subscriptions, my two favorite aspects of rocket money.

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journalists covering politics for semifore. Dave, I know you've been on the road to Wisconsin and Minnesota. I want to talk about that in a moment, but characterize, obviously, we had some big primaries, in Michigan and a couple in Missouri as well this week. But let's just start with the biggie. Characterize Abdul-El-Said win here. I mean, what it means both from a progressive standpoint,

but just sort of straight on in terms of the numbers. Expectations are funny, right? because when else I got in the race, a year plus, I interviewed him the first day he got in the race last April, the sense was, okay, this guy's run before. He's very good at campaigning. He's very articulate. However, Michigan Democrats are going to want somebody with fewer vulnerabilities.

And they'll be happy to talk about those vulnerabilities are. They think it's that he talked about defunding the police and reparations and things like that. And so he didn't have, there were candidates like James Tayloriko have had huge money bombs. He didn't have that. He did have this network of PACs that supported him, Super PACs that supported him. He ran a campaign that was going to be outspent by APEC. And in Michigan, the estimate that people were kicking around for months was, O, Apex's going to spend $20 million on Haley Stevens.

It ended up spending at least twice that. And so he was an underdog who was, won when Democrats didn't think he could. That's the basic story. There's been a lot of commentary about how polling underrated him. I think the story there is actually that there is not a problem with polling. Well, there is. But there is a polling discourse that a lot of activists have gotten in on where you can drive the conversation based on polling a release that might not be that great.

And I think he benefited the way Republicans did this 2022. Okay, we're going to have a landslide election. And Trafalgar just said we're going to. We're going to win in Vermont by 10 points. Oops, we lost by 30. It wasn't that dishonest in Michigan, but the expectation game was, I think, about how good the progressive media infrastructure is. Case in point, I'm on here. El Cyan had, I don't think would have won this race four years ago.

Definitely couldn't win a race in 2018. He tried. He was a very good progressive candidate. He was right where the voters were on Medicare for all and on Israel and other issues. Those are tests for people, right? Other candidates get asked about them and they waver and they're not as decisive and they're not where Democratic voters are. He was convincing Democratic voters, look, you often vote strategically and not for exactly

what you want. I'm offering exactly what you want. And turnout was enormous. He's by far in a competitive primary in Michigan, the biggest vote getter of a guy who won, even though I think he finishes with 49% of the vote. Because what's the campaign about versus what, people in the discourse is pulling it apart and making it about that actually does matter because Michigan ends and Democrats are going into their next primaries trying to argue that it's not too late

to stop these progressive candidates are winning look how close that was the fact that he won at all the fact that it was close at all shows you how the ground has shifted under them yeah I mean to deploy whatever it was 40 to 60 million dollars to fight every progressive is just not it it doesn't seem to be terribly doable. Two things I want to, what was said saying, like when, well, what was voters voting upon in your perspective there? So he had a base from the get-go of progressive voters who one of the most progressive candidate on Israel on health care. And it's funny. He had the slogan throughout the campaign.

Once he was winning, it was a brilliant slogan, which was money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all. His position was stop all foreign military aid to Israel, maybe keep it to Ukraine, base it on international law. That's where Democrats are. A position on health care was, and this is something where his opponents tried to make an issue out of this long debate between progressives and actually like the Sanders, and the Obama wing, saying Obama did as much as he could, we should build on it versus Obama

didn't fight hard enough and we should have done more. He didn't fight hard enough and should have done more guy. And so he, Democrats agreed with him. Okay, we do want to get to single payer Medicare for All at some point. We should just elect people who are going to do that. And him being a trained doctor, being very articulate on the issue in a way that, because everyone who runs a Medicare for all gets trapped up in the same questions, not trapped, but ask the same questions. Okay, what about taxes? Okay, how are you going to pay for it? Okay, what about private insurance? He was hard to, no one staggered him on that question because the Democratic electorate says, we can figure out the details later, but if we have somebody who's running on, this goes too far,

we'll never get there. It's Zeno's paradox. You're going to get halfway and halfway, and then never advancing and then Republicans take power and try to kill it. So on those main issues. So other stuff popped up. But importantly, the ways that he was attacked in the campaign, there were a lot of bank shots of Democrats saying, look, he campaigned with Asan Piker. Maybe I'm not offended by that, but Republicans are going to use that against him.

He has said to fund the police in 2020, look, we all made mistakes. Republicans are going to use that against him. And just Democrats are in a pretty forgiving mood, but his main issues, And this is the thing. Any strong campaign can say, the media is asking me about this. I'm going to turn it back to the thing I'm running on. Main issues are just life is too expensive. We should tax the rich so that we have more health care and also stop spending so much on foreign aid. Boom, that's pretty simple.

Every debate was about that. The money and politics part was important too because most Democrats want to get money. What does I mean? Most Democrats, if they could pull switch or would say, what if we went back to the 1970s post-watergate rules where you just cannot have super PACs anonymously buying tens of millions of dollars in ads. That was his position. Does he have a plan on day one to stop it? Not really.

But that was his position. And so he tried, I think in doing that, neutralized a lot of the effectiveness of super PAC attacks. Everybody tries that now. Everybody tries a version of that saying, if you see negative ads about me, look at the funders. Check out how anonymous is. Check out where it's coming from. And I think we're reaching, not the peak, maybe, because it'll probably get worse.

for reaching the highest level I've seen of exhaustion about how campaigns now are candidates doing their best, and then very well people saying, I'd like this guy to win. Here's $10 million. He definitely benefited from that. Haley Stevens was never going to do that. Haley Stevens couldn't do that because her campaign was going to depend on PACs funding her. And some of this is also he won't take corporate back money. She takes corporate PAC money.

She's taken money from Blue Cross Free Shield, therefore she is compromised. She's taken money from DTE, therefore she's compromised. And he would trap the Stevens campaign into an argument. Oh, well, she took money from DTE, but most of it was before this campaign. It's only $10,000 this year. It's zero versus any whatsoever. Like him being able to say, I am not owned by this. That's very powerful.

And I've been giving long answers, but I remember back in 2016, the fact that Donald Trump was not that well-funded, that he didn't initially have a super PAC, there were a lot of voters who went into that campaign believing, boy, this rich guy can't be bought. and nobody's trying to buy him. Way past that now. Right now, everybody knows where to go to give Trump money and get something from him. But the ability of Trump to capture that message was very good for him. And the ability of El-Sayed and Bernie Sanders and people like that to capture that, that is good.

Most people instinctively don't like that politics is this stupid and this easily bought. I wonder if was Wisconsin, the Wisconsin, um, uh, uh, Supreme Court race, was that sort of like, yeah, like one of the, I mean, I know that we've seen this before, but that seemed like a really good example of money coming in actually creating a deficit in value. Oh, that's the best example. I'm glad you brought it up because that Democrats knew they'd be outspent.

And look, Democrats in Wisconsin, this is part of their secret, their, not their secret, their story, but it's not something every state party can use. Scott Walker left these rules in place where state parties can kind of take unlimited limited money, and then they can spend that on their campaign. So right now for governor, they have only one candidate for governors. They're already spending money on him. So in theory, Democrats could have been vulnerable because, well, George Soros gave us some money.

J.B. Pritzker gave us $200,000. But they were up against Elon Musk. And the campaign became, are you guys sick of Elon Musk? Are you sick of this guy moving in who knows nothing about the state and buying these elections? There's still, I think, I forget what process, what stage of the process the litigation's in. but there's still litigation against him for doing his voter buy-off offer, right?

The fight for the Supreme Court and we're going to do this. Yeah, that's the best example. And so not every race. There are a lot of races, more races are in the country where, like somebody's running for state Senate and a super PAC comes in and spends $100,000 and just the media doesn't cover it. Nobody hears about it. There's more of that. You need big attention on the race. You're able to say, wait a minute.

Where the hell is this coming from? But that's every Democrat who is not a Haley Stevens who needs super PACs, every Democrat wants it to be Wisconsin 2025 of, I am not these other people. I am, if you see these ads, just turn it off. Like, you see the YouTube pre-roll. You should be sick of that. It sucks. The Stevens voters that were voting ostensibly on the idea that I,

want the, I want to put our best foot forward. I want to go into the general with a candidate who's going to win. That, to me, implies that if the Democrat wins, I'm still going to vote for them, obviously, and I may even want, Abdul L. said, to be the candidate, but I'm just afraid he can't win. How, how sincere was that, right? I mean, because everybody argues electability in the general, because as an attribute to a candidate, often we hear it from sort of like the centrists and the moderates arguing this is why you have to accept a subpar candidate in terms of issue set.

But how sincere was that? In other words, I mean, because there was a huge enthusiasm gap, right? Between what we saw in the contested governor's race, there was no Republican primary, obviously, for Senate, so you can't do an apples-to-apples calculation. But we did not see, we just saw much more people coming out for Democrats coming out for the governor race than Republicans. The fact that theoretically, a big chunk of those voters who voted for Stevens were only doing so because they want, to they don't believe

Sayad can can win well presumably they're going to vote for them in the general right because they want them to win yeah how sincere was it is a good way to ask because I think a lot of people believe and this is this is sort of a Bernie line

I've dual set a version of this that the line is that the Democratic establishment would rather lose with a progressive than win with a progressive I don't generally think that's true just from covering Democrats. If they were given a chance for Bernie to be president, not Trump right now,

you think they'd really not take Bernie as president, not take somebody who is keeping institutions in place and not be funny. The voters or, or, you know, Chuck Schumer. I don't know. Yeah, the, it is true that even the Schumer thing, just the brass tax of that or that, there are a lot of Democrats running who will say they're not going to vote for Chuck Schumer. he needs a majority of Democrats to vote for him to be leader. He will be leader again.

If they win the Senate, he'll be leader again. He's not worried about that. So what is the mix of I'd rather this progressive not win versus I'm worried that he can't? They generally, in a lot of cases, they don't think they can. Whatever it makes fun of Schumer for saying, with rightly, makes fun of him for saying, oh, well, Hillary's going to be okay because for every vote we lose in central Pennsylvania will gain two in the suburbs of Philly. and that he believed that though

that was just a delusional democratic thought they had that sure there's a lot of people who've left the party I think the better gripe against the Schumer types is that they don't have a strategy for winning back it's not just winning back because there's the map doesn't change but the human beings who live on the map change North West Ohio it has moved away from Democrats in part because a lot of New Deal Great Society Democrats are dead

and the new voters who are living there don't like the Democratic Party but it's clear those guys don't have a candidate or a solution to say, all right, I know that you voted against my party the last five times, but I'm back. It feels like progressives have something to offer. That didn't actually happen in Michigan. There's not looking through the map. There's not places that used to be that were trending Republican.

Abdul pulled them back. You saw the vice president going after this, right? That El-Sai did not win the quote-unquote working class vote, which in a Democratic primary Michigan is very diverse, which is proportion of it in the Democratic prime, probably about 40% black. Yeah, he was running against candidate, who was very good with black vote.

He won some of it, didn't get all of it. But the point of what you're asking is, did they believe what they're saying? I think a lot of it is sincere. I really believe, Haley Stevens, it was not politically wise for her to be as pro-Israel as she was. It meant that she got APEC support.

She really loves Israel. She's one of this cohort of Democrats who really love Israel. to believe in Israel. Yeah, and it did come with APEC money. But I do think she was truly offended by the rising socialists who don't like Israel. She would rather the Democratic Party vote to fund Israel all the time. She had many opportunities. I asked her about breaking from it. And some of it I think was more cynical, right? The going after, now, certainly, did they believe that Abdul, when he voted for uncommitted, was undermining Kamala? Nobody believed that. That was BS. And that was one of the ads, UDP, the A-B-Pact was running. But this is the reason this discourse is bad for the Schumer wing of the party is that they lost recently. And they don't have the credibility when they lose. After Biden won, they could credibly say, and this is, you know, after Biden won, there were not many progressive challengers winning their primaries in 2022.

Because Democrats, normal Democrats, who just vote in the primaries and they watch MS now and they, some of watch this, they, bought Kamala's book, et cetera. They're like, well, Biden saved us from Trump. We love the Democratic Party. Why are you guys so hateful against the Democratic Party? When they don't win, it's not convincing. And so how sincere are they about whether they think LSAID is terribly offensive and anti-Semitic?

Some of it's sincere, but a lot of voters say, and then what? You're going to nominate this person. We're not convinced that she's that electoral. Now, Heather in polling that said, Haley, Stevens is going to, it can beat Mike Rogers by 12 points, El Cayed is going to lose by five points. I think they would have factored that in. I do think the closeness of it was the success of, one, all the ad money that was in rural

areas, so small media markets were seeing all Stevens ads. But two, some of the polling did say she was doing a bit better against Rogers, but not blowout better. And also just every Democrats lived through these races where I think it was, yes, Biden polled better than in 2020, Biden polled better than other candidates against Zanz Trump, and that's why they nominate him. And in 2024, it left them completely shattered and confused. So there's this great opening to say the establishment lost. And we're going to get into Wisconsin, I guess. This is what Francesca Hong is doing right now. Sure, I said some, I tweeted some stuff that Rohan's going to use against

me, but the Democratic establishment that's attacked me for this lost. That's pretty compelling, because they, in fact, lost. Well, I, there, I mean, there's two, they've lost in the general elections. What is like, how much disarray is there in that democratic establishment, APEC, I mean, maybe even AI crypto aligned with like a GILA brand and, frankly, Schumer. I mean, at one point, they, I would imagine those funders are going, is this the best you can do?

Janet Mills and Haley Stevens? Like, what's going on here? Like you were bragging about, you know, your recruiting of candidates. Okay, you got, you got Cooper in North Carolina, but, I mean, that was a fairly obvious thing. If he wants it, he's going to be the guy. If he doesn't, then he won't be,

and then we'll be up Schitt's Creek. But they have, I mean, they have more than one job. We know that Schumer's job is to make sure the left is pro-Israel, which he's also not doing a very good job of. But this is their one job from an electoral standpoint. Is there any sort of like indications of a tremendous lack of confidence that they don't know what they're doing?

More of it. So the result in Michigan was so close that you're not seeing a lot of donor revolts. And they agree with Schumer. These donors would rather see these candidates win. So the, because the crypto people are different. All crypto wants is for clarity to pass and for other crypto legislation to pass. And they kind of, they have infinite money and they go in for people to think they win. For example, Christian Menafee in Houston is not right wing, but he beat Al Green in part because

crypto funded them. And Al Green couldn't get people to care about the crypto spending because that was a good race for them to choose. It was a elderly Democrat asking for another term after another member had died recently and kept the seat open forever. That was a good one for crypto to invest in. So their priorities are a little bit different. They just, whatever makeup of the Senate votes for crypto legislation, fine. The donors to, the donors who are getting frustrated are, yeah, the APEC donors and a Democratic majority for Israel. Because basically, so the power of DMFI, has been, because it's fairly new, they will go in and beat left-wing candidates and help

central left candidates who are pro-Israel. They were good at that in 2021, Nina Turner, they were good at that in 2022. And they're not good at anymore because of the way the party has moved. Their donors are getting frustrated. You're seeing some donors say, I'm not sure if it's worth me doing the same, or maybe I'm going to sit it out. Maybe I'll help strategically some Republicans. win.

They're less anger about Schumer. The sense with donors is more Schumer is trying his best. But these groups, I was thinking of them at the other day as if you've seen the Chernobyl HBO series where there are these people who have to go up on the roof and they have 60 seconds or something where they're pushing the graphite off because they can only do it for that long because it's toxic. That's what like DMFI was doing was you have to go in these races. You're doing, you're shoveling this around so that the left wing can it can lose.

and each time you do it, like, you're going to get, take some damage. You're going to take some, some radiation. I think they're, they're, they're fully in the hospice now. They can't, they're not effective anymore. They're glowing. They're glowing. I mean, it's basically, there's a much sabbier, it seems to me, if there's, we are the, between, like, all of the social media vehicles, influencers, what not, shows like this. I think the Democratic primary voter, at least a significant, you know, a certain percentage of them are just much savvier about this stuff in a way that they wouldn't have been 10 years ago.

And it's much harder to play in this to play around in the way that they're doing it. Yeah, they are. And that's the Nina Turner race, which I covered on the ground. That was the proving, proving what they, what DMFI thought would work, which was, we're going to go in and we're going to spend money against the left and say they're not loyal Democrats. And that just doesn't work anymore. Because ads, the thing I like about ads, which everyone else, everybody hates ads and I kind of say, I ate them. The thing I like is that putting money behind something means you think it'll work. And the ads are never, this has been a dispart discussion.

The ads are never saying vote for this candidate because they're going to keep funding Israel. The ads are, vote for this candidate because they're true progressive, vote for this candidate because they vote for the Democrats, et cetera, et cetera. And yes, that's not working because of the radiation. They have a sword after a few cycles of this. A voter's now saying, wait, where's this ad from? And when they look up the ad, where's the information they get? Where's the person talking about it?

Sometimes it's the campaigns themselves. Abdul had a very effective video. I think it was a video online and not an ad, but it would be six of one, a half a dozen, the other. It's on your phone. You're scrolling where he was walking along charts showing how much money was being spent against him and how hard it was to compete and just calling them out. I don't think he could have done that. Like I was saying, I'm thinking he could have done that effectively in the past.

He tried to make an issue when he ran for governor in 2018. The Blue Cross Blue Shield was funding Whitmer. It was funding her super PAC. Her dad was the CEO of at least one branch of Blue Cross. And voters, their media interface was different. So I'm not just saying this. I'm on this show. Right.

But on the right, it's very different because Donald Trump says something and conservative media says it. And there's just a, the pipeline is pretty direct to Republican voters. There is not a direct pipeline. There is if Chuck Schumer wants something to get out there, he has a press conference. And there are clips from the press conference on progressive media. And are they ever? I mean, when's the last one you saw, man, like, hey, check in on this episode of the podcast. Strich Schumer really nailed this.

No, it's, it's, their messages filtered through people who are very skeptical. And whereas Abdul, people are sharing videos of him kind of nailing it. This is how every Democrat should be talking. The way that they can get past the media filter, I've seen also mainstream, and I've interviewed Abdul and I've talked about as many issues as I can, but on, he's done these TV interviews that are 10 minutes of Israel questions. The, that used to mean, oh, his media hit tonight was not that great. institutional questions. Now it comes to people as you scroll your phone and commentators who you trust

are saying, this sucks. Why is the media obsessed with this issue? I am rooting for the candidate against the media in this exchange. I think Francesca Hong's done some of that. Peggy Flanagan's done less. We're talking people up in the next couple weeks. But Will Lawrence was doing that in his race in Michigan. Just Democrats, they have a combination of the weak party leadership that people don't trust. media infrastructure that does not like that party leadership. The snake kind of eaten itself there. So the fact that they've won as many primaries they have in that environment is not good for them. I'm sorry, is impressive.

I don't know what it's going to look like. In four years if they have the presidency, they fix it, I guess. In four years from now, if it's a president, Bance and their democratic establishment, I don't think they can control any of this because they just, they'll have a leadership, people don't trust, and they needy infrastructure that doesn't trust them. Yeah, I mean, I agree. And we'll put people on the last time that we said Schumer nailed it. And so if we can come up with an answer, we may have to double our staff to find that.

But be that as it may, I want to turn to Minnesota in particular and Wisconsin. But the theory that maybe there was a lot of crossover voters in Michigan, what's your take on that? It's an open primary, but my sense is that never really happens in a big, big way. I think there was some, so it is a huge turnout. I think it's a 500,000 vote gap between Republicans and Democrats, and there were things for Republicans to vote on. They had the race for governor in the Republican side. It was John James endorsed by Trump, who's this congressman who's lost two statewide races before, Perry Johnson, a wealthy kind of odd businessman, spending all these ads against him. Johnson, it was competitive enough where the president came to support James.

So they had something to vote for. I do, because you know, you can switch, you can vote in either, independents can vote in these primaries in Michigan. Yeah, I think there were a lot of Republicans who said, I want to go out there and vote against the scary Bernie Sanders Muslim candidate. I think some of that happened. For the electability argument, not great for, I'll say it, because they can vote again in November.

and they can the they they might not have uh they might have sat it out they're not excited up by mic rogers there was some of that um it would be because she lost it's not to nobody's nobody's got sour grapes because uh it wasn't enough to carry her over uh that's the best thing her side has going for it though is it turned out a candidate everyone made fun of who couldn't raise money very well um did get a lot of did get a lot of support at the very end saying i'm my vision of Michigan and my somewhat compromised politics are less dangerous than this guys. But I think it was the amount of votes he, if he, the amount of votes he got this time, he really had to work for that. Those were those were people he converted, those progressives,

but that's, I think it, when that is all counted, I, I, I, I, I think it will be more than Bernie got when he, when he beat Hillary Clinton or close to it in 2016. That's just insane for a Senate primary. And so if they hadn't turned out, if it was just every progressive and everyone he'd kind of converted, he went on a tour that I went on a couple stops of where El Sayyad was trying to go to places that Trump had carried and convert Trump voters. Hey, if you voted for Trump, I want to hear from you. I didn't meet many Trump voters who showed up. I think generally the voter that's key to Democrats this time is the guy who turned out for Trump and now thinks everything sucks and he won't vote again.

But he tried. He really was trying. If he did not hold 500 campaign events, he doesn't win that election. If Stevens had held, I don't know, 100 campaign events, maybe she wins. Yeah. I mean, I do think that, I think that has knock on effects that we don't necessarily know. It may, you know, it may, it may inspire Democratic voters more. I don't know. No, it's unclear. But all right, let's briefly talk about Wisconsin and Minnesota. What's your sense? Minnesota is, we're coming up on Minnesota and Wisconsin in terms of these primary days. Yeah, I was in both states the last week and a half. Some overlap with Michigan there where you've got everything.

It's different enough, though. This is you want to flatten things too much because LSA would have won't buy a landslide if Michigan was as messy as Wisconsin is. The story in Wisconsin, short version, crowded primary, the governor was neutral, his lieutenant governor was running, as was his former lieutenant governor. His lieutenant governor ran in a terrible campaign where she was defrauded by her campaign manager. She dropped out. The governor convinced the former Milwaukee County executive who had been running to come back in,

and there is a desperate effort to consolidate support behind him, making the argument, which we were talking about, that you might agree with Francesca Hong, the Democratic Socialist, but she can't win statewide. So you need to vote out of panic for this effective Milwaukee County executive who is not right-wing. The biggest gripe against him is on school vouchers that he is not as intent as Hong on getting rid of that program that their Republicans put in place. But it's a really good situation for him. for the left there, but with the same Democratic establishment argument. Watch out. Republicans know how to beat her. Vote for this guy instead. In Minnesota, it's the Senate race there, some House

races as well, but the Senate race there is Angie Craig against Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan. Flanagan is more is a progressive. She was picked to Tim Walz to be her lieutenant governor, partly because she was consolidating the progressive vote. He was seen, kind of forgotten now, but Walls was more conservative as a congressman. And she's endorsed by Bernie Sanders. She's endorsed by Tina Smith, the retiring senator. Angie Craig is the more centrist congresswoman from sort of the outskirts of St. Paul and rural areas, this district that's been moving to the left.

But she has, her argument is that she has been winning Republican voters more than other Democrats. She runs ahead of the ticket. She's much more electable than Flanagan. And two days ago, I was doctor, she's saying Republicans are going to run against Flanagan as you were lieutenant governor during the welfare fraud and they'll beat you up with that and they can't do that to me. I have the record of winning Republican votes and you don't necessarily and also you keep this issue on the table because remember Walls is not running for reelection

Klobuchar is running for governor, Senator Amy Klobuchar and part of her argument is I wasn't there for the fraud. I'm going to crack down on it. We probably want to get too much into the weeds of the fraud thing. The basic Democratic argument, though, is that we Democrats were there and I was defeated. Oh, sorry. Oh, good. We lost just as I was explaining this.

Yes. Exactly. A short version. The argument there, the Democratic story, because Keith Ellison, I saw on the trail, too, saying this is, yeah, there was fraud after COVID in the welfare system. A lot of, there was

Somali immigrants defrauding the system. We had been investigating it. And then the Trump administration came in and blew it up because they wanted a political issue. And we are fixing it. All Republicans want to do is complain and run on it. That's kind of their argument. Whereas the Craig argument is, it's a little bit, you know, be afraid.

You Democrats might agree with Keith Ellison and Tim Walls that this is a BS Republican issue. But you got to think about that white voter in Mancato. or I guess wait voters, a lot of them in Minnesota, that rural voter in like Mancato or Brainerd or, they're skeptical of the Democratic Party and you need to win them back. You should be worried about electability.

I'm talking to you as I'm finishing a piece about it because it doesn't scan, like the Legos don't fit exactly into the same progressive versus establishment story everywhere else. But the theme is that the, I keep not saying establishment because that term is like Plato. You can just, you know, tear anything. But like the anti-left-wing candidates everywhere are saying, we know you're angry, we know you even agree with this candidate more than you agree with me.

For example, Flanagan's from Medicare for All. However, you've got to worry about Republicans voting against them. And that's been tough. That's been tough for Democrats against people. Yeah, I mean, that's a tough. I think that's a tougher sell in many respects because, because, because, A, they've failed at these elections. And B, particularly when you're talking about a midterm election, it's about getting the base out, right? It's like these elections are not, you know, persuasion elections. They're mobilizing elections at midterms. I mean, that's classically been the case. And it feels like people are a little more savvy about that. But I guess we'll find out in a couple of days, right? It's the 11th for both of those states. It is. And voting's been happening, which is another factor here.

So that in Wisconsin, it's probably the most fun story of the country, political story in the country, is this scramble to get Democrats to switch their votes to David Crowley and support Governor Ivers candidate. That's all. But a lot of votes were cast by early ballots already. So that's all on Tuesday. So we'll have another kind of showdown. It's not as clear a showdown as Abdul versus APEC and Haley Stevens. though. That is a, I'm sort of contrarian and whenever in the media agrees, this is a defining story. They're not wrong. This is the defining primary is definitely Abdul being able to pull that off in Michigan. And I think other cats are going to, because that was successful, even narrowly successful, that frame of, I'm not taking corporate money, my opponent relies on it, you're never

going to change anything unless you get rid of this, these money changers in the temple. I think a lot of cats are going to take those lessons from abdul yep i think it's going to change the way that people run and let's be clear i mean had haley stevens eaked it out it would have been the central defining story of this entire cycle and uh so there's an attempt i think to minimize the implications of this which is not to say that every uh abdul al-sayid is going to win uh you know going forward but it definitely, there is definitely a shift, at least in this era. Dave Weigel, always a pleasure. Thanks so much for your time today.

I really appreciate it. No, thank you. This is fun. We've been talking about these progressive challenges for a decade. I know it, right? It's iterative, and it builds and builds, and then it slides back, and this is clear the culmination of 10 years of stuff we've talked about. And we look as young as ever.

Exactly. That's a great point. You know, I know you got to jump, but people need to see this as this is not a turning point. Everything's not going to be different now. And there's going to be some backsliding. But this is part of a much longer process that has been taking place. And we're just, you know, it's like the tide goes in, the tide goes out. But that sandbar is more and more sticking out of the water regardless of where the tide is.

yeah totally agree well happy to talk about it with you thanks dave dave weigel folks uh we will put a link to your uh your column in semaphore it's a great read i i it's whenever i'm i'm i go there on a very regular basis we get the email too but i just visit all the time so i really appreciate you coming on thanks thank you i'll keep watching talk to you later all right all right folks that's it I think people really do need to understand this like this is you know even watershed moments

are not really watershed moments right it is literally just things have been building building and it just comes over you just can see it clearly it just pops up out of the water whatever the metaphor is that you're going to use And so this is part of a process. And I think regardless of what happens going forward, the process is going to go forward.

There's no indication to me that we are where there's going to be some type of major retrenchment within the context of the Democratic Party. We're going through a major retrenchment, I think, nationally speaking. That's what we've been going through for the past 10 years where, you know, all of a sudden people woke up. 50% of non-college-educated white people in 2008 realize that Democrats are actually to the left of Republicans on race. I thought it was the opposite. And much of what we're seeing is a retrenchment.

These things can stay retrenched or not. But within the context of the Democratic Party, it is quite clear that we're going to increasingly, most in the same way that we see like climate change, not to get all doomful, marching forward, there's an ebb and flow in any like snapshot, but when you go out and look at the trend

over the course of years or a year or decade, things are moving in a certain direction. It's fascinating the Minnesota race where Angie Craig is all, you know, the whole concern of, you don't want to have them, give them an issue with this Somali fraud thing. And in the vacuum, that's, you know, somewhat persuasive. But when that same Angie Craig and these same type of Democrats, invariably take APEC money in even greater albatross,

it's hard to take it seriously that they're so concerned about not giving something to, I mean, maybe not their opponents, but that will drive down turnout and be a liability in an election. It's fascinating how that's sort of unaddressed. Like, yeah, you can have concerns about Hong saying something about Thanksgiving, but do people care about that as much as they care about how many, how much money were given to Israel? I don't think so.

Yeah, I mean, I think the dynamics may be different, too, when you're talking about a governor race versus a Senate race, right? I mean, the senator has nothing to do with any of that sort of, like a domestic stuff, and has more to do with the APEC stuff. But I think, like, it's also a question of, um, when you're making those electability arguments, I think people are less inclined to, or I think people are a little more savvy these days, not all the people, but slightly more. You have a decision to make in a, particularly in an off-year election, and that is,

Do we motivate all the people who already agree with us and make sure they show up to vote? Or do we attempt to go after people who really are not going to vote for us anyways? Like the idea that Republicans are going to be more jazzed to go out and vote because of someone might be slightly more associated with, this scandal versus, I mean, it just doesn't make sense. When you start to break it down, like, who is that voter? It was like, I was going to vote for Democrats this time. But this person's marginally more associated with this scandal, which wasn't motivating me to vote against the Democrat before. But now because of their marginal association with this, I'm going to probably vote for the Republican.

I just don't think there's a significant cohort. of Republican voters who think that way. That discerning, yeah. I was into this bull crap, but not to that extent. Yeah, I mean, it's, I don't know. I guess we'll see. We'll see as to whether that pitch sells. I definitely don't think it's going to work in the general,

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We'll be right back. Oh, Matt, what's happening in the Matt Leckian media universe. Yeah, Jack, a been show 3 o'clock Eastern time, right after the show today. Talk about Dino Gistella of the Center for Working Class Politics, talking about new research on the salience of the degree divide between college-educated folks and working people in the left coalition and the issues that it presents. So check that out coming up at 3 o'clock Eastern time today on Jack. Cabin's YouTube channel. Daniel from Virginia says, why does it feel like stolen valor

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