Trump Calls January 6th a "Day of Love"
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and tells Latino voters that the jury's still out on whether immigrants are eating pets in Springfield. J.D. Vance finally gives an answer on whether Trump lost in 2020. We won't spoil it for you. And our good friend Ben Wickler, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, stops by to talk about how things are going in the Badger State and how you can help.

There and everywhere we need to win. But first, Kamala Harris went on Fox News and lived to tell the tale. The vice president sat down with Bret Baier for an interview Wednesday night that just about everyone figured would be contentious. And boy, did it deliver. Here's some of what just over 7 million viewers saw Wednesday night. Bret.

Brett, let's just get to the point. Okay? The point is that we have a broken immigration system that needs to be repaired. So your Homeland Security Secretary said that 85% of apprehensions... I'm not finished. I'm not finished. And let me just finish. I'll get to the question. I promise you. I was beginning to answer. And when you came into office... The first bill, practically within hours of taking the oath...

was a bill to fix our immigration system. Yes, ma'am. It was called the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021. It was essentially a pathway to citizenship for the... May I finish responding, please? But you have to let me finish. You had the White House and the House and the Senate, and they didn't bring up that bill. I'm in the middle of responding to the point you're raising, and I'd like to finish. Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry, and with all due respect, that clip was not...

what he has been saying about the enemy within that he has repeated

when he's speaking about the American people. That's not what you just showed. He was asked about that specific... No, no, no, that's not what you just showed in all fairness and respect to you. No, no, no, I'm telling you that was the question that we asked him. He didn't show that, and here's the bottom line. He has repeated it many times, and you and I both know that. And you and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people. He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest.

He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him. This is a democracy. And in a democracy, the president of the United States in the United States of America should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he'd lock people up for doing it. And this is what is at stake.

Hell yes. I fucking love it. I want to go grab my ballot and just drop it off right now. You can. You literally can do that right now. I can't find it. That's the whole thing. Emily got hers. I don't know where mine is. Anyway, what did you think? What did you think of the whole interview?

I loved it. It was, I have to say there was a bit of- You, a big proponent of Democrats going on Fox News. Well, there is like a little PTSD for me here because back in 2010, I pushed very hard for Barack Obama to do an interview with Brett Baer. We were trying to pass the Affordable Care Act because we had all these members in Republican districts. We were trying to get to the support of Obamacare. And we did that interview. Brett Baer interrupted Barack Obama. Very similar to this, 16 times in 20 minutes.

And I would say the walk from the East Wing, where the interview was conducted, back to the West Wing was one of the longer walks of my life. Was he really mad at you? No, he was more just, I'd say he was disappointed, was the word I would use. He just said, well, that was fun. And then...

And then we just walked in silence for a long time. I don't remember that interview, but was he as firm and still polite as Kamala Harris was? Like, I thought she really, she was great. She handled that. She could have gone back harder. She was like, she was tough, but she didn't go to, it was perfect. I thought her tone was perfect. She was, she was great.

She called out the bullshit, which I think is one thing you have to do when you go on Fox News as a Democrat. It is what Pete Buttigieg is great at. Gavin Newsom is great at is you call out the game. And when Brett Baier just fucking leading with his large chin, which is why playing the wrong clip to clean up Donald Trump's mess like the like the lackey that he is made it very easy for her to do that.

We should say for people at home, what happened was they were talking about Trump's comments where he talked about the enemy with

which he said on a Fox News program to Maria Bartiromo on Sunday. And Bayer didn't play that clip of Trump talking to Maria Bartiromo, but played the clip of Trump responding to that clip when he was asked a question about it at another Fox News town hall and gave a bullshitty reply that really was just a bunch of

Lies and crazy news from Trump. And so just never played the actual clip because Fox had probably been trying to hide the actual clip from their audience ever since they originally aired it when Trump was talking to Maria Bartiromo. Yeah, absolutely. Just mask mask off moment as someone wrote today.

So overall, you think it was worth doing Fox News? Net positive, net neutral, net negative. I think we both know not net negative, but what do you think? Strong net positive. And like, as you said, I generally counsel Democrats to not go on Fox News.

Like you did to me. Like I did to you. And look, it worked great for you. You have a new best friend in Jesse Waters. But this was one of those times where it made sense. And here's why it was worth it. 7.1 million people watched this interview. That is more than three times Brett Baer's normal audience. Do you know what the number one market in the country was in terms of watching that interview?

Ooh, what? Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, my friend. Yeah. Love that. And it's, it's clear. Uh, David Plouffe said this to me, uh, on positive America over the weekend, but one of their targets is Republican leading independents and soft Republicans, uh,

It's a group she has made progress with. She's up to 9% of Republicans in the latest time Sienna poll. And this is a great way to reach those voters. The best media moments are ones where the candidate performs well, the platform is chosen because it speaks directly to a voter target, and you do so well that the clips will go viral on TikTok and Instagram and will reach voters who did not actually tune in. On all three marks, she hit those here.

Yeah. And I just it got outsized media coverage because it was like, you know, Kamala Harris goes into the lion's den. Ian Sams, who's we know who's a Harris campaign spokesman, told Brian Stelter on his podcast that they did the interview for two reasons. One, because they believe a considerable number of undecided voters watch Fox.

and to knock down the lies they tell on Fox. Do you think that's right? Yeah, I think the more important and larger reason was the meta message of she is strong enough and tough enough to go in to a network that is actively working to elect her opponent, take the tough questions, and Donald Trump is too scared to do an interview with anyone serious. That's ultimately what you're trying to achieve. You're larger than who the individual people were who watched the specific interview in that moment.

I checked out the latest New York Times Sienna poll, the national one, where she's up three. And I looked at the media consumption question at the very end. And 10% of voters who aren't yet supporting Trump or Harris get their news from Fox, which was like the third high. 15% said social media, 10% said local news, 10% said Fox. And then every other news source was in the low single digits.

So it is, you know, it's there is some I don't know how many, but there are some people watching Fox and also Fox is on, especially if you get out of Blue Cities. Fox is on. It's like the the network that's on like a doctor's office or a store, you know. And so there's some people who aren't like Fox fans, but they just like have Fox on and they're not all fans.

MAGA people, right? Like most of them are, but not all of them. It's the background music in a lot of communities, right? Like if you go to get your oil changed, it's what's on there at the doctor's office. Now, the thing that's always hard and one of the reasons why I often counsel Democrats not to go on is that...

you can handle your individual interview great, but Fox will take whatever the worst clips are and then they'll play those all day long. But that, but you know what? They'll do that if they didn't have a clip from Fox to do that with. They'd do that about her on any other issue. And she reached 7 million people doing it, right? Normally, if you're just a normal Democrat and you do it, you just get the,

specific audience of that show midday and then they can beat you up with it. Here, she obviously brought in a whole bunch of people and the people who tuned in are people who are A, willing to turn on Fox and B, interested enough to hear what she has to say. So those are potential voters for her. Other thing too is, uh,

She at one point in that exchange about Enemy From Within, she talks about how General Mark Milley, who Donald Trump handpicked to be his chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and how he told Bob Woodward that Donald Trump is fascist to the core. And she brought that up. And then, you know, Brett was like, oh, yeah, yeah, he did tell that to Bob Woodward. And that was apparently, according to the bulwark, only the third time.

Fox told its audience that Mark Milley called Donald Trump fascist to its core as the third time that happened. One was from Kamala Harris. One was from Jessica Tarlow on five. And one was I forget when else it happened, but that was it three times since it's happened. It's been like a couple of weeks.

Just real or weak. How we get fair and balanced journalists over there at Fox News. But that is another reason why you go on there is that you expose Fox viewers to facts that they have not heard, not just like correcting lies, but just things that they've never heard. I thought the interview was also an opportunity for Kamala to answer some of the trickier questions she either hasn't answered or hasn't answered. Well, she was asked about the Trump campaign's accusations, which they have put 20 million dollars of ads behind.

that she supported gender-affirming care for undocumented immigrants who are incarcerated. She pointed out that it is the law. These are court decisions that have required this in prisons. And so it's not like just some policy she's been pushing. And she pointed out, this was reported in the New York Times this week, that that kind of care was also offered under the woke administration of Donald Trump.

So I thought that was she handled that. And then she was asked the question about about Biden that tripped her up on The View. Let's listen. It's interesting you said turn the page, Madam Vice President. You were asked on two different shows last week what, if anything, you would do differently than President Biden. Here's what you said. You're not Joe Biden. You're not Donald Trump. But but nothing comes to mind that you would do differently. Let me be very clear. My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden's presidency.

And like every new president that comes in to office, I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences, and fresh and new ideas. I represent a new generation of leadership. I, for example, am someone who has not spent the majority of my career in Washington, D.C. I invite ideas, whether it be from the Republicans who are supporting me, who were just on stage with me minutes ago,

and the business sector and others who can contribute. How do you think she handled it this time? I would say much better. Much better. I mean, her answer is interesting because she obviously improves upon the nothing comes to mind answer, which is now starring in a pretty brutal ad that the Trump campaign is pouring money in in the battleground states. I sent it to you earlier. I hope you didn't click. No, I just saw Tommy respond, boy, that's brutal. And I decided I was not going to click. Yeah.

I honestly debated whether to send that to you or not. Because we don't live in a battleground state, you could just live in blissful ignorance for the next three weeks without knowing that was up there. So she answered it much better. And the other thing I thought was interesting about the answer is she spoke to two groups of people, right? And there's two interrelated groups, but one are people who are dissatisfied with the present

conditions of America under Joe Biden. As unfair as that may be to all the many great things Joe Biden has accomplished, there's a lot of people who think that. He has low approval ratings and you have wrong track numbers that are above 60. But she also, by simply saying, my president is not a continuation of Joe Biden. But then she pivots and says, but I have not spent my career in Washington. And that is speaking to the people who

are mad about politics generally, that she is an outsider, right? In general, outsider candidates do quite well. And she can't be a true outsider because she is literally the city of the United States, but she does have a unique biography and a unique background. And the person she's running against is not necessarily an outsider because he was the former president of the United States. So I thought just that pivot to I didn't spend my career in Washington was notable and interesting.

If she gets it again, like, I think there's a way for her to do this that is, it's not even that critical of Joe Biden, right? It's just like, you know, Joe Biden had to, when Joe Biden and I took office, had to deal with an economic crisis caused by the pandemic. And he did that, pulled the economy out of recession. But now our problem, it's a new time, new problem, costs are too high. So I'm going to build 3 million affordable homes, right?

and I'm going to crack down on price gouging and I'm going to expand Medicare to cover home care, right? Whatever her economic plan is. So she can, and I actually saw that Blueprint polling tested these and some of the answers that tested the best on separating yourself from Biden. It's not really saying like, oh, Joe Biden did this wrong and I'm going to do this. It's just like, you know what?

new person, new time, new challenges. And here's what I'm going to focus on now, right? Like Joe Biden's thing was get us out of the pandemic, get the economy back on track. And my thing is now costs are too high. And so I'm going to bring them down. Like I just, I think, I think a little granularity on ideas and policies that she's going to pursue in connection to that answer is going to be helpful. Yeah. It's just, it is just, you have to think about an opportunity. You make the initial statement that my presidency will not be continuation of Joe Biden's. And then it's just an opportunity to restate your popular policy agenda.

Because I think you have to be careful not to play the press this game here, which they also read that and were like, well, she didn't really distinguish herself. What would you do differently? What did he do wrong? And I just think there's too much drama that comes with that. And it's too much of an inside baseball for the actual voters. Well, she's also, I mean, it just, there's a...

an honesty issue there too, which is like, she was there, right? So you can't, the next, if she says like, oh, Joe Biden made this decision and I wouldn't have made it, then you can be like, well, what did you tell him at the time that it was wrong? It just, it opens up a can of worms. You can't, you can't go down that. Yeah.

So before she sat down with Brett Baier, Harris appeared in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, where George Washington famously crossed the Delaware, Dan. And she was there with more than 100 Republican lawmakers and government officials who she said put country first by endorsing her, including former House members Adam Kinzinger and Barbara Comstock.

What do you think of how she's using Republicans to make the case? And do you think that is going to be effective in reaching some of those voters we were talking about who may be tuned into the Brett Baier interview who might be, you know, right-leaning independents or Republicans who are done with Trump? Like, we live in such highly polarized times that if you're a Republican, you identify as a Republican. That's probably been your party identity most of your adult life, if not your entire life.

You voted for Mitt Romney. You voted for – maybe you voted for some Bushes. You voted for – maybe you voted for Donald Trump once. And crossing that Rubicon to break with how you see yourself because most people's – in highly polarized times, people's political identity is their primary identity. That's how they see themselves. That's how they sort themselves with their friends. And so to break from that and to do something that runs counter to that identity is hard. And the way you get people to do that is you show lots of other people doing the same thing.

This is why you bring 100 Republicans on stage. It's why Sarah Longwell's group is running videos, running ads with videos of people speaking – Republicans speaking directly to cameras saying, I voted for Trump, but this time I'm not for these reasons. And so this is how you do it. Trump is doing the opposite. I just saw before we got on here Trump doing a – at a barbershop in the Bronx sitting –

with a bunch of black men talking, just sort of shooting the shit with them. He's trying to do the same thing with a different group of voters to show that the water is warm. There are other people like you here. And so it's a smart, savvy understanding of the way politics works these days.

Also, I think there's two target demos they're trying to reach here. There's people who don't always vote, and there's people who don't always vote for Democrats. And I think the Harris-Walls campaign is obviously going after both groups, but it is harder to reach the people who don't always vote, right? And they are not as dependable, and they are low-propensity voters, and it's going to take more resources to find them, to convince them to come out to the polls, and I'm sure they're doing that. But the thing about the...

People who don't always vote for Democrats, whether they're independent or Republicans who are open to voting for Democrats, is they are very reliable voters.

and they show up in a lot of these elections. And so I'm guessing the campaign's thinking, all right, it's probably a more bang for our buck to go after some of these soft Republicans, right-leaning independents, and Donald Trump has made them available to the Harris campaign because he's so extreme. That wouldn't usually happen in a campaign for a Democratic campaign, but Donald Trump has made it more possible this time. I can't remember if I used these numbers on this podcast or one of these 700 other podcasts we've done recently, but-

You know, Blueprint also polled Haley voters, and there's a large chunk of Haley voters who are not with Trump yet and are open to the idea of supporting Harris, but she's got work to do. But just to put that number in perspective, 76,000 people voted for Nikki Haley in the Wisconsin primary in 2020. Joe Biden won Wisconsin by 21,000 votes. Yeah. But you know what? Obviously, you're not going to get all of them. You probably aren't going to get most of them, but that's a big chunk of voters who could decide the election. And the numbers are similar in the other battleground states. Right.

So we learned today about two other Republicans who've decided to level their critiques of Trump in private, like a couple of profiles in courage. Mitch McConnell, who apparently participated in an oral history project, oral history of slowly degrading democracy. I don't know what the project was, but he's on an audio recording calling Trump after January 6th, quote, stupid, a narcissist and a despicable human being.

No word on when that recording will be available, but it's a book that journalist Mike Tackett is writing. And so the AP reported it today. When asked by the Associated Press about these comments, McConnell said, quote, Whatever I may have said about President Trump pales in comparison to what J.D. Vance, Lindsey Graham and others have said about him. But we're all on the same team now.

You know what? I respect it. I truly respect that response. What a dick. Yeah, he is one of history's great villains and cowards, but I respect the response there. Meanwhile, our pal Tim Miller broke some news over at the Bulwark about former Trump Defense Secretary James Mattis on Tim's Bulwark podcast. Bob Woodward revealed that Mattis emailed him to say that he agrees with General Mark Milley's assessment that Trump is, quote, the most dangerous person ever.

So thanks to both Jim Madison, Mitch McConnell stepping up when it really matters, huh? I mean, look. Come on, people. Say it out loud in front of a camera. It's pure cowardice to sit there and believe that a fascist, someone you believe is a fascist, a dangerous fascist is on the cusp of becoming president of the United States. And your response is to email Bob Woodward after his book comes out.

Hey, Bob, maybe you put this in your next one in 2026. It's just... I don't know, man. I don't know. Are these revelations something that the Harris campaign should be using down the homestretch? She's already in her rallies all this week. She's been talking about the Milley comments, which I think is very smart. I think...

I think when your opponent's former top general that they hired is running around telling people that the opponent's a fascist and the most dangerous person to ever exist. And it's like a four star general. I think that's useful. The useful knowledge for people. It is. I mean, obviously it's useful and it's a piece of information that every voter should have before they make their decision. Just seems like you should put it should be in the voter guide, frankly.

We've talked about this before. These are hard arguments to sell to a lot of voters, particularly ones who are not super engaged with the news on a daily basis because they were alive for the last Trump presidency and they didn't see it as fascist. And so that it's just...

It'd be much more powerful on camera, but it just is a – you should talk about it for sure. It should be part of the argument as we raise the stakes. But recognizing that it's hard to convince people that Trump will be a dictator or a fascist because they believe he was not. Now, you can get some granularity to it. And you need – this is the – you see this in their ads a little bit where it's like Trump has changed. He's less stable. You talk about this a lot. He's got different people around him. You've got to tell the whole story for people to understand that.

why this time would be different than last time? Because last time is we had a kind of embarrassing president, didn't seem great at his job, eggs were cheap, then something really bad happened that was beyond his control and America got fucked up, we fired him, now he's back, right? Yeah, I mean, look, I think this is appealing to me, not necessarily because we're trying to convince people that Donald Trump is a fascist who don't already think that he's a fascist or a dictator or whatever you may want to do. I do agree that, you know,

you have to frame it as the guy since you last saw him is different. He is older, crazier, more unhinged. The guy has lost a step. Clearly he's swaying and dancing at his events. He's, uh, you know, he's saying he's going to use the military against people. He's nuts. He's lost it. Right. Like, I think that is the argument you have to make, but I think, um,

One of the most effective arguments here is that so many people that have worked for Donald Trump at the most senior levels do not think he is fit for office. Like, so Blueprint also did a test of all closing arguments, which was the most effective.

Number one most effective argument. It boosted Kamala Harris 12 points with all voters and 14 points with independents. Nearly half of Trump's cabinet have refused to endorse him. When Trump learned during the Capitol riot that his supporters were threatening to kill his own vice president, he said, so what? And refused to do anything to ensure the vice president was safe. Republican governors, senators and House members have all said the same thing. We can't give Trump another four years of president.

So it was the number one most effective closing argument. Number two was abortion. Close behind it. That boosted her 10 and 12 with independents. And then after that, an argument about Social Security and what Trump would do on Social Security and what Trump would do on ACA. That boosted her six points. And then everything else was like in the single digits or negative. But those those were the best arguments, closing arguments against Trump. Right.

The first number I read was all voters, and then the second one was independents. Yeah. So that's pretty, you know, I just think that people, if you don't know much about whatever, you don't have to make the argument that he's a fascist. Just like, hey, see these generals? See these defense secretaries? National security advisors? Mike Pence? They're all like, no, no, don't do it. Don't do it. I would say that right now we are standing at the crossroads of a very large debate within the democratic political community right now about how best to close this race. That is one argument.

I'm sure the other one is like, let's talk about price gouging. No, no, no. It's not like it's not. It's not. Which I love. You know how much I love talking about price gouging. No one hates price gouging more than you. You're the guy. And I'm still angry at the nerds, the liberal policy nerds that don't think it's a good. It's really, I think, between the first argument on that list and the second one, which is a more focus on abortion than anything else.

Abortion, abortion, economy. It's basically taking everything that has been every dollar and cents and ounce of blood, sweat and tears has been put in building up where Kamala Harris is right now and putting that into one argument as opposed to sort of a shift at the end here, which this is a shift from where she was. Yeah, it is a shift. I'm not saying I'm not weighing in here. I want to see more data. I don't know. I could I could craft an argument that gets it all together. I mean, it's like you start with you start with Trump.

You start with the fact that he has lost a step. He is unstable. He is unhinged. And then you go through all the policies, right? Like he, you know, he was always anti-choice, but now he wants to have a national abortion ban and leave in place Trump bans that have led women to die. He was always for tariffs. Now he wants to slap 20% tariffs on

on everything we buy that's imported, iPhones, tequila, cars, everything else. He was always sort of crazy, but now he wants to turn the military on America. I think you go down the list that way. Your fingers work. I'll kind of deal with you. You write that down. I'll put it in a very popular political newsletter called The Message Box.

Okay, cool. I can guest write a message box. Or, you know what? I know you don't write anymore, so just send me a voice memo and I will dictate it. Oh, nice go. Well, I'm doing this podcast. Maybe someone could take notes.

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Alright, let's talk about Donald Trump. He did this Univision town hall this week. It aired Wednesday night. Surprise, surprise. It was a lot more challenging than his Fox News women's town hall, which it turns out was actually stocked with Trump supporters. Oh, what a surprise. Couldn't tell that from the fucking town hall. I watched five minutes of it when I walked in the office yesterday. And I was like, this is embarrassing. I think Kamala Harris would have gotten tougher questions from her own staff.

Oh, yeah. I take that as a strong yes. Then the questions that they got. One woman literally stood up and she was just like, I just want to thank you for everything you're doing to stop the woke military.

What? Is there a question here? But anyway, the Univision town hall, excellent questions. And there were some people who had voted for Donald Trump and had been Republicans in the town hall who asked him questions, including this man. Let's listen. I am a Republican, no longer registered. I want to give you the opportunity to try to win back my vote.

Okay, your, I'm going to say action and maybe inaction during your presidency and the last few years sort of, you know, was a little disturbing to me. You know, what happened during January 6th and the fact that, you know, you waited so long to take action while your supporters were attacking the Capitol. I'm curious how people so close to you and your administration no longer want to support you. So why would I want to support you?

If you would answer these questions for me, I would really appreciate it and give you the opportunity. Your own vice president doesn't want to support you now. Thank you, Ramiro. So the people that don't support a very small portion, we have a tremendous, about 97% of the people in the administration support me. But because it's me, somebody doesn't support, they get a little publicity.

The Vice President, I disagree with him on what he did. I totally disagree with him on what he did. Very importantly, you had hundreds of thousands of people come to Washington. They didn't come because of me. They came because of the election. They thought the election was a rigged election, and that's why they came. Some of those people went down to the Capitol. I said, peacefully and patriotically, nothing done wrong at all, nothing done wrong.

And action was taken, strong action. Ashley Babbitt was killed, nobody was killed. There were no guns down there, we didn't have guns. The others had guns, but we didn't have guns. And when I say we, these are people that walked down. This was a tiny percentage of the overall, which nobody sees and nobody shows.

But that was a day of love from the standpoint of the millions. It's like hundreds of thousands. It could have been the largest group I've ever spoken before. They asked me to speak. I went and I spoke. Day of love. Day of love, Dan. They tried to, they wanted to hang the vice president. They were hunting Nancy Pelosi. Police officers were beaten within an inch of their lives. There were pipe bombs. Pipe bombs. And by the way, they did have guns.

Maybe Trump didn't have a gun, because he did say we. But they had guns, and Trump knew they had guns, which we learned in the January 6th committee investigation that he said, yeah, they have guns, but they're not going to hurt me, so who cares? Let them through the magnetometers. That was the quote from Trump. So Trump knew that they were armed with guns, so he knew he was lying. But it was a day of love. It was a day of love. What did you think of that exchange? Honestly, holy fucking shit. I know. What are we doing? What are we doing?

I mean, it is truly an insane thing to say. This is his biggest vulnerability in the election. And frankly, that's also his biggest legal liability is January 6th. It is incredibly unpopular. Even most Republicans don't support what happened on that day. It was an act of absolute violence, of domestic terrorism. And Donald Trump calls it a day of love, like 20 days before the election. We're just like, oh, crazy Trump, just talking again.

Something is seriously broken in... It is the media environment. It is our own attention span. I saw you tweeting this today. How is this not the biggest story? Jim Comey put out a letter saying, oh, there's a couple more emails from Hillary we're looking into. And it upended the entire fucking election for the last couple weeks. And maybe civilization. It upended civilization. Donald Trump is waiting to...

possibly stand trial because he's been indicted for trying to overturn the last election and foment a violent insurrection and then goes back to it at a town hall and says it was a day of love.

I mean, it is. It's insane. We should not be talking about anything else for the next couple of weeks. And why is not every Republican being asked if January 6th is a day of love? All those ones who were in all the video, the documentary video footage running for their fucking lives, desperately calling the White House to try to get help. It's just it is a blip and it is.

Like it, it's not anyone's fault. It is a structural problem in our democracy right now that is just, but it's that structural problem, which is kind of why we're in this mess right now is just highlighted by the fact that he can say that. And it just, we've just moved on and it happens not 24 hours ago. Yeah. Well, fortunately Kamala Harris jumped on this today in Wisconsin. Let's listen to what she said.

Donald Trump was at a Univision town hall where a voter asked him about January 6th. Okay, so now we here know January 6th was a tragic day. It was a day of terrible violence. And what did Donald Trump say last night about January 6th? He called it a quote, a day of love.

But it points out something that everyone here knows. The American people are exhausted with his gaslighting. Exhausted with his gaslighting. What did you think of that? Can I ask you a question as a once and potentially future wordsmith? Yes. Do you think people know what gaslighting means?

I did not enjoy gaslighting the word gaslighting. I think it is a resistance term from 2017 that has been overused and then now a bunch of people use it all the time. This is a correct usage of it. She used it correctly. Absolutely. But many people have used it in such wrong ways that it's sort of... I don't know if it's that he's... I guess I don't know if the criticism is that he's gaslighting necessarily. The criticism is that like...

He thinks that attacking the seat of government, a bunch of people violently attacking the seat of government was a day of love that he was responsible for, that he is currently under indictment for. Like he is not fit to be president. He is not fit to be president. Yeah, I think there's just one more turn of the argument there. Right. Where either it's a combination of he's dangerous and or delusional.

Right. Yes. Right. Because we're, yes, exactly. The frame that he has, he has lost it. You know, it's the same dancing up on stage, swaying back and forth, thinking about he's mad King. You know, it's just, it's, I don't know. I don't know. Like, do they push this? Do they keep pushing it? Like I can imagine they put, I was tweeting, I was like, how long until someone has Donald Trump's answer and,

And side by side with the videos from January 6th where cops are just getting assaulted and people getting hurt. And sure enough, there's Harris campaign like in a couple hours put out that video. Like, is it an ad? Do you run an ad about it? Does she bring it up in an interview? Like, what do you think? I don't know. It's hard to do. Yeah, I think she should bring it up all the time. Just I mean, part of this is not a harken back to the previous debate, but.

there is your final closing message, but there's also, you just have to be on offense every day for the next 17 days or whatever it is we have left. And this is one way in which you do that. And so every day you're doing all these rallies, you're mixing new stuff in. And I think it's just like sticking with making this part of the pitch at the end here is, is good.

I mean, look, there's only so many ads that can run between now and election day. And so switching that out for something else, you already, because there's already traffic on now and it has to bleed through all of its points to have been an effective use of money. And then they obviously have a closing argument ad that's coming at some point for the final few days. So, I mean, you can do digital stuff with it for sure. Putting on actual linear TV is probably tough and you just have no points to waste right now. Yeah. Oof.

One other thing that came up at the town hall, notable, Springfield, Springfield, Ohio. Let's listen. My question to you very respectfully is, do you really believe that these people are eating the people's pets? Thank you. Well, thank you very much. This was just reported. I was just saying what was reported that's been reported.

and eating other things too that they're not supposed to be. But that's been in the newspapers and reported pretty broadly. - No, no, it has not been reported at all. It was reported by you and JD Vance and a bunch of people who don't know what the fuck they're talking about. So I do give that guy credit for asking the question respectfully. With all due respect, sir, were they eating the pets? - The sad part for me as I was listening to that answer was,

I am so online that I know exactly what Trump is talking about when he says other things, which is the geese. It's the geese in the parks. I know. I know. I know. Which also, not true. Not true. No.

I don't know. You think you go to a town hall, a Univision town hall, and you say that you just spread a debunked conspiracy that legal immigrants are eating people's pets. What is he going to do? Is he going to be better in the Latino vote than last time? Is that where we're headed? We'll find out. It's just worth putting a button on the fact that

This is depraved sociopathic behavior because there are innocent people, not just the migrants in Springfield. Everyone in Springfield's life has been massively disrupted about this. There are bomb threats in schools. People are scared because he has this dumb fucking lie that he can't admit was wrong and just move on from.

And he's done the same thing to folks in North Carolina who are recovering from the hurricane. They've had to deal with the conspiracies. People in Aurora who now have to deal with the fact that they think that other people think Venezuelan gangs have taken over the whole city. Everywhere he goes, he just spreads conspiracies in order to try to win that end up hurting people. He's just a fucking chaos machine. Just does not care. Another part of the argument that they should make. It's going to be a long message box you're writing. I just...

Like, I'm struggling with this because I get... I am a data person. Look at the polls. Look at the stuff. And, like, I get that especially because she is relatively new to the national scene as a presidential candidate this time around that she needs to define herself. And people want to know what she's going to do for them and what she's going to do for the country and her vision. And that's, like, incredibly important for her to talk about. But...

At the same time, she's not running against a typical Republican. She's running against Donald Trump. And...

Liz Cheney, all these Republicans, they're not supporting her because they like her policies. They're supporting her because they don't like her policies, but Donald Trump is fucking nuts. And if I was going to make an argument to someone who's going into the voting booth and wasn't sure what they were going to do, I would probably be like, yeah, maybe you agree with some of the stuff she says. Maybe you don't agree with other stuff, but this man is unfit to be president because he has lost his fucking marbles and that's it.

Yeah, I think the important part in that is...

And I think it fits in any version of the argument you want to do, but is that all the people who know him best and worked for him before don't think he should be president again. Yeah. Yeah. Don't take my word for it. I'm a crazy lib, right? Like listen to, listen to General Mattis and the, and the Joint Chiefs guy and Mike Pence. Dick Cheney. Like. Dick Cheney. You know, you got to listen to Dick Cheney. All right. Before we get to Ben Wickler, one last thing I wanted to mention. J.D. Vance finally coughed up an answer on whether he believes the big lie. Yeah.

He was asked yet again at an event, did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election? And his response is, I've answered this question directly a million times. No. I think there are serious problems in 2020. So did Donald Trump lose the election? Not by the words I would use. What the fuck does that mean?

I don't know. I guess that's just that's one where I do think like going back to Big Lie, what do they think? I don't know how many people that moves because you've got to move the threat of a Trump presidency forward and you can't just be looking at the past. But like it goes into the whole like J.D. Vance is full of shit and will, you know, do Donald Trump's bidding no matter what.

and is next in line for the presidency if he wins. And Donald Trump is fucking old and under many indictments. I think people assume, and it's kind of the way the press coverage is, there's a natural assumption that's like, well, Democrats and independents know the truth. All the Republicans believe it's a big lie. That's actually not true. In fact, only a third of voters believe the big lie and less than two thirds of Republicans believe it.

And so it is a signifier that you're an extremist kook when you talk about the big lie. There is this Stanford Business School study from 2022 that showed that the big lie candidates did around two points worse than the non-big lie Republicans in that election. And so I'm not saying this is going to cost Donald Trump and J.D. Vance two points, but it does matter because it says something to voters about who you are, which then it can be projected forward about all the other extreme crazy things you will do. It's tied to...

Your people believe if you're crazy enough to do that, you're crazy enough to do all these other things like right to contraception, gay marriage, book banning, cutting Social Security, Medicare and all that stuff. Yeah, no, that makes sense. All right. Before we get to our interview with Ben, one quick announcement this year. Climate is on the ballot all across the country. And voters like you are deciding on critical climate measures that affect the air we breathe, the water we drink and whether we'll still have summers that aren't on fire. Yeah.

Vote Save America's build your own ballot tool to the rescue. You can learn who and what's on the ballot wherever you live. Fill out a practice ballot in just a few clicks and be prepared to cast your ballot for climate solutions on or before November 5th. Your vote matters, so help build a greener future by electing climate champions. Go to votesaveamerica.com slash climate to check it out now. And also, again, sign up votesaveamerica.com slash travel. You can go to a swing state.

There's travel and lodging that will be taken care of by the campaign. You can sign up. You can go to Arizona, Nevada. If you're in the West Coast, you can go to Pennsylvania. If you're in New York, super important to go help.

As we have talked about this entire episode, the media environment is broken. There are structural problems with people remembering shit. And so the conversations that you have in these final weeks with people, with people who have not decided whether they're going to vote or who they're going to vote for, are going to make the difference in these states where the race is on a razor's edge. So please sign up. VoteSick.

Vote Save America. This message has been paid for by Vote Save America. You can learn more at votesaveamerica.com. This ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. When we come back, Ben Wickler.

At a time when we're debating where policing is going, we're going to tell you where the police came from. The first person to use the term organized crime didn't mean it in the sense of Don Corleone and the mafia. He meant it in terms of what he saw as this deep, deep symbiotic relationship between the people running the city government and the police department. From Wondery and Crooked Media, I'm Chinjarai Kumaneka, and this is Empire City, the untold origin story of the NYPD.

Follow Empire City wherever you get your podcasts. Binge all episodes of Empire City early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Joining us now, he's the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party and a friend of the pod. Just looking great, that she said. I'm guessing you're in Green Bay right now. Ben Wickler. Hey, Green Bay, Wisconsin, and hello, Pod Save America and John. It's good to be with you today.

So you're in Green Bay. I know that Kamala Harris is going to be there today as well. Wisconsin was decided by 20,000 votes in 2020. 2022, the Senate race was decided by just under 30,000 votes. So 50-50 state, has been for a while. Polling in the spring and summer suggested Wisconsin was the blue wall state where Democrats had the biggest lead. Now it's arguably the tightest state once again, as it had been in 2020. What, if anything, do you think has changed in

in the race over the last month? I'm removing my cheese head because I'm nodding vigorously and it is hard to nod in a cheese head, so I'm replacing it with my camo hair. I love that. Love that hat. Wisconsin is...

being itself. Wisconsin is the 50-50 state. So the big question is whether there's polling error and which direction it goes, but the polls getting super, super tight is kind of what we experience a lot here. And right now, the presidential race is a toss-up. The Senate race is now a toss-up. The Republicans have...

flooded the zone with attack ads against Tammy Baldwin. So that race has gotten super tight. The fight for the state assembly majority is a toss up. We are trying to flip four state Senate seats to pave a way to a Senate majority in 2026. And then there's multiple house races that are in the margin of error. So it is intense across the board. And the question is,

Were we ahead before and now it's just the partisans are kind of returning to their camps? Or was there some kind of response bias that was kind of getting the polls a little bit off and now it's actually a truer picture of what's been here all along? But either way, our expectation in the final sprint is that this thing comes down to like two or three votes per precinct across the state and it's in the margin of effort, as we say, not the margin of error.

I promise I won't harp on the polling for too long, but I'm just wondering about the polling error in Wisconsin or the potential polling error. It was the biggest polling error of any state in 2020. We all remember the Biden plus 17 poll. But even the average was way off and it was more off than most other states in most other cycles. What's your take on whether the best pollsters, especially private campaign pollsters,

have fixed the problem or like, what have they said to you about trying to fix the problem? Is it, what are you most worried about in terms of like, uh, what the polls are telling you about where the electorate is, not just in the, like, what's the horse race. Cause who cares about that? But, you know, in terms of where the campaigns are putting time, money, resources, et cetera. Yeah. Well, I,

we've been just obsessed ever really since 2016 but especially after 2020 because we had the biggest polling year in the country also 2016. seven points off in the real clear politics average in 16 and 20. that was before the flood of red wave kind of skewed polling

And the result of that has been a kind of flowering of a tons of different types of ways to measure what's happening with whom. Tons of focus groups focus on particular subpopulations around the state across race, ethnicity, gender, geography, generation. It's lots of polls at different levels conducted with different methodologies that we can kind of pile on top of each other. It's tons of research.

work to model who's going to say what when we knock on their door and then compare that to what actually happens when we talk to them. So you can get a sense of whether you're off one way or the other. That was part of what happened in 2016. We ignored the data from the field. We don't do that anymore. And all those signals are telling us that this is likely to be super close.

Now, that said, if we wake up the day after the election and we've lost by several points or won by several points, in a way, I would not be shocked because there are two big forces, one pushing in one direction, the other in the other. One is that there's a lot of Trump supporters that just do not trust polling and won't answer pollster phone calls. And every pollster has to guess how big the partisan non-response bias is.

And then the other thing is that the Dobbs decision especially has energized a ton of people, especially women, especially young women, but also older women in all parts of the state who are, I think, potentially going to vote in a furious and intensive way that isn't necessarily reflected in public opinion polling.

Now, if I was a pollster, I'd tell you these two forces are probably going to basically cancel each other out. We're trying to predict both. And we think it's tied and it will be tied, or that's the most likely thing. And that's what the margin of error is for, is to show you how far it could shift in either direction. But we won't really know until the final ballot's counted. And the only thing we can do in the meantime is assume that it is

literally a coin flip, and that if we throw everything we have against the wall, if we organize with every second of daylight and into the dark now that the sun is setting so early, if we make every phone call, if we raise every dollar to get it into paid communication in every form, all of that might be enough to win by a hair's breadth and save democracy.

I've heard you say that another challenge in figuring this out is same day registration in Wisconsin. And so you can get a flood of people who show up on Election Day that were probably never captured or thought about by not only pollsters, but I guess modeling. Is that how do you guys think of that? I mean, it's a great thing, by the way, that people can register same day and vote. We love that. But I'm sure it makes it trickier. It does make it trickier, especially because nobody's polling online.

unregistered voters. That's just not, you know, every pollster, they show you likely voters, which are a subset of registered voters, and then they show you registered voters. But we always have wards where there's over 100% voter turnout of registered voters because there are more people who same day register and vote than there are people who were registered and don't vote. So the electorate will grow. And if you look at Wisconsin voter registration statistics, it looks like the electorate's shrinking until an election comes along and then it jumps up.

And that can go either way. In 2020, the same-day registration favored Trump heavily. Democrats voted early by mail. They all registered beforehand so they could get their absentee ballots.

This time, there's a chance for Democrats to get the jump on this. But there's also lots of years when it's been evenly split in same-day registration, too. But that's part of what uncertainty has built into the whole thing. And it's also why the returns to effort in Wisconsin are so high. Because if you're out at a bar talking to everyone there about the importance of voting, even people who've never voted in the state before can wake up the next morning and, you

have a couple of cups of coffee and then bring their proof of residence and their photo ID and register and vote that very day.

I will also tell you, I have this vivid memory from high school when a friend of mine, his older sister was a UW Madison student. And it was a student running for, I think, county board. And the friend's older sister had a party and a bunch of people stayed up really late drinking and they woke up and they were sung over and like they didn't vote. And the candidate wound up losing by fewer votes than the number of people who had voted.

Been too drunk to vote that day. So the lesson is, no matter how you feel, you will get yourself to the polls. You might be the margin of victory right there. So if you're going to drink before election night, just set that alarm really loud and put it right next to your head. That is the lesson I get from that. Yes. Have a buddy who's responsible for dragging you to the polls.

We're speaking on Thursday. Kamala Harris has three events in Wisconsin today. Tour with Mark Cuban. Obviously, she's going to be in Green Bay. She's in lacrosse. Also, I think Tim Walz and Barack Obama are going to be in Madison next week. I've had some people ask me, in this political and media environment where everything is nationalized, everyone is polarized, what's going to happen?

What is the value of campaign stops like these to you guys in terms of moving voters? They're so, so helpful. I cannot say how helpful and how valuable they are. And, you know, time is the one thing you can't buy with money and campaign contributions. So when a candidate comes...

a bunch of things happen at once. The first thing is that there's a bunch of press about the fact that they are coming. So it gets in the news. The key thing, right, is reaching people who are not paying attention to politics already. And when you are in the local, like, radio news break between the best hits of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s,

that Kamala Harris is coming to town, people are finding out about that. Then you have the actual event. You have thousands of people show up. They can all be asked to volunteer. They can all be asked to get on the Reach app. They can all be asked to go to wisdoms.org and donate and sign up as volunteers to do door-knocking shifts.

So they then can multiply out and go talk to their friends. Then you have the news coverage of the event itself, which again will reach a lot of people who are generally avoiding political news, but it is the thing happening in town at that moment and in the state at that moment. It's covered all over the state. And then there's clips from the rally or the event that happened. They go viral on the internet and that are used in ads. So many of the ads you see in Wisconsin right now use footage from events that happened in Wisconsin.

So there's this, like if a campaign is doing it right, a visit from the candidate to a community has a multiplier effect before, during and after both at the grassroots level and in a kind of air war across the state. And I will tell you the Harris campaign is using these visits in the right way. It is, you know, this is not Trump rambling for an hour and a half in Madison Square Garden. This is showing up in Green Bay and La Crosse and actually connecting with people, energizing them and then sending them out as ground troops while also amplifying the most critical moments.

So this is gold for us. And I will say the fact that Harris and Walz are visiting lots of different parts of the state, different places, they get, you know, different media markets with different local TV signals, that they're coming back in different kinds of contexts and that they're, you know, bringing along President Barack Obama to Madison on the first day of early vote. All those things could give us that final extra edge that Elon Musk with his gigantic amounts of money and his very weird online presence, he can't match that. That is something that

that we have and could be our counter to the flood of right-wing money that is hitting the airways all over our state. You were talking about the deluge of ads with all the right-wing money. What is the gist of these ads in terms of message and what has been the most, the best, most effective pushback to some of these negative ads? So all the Republican ads in our state just about are hammering on fear and it's fear of immigrants and immigration tied to crime and trans stuff.

And sometimes they tie all three of those together. Sometimes it's pick two. It's like a right-wing rat bag of trying to demonize a group of people and make everyone else afraid of those folks and create an other that strongman Trump says he'll protect you from. And it's an old, tired, vicious playbook, but it can have an effect. And it's being used at lots of levels. It's being used in the Senate race as well. And to counter it, you have to lay out who's

who you are and what you're for, you have to point out why they're making these attacks, which is that they're trying to distract people from the fact that they're trying to rip you off and that they're trying to divide people because they know that if we elect Harris and Walz and we elect Tammy Baldwin, then we'll actually have a government that's on the side of the middle class standing up to special interests and blocking extremists from banning abortion. So you have to be on offense, but also explain why you're under attack and then shift to the ground where you're going on offense and winning.

And the thing you don't want to do is kind of get stuck in repeating their lies while you're debunking them. So they're obviously wrong, but getting on the stronger ground and then pushing back and punching back and explaining why they're doing these attacks is a critical piece of this.

I think one of the striking things is that Republicans are not even trying to defend against the accusations of abortion demands. They're just on the attack right now. And what that means is that a lot of Republicans who are generally kind of partisan Republicans are coming into the fold. That's why you see the Senate race tightening. Also is that there are a lot of the Trump voters who were lukewarm on Eric Hovde when the ads were about Eric Hovde, they're getting on board for kind of like the, the mega attack game plan. But again,

The Republicans are leaving themselves open for the kind of moderate Republicans who have mixed feelings about the fact that their candidates want to ban abortion nationwide. And a lot of the Democratic ads, we have especially kind of...

on offense ads about the economy and the economic vision of Democratic candidates and about this issue of personal freedom, reproductive freedom and abortion. And the personal testimonials from people who've been directly affected by abortion bans or had complications in their pregnancy and urgently needed care that Republicans would try to ban, those things do move voters forward.

I think they affect every race on the ballot. That's one reason why we're so focused on supporting the down ballot candidates as well, because I think that if you have an ad from a state legislative candidate that talks about the effect of the abortion ban that Republicans put in or refuse to lift a finger to remove after the Dobbs decision, I think that affects every race on the ballot. So two kinds of persuadable voters, one kind that is open to

Voting for Trump, open to Hovde, open to some Republican candidates. And then there's the person who's open to not voting at all. What are you guys hearing on the doors, on the phones, over text about what issues are driving the race for these persuadable voters and what is getting them off the fence? So it's interesting.

The wall of right-wing fear-mongering in the state means that if you're talking to someone who's voted Republican in the past, they're often thinking about the kind of criminal immigrant narrative that Republicans are pushing. And you'll hear that from people.

And they're also thinking about what it would mean in their families if abortion was banned and they or someone that they loved needed access to abortion care. And this is often, you know, it's not people who want a candidate who goes right down the middle of these two issues. It's people who are conflicted across these two things.

I think the other piece that you often hear, especially from people who generally are fed up with the system, is frustration around the economy and the feeling of like, who's actually fighting for me? Like I had a non-voting Uber driver who his line to me was like, Republicans care about the rich, Democrats care about the poor, no one cares about the middle class. And I was like, well, I want to ask you to listen to a Kamala Harris speech, my friend, because you will hear someone laying out a vision for the middle class. The folks can buy houses and start businesses and

you know, support childcare, support their aging parents through Medicare. But it's going to where the voter is that actually makes the difference.

And the thing about the abortion bans is that they've reached into people's personal lives. They've reached outside of politics, outside of what's on the news and into people's most intimate, urgent medical decisions and the moments when they're most vulnerable. And suddenly it's politicians calling the shots. And that is horrifying for people. It's a horrifying thing. It's a horrifying prospect. And it's something that a lot of people in Wisconsin are one or two degrees of separation away from someone who actually experienced it. For 451 days, we had an abortion ban here.

And that's affecting all these different races, the economic argument and this question around freedom. You know, we have...

candidates, Democratic candidates in every congressional district. I'm in Kristen Lyerly's district right now in Green Bay. She is a pro-choice OBGYN who's running for Congress and making this absolutely clear as a dividing line in this race in a way that I think energizes voters. You have Rebecca Cook in the third congressional district running against Eric Hovde. Eric Hovde, by the way, who was on Capitol grounds on January 6th and would be inside the congressional chamber in January 6th, 2025, if he were reelected. But that guy supported total abortion bans.

And Rebecca Cook is a young pro-choice woman candidate who grew up on a dairy farm. She's nobody's idea. She's a very kind of centrist, democratic candidate in a purple district, but she is crystal clear that the government should not be overriding people's personal decisions about this. And that combination of economic populism, clarity about choice and reproductive freedom, and the kind of common sense, rejecting extremes, it's a really good fit for the district.

And then you have in the first Peter Barca, who is up against Brian Stiles, supported all these abortion ban bills in Congress. In all these different races, the arguments that the candidates are making in the House races,

They echo the candidates' arguments for Tammy Baldwin's Senate race against Eric Hofty, who said he's totally opposed to abortion. And they echo the argument that Harrison Walls make against J.D. Vance, who supported national abortion bans. And Donald Trump wants to punish women. And so there's a surround sound, an echo effect, and also with the state legislative candidates.

If that can be what is on voters' minds as they walk into the polling place, someone who's on my side on the economy against special interests and somebody who's on my side for freedom against meddling extremist politicians, Democrats win this election, even if it's close. If people walk into the polling place feeling afraid of a phantom crime wave that's whipping through their communities, you know, driven by these kind of caricatured policies Republicans are telling them Democrats are imposing...

then it becomes really hard. And the vote, the fight for what the election is about in a way is existential. It's part of what volunteers can change when they're talking to people at the doors.

Speaking of the doors, you mentioned Elon Musk. I've heard reports that even the Trump folks who are quite confident about winning are less confident in their ground game, which has mostly been outsourced to Elon Musk. I know that Democrats, including folks in the Harris campaign, are quite confident in the ground game. I know you're confident in the ground game. But what are you seeing in Wisconsin in terms of both sides' ground game? I was in Platteville, Wisconsin yesterday.

in Western Wisconsin, this is like the Southwest corner of the state. And like in every county that I visit, I was asking the volunteers there if they're seeing Republican canvassers when they're out on doors. And the answer is a two letter word that begins with N and ends with O. We are out in communities all over the state in every single county.

all across Wisconsin every week. And every week we hear about maybe a couple of places where America PAC canvassers are showing up. And often they're not even successfully hanging their door knockers, their door knocking, you know, door hangers off the doorknobs in people's houses. There's been like two instances where I've heard about actual conversations people have had with them. I, you know, I know that this is shocking given his business record, but

It might be that he's not going to hit his deadlines for getting those door knocks done. And I love this for the Republican Party. I think it's great. I think it's a great example of, you know, outsourcing jobs that used to be done by Wisconsinites. Someone who doesn't believe in union labor and hard work. And this is their plan. Now, does that guarantee that we're going to win? It absolutely does not. But it means that we might be able to move

work our way through to the finish line in this thing. And having a, you know, one sort of medium of the contest in which I think we have a serious advantage means that we need to triple down on that. There's a, you know, in general, your weaknesses are not actually your strengths. And so what you want to do is make the most of your strengths and then, and then shore up your weaknesses on the Republican side, they've let the bottom fall out of this thing. And, and,

You know, we just need to run up the score with everything we can do to organize and get our friends out to vote. And again, I'm just going to hammer wisdoms.org slash volunteer. Or if you go to Kamala Harris.com slash volunteer, you can sign up wherever you might be in the country. I know I vote save America. You have volunteer links. Um,

Folks, those phone calls, those door knocks, the relational outreach that we're doing friend to friend, these things do matter. And this thing could come down to fewer votes than the number of contacts in your phone and your five best friends' phones. Like that could be the margin of victory in states like Wisconsin. And there are not a lot of those states.

That's a good place to leave it. Everyone, if you're nervous, volunteer. And Wisconsin's a great place to do it. You guys could could use some help. I will let you go. I know you've got a Kamala Harris event to to attend up in Green Bay. And thanks, as always, for joining us. And Ben Wickler, good luck out there. Thank you so much, John. And folks, do not sleep on our Senate race. The House races, the legislative races, finally a fair maps and the presidential. This is every line of the ballot. All systems go. Let's go fight and win.

That's our show for today. Dan will be back with a bonus episode on Sunday. Dan, who are you talking to this week? This week I talked to Amy Walter, one of the smartest people in politics. She is the editor-in-chief and publisher of the Cook Political Report. And we talked about the presidential race, but also the House and Senate races to understand if Democrats have a chance to sweep all three in this election. All right. Everyone check it out Sunday. Have a good weekend. And we'll be back with another Pods of America on Tuesday. Bye, everyone.

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Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari. Reid Cherlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis.

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Hi, I'm Jon Lovett, host of Love It or Leave It. You know it can be tempting to tune out the news completely, but my producers won't let me, so instead I put on a weekly comedy show about it. Every week, I welcome an all-star lineup of comedians, performers, politicians, and random gay guys to make sense of politics and pop culture. And even when we don't succeed, boy, we have fun trying. So join us as we run down the latest headlines and figure out what the hell we're all going to do about it. Listen to Love It or Leave It wherever you get your podcasts.