Trump Closes With Small Fries and Big D*cks
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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Wow. Okay. On today's show, an exhausted Donald Trump is talking dicks and flipping burgers as both campaigns race to get those last remaining undecided voters off the fence. I'd much rather be talking burgers and flipping dicks. High-fived on that. Didn't even know that was coming.

to surprise you guys. Kamala Harris continues her sprint through the battlegrounds with help from Barack Obama, Liz Cheney, and many others, while the world's richest man launches a legally questionable million-dollar sweepstakes to help Trump. And later, friend of the pod, Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz, talks to Lovett about how the race is looking and the most important things everyone can do to help. But first...

Donald Trump may very well win this race, but with two weeks to go, he seems to be losing steam and his mind. A Trump advisor reportedly told an outlet that their 78-year-old candidate has been canceling interviews because he's, quote, exhausted. A recent Associated Press headline reads, a failed mic leaves Donald Trump pacing the stage in silence for nearly 20 minutes in Detroit.

This was after he stopped taking questions at a Pennsylvania town hall so he could rock out to Ave Maria and YMCA for a good half hour or so. And whenever Trump does speak, his rhetoric lurches from deranged to absurd. Here he is with Fox News' Howie Kurtz over the weekend. The other day you called it a day of love. That sparked a lot of reaction. Can you understand why many Americans would view it as a dark and tragic day in our history? The...

The crowd I spoke before, which you rarely see, I have pictures of it, they're massive, but nobody wants to put them in.

- It was the biggest crowd I've ever spoken to, and I've spoken to the biggest crowds. I've never seen that many people. I tell you, there was a beauty to it, and there was a love to it that I've never seen before. - The enemy within is a pretty ominous phrase if you're talking about other Americans. - I think it's accurate. I mean, I think it's accurate. - After our interview, Donald Trump flew to Pennsylvania, Arnold Palmer's hotel, where he discussed the golfer's side of his manhood. - This is a guy that was all man.

His man was strong and tough. And I refuse to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, oh my God, that's unbelievable. I had to say it. He had to say it. Why do you guys think he felt the need to tell the crowd that the late Arnold Palmer was hung like a one wood?

There's a lot to talk about in that whole package. There you go. First of all, why did Howie Kurtz have a four-packs-a-day voice in the interview, and then he sounded normal after? What was going on there? This is neither here nor there, but also, Howie Kurtz, he looked like he was from the 70s. Not in a good or bad way, but his haircut looked like he was reporting on the oil embargo during the Carter era. It was a deeply weird...

interview. Do you shower together after you golf? This was one of my first questions. Like, I'm not a golfer, but it doesn't seem like a shower afterwards type of sport. Yeah. Ben Dreyfuss did some original reporting on this. Did you guys see this? Tommy, I was going to bring it up, and then I was like, I don't know how to explain Ben's reporting in a way that is appropriate even for this podcast. I don't want to scoop him. I just think it's cool that of the three of us, I'm not the one that went deeper into whether or not Arnold Palmer had a giant dick deep down the dong.

Ben Dreyfuss did. Ben Dreyfuss did. And? There's a lot of circumstantial evidence that he does not necessarily have a big dick. Had. Sorry. Rest in peace. Yeah, he's dead. He's dead. He died in 2016. Yeah. They had to push that lid down on the coffin pretty hard. Shit.

This is what this campaign has done to us. There's nothing left to talk about except for this dead golfer's junk. This is the point, too. We're skipping over how in the interview he was like, oh, yeah, I do think that the violent attack on the Capitol was a day of love. And I do think the Democrats are the enemy within, which, again, we predicted this would happen. I think this was like right after Mike Johnson.

speaking of Johnson's, went on Meet the Press or somewhere and was asked about this. And he's like, oh, that's not what he meant. That's not what he meant. And sure enough, Donald Trump's like, this is exactly what I meant. Punish Adam Schiff. That's what I meant. Whatever Glenn Youngkin said, whatever Mike Johnson said, whatever anyone else is saying to try to defend me, this is exactly what I mean. Yeah, it's sort of, if Trump were on a unicycle,

saying I'm going to imprison my enemies, it's still dangerous, even though it's pretty funny that he's on a unicycle. Yeah. A deranged clown can be funny, but you give him the nukes, not so funny. No. In general, how do you guys think the let Trump be Trump strategy is playing out in the final weeks here? Net positive, net negative? I think on balance, it's a net negative. It's hard to argue that if you were just, you know, had like a disciplined strategy,

message about the economy for the remainder of campaign that that would that would probably help him uh calling january 6th a day of love absolutely unequivocally hurts him and repeating it on how it hurts hurts him i think the arnold palmer stuff like look there's a lot of young men in particular hear this and just think it's funny they think it's trump is authentic he's

He's goofy. He doesn't care about being politically correct or saying the right thing. Like the head spinning part about this is always that he wins evangelical voters like 95 to one. And you would think that the kind of Mike Pence's of the world are the people who would find this offensive in some way. Or, you know, the people get mad about like a Disney character not being white every few years. Just like kind of brush this stuff off. No, there's just look, there's a little bit of politics in him talking about Arnold Palmer having a big dick, which is like.

He was a real man. He was, there were, there used to be real men in this country. We celebrate real masculine men and the other side doesn't. Big swinging dicks, big, big golfing guys in the shower. Just even I'm uncomfortable. He doesn't even need clubs. This Arnold Palmer guy, he's just out there with a putter fucking buck ass naked golfing. Let me tell you about the only pole that matters. Yeah.

I just think like, look, it doesn't matter how, look, any great golfer will tell you, you can have a heavier club, you can have a lighter club. It's about touch. It's about finesse. I was waiting for Tommy to make the motion. I beat him to it. I beat him to it. Enough about a short game. Hey. Continue. What else were you going to talk about? Yeah, I mean, look. What else?

What else were we going to talk about, John? I don't know. I think you can say in these final weeks he is not driving much of a message himself. We can separate him from the campaign, of course. His campaign is running all kinds of ads. They are driving a very specific message. He is not driving much of one. There was also a time story, I don't know if you guys saw this last week, about how he's just...

over the weekend, how he's just bored of the economy. That's why he's making it all about immigration. Like when he does drive a message, it's almost exclusively about immigration because he thinks the crowd seems bored by it, which I think is very revealing. It's what the crowd likes and it's what he likes. He's genuinely passionate about it. I think like with Trump, the medium is the message. I think when he's ranting and raving in front of his biggest fans, I think his biggest fans like it when it gets outside of that. I think it hurts him. I think the kind of

goofy, rambling, occasionally funny Trump in a podcast setting. I think they think it's better for him than sitting down for mainstream interviews. I don't think it's as helpful as their campaign would want it to be because he is so, he's just lost a step. So even when he's doing his greatest hits, he's just not bringing the same energy to it. He doesn't have many more steps to lose at this point. No. He's almost out of steps. Have you seen these clips of Frankie Valli?

No. Frankie Valli has a Vegas show. It's quite sad. I believe. And basically, they kind of wheel out 90-some-odd-year-old Frankie Valli, and he kind of holds the mic up here, and then they just play his greatest hits. And increasingly, that's what Trump is like. They kind of get him out there, and he's like,

used to be tough in this country i think the jews might be responsible it's like and it's a little bit like he's a random number generator and just like some part of the trump large language model will kind of spit something out there's a bit of uh you'll be surprised to learn there's a bit of hyperbole that like whenever trump says something crazy now they try to like put everything in the dementia frame right he's lost it like the arnold palmer thing is an

I don't think it's not that, even though some people were treating it like that. He didn't tell it as well as he would have five years ago. He would have been more charming and funny about it a couple years ago. Right, right. But I do think when you combine the weird swaying to YMCA and Ave Maria at that town hall with the 20 minutes of walking around in silence while he's waiting for a mic. Also, no one could get him a mic in 20 minutes. It's inexplicable. That seems crazy.

Inexplicable you don't have another mic. And just like the rallies, the rambling, the speeches are going on for even longer than usual and they've always been really long. Again, if you watch a rally or an interview with a MAGA friendly outlet, which is the only ones he does now, I think you will not be impressed with Donald Trump. Yeah.

And you're right, the podcast ones, maybe some people are impressed with that, some of the podcast interviews, but I don't know. The irony is he only does stuff in his safe space. He's on like kind of podcasts with former wrestlers like The Undertaker or kind of Barstool Sports type shows or Fox kind of friendly audiences.

But he does better when he's pressed a little bit. When he did the thing with John Micklethwaite, the editor of Bloomberg News, they got into a back and forth and Trump was pissed. He was punching back and he got aggressive and it made him a little more disciplined. And also he was getting cut off by Micklethwaite. So he couldn't go on. He couldn't do the weave for 35 minutes about some bizarre story that ends with

you know, the golden bear's ass is kind of like the punchline. It's like he gets forced to be a little more focused and like pugilistic. And I think when he's on, when he's just like alone at a mic, he ends up in going on these diatribes that hurt him. Yeah. Two of Trump's comms people did an interview with Semaphore where they said that the freewheeling Trump is a strategic choice to counteract the Harris campaign's portrayal of him.

And basically they said that, you know, if voters see Trump laughing and joking, I've never seen him laugh. They know he can't possibly be a threat to democracy. Do you agree with that general idea? I agree that that's what they're trying to do. And I think there's some validity to it. I do think that if the only thing people saw was Trump laughing it up at a McDonald's or having a funny moment on a podcast with Theo Vaughn about Coke, and then what they see on television is Liz Cheney being like, he will end democracy. I think that that's

that is their fair pushback, but it's not enough. It doesn't counteract the other many clips of him actually issuing the threats and doing all of the rest. Yeah, I think we're kind of, we're trying to

retrofit reality into a strategy here. Yeah. You know, I mean, I think the thing that prevents people from thinking that he is some scary authoritarian threat to democracy is his four years in office and the fact that he's like the best known celebrity on the planet. I'm sure these interviews help him goofing around being fun and talking about like, you know, the guy who took over for Lou Gehrig.

that all helps Wally Pipp. But yeah, I mean, these guys are trying to make it sound like they have some sort of strategic genius here when it's just their guy doing Trump jazz. I thought what was most revealing about that is that they are concerned that he appears as a threat to democracy. And they know that that is not politically helpful to him. And so that they are trying this in the first place. Agree with you guys that they're not quite succeeding. Well, yeah, I just think that like,

There are two campaigns running like Donald Trump is not strategic, but he has smart people around him. Everything they do isn't going to be stupid. Trump is going to get wins on the board. He's going to have effective moments. He's going to have charming moments. I think to Tommy's point, yeah, they're trying to turn the fact that they can't really figure out what to do with him at a rally to stop him from going off script for an hour and a half. They're trying to turn that into an advantage. But like,

reading that interview, I was like, well, this is pretty smart. Now, you then remember, wait, the person they're describing is Donald Trump. No, he's not having this incredibly successful interview on these platforms. He's not delivering what they're claiming he's delivering. But there's a part of that interview where they talk about why they prefer going to comedians and others than going to national media. That may

a member of the Kamala Harris campaign could absolutely say that like less charged and toxic conversations. And I'm like, well, that's smart. That's right. Yeah. They're just describing like the reality of the current media landscape. Yeah. Trump event that got the most attention this weekend was the big visit to McDonald's in Pennsylvania. Basically, the Trump campaign shut down a McDonald's temporarily, then picked some people to go through the drive through so Trump could serve them fries and repeat the

Weird lie he keeps telling that Kamala Harris never worked at McDonald's. Just no basis in that at all. Obviously, this drove everyone a little crazy. The one CBS reporter did ask Trump a substantive question about the minimum wage. Let's listen.

Well, I think this, I think these people work hard. They're great. And I just saw something, a process. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful thing to see. These are great franchises and produce a lot of jobs. And it's good. And great people work in here too. So take that as a no, maybe yes. This whole stunt photo op event, whatever you want to call it, generated quite a bit of attention and blowback. What'd you guys think?

You got McDonald's this morning. I did get McDonald's this morning.

I was so angry. I was so mad. Advertising works. Branding works. Yeah, I mean, it definitely made me want McDonald's more. I mean, look, I think Donald Trump putting on and taking off an apron for the first time in his life at a closed McDonald's while he pretends to serve food to super fans recruited, I suppose, by either the campaign or the MAGA owner of this franchise. Like, it's a good picture. I think it's a good picture for Donald Trump. But I think we have to, like, it's so hard to get out of the, like,

He's in an like all the kind of like joking and making it about the picture and not about the fact that like, of course, he doesn't support raising the minimum wage. Like Donald Trump would be a disaster for people who work at McDonald's. It is a sick fucking joke that he's putting on this apron. Last time he was president, he tried to take away health care of millions of people. Many of them probably work to McDonald's.

He's opposed to their ability to unionize. He will take away their basic health care protections. Doesn't want to pay overtime. He will cut taxes for billionaires and corporations and make a national sales tax that regular people will have to pay to cover the difference. Like, it's just...

It's the whole the idea that he is this candidate of the working man because he's put on a fucking apron like I think it's a good picture for him but it's like our job to kind of not fall into the trap of debating and being at the McDonald's and like getting back to this like make the picture a fucking a joke and

Yeah, it was a really smart event. I mean, it's really, really smarter than it do. I don't know why he's obsessed with saying Kamala didn't work at McDonald's. I guess he just lets her call her inauthentic or something. But yeah, he got to raise that there. He, I mean...

Like it seemed fun and funny, normal, the whole event. I mean, I watched the whole thing. It was like 25, 26 minutes of him learning to use the frying machine, doing it in a suit and tie, which looks ridiculous, but I don't know. Like he's authentically a fan of McDonald's. He eats it. He served it to athletes who won national championships.

It was obviously a campaign stunt. It was not, he didn't really work the fryer. Like he dunked it once. Like in 07, remember Obama did the SEIU walk a day in their shoes event. That woman, Pauline Beck, where he like got up at the crack of dawn and went with her. They, they made a breakfast for this man. She was a home healthcare worker. She made breakfast for the man. He swept up. Like it was an actual day of work with the SEIU. Um, that was different. This was just a 25 minute stunt, uh,

But it went super viral on social media. Like, we're all talking about it. I think it was very smart. Yeah, I think it's like a net neutral. I think there's like a ton of people making fun of it. A ton of people saying it's the best thing ever. I can't imagine it's moving many people. I think, but look, there are...

a bunch of people who maybe don't read about it but just see the picture and might be like oh cool like the vast majority of people cool people the vast majority of people will see a clip on their tick tock or social media or something and be like oh there's donald trump good mcdonald's that's kind of fun and different well it broke it broke through to like you know people in my life that don't pay attention much to politics and i i got some text people just like what the is this it wasn't like cool it was like what the is this yeah i i just think that like

The the the trump people liking it. I just think it's a great picture It's a great picture and then people making fun of it because like oh he's like the it's like The worst undercover boss like all those kind of jokes I just I like I do think you have to kind of get to like this is somebody pretending to care about working-class people right that's when he will not and like as it has to just be very like not jokey I think the responses that that drove me

most insane are uh this is just like dukakis in a tank it's like no it's not oh that was one of the popular liberal responses on twitter those people are stupid another one another one oh by the way i did some investigative reporting and that mcdonald's got fined for health violations that i thought was kind of funny i'm sorry i like that i'm sorry but mcdonald's serves millions of people every day nobody gets fucking sick it's amazing

Nobody gets sick? It's amazing. Nobody? Very rarely. Very, very rarely. Obviously, the Kamala Harris campaign would do this, but they were showing some of the responses on TikTok, which I do think were very funny. It's just some young kids being like, hey, grandpa, just put the fries in the fucking bag. Well, the best part of it is he was obsessed with the fact that you didn't actually have to touch the fries to get them from the fryer to the container before the packaging to the packaging. I was like, what did you think happened at a restaurant? Do you think people were hand scooping your fries out?

Well, he was doing a very Trump thing, which is just like talking a lot about how this and that. The other thing, when like the people are just sitting there like waiting, the people who've been hand selected by the campaign are just waiting there for their fries in their bag so they can drive off set. But then he did a little press conference from the takeout window. So he was taking questions from the press. That window was so good. It was good. It was good. It was good. It looked like, yeah, it kind of reminded me of when

when John Amos was in coming to America and running the McDowell's. I'll tell you what, if he wins, the picture of him smiling and handing out fries is going to be the picture. If he loses, the picture of him sitting behind the window like this, which is another one, that will be the picture. The picture will be him at MSG or him in Coachella being like, why are you in California? Here's one response to the whole McDonald's thing from a Democrat that I did find compelling. You've got Donald Trump putting

putting on a little McDonald's costume because he thinks that's what people do. They're not trying to empathize with us. They are making fun of us. They are making fun of us. Donald Trump thinks that people who work at McDonald's are a joke. Elon Musk thinks that dangling money in front of a working person is a cute thing to do when the election of our lives is before us. Because that's what

People and billionaires like that, too. That was AOC, of course. I liked that because I think it turns it into a real populist argument and sort of exposes the fraud without being like, no, I think that's right, which that was my scientific term for what I thought most of the responses were like. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaking of the world's richest man, Elon's now running a sweepstakes in Pennsylvania where he gives a million dollars a day to someone who signed his super PACs petition. You sign a petition saying you support the First and Second Amendment. The only requirement, of course, is that you live in Pennsylvania or in one of the other swing states and are registered to vote. He's already given away at least two checks.

But if you Google how to sign up, all the top results are articles examining whether this is legal. Tommy, have you read some of those articles? And can you tell us if it is in fact legal? Tommy's read an article. He's here to tell us what he found. Much like Elon, I skimmed a couple. Much like Donald Trump learning the fry later for the first time. Hey, here we are. Can't be a finance law. So the law specifically says you cannot pay or offer to pay someone to register to vote or to vote. And those who do so can be fined up to $10,000 or get five years in jail for

Or both. Because basically we don't want the election turning into a bunch of billionaires paying the most people to vote. Well, some of us don't want that. Some of us don't. Furthermore, the Department of Justice clarifies in its guidelines about prosecuting election offenses that bribes include lottery chances or sweepstakes. So making this sort of a sweepstakes for Elon does not get out of jail free card.

So some election law experts think that this gambit for Mulan is clearly illegal. The must defenders will say, no, he's just offering a reward to people who sign his petition. He's not encouraging you to register to vote. But as you know, to John, to be eligible, you have to be registered to vote or live in one of these seven swing states. And the deadline for entering the contest just happens to be the deadline to register to vote in Michigan or Pennsylvania. So it's not subtle. It's just it's very clearly just unlawful.

designed and talked about in concert with a bunch of messages about registering or voting early. With all election law things, you can find experts who say it's illegal. You can find those who say it's not. Big picture, I think Elon is betting that no one will enforce it. That if they do... Good bet when you look at the history of the FEC. Trump-friendly judges will probably get your back because they're greenlighting all kinds of campaign spending these days. And if Trump gets elected, obviously he will

Just never, ever prosecute Elon Musk. Down the list of pardons for him. Yeah. So I know Jamie Raskin talks about this in some more detail in today's What A Day newsletter. So check that out. But, you know, I think the bigger picture is like, what are the politics of this? Will people think it's gross? I kind of do. Gross or just like, oh, you got to you got to pay people to vote for Trump? That's what I'm saying. It feels like it does not. I think Americans might inherently be offended by paying people off to vote.

That's why that's actually the part about the AOC clip that I liked even more than the Donald's part is just like, oh, this billionaire is going to dangle a million dollars in front of the plebs to see if you'll vote for, you know, it's like such a. That said, if I were I'll just say that if I were a registered voter in any of the swing states that were eligible, I would, of course, sign this pledge. Everybody listening, if you feel like you could sign this pledge, I would consider doing it because.

you can do a lot more with a million dollars than Elon Musk can. And yeah, no, what honestly it reminded me of is there's like old footage and photographs of like Belgian and British colonists like throwing coins and candies at the children in their colonies. And that's what Elon going out there and like dangling money in front of people like genuinely reminded me of. Yeah, it's...

I don't think it's very cute. I also don't think it's very effective just from like, yeah, you can sign the if you're a registered voter or you registered to vote. This still doesn't mean you're going to go vote. No. And this suggestion is like, OK, well, it's a First Amendment, Second Amendment petition. So you're only going to get Republicans and then you're gonna have their contact info. And then, you know, Elon can get them with messaging and actually turn them out. No, you just have a bunch of people who want money. So they'll pretend to care about the First and Second Amendment and sign your dumb petition.

And again, you'd have to take our word for it. A lot of they interviewed some Trump campaign officials about this, who, of course, all in background about Elon and the ground game and everything. And to a person, they were all just like, yeah, he's got his own thing. We've got our other things and he's just doing it where we're happy to have him out here. But it sounds like they. But this is like I feel like this is the Arnold Palmer's dick of the of the Elon shit, which is like, no, it's not the million dollar pledge. It'll make sense in a second. It's the technology.

Tens of millions. He's doing the weave. I'm doing the weave, baby. I've been weaving. Listen. Do you think Trump invented the weave?

We've been dicks forever. Yeah. A hundred. It's the hundreds of millions of dollars being dropped on the race by Elon, by the crypto bros buying ads like this really is now like in the homestretch. There are these like there's like the there's the Kamala Harris campaign. And then there's the kind of twisted, bizarro, evil version. Right. Like the Kamala Harris campaign has raised a billion dollars. Trump has Elon's money and all of this crypto money and all this billionaire money from Ken Griffin and others. There is a real field organization. There's their paid for field organization, which is

I really hope is is working about as well as you would expect. And Elon turned on field organization in the last weeks of this campaign. Then you have a turnout, the vote operation versus a undermine and scare the vote operation. Like there are these two things sitting side by side. And Elon is a big part of that.

Last thing before we get to Kamala Harris, we mentioned already the Democrats have different theories of the case about how to attack Trump and company. We haven't talked about our former boss, Barack Obama, who's been having a really good time on the campaign trail, just tearing into Trump. Let's listen to how he did it recently. You would be worried if your grandpa started acting like this. You would. I mean, right.

You'd like call up your brother, your cousin or something and be like, "Hey, have you seen Grandpa lately? What we gonna do?" But this is coming from somebody who wants unchecked power. Wants the most powerful office on Earth with the nuclear codes and all that. The point is we don't, we do not need to see what an older, loonier Donald Trump looks like with no guardrails. America's ready to turn the page.

Speaking of people who like dick jokes, speeches. So that's basically another version of the unserious man, serious consequences that Kamala Harris has used. I don't know. I like it.

Yeah, I mean, I think threat to democracy can sound a little vague and hard to understand in practice. I think don't give kooky grandpa the nukes like that's that's not complicated. Yeah. Yes. I think that that was great. And it was much it was actually much more like there's it's basically just like Donald Trump would be a mad king. Sometimes we talk more about the mad, sometimes talk more about the king. And like that was, I think, more mad focus. But you saw a little little of the kind of the the threat to democracy rhetoric with the phrase guardrails with no guardrails is very like kind of threat to democracy.

I like the word guardrails just because you can conjure up a picture, at least, as opposed to some of these words that the democracy defenders use. Yeah, no, for sure. Everyone knows what a guardrail is. No, I agree with that. But I think, like, if you don't... What do you mean guardrail? Like...

The argument that like Donald Trump is just like he's losing it. You just don't want somebody who's losing as president. You don't really need the other party argument that like, oh, Mike Pence doesn't support him. He's going to have a different group of people around. That is a different argument. I thought it was like I think that's why I think that second part is a very effective argument.

I agree. I think the big obstacle here, the big hurdle you've got to overcome is what Tommy pointed out, which is everyone's like, oh yeah, we survived the first Trump term. And I think what you have to, the argument you have to make is, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fine. And maybe you haven't tuned in since then, but this would be much different because he's fucking crazier. This has to be new information. He's crazier. And the people around him that were like somewhat normal are all gone. And the people that are there, your Laura Loomers, your Mike Flynn's, all these people, they are fucking the bottom of the barrel.

I completely agree with all that. I just think that like Barack Obama, even at his most, like he's, we're all struggling to make this, to tell this story that's connecting the fact that he's a kind of a doofus who's losing a step and wandering around the stage and not totally control of his faculties from the authoritarian strong man that's coming towards us. I think both are part of the story and we're all figuring out different ways to talk about them. I think that guardrails thing is just like, that's a larger argument that we don't see there, but I get it.

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Get started on the Angie app or visit Angie.com today. You can do this when you Angie that. All right. We're recording this on Monday afternoon, West Coast time. And today alone, Kamala Harris did an event near Philly, a conversation with Liz Cheney, hosted by her pal Sarah Longwell in Bulwark. She was in the Detroit suburbs and the Milwaukee suburbs. Those were after we taped. Here's a sampling of the message she's driving in those places. This is from her event in Detroit, and that was moderated by Maria Shriver.

Madam Vice President, you know, everybody I talk to says, you know, I have to turn off the news. I can't read anything. I'm meditating. I'm doing yoga. I'm doing, I'm so anxious. I just don't even know. I'm eating gummies, all kinds of things, you know. What are you doing? What are you doing? Not eating gummies. I've said many times, I do believe Donald Trump to be an unserious man, but the consequences of him ever being in the White House again are brutally serious.

And take it from the people who know him best. His former chief of staff when he was president, two former defense secretaries, his national security advisor, and of course his vice president.

who have all in one way or another used the word that he is unfit to be president again and is dangerous. And that illustrates the challenge from the other side. She goes from gummies, laughing gummies, to he's a dangerous threat. It's so funny that just like, I'm sorry, but like Shriver just talking about what people are doing to deal with their stress just sounded so fucking rich. So rich is what it was. Yeah.

So the headline in the Times from Monday morning's Pennsylvania event was Cheney with Harris tells anti-abortion women it's OK to back her. Just wild times. What's your take on what the strategy was behind these Cheney events? So, I mean, there is a Times analysis that talks about who both campaigns think are the persuadable voters left out there. And the Harris campaign thinks about 10 percent of voters in swing states are still winnable. And a big chunk of those voters are Republican women who dislike Trump.

but need to hear more from her on the border and the economy to close the deal. And these events are laser focused on those women. And they also, I think, generally push back on the Trump criticism of Kamala Harris as like a, what's it, she's a Marxist, communist, fascist at this point, you know, whatever he's calling her, some sort of extreme radical. When you see her up there with Maria Shriver or Liz Cheney, I think that really rebuts those criticisms in a pretty strong way.

I was watching the Pennsylvania one, and when Kamala Harris got a question about abortion and she started giving her answer, I was watching Liz Cheney, and I'm like, well, this is awkward because it's like usually they're just talking about things they agree on. And then Cheney asked to step in and then gave that answer on abortion. And it just made me think, you know, there's been some criticism from some corners of the internet on the left that like, oh, Kamala Harris is out there with the Cheneys, and now she's blowing the whole thing because she's...

But like not only has Kamala Harris not moderated any positions or given up anything in order to get the support of Liz Cheney, there's Liz Cheney saying, oh, by the way, I'm against abortion, but I'm here because I think this is so important. And by the way, these abortion bans have gone way too far. She was talking about how in Texas, Ken Paxton, the attorney general, is suing to get women's private medical records because he wants to see if they've traveled over state lines to get an abortion.

And Liz Cheney's like, we can't do this anymore. So I thought it was like, I thought it's really effective. Yeah. I just, Liz Cheney, I think is an incredible spokesperson in that setting. It is like, she's doing the thing we've been asking everyone to do. And it speaks to both what it clearly took for her to do this. And also the cowardice of so many others that she is basically alone up there. But like, that was a great event. It was just a great event. And it's incredibly persuasive. Yeah.

I don't want to see Dick Cheney out there ever. But yes, Liz Cheney is a very good spokesperson. I don't think he'd be useful many places. No. And she's I think she's like shown herself to be a principled person from impeachment until now. And I think people give her the benefit of the doubt on a lot of the other stuff. And again, it just sends the message like, yeah, we don't agree. Yeah, I'm conservative. But like, there's just bigger things at stake right now. I want to talk a little bit more that New York Times story that Tommy brought up.

about how both campaigns are identifying and thinking about undecided voters. Another group of undecided voters that both the Trump and Harris campaigns are targeting are disproportionately younger and less white. And they talk about that in the piece. One example, a 22-year-old in Arizona, they have him in the Times piece, who said he doesn't care who wins and that he only registered to vote because his mom made him. But he will vote for Harris if someone brings a ballot to his front door.

I mean, I hope the Harris campaign gets his address. That's why I have a field program. His name's in the piece. Give him a call. Find his address. Send him a ballot. How long did the Times interview take, my man? You care a little bit. You care enough to spend a whole interview talking about it. That's a good point. It's a fair point. How much you don't care. Trump campaign thinks that about 5% of voters are undecided. And like you said, it's funny because we're going to talk about Plouffe's interview in a little bit with John Heilman. But Plouffe said there's about 4%. But I think...

What you mentioned from the Times piece is the Harris campaign thinks that up to 10 percent are persuadable. And the reason I think it's bigger is because of those Republican women or right leaning independent women who just do not like Trump but are not yet sold on.

on Harris. Yeah, it's hard to tell just sort of how people slice and dice the numbers between like the group of voters that either won't vote or almost certainly would vote for Trump, the group of people that won't vote or almost certainly or probably would vote for Kamala, and then the group of people that are truly...

going to vote or may or may not vote, but are actually undecided. Yeah, the Times found that they think that 3.7% of voters in battleground states are undecided, which is only 1.2 million people. So 1.2 million truly undecideds. But I think you're right. These numbers, these percentages swell when you're talking about not voting to voting or, you know, people might be persuaded to stay home, basically. Anything else you guys found notable in that story? I just, the...

the refrain of how people want more information and then how hard it is to get that that people the readily available information and even that when Kamala Harris does this huge round of press how little of it ultimately gets to those voters there's one piece in the 20 times no single program reached more than one in three of those undecided voters they're just like I was surprised by that the other direction yeah so it says the the in the Times because it said internal surveys the Harris campaign internal surveys

showed that two-thirds of undecided voters in the battleground states had consumed at least some of Kamala's interviews during her big media blitz week or two weeks, but no single program reached more than one in three of those undecided voters. But two-thirds of undecideds just seeing something? That shocked me. I just like... Big daddy gang? I guess. I just like, what does it mean for... I just like...

how hard it is. Like, these are all people saying they want more information. She's doing a full court press across every kind of media. And like, maybe, maybe one in three is getting some clip of one thing. It's just like, it just reminds, just like, I thought where you were going to go with the more information complaint is the woman, uh,

that they interviewed at the end of the piece. She's like a 40-something woman in Pennsylvania, and she doesn't like Trump, but she's worried about the economy. She goes, you know, I've heard a little bit about Kamala Harris's plans, but on housing, she wants to give first-time homebuyers a $25,000 credit on their down payment, and I just don't want to be given more money, and no one's talking about the supply of housing. And I was like, oh.

uh, she wants to build 3 million more. But she also said she might write in RFK Jr. as a protest. Is that the same woman? Yeah, that was the same woman. It's tough. Undecided voters are tough. And we love them. We love them. And we don't want to say anything other than we love them. We just love their whole energy that they're bringing to this. I also found it interesting that of the more than 100 clips during her media blitz that the Harris campaign tested for their effectiveness in increasing her support, her proposal was

about providing home care for adding home care coverage to Medicare coverage for seniors ranked at the top, which is interesting because again,

Who's going to talk about that on shows like ours and cable and everywhere else? I mean, we mentioned it, but like it's not it's not going to get people get pundits excited, but it moves votes. Yeah, it's something people care about. I also thought the Trump campaign found that up for grabs voters were six times more likely than other battleground voters to be motivated by their views of the war in Gaza. They didn't really say in which direction. I found that interesting, too, especially since the Harris campaign doesn't seem to see that.

So there was that fact. And the other point, the other fact from the Trump campaign is that the undecideds are more likely to work two jobs on average, and they earn $15,000 less per household than the battleground voters who have made up their minds. And I saw those two facts side by side, and I was like, I'm trying to make sense of this. So undecided voters are working two jobs and really struggling, but also more motivated by...

uh the Middle East than other voters and I I wondered if some of that was a little bit of them wish casting and kind of putting a little something out there I think it's also who the the pool is that you're talking about if these voters are younger you're just gonna get more of them that care about Gaza than older voters I think

Yeah. The other sort of last thing I noticed on this was they talked about how Kamala Harris bought ads on daytime Fox because more women are watching Fox during the day than at night when it's more opinion focused. And then the Washington Post had a bunch of swing state polls out today where they asked people about their main news sources. And they found that about a quarter of those who consider Fox a main source of news said they're considering voting for Kamala Harris with about one in six saying they have already or definitely plan to vote for her.

Which is a very surprising fact, I thought. Well, on the last pod we did, I can't remember when, with Dan, I looked at the latest New York Times poll. And that showed that 10% of undecided voters say that Fox was a news source for them. Yeah, but then I wonder, like, okay, so then the kind of person answering these polls is the kind of person consuming this news. And I don't know. It made me think, like, well, does that tell you more about the poll than it does about the voters? Yeah.

Well, we also got more insight into how the Harris campaign is thinking about this extremely close race from David Plouffe in a new interview with Puck's John Heilman. Here's some of that. This race is just dead even.

And listen, you know, I think the Trump campaign would admit that too. And you can tell based on their activity and what they're saying. I guess my confidence is more based on looking at who the undecided voters are. And, you know, data these days is incredibly rich and sophisticated. Every battleground state of the seven, there's at least 4% who are still trying to decide who to vote for. In the early voting data we're seeing so far, there's no suggestion that

that they are turning out a bunch of irregular voters. Does your data in the seven battleground states show any sign that Trump has momentum and that he's tight? Whether you say, I get that mathematically, statistically, this is going to be a toss-up race within the margin of error in all seven. But you could see...

There is momentum that's coming through in your data that's not noise. Does the Trump campaign have any of that in any of the seven battleground states? No. I would listen to an interview with David Plouffe. Maybe he should just give like a five minutes every night from now until the next two weeks. Wouldn't that be nice? For sure. Because it's not like, I call this, it's prestige hopium. Yeah.

It's not like everything's going to be fine kind of thing, but it is because at the end he's still like, yeah, we could lose this race. It's very close. It's tied, right? But it's just a lot of great insight from Plouffe. I highly recommend you listen to it. And Plouffe, if you have any more stuff to say, just come back on Pod Save America. We'll do that five minutes here or the call map, by the way. But yeah, it's also like there's a point in the interview where

And then, you know, he's like, what do you say to people looking at the swinging of the Nate Silver average? And he's like, I wouldn't look at that. I don't look at that. And it's just like, yeah, don't. It's based on public polls. Yeah. Yeah. They just don't look. He won't look at any public polls. He thinks they're junk. But that, but just that, like, that they're based on public polls and they're

If the Nate Silver model says it's 52-48 versus 48-52, it still means that in 48 times out of 100 Kamala wins or 48 times out of 100 Trump wins, like these little changes don't matter. And it was like what Plouffe said to Dan a couple of days ago, very similar to what he's saying here, which is basically like these ebbs and flows in the public polling that are causing these like epic swings and vibe shift and text to me are like, they're just not real. They're just not real.

Yeah. I mean, I think some of the, another important point he made was that Trump is just so dependent on turning out these first time or irregular voters. Uh, and that's a real risk. And he, he repeated his observation that they're not seeing incels marauding to early vote locations. So that was good to hear. And again, we talk a lot about how Democrats are struggling to, uh,

win over male voters. But Plouffe talked about Trump's massive disadvantage when it comes to women, especially college educated women and women under 29. And then again, for all the talk about shifts in the Latino vote, he made the point that a lot of the numbers are coming from these national polls where you're sampling like 300, 400 total people

And, you know, there are going to be states like Florida where Trump is going to win overwhelmingly and is going to win with Latino voters. And that's going to skew what sort of the aggregate picture looks like. But really, the Harris campaign is concerned about Arizona and Nevada and parts of Pennsylvania. Yeah. I also thought just in general, he said, look, Trump's going to get 48, 48.5 percent of the vote.

and that's probably higher than he got even in 2020. He's like, "That's just a fact that we're all gonna have to live with." And he thinks that any tightening that we have seen in the polls lately is just polls that had Trump at 43, 44, 45, and then finally he's getting his vote share, which he's gonna end up getting, and she's sitting at 49 in a lot of these. And so I think when, he has said before to Dan too, 48, 48 or 48, 47 in like all these swing states.

And he said that the reason that he has confidence, that he's cautiously confident is what he said, is that the he thinks that they have a higher ceiling. The Kamala Harris has a higher ceiling than Trump does and that the remaining voters who are undecided look more like Harris voters than Trump voters. But that said, yes.

They still have to get those voters out. They still have some persuasion to do. And he also said that he thinks door knocking and canvassing and like going out there is going to be more important this year, this election, than it has been almost any other election. Yeah. And partly because the campaign started later. There are people that truly are undecided and want more information. And it may be somebody coming to their door to give it to them. Like that kid in Arizona who needs the ballot dropped off at his door. How are you guys feeling? Terrible. Terrible.

- Yeah, I don't feel great. - Just wants to be over. - I went into the CVS and I got a two for one Pepsod so that I could have one in my house and one in my car.

Which is, I think, maybe just being 42. I think if we were up by five, I still probably would need it. But I can't be sure. I can't be sure. I feel fairly zen. It's a little angsty over the weekend. I did go to a children's birthday party and was talking to one of the parents. And of course, you do the pod wherever you go. And I was giving what I thought was just a pretty nice...

not optimistic or pessimistic, neutral analysis of where the race stands. And I finished up and then she walked back up to me 10 seconds later. She goes, you made me feel awful. This is scary. I'm like, yeah.

We can lose. Like, it's not. No one should think that. I think there was some a lot of good feelings, as there should have been, after the switch, after the convention, after the debate. I know that I thought that there was a possibility if she did well in the debate, maybe she'd open a little bit of lead that would be stable and that would be that. It's just it's going to be a tied race. What feels bad is that this piece of shit is even in the running.

Yes. That will never not be the case. But it's also like, I just don't want us to do the same thing we've done did in 2016. Like who gives a shit how you feel over the next two weeks? I'm sorry, Maria Shriver. It doesn't fucking matters. No, but it doesn't matter how, no, I thank you. And thank you for asking. We should check in with people you love. Thank you for the question. But like, like,

Oh, what are you doing to deal with all the stress? The stress over the next two weeks? Who cares? Who fucking cares? And I know you did what you guys have done this too, and you felt the same thing. Like, I ended up doing a kickoff call for the Wisconsin Democrats, their organizers, the whole staff, Sunday night. And after a weekend of feeling a little angsty about everything, I finished that call and I heard all the stories about the doors they knocked on and the voters they talked to and people...

And I was just listening. I was just like listening on the call after I like talked to them for a couple of minutes and I stayed on for the whole half hour. And I'm like this, I walked out of that call. I'm like, this was better than any good poll. I just felt, I felt so great. Now is that feeling valid because it's all anecdotal? Who knows? Maybe not, but it,

it felt good. Well, that was the point that like you'll hear with shots where he was talking about that moment where Kamala says, Oh, you're at the wrong value. You're looking for the smaller one down the street. And he said that like when he was first running, there was no poll. He's running a state legislator race in Hawaii. And that like you did Matt, the vibes did matter. They mattered both because they represented how things would go, but also vibes will help you get things to where you need them to go. And so like a lot less angsting, like, are we going to be okay? Text come,

It is not known. It will not be known until a few days after the election. Everybody's just got to go to Vote Save America and do the shift you haven't done yet. Well, who needs polls, though, when we now have actual votes coming in that we can analyze before they've even been counted? That's right. More than 15 million people have already voted early, which means tea leaves are being read and lessons are not being learned. And either of you guys want to remind folks what the early vote can and can't tell us?

Yeah, it can't tell us anything. Nothing. It can't tell you anything because this early voting, it has gone 2020, 2022, 2024. Each of these elections, like the, the,

The pandemic, post-pandemic, the rise of vote by mail and early voting, a Republican candidate who has just has come out against vote by mail and tried to push people towards Election Day. Like the influence of all of this means we just don't know what the vote share will be on Election Day and an election that will be decided by a point or two if we're lucky.

That will really matter. And so the margins are what matters. And there's no way to know the margins. Like maybe there's value to it for a campaign and very specific kind of targeting and information. But for us out here in the world, not particularly useful. Yeah. Unless you're doing very sophisticated like regression analysis based on blah, blah, blah, math, math. Like don't read this stuff. Yeah. It's useless. Yeah. So everyone knows because, you know, we heard Plouffe talking about the

they feel good about the incels not showing up at the polls. You might be thinking like, what does that mean? Because the ballots aren't coming in sticky. So, wow, this is a real, setting a real record on this episode. Good episode. What they, what the early vote can tell you, and again, it can really tell campaigns this who are, who have so much sophisticated data and are calling thousands of people a night and ground game and all that kind of stuff. You know, they can tell you party,

demographic information, vote history. I think that's what Ploff's referring to. So in some states, you know if the voter who's voted early has voted a lot before or are one of those low propensity voters. And then you can see if the low propensity voter looks like a Harris voter or looks like a Trump voter. So you can make some educated guesses if you're the campaigner.

And that only helps you insofar as not knowing if you're going to win, but knowing, okay, we've got these voters, but we still need to go after these voters because they haven't early voted yet. And so now we need to go make sure that they send their ballots in. Like that's what early vote is good for in a campaign.

It's not good for telling you like, oh, yeah, now we're going to win, because even if you ask campaign with sophisticated data analysis about what the early vote show and they'll say, well, we're a little down, but hopefully on Election Day, everything, you know, we're going to chase all those ballots that didn't come in yet. That's what they'll say. And by the way, that's not necessarily a false hope, right? Like there have been elections where the early vote people took that to predict a Democratic lean that wasn't there in times where it used a particular

publican lean that wasn't there. Like, it's just, it's not been predictive. There were people in 2016 looking at the early vote predicting landslide Hillary Clinton victories, and they could not have possibly been more wrong. Let's just not make that mistake again. And, you know, because, again, the behavior, the voting behavior has changed so much that

that even in, I remember in 2022, the early vote was sort of bad for Democrats, quote unquote bad compared to 2020 because everyone was using the 2020 comparison. And it turned out that was all wrong because people's behavior started changing. We will find out after the election.

what we learned about early vote and what we learned about the polling this cycle but there's really take those lessons and for next over apply them we will fight the last war yet again the last war there's kamala to the incels do not come that's not that's for the vol cells do not come oh god you can yes and a joke once yeah that's some funny shit

Okay, when we come back from the break, Lovett's going to talk with Senator Brian Schatz about the latest with the key Senate races and the presidential. Schatz is like, how did this happen to me? That's the throw to Schatz is me doing that? Yeah, that's it. Anyway. You know who is coming on the pod? It's Senator Brian Schatz. Is that what you want, Tommy?

Want me to add to your little joke? Okay. I like that. Your little joke. See? Oh, you can tie a little joke, too. Oh, my God. Maybe you can make us a scorecard. We're already in the ads.

Anyway, yeah, we have two quick announcements. First, the entire season of Empire City, the untold origin story of the NYPD, is finally out. The series that was named one of Vulture's best podcasts of 2024 takes listeners through pivotal moments in the NYPD's history that shape modern policing, including how the police got militarized, what happened when New York City cops started policing abortion, and the first ever investigation into police brutality.

police corruption. You can binge all episodes now by following Empire City wherever you get your podcasts and enjoy ad-free listening by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Also, you don't need us to tell you this, but the most effective messengers in these final days are not people like us. What? They're people like you. Oh. That's why we've launched what we're calling...

Last call. Last call. Last call. We should have like a ding. Oh, let's add a ding in post. Let someone add a ding there. We need everyone listening. That means you. If you're listening, we're talking to you. To think of three people you know in swing states. Okay? Three people you know. Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, or Georgia. Friend, former colleague, a one-time hookup, a frenemy. Two-time hookup.

An acquaintance. The love of your life who moved away and broke your heart. Yeah, the one that got away. Here's the ask. Scroll through your contacts list, find those names, and text or call them or message them. Do whatever you have to do. Then do that five more times before Election Day. Reminders work. Ask them if they have a plan to vote. You can send them to Vote Save America. They can look at their ballots. They can figure out to make a plan to vote. And if you don't know anyone in those states, which...

Fuck you, coastal elite. You definitely know three people who could use a nudge to vote no matter where they live. And that's important too, you know? And for one lucky person who does it, we're giving you a million dollars. That is...

For the right person, a million dollars. That is not true. There's a million dollars in it. That is parody. For one lucky person. That is parody. One million dollars. Wow. What a contest. Your move, FEC. Again, if you don't know what to say in those texts, DMs, and calls,

When we come back, Brian Schatz.

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Now you can get unlimited talk, text, and data for $30 a line when you buy two. That's just $60 a month for two unlimited lines. So if you're 50 and up, make the switch and save. Come on, you've earned this. Call 1-888-FREEDOM or visit ConsumerCellular.com today. Requires two lines of service, age validation, and credit approval. Subject to system and area limits, taxes and other fees apply.

Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co-founder of Angie. One thing I've learned is that you buy a house, but you make it a home. And for decades, Angie's helped millions of homeowners hire skilled pros for the projects that matter. Get all your jobs done well at Angie.com. Joining us today, friend of the show from the great state of Hawaii, Senator Brian Schatz. Welcome back to the pod. Nice to be back here, John. Good to see you.

Yeah, it's great to see you too, Senator Schatz. I just want you to know I'm now losing it. So this is going to be, let's see what happens. The anxiety is through the roof. The prilosec's not working. I'm having fever dreams. I'm having stress dreams.

So we have two weeks left. People are voting. How are you feeling? How are you feeling about the state of the race here? Look, I have to say it. I'll say it this way. We are slightly ahead. And if we do everything we're supposed to do, we will win. And if we do anything we're not supposed to do, we will not. So I like our chances, but we really do have to execute in the next couple of weeks. Now, Kamala, the good news, right, is that

Our candidate is executing at a super, super high level. And that's not just important from the standpoint of vote getting. It also gives a lot of confidence to the grassroots out there. The people are giving money. The people are knocking on doors. When you see your candidate kicking ass, you kind of want to follow that example. So I think it's as important that she sort of lead us.

um, that, that as it is that she sort of demonstrate that she's the right person to be, uh, the next president of the United States. So I'm feeling pretty confident, but definitely not overconfident. And, you know, there's an old line in an old movie. I don't trust happiness. So I'm going to be scared all the way through. Yeah. That's, um,

Sounds Jewish. So let's talk about what we what we need to do. I was talking about this with Tim Miller and he used a sports analogy, which is it's now about the 12th man. It's now about the crowd and what the crowd can do. But on the other hand, you know, we have to do everything right and we can't do everything, anything wrong in order to win. Why does that logic not apply to Donald Trump?

Well, listen, I don't know. And maybe it does. Right. Maybe some of these hiccups, maybe the fact that he's starting to turn down media opportunities, maybe the fact that he's not even campaigning in swing states, but going to California and New York, like all of that could end up being in retrospect, the reason he loses. All we can control, though, is what we're up to. And we have to execute as well as we possibly can because of the Electoral College and

If this were a popular vote thing, I think I'd feel a little more confident. But I do feel confident. And it's a weird thing, right? The polling is fine, but not, you know, dispositive. But I will tell you, last night,

when the vice president was interrupted by some hecklers and she said, oh, no, you must be at the wrong rally. There's a smaller one down the street. It was such a small thing, and yet it was such a big thing. You only do that if you have a spring in your step. And I have very, look, I started in politics in state legislative races where we had no money for polling.

And so it was a lot about body language and organization and kind of the vibes on the ground. And we could predict with some regularity, with some confidence who was going to win without any polling. And so I would say if you took all the polling out of it, Kamala Harris is kicking ass and Donald Trump is melting down. And then if you put the polling into it, it's damn close. I love that. I love a vibes based analysis. Let's talk about Trump.

So we've got, I think, two stories right now. One is Mad King. He's bouncing and swaying to the music. He's rambling, seeming confused. He's canceling interviews and events. The Harris-Walls campaign is asking on social, are you OK? And then we've got the two bit authoritarian. He's starting to deploy the military, handle his enemies, promising mass deportations, threatening democracy. How are you putting those two stories together right now?

Well, I don't think it's that hard. I mean, I think that the problem with characterizing him as a threat to democracy is that you're sort of inherently giving him a ton of power, power over our collective psyches, power over the American experiment. And then he seems strong. And so I think what the Harris campaign has done and sort of unlocked, even in a way that the Biden, the successful Biden campaign did not, was this idea that, sure, he is a threat, but he's also a joke. Yeah.

And if you look through history, lots of people who did lots of bad things were also ridiculous figures in human history. And so he's both of those things. He's a legitimate threat to the American way of life. And he's also a jackass.

And one of the things that I think Kamala is doing well and one of the reasons that we were doing poorly with Biden, frankly, as our standard bearer, is there's just at least some portion of the electorate that wants someone who who's on the ball, who looks like they're kind of like smacking the other side around. And they're not really sure what they think about the issues, but they want someone who looks like a good television president. Right. Like someone who looks like they're kicking ass.

And Kamala Harris looks like she's kicking ass. And whatever Donald Trump's like, you know, personal flaws and policy flaws and his sort of

sort of almost evil way of viewing the American experiment. He had some game back in the day. Yeah. Like he could actually be fun to watch, interesting to watch, infuriating to watch, but like good television. This is not good television anymore. And I think that there is something pretty significant about Kamala pointing that out. It's of course not the main thing,

But remember, people vote for your side for their reasons, not yours. We are not looking to get vindicated here. We're just looking for the W. Yeah, it's funny as you say that. I hadn't thought about that way because I remember early in like 2017, 2018, I would say like, hey, everybody, we got to like accept like Trump has some charm here. He has some charisma. He can be funny. And people really they did not care for it. But it reminds me, have you seen these videos going around a Frankie Valli?

being brought out to the microphones to lip sync his old hits. There's a little bit of a Frankie Valli energy to it where he... I actually hadn't thought about it that way, that he really is kind of... He's trying to do...

the performance he used to do. And it's not, it isn't working. It isn't working. Listen, when I, so, you know, I grew up in Hawaii and we used to go, you guys call it karaoke. We call it karaoke. And, you know, I would always sing, you know, just once by James Ingram. It was a blast. I was 16 years old. Then I was 26 years old. And there was some point at which,

You know, I'm in my 30s. I'm singing just once. But is it fun anymore? Is it charming anymore? Is it hilarious anymore? I feel like he's sort of the last guy at the karaoke bar, you know, and he won't let go of the microphone. You know, that that story is it's it's I think it's it's helpful. It's a good analogy. It does make me sad. I think you could keep doing karaoke. I don't think you need to stop. I don't I don't think you can age out of it. And I think that you should let that go. That's that's something that's projection.

Listen, I'm not saying that I shouldn't sing. I'm just saying I should maybe pick a new song. Yeah, no. Okay. Pick a new song. Pick a new song. So it's a close race. Rather be us than them. But Trump could win. And based on what you're seeing right now, and only to point us to places where we have to work harder, close some gaps. If Trump ekes it out, how did he do it? How did he put together the coalition? What are we missing?

I still think we need more actual human beings in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And we need more money in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio for Sherrod Brown. You know, look, it is it is fair to say that some of these races, you know, the die is cast, the money is spent and the voters, you know, it's basically up to the voters now. But there are a couple of places where it's close enough and the turnout operations matter enough that.

And they are sophisticated enough where you could take a person from, you know, who lives in Santa Monica or lives in, you know, South Texas and just wants to help. And they get on that online phone banking thing and they actually make a difference. So I would still help in the Midwest, both by sending money and by either showing up physically or making phone calls.

So Trump has been pulling out of events. Clear's campaign is trying to take him out of these sort of more national platforms, whether it's an NBC interview, a CNBC interview, 60 Minutes. And they're just sort of resigned to what he's going to do at the rallies. Meanwhile,

The thought might be, OK, so they're letting his freak flag fly in these debates that are mostly reaching his supporters. They're counting on the media not covering it really that effectively or kind of sane washing him or people not really seeing what he's saying at these rallies. But they're going to make up for it with ads that are more mainstream. And yet in Pennsylvania, they're running millions upon millions of dollars of ads

demonizing trans people as opposed to inflation or the economy or what have you. Can you make sense of it at all? Is there any theory to it that we might look back on and say, oh, that actually was smarter than it looked?

No, it's not smarter than it looks. They tried it the last couple of cycles. It doesn't work. It is their happy place ideologically, and it is where they go when they don't have anything to run on. Look, they want to be closing with an inflation message, right?

They want to be closing with an economic message. But Kamala Harris and the Democrats and Bob Casey and Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester and Tammy Baldwin and everybody else have basically erased the Republicans lead on the economy. And so they just sort of like dig in. You know, it used to be the caravans.

And because the because, first of all, border crossings are at a not an all time low, but at a low over the last several years and the Republicans killed the border security bill, they don't have that one. They don't have inflation. And so they're just kind of like digging around in their in their trunk trying to find something. And this is their sort of ideological safe space. There's no evidence that this moves forward.

swing voters. And I think Tim Walz and Kamala Harris and everybody else is handling it well, which is to, you know, stand for equality, but not to dwell on it. Because frankly, what people find offensive about that, regular folks is like, why are you even talking about that? Like that has nothing to do with my life. So Trump is doing a fair amount of a certain kind of press, which is interviews with, you

podcasters and influencers in the kind of loosely part of the manosphere trying to reach these lower propensity, less political men. A, do you worry about it? And then B, should Kamala Harris go on Joe Rogan?

Sure. Listen, I worry about everything. But that doesn't mean that I think this is like the winning strategy. I think the winning strategy would be for him to, you know, wake up one morning and pretend to be a moderate and, you know, say nice things about democracy. That would worry me. Whether this will work or not, I have no idea. Yeah, I think she should go on Joe Rogan.

Oh, yeah, me too.

And I just don't imagine that he's going to come in like loaded for bear. I'm sure he'll have some prepped questions, but in a sort of political discussion between Kamala Harris and Joe Rogan, I do think Kamala, you know, wins the exchange. Now, does that end up in, you know, a bunch of clippable memes that, you know, are designed to make her look bad? Sure. But I still think, you know, they're going to do that anyway. Those memes are going to be created anyway. And I just think she looks strong. She looks unafraid.

And I think one of the other things, you know, I got a couple of buddies who have difficulty with Kamala, but not for any real reason other than they have been sort of poisoned by the Internet. And so sometimes you just have to break through that palace guard and talk to people directly. But, like, do I think the whole campaign is going to hinge on going on Joe Rogan? I do not. I just think she should basically...

find whatever audience she can find. And I think what the cool thing about their campaign is, I think they've figured out both like probably statistically speaking, because they have real data operations and intuitively that basically wherever she goes, she and she presents, she ends up slightly more popular than when she came in. And so my view is if that's true, then Joe Rogan's got 12 million people and you should talk to him.

Yeah, more, more, more Kamala is more and more Trump is less. Yeah. And also like Brett Baier, she went, she did it. I think there were good moments and there's moments they're exploiting, whether you call it a big win, a medium win, a draw, whatever you want to say about it. It's not going to get tougher than that. It's not going to get harder than that. The combination of of questions designed to go for biggest vulnerabilities, the interrupting all of it was like, I think, as tough an interview as she could possibly have.

Uh, so any logic for that interview to me, he says like, go, go there. Like, just like, fuck it. Um, let's talk about the Senate.

Your colleague from Texas, John Cornyn, leading candidate to succeed Mitch McConnell, whether in majority or minority, vowed to block nominees for Kamala Harris. He deems too far left. He said, I'm not going to schedule a vote on some wild eyed radical nominee. So if Kamala Harris wins and the Senate flips, would Kamala Harris be able to replace the Supreme Court justice or even have a cabinet?

I don't know the answer to that. And that's why I really don't. And I, you know, I don't like the hypotheticals just because I don't even like to stipulate either a win or a loss on either side. But I, but I do think it illustrates how important it is for us to focus on these Senate races. Like there, there is no,

path to a Kamala Harris cabinet or to a rebalancing of the Supreme Court or to climate action or to codifying Roe or to codifying LGBTQ rights or any economic progress without a Democratic Senate. And I just don't want anybody to get sort of despondent here. We were here two years ago and four years ago, and it was predicted that

by all the smart people that we were going to lose the Senate. And then we kept the Senate and then we kept the Senate again. And we've passed the biggest climate action in human history. And we reduced the price of prescription medicine. And we've done all these incredible things only because we won the Senate. And so, yes, the presidency is job one. But, you know, job 1A is making sure Sherrod Brown and John Tester and Tammy Baldwin and Alyssa Slotkin and Bob Casey return to the Senate.

So talk to me about Nebraska, Texas, Florida. I'm not going to talk about Nebraska at all. I don't know very much about it and I don't want that to polarize. What I would say about Texas is that

Beto got very, very close. And I think Colin Allred is running a slightly more disciplined campaign and a very well-funded campaign. He's very close and does need money. And I think the theory of the case in Florida is basically the same, except that we have reproductive choice on the ballot. And so in a scenario where the turnout projections are

are slightly undercounting the number of pro-choice individuals showing up.

then I think we could either win Florida on the presidential or lose by a little. And then Debbie Moukarsel-Powell can win. She's running an extraordinary campaign. But both of those campaigns are campaigns that actually need hard money cash. So if you've got 500 bucks laying around, send the campaign, not some campaign committee, not some super PAC, send the campaign some money, and they will put it right into communicating with voters.

So I really enjoy that. Nebraska's not happening. Sorry, I even raised it. Forget about it. Huge mistake on my part. Forget Nebraska. We don't even know what's going on there. It really has nothing to do with us, frankly. Correct. So interesting about Nevada, Arizona, and Florida. These are states with competitive Senate races. They are states that...

Florida is tougher, but but where traditionally we've considered them swing states in the presidential and their states with abortion ballot measures.

Two theories here. One is the abortion ballot measures turn out people that care about basic reproductive freedom. The other place like Arizona, you have voters who are going to vote for Ruben Gallego. They're going to vote to protect abortion. And then they are considering whether or not to vote for an anti-choice, anti-abortion president under the feeling that they're balancing, that they're protecting abortion in Arizona anyway. How do you deal with that kind of

false sense of comfort. Well, I think the Harris campaign has done a pretty effective job in making it clear that Donald Trump really is going to push for a national abortion ban. And so it won't matter what kind of statutory protections you have at a state by state level. And the problem is, I mean, for us, is that they talk about minimum national standards, right? And

And that is a ban. That's what they mean. And Donald Trump is going to do that. There's no doubt about it. That is part of Project 2025. I think we've done a very good job of getting the word out and making it clear that you sort of can't have your cake and eat it, too, and vote for an anti-choice federal candidate and a pro-choice ballot amendment. But the problem is that even if that is something that has gotten through for, say, 80 percent of the voters, it's not going to happen.

We kind of needed to get through to 95 percent of the voters in order for us to fully align and have the abortion rights referendum in Arizona win, Gallego win and Harris win. So I'm losing my mind. You surf. Should I be surfing? Yeah, you should. Sure. Of course. Southern California. Wow. It's a lot of ballots, huh?

Yeah. I mean, but you're young, you'll be fine. And you know, you, you, you did a reality show that required all kinds of fitness. You'll be fine. Never got to use it. Never got even to never. I have my balance is actually really good. Never got to fucking use it. Oh yeah. I'm sorry. I didn't watch it as you know. Um, no, I know you should, you should surf. But the problem with Southern California surfing is like part of, part of what's good about surfing is

like fishing, like hiking, like lots of things is that you kind of can escape the hustle and bustle. Southern California surfing is like as stressful as driving on the, on the freeways because it's just packed and a little bit aggressive. So, you know, those are not my vibes. Honestly, just like using stereotypes about my culture to just putting them together. Oh, we're all sitting in traffic here in California. You and Chris Murphy, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, you seem close. Have your hands ever brushed in a weird way?

Chris Murphy and I know we don't, he's very Northeastern. There's no touching. So that's good. That's interesting. Uh, so, uh, homestretch, just let's reiterate what you feel like people need to do. Sorry. Go ahead. Uh,

We got we got you want people to go to Pennsylvania. We got to get calls in and feet on the ground in Pennsylvania. We need money in Ohio, Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, and we need calls and volunteers in Wisconsin. What else is the other other priorities for you right now?

That's it. I mean, the other thing I would say is like, don't agonize, organize. I do think that, you know, we're a party that tends to agonize too much. We're a party that doesn't trust happiness. And we're a party that can sometimes talk ourselves out of having the winning momentum. Now, Kamala Harris has done a lot to give us a spring in our step. And it is our obligation, seriously, it is our obligation to stuff our feet

phone in a sock drawer and go out there and campaign. Do it people. You know, we know this show is very popular, so I know how many people are listening and I know how many people have signed up at vote, save America. And I don't like the ratio center shots. A lot of people listening to this that haven't done a goddamn thing. Well, I'm not going to scold anybody except to say that here, here's what I would say. Look, I, um,

My first race, 26 years ago, I was running for the statehouse and I came out of the primary election kind of bruised. I didn't look super strong. And a mentor of mine said, let's assume you're behind by about a thousand votes and you've got 90 days left. So you got to win over something like 12 people a day.

And let's assume you win over one in four people that you talk to. You're not winning over everybody. Okay, you got to go talk to about 50 humans every day for the next 90 days, and then you're going to win this thing. And that's what I did. I actually knocked on doors to the point where people told me to stop calling and coming by. I wore my shoes out to the point where I had to buy a new pair of Rockports from the local Ross on Ward Avenue.

And I won by 425 votes. And I would not have won by 425 votes if I stared at a screen wondering if I was going to win by 425 votes. What happens next depends on us. It does not depend on events far away. It depends on what we all do, what all of the listeners do. So if you haven't sort of taken the step to either press the donate button or

or to get on the phone and start calling family and friends or a list provided by the campaign. Now's the time. Now's the time. What a great message to end on. And I just also want to say, wherever you are, even if you cannot physically get to Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, or any of these other swing states, you can call into those states, you can donate into those states, and I guarantee you, wherever you are, you are within 90 minutes of a house race.

that could swing the balance in the house and you can go knock on doors there. John Tommy and I are beginning hitting some of the doors in California as well. So go to votesaveamerica.com. The time, it's it. We're at the two week mark here, people. Phones down, knocking fist up, you know? Senator Brian Schatz, always so good to see you. It's good to see you too, John. You make me feel better. I'll look forward to watching Survivor for the first time. That's great. Maybe something we can do after we win. Okay, take care.

That's our show for today. Wow, what a show. Thank you, Senator. Dan and guest host Alex Wagner of MSNBC Primetime Fame will be back with a new show on Wednesday. Bye, everyone. Wonder whose dick they'll talk about.

Bye.

Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah 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.

Writing support by Hallie Kiefer. Madeline Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Phoebe Bradford, Joseph Dutra, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Kiril Pallaviv, and David Toles.

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