The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump pushes unsubstantiated claims of election fraud — again

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

In a national address Thursday night, President Trump said he has new evidence of fraud in the American election system. We discuss whether facts back up Trump's claims and what to make of Trump devoting a primetime address to this topic now. This episode: political correspondent Ashley Lopez, voting correspondent Miles Parks, and senior national political correspondent Tamara Keith.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Donald Trump has been a candidate in U.S. elections for a decade. And for almost that entire time, he's argued elections are not fair. Even the elections he's won. Last night from the White House, he addressed the nation, saying he had new evidence of a corrupt election system. But does he? It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.

And I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover politics. Our very tired group here who had stayed up last night to watch this speech. And Miles, I mean, you and I have covered Trump's false claims of election fraud for a while. And the White House was billing this as a big speech. There was a lot of chatter in the voting world. What is he going to talk about? But as you reflect on the overall address, I mean, what is your main takeaway of what he actually said? Just to be clear.

I'm not tired. Voterfought claims get me amped up, Ashley. So I'm like ready to go right now. All you need is three hours, yeah. But the big takeaways here is that we were ready for a bombshell. You know, if you think about the hype that was just. leading up to this speech, the things that Caroline Levitt, for instance, the press secretary was saying, there was a tweet from Bernie Moreno, Ohio Republican Senator, who said this might be the biggest

Oval Office address since the Cuban Missile Crisis. So we were ready for something real. And these documents started coming in. The president's speech came out. We watched it. And it is just not clear to us at NPR who have been combing through these documents, what we are actually learning that is new about the 2020 election or about the election system more broadly, to be very clear, no one has ever said that the election system is perfect. There's been widely reported, especially after the 2016 election in Russia's interference efforts in that election, that there are vulnerabilities in the election system. And much of these documents focused on those vulnerabilities and also on aspects of intelligence that indicated China had an interest in pushing different

types of election results. But again, I think the biggest takeaway of all, there was no new evidence brought of a single fraudulent vote cast in the 2020 election. Obviously, there were a few fraudulent votes in that election as there are in every election. But in this tranche of new documents and new evidence, nothing actually new came out indicating widespread fraud. There were wide-ranging things that he talked about, China gaining access to voter files, which actually are publicly available information, for instance. But he didn't connect those dots together. He didn't connect those dots back to actual fraud happening in the election, that though didn't stop him from using a broad brush to claim that the American election system is very deeply flawed.

Put together these disclosures reveal an election system so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it. It is not defensible. And I should note that the evidence and the reports and the claims that the president was unspooling were almost exclusively focused on the 2020 election, an election that he lost, a free and fair election that he lost. And it's an election that took place while he was president of the United States. It was his government, his CIA, his government that he was calling the deep state that hid things from him. I mean, I was also struck by just like how much of this was already known. Specifically, I want to walk through some of the things that came up here, which is foreign influence, which is different than foreign interference, vulnerability, stuff that, as you mentioned, Miles, is well known in the election world. Like, what, how would you characterize, like, the bulk of this in terms of, like, how much is even actionable from what he presented? You know, it was interesting. I talked to Arizona's top voting official, Adrian Fontez, who's a Democrat, after the speech. And I asked him directly that, basically.

you know, what are you seeing in these documents that is new to you? I kind of felt a little bit cheated. I was expecting some kind of delicious bombshell that we might be able to investigate, but instead I got a rehash of the same grievance. And I thought that was really interesting, this idea that he was ready, that there were going to be some sort of new claims, when in reality, it tracked almost identically to what the intelligence community was saying publicly in 2020. China was interested in pushing Joe Biden as a candidate. There was some public disagreement on how much the country was willing to do in terms of pushing for that outcome. And very clear, no one has ever been able to say that China actually tried to manipulate votes or

affect the technical aspects of running an election. It seems like they were more focused on influence, as you mentioned, this idea of affecting public opinion and how people feel about things. But there was no new evidence, again, about interfering with votes. Okay, so we talked about foreign influence. China came up. But another topic that the president raised was non-citizen voting. Can you just give us a quick rundown on what he talked about? We've talked about this a lot as well. The Department of Homeland Security has developed new systems since Trump came back into office to investigate non-citizen voting and investigate states voter rolls to try to find non-citizens on the rules. What they are claiming, what Trump claimed last night, is that they ran four different states, California, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania and New Jersey through this system using some data that we're not sure exactly where they got this data, what data they actually ran through it, but that once they ran this through this system, they found hundreds of thousands of non-citizens registered to vote. I want to stop

there and just say everyone you talk to in the election space is very skeptical of these numbers because the Trump administration has not provided evidence of what data they used. Data matching in this type of way is notoriously flawed and prone to fall. positives. And so there's just at this point a lot more questions than answers about these numbers. The Trump administration has given and the states themselves are even disputing them. And part of that is because these are states that have declined to voluntarily give their entire voter rolls or the private versions of their voter rolls to the federal government, which is the data you need to accurately do this sort of list matching. And so you kind of see this thing where they're pushing this data

that we have a lot of questions about almost in a way to pressure these states, it seems like, to work with them on providing this voter data that they have been very, very hesitant, have fought in court not to give up. The idea of building a national database of voters actually would undermine one of the security features of the American voting system, which is that every state has their own system, that it isn't centralized in the federal government. that if, you know, if a foreign actor or somebody wanted to interfere in an American election, they'd have to go county by county, city by city, precinct by precinct.

There isn't just one big place where they could grab it. And Tam, I want to go back to what you were saying because I do think context is important here. Like, he's not just maligning the government and the way our voting systems run. He's doing this right before midterms. Like, can you talk about the politics and the timing of all this? As you say, there are elections coming. are voting this month, next month. But really, this is not a new storyline from President Trump. This is part of a very longstanding, ongoing process where he has sown doubt about American elections,

including elections that he's won. He was claiming illegal votes in 2016, an election he won. He obviously has been extra fixated on 2020, an election he lost. But in a way, he is setting this up. He is saying that it's not possible for this next election to be fair unless Congress passes something called the Save America Act, which is something that he has been pushing for repeatedly, which would require, among other things, proof of citizenship to register to vote. But that Save America Act doesn't actually address most of the vulnerabilities that he was talking about in that speech. I don't think that's where this ends, though.

I mean, all the election officials who I talked to, actually were surprised that that's all he asked for. I mean, everyone was going deep down the rabbit holes, considering he did fire all the rest of the commissioners at the Election Assistance Commission, this federal body that does work in the election space last week. There was some thought that maybe that could be, that he could try to do something with voting machines, using those firing. There was all sorts of sort of trying to game out partially because a lot of his allies have been on podcasts and social media, claiming or pushing for different sort of things that have kind of aligned with how he's talked about elections. And I think I keep going back to something Steve Bannon said this week, which we talked about Tam, which is this idea that Thursday night this speech was going to be the predicate. That's the word that Steve Bannon used. And it's a little bit unclear on the predicate for what, right? In this

speech, he seemed to be it was a predicate to push for the SAVE Act. But people in his orbit have pushed for some sort of national emergency that would give him new powers in the elections where all legal experts say there's no truth to that, but they're still pushing for it. Other people are pushing for, you know, new law enforcement efforts to secure the polls, all sorts of different things. But I think it all goes back to you need this predicate. You need this idea that this system is fatally flawed. And I think that's an interesting way to think about Thursday speech. It's probably not the end, but more like the beginning or middle chapter. And we should just say that Steve Bannon is this far right media personality.

But he served in the Trump term. He has advised President Trump. He has publicly talked about Trump serving an unconstitutional third term. He is someone who is on the fringe, but also is on the inside in the Trump orbit. And it makes sense that the SAVE Act wouldn't be the sort of end of the story, right? Because the SAVE Act has very few odds of passing anytime soon. I mean, and also you had mentioned this. It doesn't solve any of the concerns that were raised in the speech.

But what does it do, Miles? The SAVE Act would add a bunch of new restrictions onto registering to vote that research has shown potentially could impact millions of Americans. Basically, it would require people to, A, have photo ID when they vote, but the more important, seemingly according to experts aspect of it, would it would require people to provide proof of documentary proof of citizenship, like a birth certificate or a passport when they registered a vote. And there are just a lot of people who don't have easy access to those documents. But to be clear, there's no sign at all that there's appetite in the Senate right now to get moving on that. Yeah, none. So the issue is that the Senate, yes. is controlled by Republicans, but to get a bill through like this, you would need a filibuster-proof majority, which means you would need Democratic support. That doesn't exist. Even if Republicans wanted to use procedural moves to try to avoid the filibuster, there are very big questions about whether enough Republicans support this measure to actually push it through. And then there's the fact that

it is mid-July at this point and people are voting. And the November election, you know, is very soon. There's just not a lot of runway for this either. And it just shows, I think, with something we've talked about on the podcast a lot, the limits of presidential power when it comes to elections. I think President Trump keeps running up into this is that he's now written two different executive orders that have been blocked by the federal courts because they encroached on state's rights to run elections. And so I think, I don't know, it does seem like he's running out of options in terms of trying to influence election policy because the Constitution is clear that locals and states run elections.

I mean, that has been the big takeaway from this year is that the courts up and down from the, like on the federal court level, up into the Supreme Court, have told Trump that we believe, like, states should have the power to run their own elections. And I mean, I wonder if that's where part of the frustration is coming from because he has been running some numbers before the courts. Like they're like the expanse of his power has grown, but just not in this one specific way. Yeah. And I mean, I think there are still, like I said, a lot of fringe legal theories on things he still could test. in the next couple months. And so I think election officials aren't, they're not feeling super complacent. They're not feeling like, oh, the courts have our back. Yes, they've had our back at this point. Yes, his administration is 0 for 15 or whatever and trying to get our voter data. But there's still this feeling that they're going to keep throwing spaghetti at the wall. Yeah. Okay. Let's take a quick break. More in a moment. Welcome back. And Tam, I want to talk about the politics of all this. Presidents usually give White House addresses in prime time to talk about, you know, some kind of. of crisis or some major issue going on. The U.S. is at war with Iran. I'm kind of surprised that's not

something that came up all that much. I mean, what did you make of the fact that during this time Trump took the time to make a primetime address about an election that is six years old? Right. These speeches, as you say, are rare. They bring a certain gravitas. Typically, the White House will ask the networks to preempt their regularly scheduled programming to carry these addresses. Think the address that President Obama gave after the bin Laden raid, for instance. This was a different kind of speech. And as you say, the president barely touched on the U.S. war with Iran. Like, if you had told me that the president of the United States was going to give a big prime time address this week, I would have thought, well, yeah, the Iran war has really escalated. The ceasefire is off.

the U.S. is enforcing a blockade again in the Strait of Hormuz. Oil prices are going back up. The President of the United States needs to speak to the American people and tell them that they might have to sacrifice for a little while or explain this escalation in the war. That's not what he did. He gave like barely a sentence to the Iran war, very little time. And quickly then made this dramatic turn to focus on election integrity, election security, issues that he has been talking about, literally. for six years. And I will just note that it isn't just me that's surprised. I have these swing voters who I correspond with regularly and I checked in with them to see what they thought of the speech. And a couple of them were like, yeah, it was kind of weird. He didn't really talk about the war with Iran. Which I imagine is not something that congressional Republicans love. As we mentioned,

they're not jumping to pass the SAVE Act right now partially because, you know, they are out of their primaries, a lot of them. And they have a general election audience to, to, to cater to. And from my understanding, Miles, the 2020 election is something that maybe the MAGA base really cares about, but voters writ large, this isn't their number one priority. But this is what I'm really interested to watch over the next couple weeks, because, yes, it does feel like this is pointed to that small percentage of the Republican base that's super fired up about this issue, right? But it's not clear to me that they're going to be happy with what was disclosed and what was announced because, again, people were pushing for much more

extreme action this week, that there were people speculating that he was going to, you try to decertify machines in entire states, that he was going to institute a national elections emergency. And so the fact that this was just another call for a SAVE Act that even they understand is not passing that, there is a lot of anger at Senate Majority Leader John Thune right now because the SAVE Act is not going anywhere. I'm just very curious to watch whether Steve Bannon, whether Tina Peters, the former election clerk who was in prison and has been doing the far right media circuit has been pushing a lot of this stuff. Is she going to be satisfied with what she heard, considering she was saying, you know, everywhere she could that there was a

blockbuster coming. This is a president who has been frustrated with Congress, very frustrated, that Congress is not taking up, not passing this Save America Act. And he even recently refused to sign a big bipartisan bill addressing the cost of housing to, quote, protest about the Save America Act. And that didn't really move the needle. So it was like he needed to do. something else to elevate this, to try again. And so he commanded the national airwaves in the way that only a president can. And ultimately, in the end, the call to action was again past the Save America Act. But most importantly, addressing this crisis of election security demands that Congress must pass the Save America Act. How easy is that to do unless you want to cheat?

It is important to note that Democrats aren't the only ones who are standing in the way of the Safe America Act passing. It's the Republican-controlled Senate that is also part of the issue here for Trump getting this through. But to me, what stands out from that whole quote is, unless you want to cheat, he is setting up the conditions to be able to say, and he's been doing it for months now, but setting up the conditions to be able to say that an election where Republicans are. widely expected to take losses that in these upcoming midterms, it wasn't fair because, well, they didn't pass the Save America Act. Yeah, the implication is if Democrats win and the Save Act isn't passed, it's cheating. I think a lot of people, the question I get from a lot of people was like, where is this going, right? And I think that's kind of what you're getting to, Tam. And I think election officials I talk to say they don't really know, but that it's possible that the Trump

administration doesn't really know, but that by building. building the shroud of doubt, they give themselves a lot of options. Maybe they won't contest the midterms. Maybe this is more a look for 2028. Maybe this is, you know, maybe there's something else afoot here, but that usually the entire flow chart flows from this idea that you have to have a wide enough swath of Americans doubt the system more broadly. And it just gives you a lot of different options. Yeah. I do want to like go back to the conversation about how little the SAVE Act would actually address the things that were raised. And I want to talk about Miles, you know, you and I both. cover voting. And there has been chatter about how the infrastructure, like voting machines are old. It's been almost 30 years since the Help America Vote Act, the last time the American government spent a lot of money to update our voting systems. Like, I guess can you walk me through like what it would look like if this were a serious issue to address? It would involve money. And does the Save America Act involve any money? No, it does not. And so I think I reported a couple months ago that to get America's voting systems up to the most recent standards approved by the federal government, it would take

billions and billions of dollars. And there's just never been appetite, or it hasn't been appetite recently to invest that level of money in American election infrastructure. I think one of the things that's been interesting to me is Louisiana is the state with the oldest voting equipment in the country. And no one talks about that. So I think what's really interesting is that there's just this conflation happening between vulnerabilities and the exploitation of those vulnerabilities. I was talking about this was Susan Greenhall, who works at the advocacy group Free Speech for People, and she has spent a lot of the past few years focused on the same vulnerabilities and trying to improve the same vulnerabilities that Trump is talking about, but she said there's a huge

distinction and a huge elite being made to say that this is evidence of stolen elections. Two things can be true at the same time, that we have ignored vulnerabilities in our voting systems for a long time, and there is no evidence that the election was rigged in 2020, and everything that has been put forth purporting to provide that evidence always falls apart like a cheap suit. I think 10 years ago, a lot of election officials were like, oh, maybe people are starting to care about elections. Like maybe this is actually a time where there's going to be a huge investment and a good faith effort. And this could actually be a thing that does move us into a new stage of election security. But I think that hope has kind of died a little bit, especially when you combine it with the fact that while Trump is saying this, he's cut all the election security workers at the Department of Homeland Security.

for instance, or almost all of them. And so I think there's just a contradiction between his actions and his words and some of this stuff. Well, and the Save America Act would create all kinds of expensive administrative responsibilities for elections officials and departments. And yet, there's no money. Yeah. An unfunded mandate. Always fun. Yeah. Well, I do wonder what you guys are going to be watching for. As you mentioned, Miles, this doesn't feel like the end of this. Like, this mostly feels like the opening salvo of something we're going to be. going to be hearing a lot about as the midterms get closer. But what specifically are you guys looking out for? I think I'm going to be watching how voters are taking all of this in because in previous

election cycles, we have seen candidates who aren't Trump really be hurt by this level of election denialism. It seems like an issue that potentially he can get away with because it's part of his brand and something that people can kind of shrug away. But when candidates in down ballot races, governors' races, secretary of state races, things like that, kind of, lean into some of these issues that they underperform other Republican candidates or they seem to. And so I'm really curious to see if that trend continues. Right. This is a midterm election year where the president and his party would be expected to take losses. So that's sort of the baseline we're coming from. Then you add to that that President Trump was able to turn out voters in 2024 that are what we'd call low propensity voters, people who don't vote in every election. They're not highly motivated, except they're motivated by him. They are very motivated to vote for President Trump. So now his name isn't going to be on the ballot.

And he has to convince these voters to vote for random Congresspeople they haven't heard of. At the same time, he is convincing the base, at least, that the entire system is rigged and rife with cheating. And a lot of people might just throw up their hands and say, Well, why vote? Why vote? It could really depress turnout or depress voter motivation. What it probably won't do is depress Democratic voter motivation because Democratic voters are upset. And they're actually motivated by incursions on voting rights. That is a thing that base Democratic voters care about a lot and makes them want to vote even more. I was talking to a staffer recently.

for a candidate who's running in one of these battleground states. And what she said was like, my candidate is going to be running on affordability. But if the president wants to run on democracy and wants to bring that up, yeah, let's do it. Like basically, they're not going to bring it up. But if they want to rehash January 6th right now in a midterm election, like that actually excites, it seems like, excites Democratic candidates because they, yeah, I don't know. I don't know that independent voters especially align with the president on this issue. Yeah.

And one thing I know for certain is that while in a midterm year, presidents often allow their members to the, you know, their members of Congress, they're from their party to have an arm's length because, well, the president's brand is a little toxic. That isn't President Trump's brand. And the head of the Republican National Committee recently announced that there's going to be this midterm convention, which is a thing that they have made up. It doesn't normally exist. It's going to be in Texas. And they're saying it's going to be a Trump. Palooza. So no matter what, and, you know, like probably no matter what either way, President Trump is going to be at the center of this midterm. Yeah, a lot to watch. Okay. One more break. And then it's time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back. And it's time for Can't Let It Go. That's the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week we just can't stop thinking about politics or otherwise. Tam, I want to start with you. What can't you let go of this week?

This is a big news story that if it weren't for all the other news would have taken. taken everything by storm. But President Trump's teleprompter operator is being investigated for making nearly $100,000 on the prediction market site, Kalshi. Essentially, you can bet on what the president is going to say. And the one person who knows better than anyone else what the president is going to say is the one who is feeding the words into the teleprompter. I got to say, that is a low number considering, like, he literally knows what he's going to say. Is that, am I crazy? Like, $100,000 doesn't seem like that much when, like, he's the person who knows exactly.

I imagine, I'm just guessing here, completely speculating, but this was probably a situation where this is a person who was like, well, I got to keep it like reasonable. But I don't know. Yeah. He is now in settlement talks with federal regulators. The White House says he's been placed on unpaid administrative leave. I just keep thinking about this beleaguered guy who I would see running backstage with a laptop, like getting ready to put all the president's words into a teleprompter, only for the president to go completely rogue and say utterly random things. So sort of predictable, utterly random things. But like being President Trump's teleprompter operator has to be one of the most difficult jobs in the world.

And that brings up actually an interesting point that like maybe it's such a. a small amount of money because he just got a lot of the bets wrong. He was like, I see this in the script. I bet on this and then he didn't actually say it. And then he went rogue again. Or what's the, it's not rogue. He weaved. He weaved right out of a good bet. Yeah. Or maybe it's just like he's bad multitasker. Like it was just like he's trying to keep track and it's like kind of hard. I mean, it's just going to be really interesting to see how much more of this stuff comes out. Because I mean, Luke Garrett, our reporter here at NPR also did a story a couple of months ago about campaign staffers betting, you know, related to their campaigns and stuff like that.

It makes sense. If you have access to internal documents, internal data, and you're getting paid like peanuts, then you're probably, I don't know, you're looking at those markets like, oh, maybe I can make a little extra or something. I don't know. It makes logical sense to me. Yeah, and these markets are not well regulated. It is basically a new form of gambling in your pocket. I know Miles and I like stress about this all the time. Like the gambling problem in this country is like really out of control. A whole separate pod. Yeah.

separate pod. Ashley, what can't you let go of? Something more cheery. Good. This is basically a trip back to early odds comedy. I can't let go over the fact that both Will Ferrell and Steve Correll have shows out right now, both named after birds. So Steve Currell has a show called Rooster. And if you haven't watched it, I binged it in like two days. It's on HBO.

It's excellent. It's very, very funny. But does he play like kind of a not nice man? because I feel like Steve Carell keeps playing Not Nice Men and it's tough for me. He plays the sweetest baby angel in this show. You will have a great time. This is like Ted Lasso with Steve Carell. If you like Ted Lasso, if you want to be taken care of by a TV show, this is a show for you.

That's my pitch. You're going to love it. You're going to love it. Hello Weekend. We're going back to form. Goodbye Sleep. Yeah. We're going back to form with Steve Carell.

You're going to love it. And then also Will Farrell has a show called The Hawk, where he plays like a, you're a golfer who's like, you know, sort of a tail end of his career trying to, you know, scrap for relevance here or whatever. I have not seen the show. The reviews have been mixed. I'll put it to you that way. But it is just really fun to see both these guys like promoting shows.

And I'm like, oh my gosh, is it 2004? I feel very safe right now. So I have a Will Ferrell story. You do? I do. When I was 13 years old, I went and saw an improv show where he was performing. And I got called up onto stage. and he was like dancing with me

and I gave the worst improv. I was so like mortified by the whole thing. I didn't know what to do. He was being like this wild character and I was just like, ah! Is there a film of this somewhere? No, there is no film because there are no camera phones when I was 13 years old.

There's no film cameras? And I hope he does not remember that one time that a 13 year old girl gave no yes and at all up on stage. You know, Tam, you are seeing that through the eyes of a 13-year-old. I'm sure if you were to look back now, like, truly, and you'd be like, it's just a little girl. She's having a good time. It's really fine. I think that it applies that Tam would do better in that situation now. And I hate to, I mean, I think anyone in that situation, Will Ferrell is doing being ridiculous. It's going to be tough to come up with your best

improv. Yeah. But then I was like, well, that guy, he did well for himself. Yeah. No kidding. Anyways, but yes, watch Rooster. You're going to have a great time. Okay. Miles, what can't you let go of this week? What I can't let go of and what I will grip. So tightly for the rest of my NPR career is Don Gagne. Oh, yes. Our incredible special colleague friend, his last day at NPR is today. And I don't know.

Lexi Shepiddle, our producer at NPR Politics, put together along with NPR's research team, this, like, amazing infographic of like Don's career. Have you seen this? Yeah. It's like... I saw it in the flesh. 4,480 stories filed for NPR. Wow.

Like 200 of them filed internationally. 25 stories on the Florida recount alone. 25 stories filed from a diner. 347 stories that mentioned the word strike. This amazing, like, I don't know, his career has been such an inspiring thing for me to watch as I've, like, learned radio and come up in this place. But I think more importantly, for me, as I'm thinking about Don, and I have been thinking about Don a lot this week, it's just like the presence he has in all of our lives and in our newsroom. and oh man I'm getting like he just is like

the level of warmth and he's an inspiration more as a person than as a journalist and I'm just going to miss him so much I feel like I always have him in my ear when I am on a White House trip or I go to

I was in Detroit once and Don was like you've got to you've got to go see the Diego Rivera like I know you don't have time you have to go see the Diego Roberto Rivera. And so when I was in China, I was like, all right, what would Don Gagne do? And so I went for like an hour to the Great Wall of China because that's what Don Gagne would do. I think we all need little bracelets of like what would Gagne do? Because I do think he is kind of like the North Star just like as in radio. I mean, he's just the best. I mean, his stories are just, if you want to learn radio, go listen to a Don Gagne piece. Yeah. I mean, there is the archetype of the grizzled newsman in this industry. And it's usually people. who are hardened by having to talk about hard stuff all the time.

That is not Don Gagne. He is the sweetest man who has somehow come out of this career. Still sweet. I know. When I got back from parental leave, one of my favorite people to talk about fatherhood, for instance. I mean, he is just like he wears it on his sleeve and he's a great person, a great dad, great journalist, and he will be missed. And so encouraging to all of us. Yeah.

We will miss him here. Definitely on the politics team. He's not gone forever. We're just going to not hear him as much on the radio, right? All right. That's all for today. Our executive producer is Methoni Maturi. Our producers are Casey Morel and Brea Suggs.

Our editor is Rachel Bay. Special thanks to Dana Farrington and Ben Swayce. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover politics.

And thank you for listening to the MPR Politics podcast.