transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:20] Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau.

Speaker 2:
[00:21] I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Speaker 1:
[00:22] Look at us. We're here in DC. Back where it all started. Beautiful city, beautiful city. They haven't started to work on the arch yet.

Speaker 2:
[00:32] No, did you check out the ballroom?

Speaker 1:
[00:34] I was just, when we were landing, I was excited to see that the monument was still standing, watch the monument, because I didn't know.

Speaker 2:
[00:39] That's good, yeah, the Lincoln Memorial painted maga red.

Speaker 1:
[00:43] Yeah, right, so everything looks normal so far. All right, on today's show, we're gonna talk about the latest developments in our new forever war and why it could take six more months to open the Strait of Hormuz even after the war ends. We'll also cover Democrats' big win in Virginia in the state of the redistricting wars, which Republicans are starting to regret. We'll check in on our boy Kash Patel, who can't quite shake the J. Edgar Boozer allegations.

Speaker 2:
[01:07] Just a top notch, top 10 all time Pod Save America title.

Speaker 1:
[01:12] I was saying, I don't know who came up with it. They're all on the line, so someone knows, but we're not with them.

Speaker 2:
[01:17] Love it saying it was him.

Speaker 1:
[01:19] It's definitely was not Lovett. That's all I care about. And why the biggest national security threat that we face may be sugar daddies. Then our friend Mark Leibovich of the Atlantic joins us here in studio to talk about the California governor's race in this town's Super Bowl, the White House Correspondents Dinner this weekend. Why we're here, we couldn't stay away. And with Trump in attendance for the first time as president and the first time since 2011. What happened in 2011? We're not going to get into that again. If you're listening to this show and you don't know the story of 2011, then you have not paid attention. Crooked Con's coming back, Dan, right here in this city.

Speaker 2:
[02:00] Washington DC?

Speaker 1:
[02:01] Washington DC, November 5th through 7th. It's going to be right after the midterms.

Speaker 2:
[02:05] Is it being held in the ballroom?

Speaker 1:
[02:07] Maybe, maybe. Yeah, we're scoping it out if it's done by then. We're going to have more panels, more speakers, more opportunities to connect with people who care about politics. Plus, there's going to be live tapings of Love It or Leave It, Pod Save America, and Strict Scrutiny. So head to crookedcon.com, sign up for updates, including ticket release dates, lineup announcements, and a lot more. Also, huge news for campaigns, candidates, and anyone who wants to be super smart about politics. Take it away. Yes, we, Dan.

Speaker 2:
[02:42] Thank you, Jon. So for years, we've heard from candidates, staffers, organizers that they are forced to turn to Pod Save America for political strategy and messaging guidance because they can't afford a pollster, a consultant, they're not getting support from the national party. Like it obviously is very flattering that they listen to us for advice, but it also it's like a pretty shameful indictment of how the whole system works. The fact that the people who need the most help get the least help, the fact that the best poll consultants, the best pollsters only work for the candidates who have the most money, who tend to be the candidates who need the least help. So to try to fill that gap, I'm launching a brand new product called Message Box Pro. This is a consulting subscription service for people who work at all levels of politics, whether you're running for office, you're working for a campaign, you work for a politician, you're just organizing to defeat MAG and protect democracy in your community. Subscribers get weekly strategy memos from me, polling guidance, data-driven insights, and advice on how to get your message out in this crazy media environment. For more information, go to messageboxpro.com. You can sign up there. The first 250 people who sign up, get locked in a special founding member price forever, www.messageboxpro.com. This is a project I'm very excited about.

Speaker 1:
[03:59] Is there a co-host discount?

Speaker 2:
[04:03] No.

Speaker 1:
[04:04] Just wondering. I'm kind of interested.

Speaker 2:
[04:07] Maybe I can comp you.

Speaker 1:
[04:07] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[04:08] All co-hosts will be comped.

Speaker 3:
[04:09] Okay. Good.

Speaker 1:
[04:11] Well, that's exciting. Everyone check it out. You guys have weekly strategy memos from Dan.

Speaker 3:
[04:17] Wow.

Speaker 1:
[04:18] I mean, that's pretty great. It's a pretty exciting product, Dan. I'm really excited you're doing this. We've been talking about this for a while, so I'm glad you got it off the ground. messageboxpro.com.

Speaker 2:
[04:30] You can also go to the notorious crooked.com/yes, We Did. That's another option.

Speaker 1:
[04:35] But that's also to donate to your future races.

Speaker 2:
[04:38] No, no, no.

Speaker 1:
[04:39] Okay. All right. Let's get to the news and what seems to be a stalemate, an award that's been going on for seven weeks and counting. Quick reminder, it's now been 43 days since Trump first declared victory in Iran. Now we are on week seven and counting. We're recording this mid-afternoon East Coast time on Thursday, a little earlier than usual, and Trump is about to do an event in the Oval Office where he may take questions. Our producers are monitoring the situation. Reed, you're just going to give us a wave, big wave in case there's-

Speaker 2:
[05:08] Throw his sweet green ball at us.

Speaker 1:
[05:11] It's going to be big news though, big news. But for now, Trump extended the ceasefire on Tuesday, didn't put a new deadline on it, and it's unclear if we still have a ceasefire because then Iran seized two ships in the Strait of Hormuz, and the US has seized a couple of tankers, including on Thursday a tanker of Iranian oil, and there's still no word on whether there will be another round of negotiations. JD Vance just sitting at the airport, waiting to get the call so he can jump on a plane. Trump is still posting through it. This is all just today, claiming that, quote, we have total control of the Strait, which we obviously don't, as evidenced in part by his next post, that he's ordering the Navy to, quote, shoot and kill any boat laying mines there, which he claims is already happening, but wants it to continue at a, quote, tripled up level. That's technical speak.

Speaker 2:
[06:02] Reacts.

Speaker 1:
[06:03] Yeah, tripled up level. He also shared two posts from war monger Mark Thiessen, yeah, my predecessor at the White House, that suggested he should kill the Iranians who don't want to deal. So he said there's a couple of factions. There's the want to deal faction and the don't want to deal faction. And Thiessen said he should kill all the Iranians who don't want to deal. But also the Trump doesn't need a deal. So there's a few problems there. Meanwhile, this is all after the Pentagon reportedly told Congress in a classified briefing, this is from the Washington Post, that it could take six months to clear the strait from the date the war ends. So if the war ends tomorrow, we're looking at six months until the strait is open again and global energy supplies go back to normal and the price of gas comes down and oil and all the other and the supply shock and all the other problems that have befallen the global economy because of this. So it looks like the administration is trying to spin the ceasefire extension as a temporary act of mercy. They're saying on background three to five days to quote, allow the Iranians to get their shit together. This is what they told Axios and Trump keeps threatening that huge strikes will resume. How eager do you think he actually is to restart this war?

Speaker 2:
[07:21] Well, he's given, I think it is now five deadlines with threats.

Speaker 1:
[07:25] A lot of deadlines.

Speaker 2:
[07:26] And in every single one of them, he's extended the deadline without getting a single thing he wanted. So I'm getting the sense that he does not want to restart this war, but he really wants the strait to be open and the war to be over and it to be seen as an unalloyed American victory. All of this is an impossible task.

Speaker 1:
[07:42] It's one tough circle to square.

Speaker 2:
[07:43] Yes, it is an impossible circle to square. We are stuck in this place. And every day that we're still in the stalemate, because really stalemate is not a term you want to use with a war in the Middle East.

Speaker 1:
[07:55] No, I've been there before.

Speaker 2:
[07:57] Every day that the stalemate continues is makes it worse for the US and the global economy. The oil shock gets worse. The shortage gets worse. I think if you read what people, sort of experts in the oil industry say, it's that the markets, the political conversation is dramatically underestimating how bad this is and what the medium-term consequences are. Like Europe is headed towards a potential jet fuel shortage.

Speaker 1:
[08:24] Yeah, with Danza canceled like 20,000 short flights already. It's really bad.

Speaker 2:
[08:30] It's very, very bad with very, very real implications for people's daily lives, not just gas prices, but every single part of their life, the strength of the economy, overall inflation, the cost of food. And from the day you end the war, you have six months till you can get to something hopefully resembling normalcy and begin to unwind all of this. And we have no idea when that day one will be.

Speaker 1:
[08:53] And per usual, Trump is making his problems worse because he has made it clear to the Iranians and the world that he's horny for a deal, which the Iranians know, which is why they're going to make it harder for him to get a good deal that he can feel confident about, which he also needs to avoid seeming weak because he can't seem weak. So it's just, and you can tell that like the Iranians are sort of showing a little more confidence in the way they're posting and talking about this. And also they're like, it's clear like the IRGC is in charge and the hardliners. And there's a long New York Times piece today about the new Ayatollah. And he is apparently still very injured and very ill. But like, it's like the way they described how Iran's being governed right now is that like it's a board of directors and the new Ayatollah is the chairman of the board. But all the generals and all the IRGC people have almost just as much of a say, certainly more of a say, than they did when his father was in charge. So that's probably not good for world peace or getting a deal.

Speaker 2:
[10:01] It's just there are such different incentive structures here. All the IRGC cares about is staying in power.

Speaker 1:
[10:08] And they can weight it out. Because they are a repressive, awful regime, they don't care how much pain they inflict on their own people. And it's not like they have elections coming up.

Speaker 2:
[10:20] There's no one sitting IRGC headquarters worrying about the generic ballot right now.

Speaker 1:
[10:24] And they know that Donald Trump just wants out, both because he's worried about the politics and because he has no attention span.

Speaker 2:
[10:30] And it's just not clear what he could do to change the calculus here because all he can do is bomb more things.

Speaker 1:
[10:36] What we all have to hope is that they end up doing a deal that's probably better for the Iranians than we would have hoped. And Trump pretends that it's some great deal and tries to take credit for it, but at least it ends the war. Like that to me is now the best possible outcome because there is no outcome where we get a great deal.

Speaker 2:
[10:55] No, I mean, the fundamental challenges here is anyone dumb enough to start this war is too dumb to get out of it.

Speaker 1:
[11:02] Yeah. Yeah. That's about where we are right now. You see that Pete Hegseth fired the Secretary of the Navy, which is an interesting thing to do here in the middle of the biggest naval blockade operation in decades. Another heroic background quote to Axios, quote, He didn't understand he wasn't the boss. His job is to follow orders given, not follow the orders he thinks should be given.

Speaker 2:
[11:25] The only wars that Pete Hegseth can win are bureaucratic ones.

Speaker 1:
[11:29] Yes. Doesn't seem great that they're losing the Secretary of the Navy. It seems like this guy went to because he was having trouble with Hegseth and fighting with Hegseth, and part of it was based on Hegseth wants to eliminate the woke army, the DEI agenda, and so he was trying to make sure he looked at every application for a possible job and inscribed social media to make sure there were no signs of woke or DEI anywhere in the resume or in the social media. It doesn't seem like that's a good thing. There's a lot of people now, I feel like, at upper levels of the Pentagon who have been let go, again, in the middle of a war.

Speaker 2:
[12:04] Yeah, we keep getting rid of people who know what they're doing and replacing them with people who don't.

Speaker 1:
[12:08] Senate Democrats brought up a War Powers vote on Wednesday. Republicans voted it down now for the fifth time this year. What else can or should Democrats be doing? It seems like they're just going to keep bringing these votes up, but it seems like each time, they are getting more Republicans who are at least considering voting for the War Powers Resolution. And the time limit's up in terms of even if you don't have, even if you don't think that the War Powers Resolution does anything, the president can only be at war for a certain number of days, and the time limit's coming up there, and so now they're trying to figure out a way to get around that.

Speaker 2:
[12:43] Yeah, I'm always torn on the War Powers Resolution thing as a tactic here because one thing we've known for some of the polling we've seen is that people are very, very against this war. They don't understand why we're in it. They hate the costs of it. They think it's stupid. The least effective argument is the process one. Yeah. But morally, constitutionally, from a governor's perspective, the process one is very important. That is a case that should be made. And even if we were to pass it, Trump, we're not going to pass it with a veto-proof majority, right? So it sort of is what it is. And so we have to think about using these votes to put as many Republicans on the record as for Trump's illegal war as possible.

Speaker 1:
[13:22] I have noticed that all the talk about the supplemental war funding has kind of died down. Remember, it was going to be $200 billion. And then someone said maybe it's closer to 100 billion that the White House is going to ask for. But I don't see that legislation getting fast-tracked anytime soon, do you?

Speaker 2:
[13:41] Well, I just don't know what the immediate urgency is. Like, what will push this is, it's very, very... When the Pentagon wants something, the Pentagon is very, very good at ensuring that everyone knows they want it. And so if they actually... Like, Trump and Russ Vought have made a mockery of all sort of budgeting laws. So they could be robbing from all sorts of places to avoid this. But at some point, they're going to need that money and they're going to have to go to Congress for it. And then that becomes the most important, most politically salient vote people will take on this war.

Speaker 1:
[14:16] I would bet their calculation is, he's trying to get a deal. He's trying to get us out of this. Let's just try to wait to ask for the funding until the war is over. And then we can say it has nothing to do with the war. The war is over. This is just to refill our munitions, which are running low. And now there's reporting from Alex Ward in the Wall Street Journal that munitions are so low that if we ever had to go to war with, say, China, that we wouldn't be able to have enough munitions.

Speaker 2:
[14:40] Yeah, I mean, the risk to that strategy is the later you wait, the closer you put it to the election. We're in late April now. Congress is going to take, like, the last thing, the worst possible scenario for Republicans is they have to deal with this in September, right before the election.

Speaker 1:
[14:56] Yeah, as gas prices are over $5 a gallon at that point. All right, let's talk about the great news of the week. Democrats won the Virginia referendum to redraw the state's congressional maps, which will likely net Dems another four seats in the Commonwealth and hold 10 of the 11 congressional seats there. It is now going to be a 10-1 split in Virginia, Democrats and Republicans. Trump said the election was rigged, obviously, called on the courts to fix this travesty of justice. That was his quote. And of course, indeed, a Republican circuit judge in Virginia blocked the results on Wednesday, which was expected. This judge had blocked the referendum earlier. And Attorney General Jay Jones vowed to appeal. Now Virginia Supreme Court will decide. Republicans and right-wing media joined Trump in bitching about the results. And Democrats aren't feeling too guilty. Here's Jesse Waters, Jessica Tarlov, and AOC.

Speaker 4:
[16:00] You guys have been gerrymandering for quite some time. You're very good at it. Trump tried his hand at it, did it in Texas, got some good results in it. You guys have just been running the table. Can you stop? Can you slow down?

Speaker 1:
[16:13] No.

Speaker 4:
[16:14] All gas, no brakes.

Speaker 5:
[16:16] What do you make a Republican saying that you guys are getting time for runs?

Speaker 1:
[16:26] First of all, what do you think about the Republican complaining? If you could expand on wham, wham, wham. I saw it from a lot of Republican strategists who I think know better. Many of them live in Virginia as many Republican strategists and Democratic strategists do in Northern Virginia. But they are very upset. When you say, well, Texas started, they're like, well, no Democrats started it first before Texas and other cycles. In New York, they did it in 2020 and all this fucking-

Speaker 2:
[16:56] Bullshit. Okay. So what is it the Republicans love to say? Fuck around and find out because that's exactly what happened here. But let's just-

Speaker 1:
[17:07] That's what Hakeem Jeffries said.

Speaker 2:
[17:08] Did he say that too?

Speaker 1:
[17:09] He actually said fuck.

Speaker 2:
[17:10] Did he? That's very authentic. Good for him.

Speaker 1:
[17:12] Very authentic.

Speaker 2:
[17:13] Here's-

Speaker 1:
[17:14] Honestly, good for him. Hakeem Jeffries gets a lot of credit here. He crushed it.

Speaker 2:
[17:19] Absolutely. Republicans started this redictionary war. He, Democrats could have crawled into the fetal position. Gavin Newsom stepped up. Hakeem Jeffries stepped up. Hakeem Jeffries-

Speaker 1:
[17:29] And he did work. He went to these states, went to these legislatures, pushed people. It was a lot of behind the scenes work, but he did work.

Speaker 2:
[17:35] Virginia would not have happened without Hakeem Jeffries, for sure. So he gets a ton of credit here. But let's just be clear about this. In 2021, there was a vote to ban gerrymandering. Every single Democrat voted for it. Every single Republican voted against it. One party supports a national ban on gerrymandering, because the only way to do this is a national ban. One party supports it, it's the Democrats. One party opposes it, it's the Republicans. What they don't like here is they started a dumb fight and they lost it.

Speaker 1:
[18:08] Yeah, I just think we should be consistent in the positions we hold on reform that reforms corruption and rigged system and gives people more of a voice. And yeah, we're for ending gerrymandering everywhere. And if the Republicans don't like the bill from 2021 that would end partisan gerrymandering for whatever reason, because some of them have some problems with the way it's... Then tell us what you want to do. Give us a bill that would... And then maybe we can negotiate on it. But I feel the same thing with money and politics and Citizens United and Democrats are spending money too. No, we want to overturn Citizens United. We want to get rid of money and politics. Do you also? Then let's do it. I think that there should be term limits and maybe age limits for members of Congress and Supreme Court justices. Great. Let's do it. I think we should get rid of the filibuster. Everyone's like, oh, well, now the Republicans, would you be pissed if the filibuster wasn't there? Yeah, I would be annoyed that they maybe could pass a few more things. But I believe the filibuster is bad. And so I believe that it is bad no matter what. I just think that maybe Republicans could be consistent for once on the reforms they support and when they support them.

Speaker 2:
[19:15] Yeah, I mean, there's two things there. One, there's consistent. The other one is whether Democrats should be required to unilaterally disarm when things remain legal, if we're trying to change the law.

Speaker 1:
[19:25] Of course not.

Speaker 4:
[19:26] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[19:27] That is an absurd fucking position.

Speaker 2:
[19:29] I do think in a different era, and maybe even the first Trump era, Democrats would not have responded as aggressively to this. Because we do believe gerrymandering is wrong. We would have thought that, not everyone, I don't think you and I would have thought that. But I think a lot of, many in the party would have thought that it is a dirty pool, two wrongs don't make a right, we should not do it. And the fact that we did, it turns out Democrats have learned a lesson, finally, of the Trump era, which is if you were going to take on fascism, you have to be willing to fight fire with fire. You have to use, everything Democrats are doing is legal. It is a maximum use of allowable political power.

Speaker 1:
[20:06] The way to fix unfair rules is to fix the rules, not just sit there and let your ass get beat. So last year, Abigail Spanberger in Virginia beat her opponent by 15 points. The referendum passed by three. It's a 12-point swing. Why do you think it was so close?

Speaker 2:
[20:25] A couple of reasons here. So the most obvious comparison point is the California measure that passed in November. That passed by about 30 points. This is three points. California is more democratic than Virginia, but it's not 10 times more democratic than Virginia.

Speaker 1:
[20:45] Right. And if it passed by 30 points, isn't it like a D plus 20 state usually?

Speaker 2:
[20:50] Yeah. And Kamala Harris won Virginia by 5.8 points. But some reasons why it was closer. One, this was a very high public turnout was quite good. It was actually as the big 2021 levels. When we lost. When Glenn Yonkin was elected. The Republicans did mount a very good campaign here. They actually used Barack Obama in their ads. Both sides used Obama in their ads. The no side used Obama, footage of Obama talking about what June Manning was bad in their ads. And then the yes side used more recent footage of Obama saying pass this amendment.

Speaker 1:
[21:28] Smarter than no side.

Speaker 2:
[21:30] And they spent real money, less money than the yes side. The other issue here that made it closer to independence, so independence in the last Washington Post poll that was a couple of weeks before the election had independence at plus 10 on the no side, which is a huge swing from Spanberg who won them by more than 20 points in 2025. And that kind of makes sense because if you're an independent who is upset with Trump, maybe you voted for Youngkin in 2021, maybe you voted for Spanberg in 2025, probably Trump in 2024, and you're mad at Trump, you see this a process-oriented anti-pro-gerrymandering amendment is something that you can still vote against.

Speaker 1:
[22:19] Yeah. And I don't know how the vote broke down in any of the individual districts, but I also think it is very understandable if you're an independent, or if you're a Republican and you're deciding whether to come out and vote or not. Like, if you're in a district that's going to get gerrymandered, so you no longer really have a say, and you're a member of Congress or you're not going to ever get a Republican, I can see why you vote against it.

Speaker 2:
[22:42] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[22:43] This is why gerrymandering in general is bad, and they shouldn't have sent us down this path.

Speaker 2:
[22:47] And the interesting thing, the one group that blew the doors off, and it's probably why Democrats won, was Asian American voters.

Speaker 1:
[22:55] Yeah. And black Americans too. I saw both Asian and the Asian vote and the black vote were-

Speaker 2:
[23:00] Were quite high.

Speaker 1:
[23:01] Yeah. Because again, especially black voters, know what it is to be gerrymandered. Let's talk about what the redistricting war Trump started with Texas hath wrought. When you add up all the states now that have redrawn their maps, Democrats are, as of this moment, plus one in the overall count. The only state left is Florida, where the legislature has a special session scheduled for next week. But it's actually unclear if DeSantis changing the maps will net Republicans any additional seats. And some in the party are already feeling what Axios described as, quote, buyers were morse.

Speaker 2:
[23:37] You bet.

Speaker 1:
[23:37] It's a bummer, huh? When asked if the redistricting effort was worth it, the chair of the NRCC, whose job it is to keep Republicans house majority, told Axios, quote, It's not for me to say, because really it wasn't my decision. In California, independent Kevin Kiley, who was a Republican and now caucuses with the Republicans still, told Axios, quote, I wish none of this had happened.

Speaker 2:
[24:03] Well, he lost his seat.

Speaker 1:
[24:04] Exactly. Did we win redistricting?

Speaker 2:
[24:07] Yes. Yes, we won redistricting. When Florida is done, it could come out that we are a seat or two behind. Florida is interesting because DeSantis could redraw the maps. One, just worth noting that partisan gerrymandering in Florida is illegal.

Speaker 1:
[24:27] According to the Constitution, no less.

Speaker 2:
[24:28] To the Constitution. So he's going to need to-

Speaker 1:
[24:29] So it seems, that seems like a hurdle.

Speaker 2:
[24:31] It is a hurdle. The Florida, I would say the legal reasoning of the Florida Supreme Court is malleable.

Speaker 1:
[24:38] A bunch of Eileen Cannon's on that thing.

Speaker 2:
[24:39] Yeah, and so there's some thought that they're going to find a way to twist this, twist the illegal pretzel enough to get it done. But even if you draw it, right? So DeSantis is under pressure to do what Newsom did. Because DeSantis wants to run for president in 2028, potentially. This is his chance to show himself to be an important Republican player. But experts who look at this think that anything more than adding to Republican seats puts them at real risk in what you call a dummymander, which is where you draw the districts in a way that in a bad year, you lose a bunch of seats. So even, I think, even if DeSantis were to do it, he's going to get two seats at max. So you end up, we end up minus one for the whole thing. And what I think in the sense that we won, I'm not sure anyone's going to do this again in mid-year, right? Obviously, we're going to have to do this again after the 2030 census across in every state. But I think Democrats sent a message to Republicans that if you try to do this, we will do it too. And you're not going to get that much, and it's not going to be worth it. The juice won't be worth the squeeze.

Speaker 1:
[25:46] I saw a longtime Florida Republican consultant talking to Politico. He ran the numbers, and that person ran the numbers, and concluded the new map couldn't get Republicans zero seats for the reasons you talked about. Because right now, they hold a 20 to 8 edge. Because basically, there's nowhere left to cram Democrats without exposing safe Republicans to incumbent. So it's going to be really hard even if the Supreme Court doesn't, even if the Supreme Court allows it. The other thing that we've been waiting for is this Supreme Court case that could upend the map in the Voting Rights Act and basically say that all majority minority districts can be redrawn, which would cause Democrats a bunch of seat. But I do think as of now, it's like too late. It's too late for it to matter in 2026. Apparently, because two southern states, which is where it would heavily affect southern states more than anyone, two southern states have already held primaries and candidate filing deadlines have passed in every state but Florida. Even if the Supreme Court says it matters for this election, they just can't.

Speaker 2:
[26:53] It would be mass chaos if they were to try to make it in place.

Speaker 1:
[26:58] For the states that already held primaries, you can't do anything. I guess the legislature could go try to change the filing deadline by passing the legislature.

Speaker 2:
[27:05] Yeah, they'd have to pass new laws to basically do emergency elections to do it. You have new filing deadlines. People have to get signatures for those petitions. Then you'd have to have a primary. Then the general election November seems... And you have to draw the districts at some point in that too.

Speaker 1:
[27:20] So seems fine for 2026. It is a problem and it seems like the decision will be bad. But a problem for another day.

Speaker 2:
[27:29] Enjoy that majority while we have it.

Speaker 1:
[27:32] For the next two years. The redistricting fiasco only adds to the Republicans' midterm woes. Trump and the party continue to hit new lows in polling. Both the AP and ARG had Trump's approval at 33% and 32% respectively. So that's fun. As Sarah Longwell says, that's the Bush line right there. Cook Political Report released a new poll on Thursday, finding that just in swing districts that Trump won in 2024 by an average of two points, Democrats now hold a six-point advantage on the generic congressional ballot. So that's pretty big. In a new Fox poll, voters gave Democrats the edge of Republicans on inflation and the economy for the first time since 2010. I think that's a six-point spread in the generic ballot as well. How much hopium are you huffing these days?

Speaker 2:
[28:17] I'm not really a hopium huffer per se.

Speaker 1:
[28:19] I know. That's why I'm asking.

Speaker 2:
[28:20] But I think that the political environment looks about as good as we ever possibly could hope for Democrats right now. The poll that everyone should really be paying attention to is the Cook Political Report poll of the 36 districts that will decide the House, all of the toss up, lean Republican, lean Democratic districts.

Speaker 1:
[28:40] That was the one that was the 36th district.

Speaker 2:
[28:44] In that one, Democrats have double digit advantages on lowering prices and on the economy, which is something that has changed. Trump's unpopular, Republican base is divided. We have the opportunity before us. As we get to this conversation, there are some hurdles to maximizing that opportunity. But this has the potential to be a 1994, 2006, 2018 style election for Democrats, whereas a massive rebuke to the incumbent president and in his party.

Speaker 1:
[29:20] We've been talking about the House, but headline of Nate Cohn's newsletter earlier this week was, why a Democratic Senate once unthinkable is now a real possibility. What did you make of Nate's reasoning? Because he's not someone who just...

Speaker 2:
[29:32] No, he is not a Hopium Huffer...

Speaker 1:
[29:34] .flies off the handle and just starts making predictions.

Speaker 2:
[29:37] We've made this case on Polar Coaster multiple times, and we've talked about it a little bit here. But once again, as we've said, it is a tall order to get the Senate, because you have to win two of four states that Trump won by double digits. In addition to winning, holding all of our ones we have and winning many in North Carolina. But the advantages we have are we have good candidates, very, very good candidates in three of those four. The fourth state is Iowa, which hasn't had its primary yet. So you have Mary Paltola in Alaska, top-notch candidate, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, top-notch candidate, James Helrykow in Texas, top-notch candidate. There's some view.

Speaker 1:
[30:14] Roy Cooper in North Carolina.

Speaker 2:
[30:15] Roy Cooper in North Carolina, and then Maine.

Speaker 1:
[30:18] But it's not one of the four.

Speaker 2:
[30:19] Maine's not a race anyone's ever talked about in this podcast, so it's an under-the-radar race. The Democrats are overperforming in special elections by a margin that would deliver, it puts all of those states in play. We gotta win those, we need a plus 10, plus 11 environment to win those states, and we're seeing that's the sort of environment we're in right now, and then you can add some additional points to that because you have candidates who are gonna perform better than a generic Democrat.

Speaker 1:
[30:47] Yeah, the paragraph in Nate's piece that really stuck out to me was, I saw about Sherrod and Mary Peltola. It says, in Ohio, Mr. Brown lost by 3.6 points in 2024. Ms. Peltola lost by around two points in Alaska. Today, the Democrats are faring about eight points better on the generic congressional ballot than they did in the 2024 combined US congressional popular vote. Or put another way, Mr. Brown and Ms. Peltola probably would have won the reelection in 2024 if those contests had been held in this political environment. So that's pretty big. Echelon did a set of polls in the Senate states. Echelon, really good pollster, run by Republicans Patrick Ruffini and Kristen Soltis Anderson. They have Ossoff up 51-44 in Georgia. In Maine, they have Platner up on Collins 51-45. They have Mills up by a narrower 48-46.

Speaker 2:
[31:42] That's that Maine Senate race?

Speaker 1:
[31:43] Yeah. That's his running. Again, I'm just holding my tongue on that. In Iowa, they have Zach Walz a two-point lead and Josh Turek a one-point lead. They do have a tiny lead inside the margin area in Iowa. Then the only tough one there is in Ohio, they have Sherrod down 51-45. There's been a few Ohio polls that have been kind of troubling lately, but we'll see. Speaking of Patrick Ruffini, who literally wrote the book on the so-called realignment that delivered Trump to the White House in 24, he tweeted a few days before the Virginia election that if the referendum passed by around a five-point margin, of course it passed by three, it meant Republicans have some fight in them and can hold down Dem seat gains in the House and keep the Senate. What did you make of his case?

Speaker 2:
[32:32] It's not crazy. The original point here is Democrats tout every time we overperform, and so he's going to go around and tout the one time we underperform, so sporting, I guess. What I think is, and I want to stipulate that a process-oriented ballot measure is very different than a candidate race where the candidate, it's hard to hold the no on redistricting measure accountable for why you're angry at Trump.

Speaker 1:
[33:02] Yeah. And just to your point about ballot measures, let us not forget all the abortion ballot measures in deep red states that made us excited that maybe we were going to win those states.

Speaker 2:
[33:11] Or minimum wage ballot.

Speaker 1:
[33:11] They did not. We did not.

Speaker 2:
[33:13] The 25-point congressional overperformance in Georgia from three weeks ago, or whatever it was, is a better indicator than this. Also, it is certainly not evidence of an improving political environment. Trump's actually doing worse than he was before. The generic ballot is getting bigger, not smaller. And so I think it's a bit of a vacuum. What I think is true is that what Republicans effectively did here is they nationalized that election. And when you nationalize an election, that gives them the chance to turn out more of their voters. Because we are winning both through massive Democratic turnout, persuasion, and diminished Republican turnout. They're not going to drive down our turnout. They're probably not going to do a lot of persuasion. But the one thing they can do is drive their turnout up. And that is the difference between us winning a bunch of Trump plus 12 seats and us not winning Trump plus 12 seats.

Speaker 1:
[34:04] Yeah, and the other point I found compelling about Patrick's argument is he basically said in all these special elections that we've had so far, Republicans really haven't been able to up the stakes and make voters feel like there's a lot at stake in this election. And in Virginia, they were able to do that because they made it seem like you could lose your voice and your district forever. So once you get closer to the actual midterms and everything is nationalized, as you said, and the stakes are higher and they're spending all the money they have, which we're about to talk about, then you could get a closer environment than you've had in some of these special elections, which I do think is possible.

Speaker 2:
[34:44] Republicans are going to get their shit together and sign my shit before. That is going to happen. It always does. They're not going to get Trump level turnout. They're not going to get the turnout they want, but they're going to get better turnout than they've been getting in some of these special elections. That is not enough to save the House. It may be enough to save the Senate, but it's not enough to save the House, but it could hold down margins. There was between Democrats picking up 15 seats and 25 seats.

Speaker 1:
[35:20] The New York Times reported this week that Republican Party political committees and allied groups currently have a massive $600 million financial advantage over the Democrats and their political committees and allied groups. The DNC's total cash is actually negative $4.5 million, which seems less than ideal. What do you make of the overall disparity there?

Speaker 2:
[35:41] I would say one of the funniest things I've read in a long time is there was a political reporter was passing along, who's Natasha Karecki, I think was passing along some of the spin from Democrats. And one of the spin from some of the Democrats about this was, well, we had all this money in 2024 and we lost anyway.

Speaker 1:
[35:57] So let's try running it back with no money.

Speaker 2:
[35:59] Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1:
[36:02] In 2024, we had a candidate and we lost.

Speaker 2:
[36:05] Let's try no candidate. That's good thinking. Here's what I'd say. It is bad when the DNC has negative money. Okay, that is bad. It is not as consequential as I think people on the Internet think. The DNC is not intimately involved in funding House races or Senate races, that is the DCCC and the DSCC. They have less money in the Republican counterparts, but that's a much narrower gap. Then where Republicans are truly crushing us is in super PAC and nonprofit money and dark money. That's not even counting all of the hundreds of million dollars in the AI and crypto super PACs, they're mostly going to help Republicans. But where Democrats are crushing us, our candidates are raising a lot more money than their candidates. Here's why that matters, because every dollar in political fundraising is not equal. By law, television stations have to sell TV ads to campaigns run by candidates, the actual candidates, and what is called the lowest unit rate. They have to do that, what the going rate is is what they charge a candidate. They gouged the living shit out of Super PACs. So Super PACs in the last 60 days before an election are paying two, three, four times the amount of the campaign. So let's take North Carolina, where Roy Cooper's raised a gazillion dollars. Let's say the Republicans plus Michael Watley's Republican nominee have $80 million. That's equivalent to $20 or $30 million of Roy Cooper's money. And so it is bad, we should have more money. It is bad that we are being out raised like this, but give money to campaigns because those dollars go further.

Speaker 1:
[37:52] So what you can do by going to votezaveamerica.com and we'll tell you the best place to send your money. Don't want to be wasting any of it. Seems like Trump is responding to the grim political outlook with his tried and true method of firing people. So he's reportedly considering forcing out more members of his cabinet. Lori Chavez de Reymers, the Labor Secretary, resigned this week in scandal following Christine Noem and Pam Bondi. There's some speculation that Howard, I almost just said Nutlick.

Speaker 2:
[38:22] You can say that.

Speaker 1:
[38:23] Yeah, but it's just, it's natural now.

Speaker 2:
[38:25] What's he gonna sue you?

Speaker 1:
[38:26] No, I guess maybe. That maybe Nutlick could be next, or possibly Kash Patel, who's again not having the easiest time rebutting. It could be Halsey Gabbard, too, it could be. Oh, I saw it's Halsey Gabbard, yeah. Kash is having trouble rebutting the Atlantic story that did lead to his new nickname, J. Edgar Puzer. Here's Patel and his boss, acting AG Todd Blanch, responding to questions about the Atlantic story at a DOJ press conference on Tuesday. Let's play the clip.

Speaker 6:
[38:54] Can you say definitively that you have not been intoxicated or absent during your tenure as FBI director?

Speaker 5:
[39:01] I can say unequivocally that I never listened to fake news mafia. I'm like an everyday American who loves his country, loves to sport a hockey and champions my friends when they raise a gold medal and invite me in to celebrate. I've never been intoxicated on the job.

Speaker 6:
[39:15] Obviously, you've read the Atlantic article that's now a subject of a defamation lawsuit brought by the FBI.

Speaker 7:
[39:19] I absolutely did not read that article. You're being extraordinarily rude and I know maybe that's part of your profession but please just stop.

Speaker 2:
[39:26] Your lawsuit contends that you were not able to log into the system. What did you think after you were unable to log into the system?

Speaker 5:
[39:33] Let's have a survey. How many of you people believe that's true? It was never said, it never happened, I was never locked out of my systems. Anybody who says-

Speaker 2:
[39:43] Your lawsuit says the opposite.

Speaker 1:
[39:46] Your lawsuit says the opposite. That's the key line for the reporter at the end. Meanwhile, the Times reported on Tuesday that the FBI began investigating one of the New York Times reporters, Elizabeth Williamson, after she broke the story last month that Patel has assigned FBI SWAT team to protect his girlfriend and drive her to her concerts because she has a country music sensation and even a hair appointment. Patel is now denying that the FBI investigated even though the Bureau basically confirmed to the Times that they had looked into Williamson's, quote, methods. How hard is Kash Patel crushing it right now? What did you think of that press conference?

Speaker 2:
[40:25] Oh man, he's so uncomfortable in every situation.

Speaker 1:
[40:31] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[40:31] He's just trying too hard at all times. Just an average everyday American who loves hockey.

Speaker 1:
[40:39] The lawsuit is helpful if you read the lawsuit because it does detail every allegation that is bad in the Atlantic piece and one helpful page just puts them all down one through.

Speaker 2:
[40:50] What was the Atlantic article so long you couldn't get through it?

Speaker 1:
[40:53] Yeah, no, it basically gave you the summary of it in the lawsuit and did essentially admit that the story about not being able to log in to his email or his system was true. Do you think Trump gets rid of Kash?

Speaker 2:
[41:06] I don't know. It's like even more than Bondi and Kristi Noem, I think that this would be seen as an admission of failure on Trump's part. Who is the other?

Speaker 7:
[41:17] Yeah, it just, I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[41:18] I mean, first of all, Trump's never had a drink. He doesn't drink. So I think he doesn't like the idea that someone is running around drunk in the FBI. Not because he like, I think this is all through the prism of like, it makes Trump look bad, right? This is not about, he doesn't care about the safety and security of the country. And also what Trump wants is revenge on his enemies. And look, that press conference was about the indictments they brought against the Southern Poverty Law Center for, it seems like, crazy charges, but.

Speaker 2:
[41:50] It did seem crazy.

Speaker 1:
[41:52] But, so I think Trump's annoyed with that. So we'll see. I don't know. I would have said, I said this on Tuesday's show, but I would have said no, he'll keep him if it was before Bondi and Nome. But now that he's got those two out, I feel like he's got a taste of like, oh, I fire someone. It's a story for a day and then we move on.

Speaker 2:
[42:09] So would you, I know we don't predict on this show, but if you were on some sort of prediction market platform, would you put any of your hard-earned coin on the idea that Kash Patel will not be in this role on Thanksgiving?

Speaker 1:
[42:28] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[42:28] You think he'll be gone by Thanksgiving?

Speaker 1:
[42:29] Yeah. I think they'll, yeah, because he definitely posts midterms. Not definitely, but I feel good about saying that. If you told me by 4th of July, I'd be like, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[42:40] So you think post midterms, but definitely before the end of the year?

Speaker 1:
[42:44] I think so. I would put money on that. Okay. I don't know how much money, but I put money on it. Speaking of money and staff behaving badly, it is our solemn duty to discuss the case of Julia Varvaro, the 29-year-old who is serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security. Don't worry about it. That's not a big job. According to a former romantic partner who filed a formal complaint against Varvaro, she is actively on dating sites where sugar daddies agree to fund the lifestyles of younger women, including one called Seeking, where she offered mutually beneficial relationships. According to the Daily Mail, the whistleblower slash ex said he'd spend $40,000. Not betting that on cash leaving. On gifts and travel for Varvaro over the course of their three-month relationship, and he thinks she's under financial stress that constitutes a national security risk. It seems like the government agreed, because she was placed on administrative leave after the story came out. As you know, Dan, our producers are constantly urging us not to kink shame on the show. Even though I continue to stress that kinks that constitute a national security threat, do not count and traditionally have been frowned upon at the highest levels of the federal government.

Speaker 2:
[43:59] What if threatening national security is your kink?

Speaker 1:
[44:03] Well, then what do you do there? I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[44:05] Ask the producers.

Speaker 1:
[44:06] Yeah. No. If people want to go on wherever this is to get some sugar daddies, that's fine. If you want to be a sugar daddy, that's fine.

Speaker 2:
[44:14] If you want to be a sugar daddy, that's fine. Jon Favreau, April 23rd, 26.

Speaker 1:
[44:21] Just when you have a government job, especially one that involves counterterrorism at Homeland Security, I don't know. You don't want to put yourself in a position of being blackmailed.

Speaker 2:
[44:32] I have to admit to you that when we were slacking about this yesterday was on my plane. I did not know about this story. It was all news to me. Then I went to my computer and I was about to type in sugar daddy politics. And I thought better of it.

Speaker 1:
[44:46] There's a lot of pictures of this guy, of the sugar daddy with her, that the Daily Mail has published and everyone else. And there's one right as we started recording, of course. Of course, our old friend Travis Helwig, who used to work here, sent it to me. And it's just the sugar daddy sitting next to her with a little sign that says, she's horny. Again, fine. But if you're Deputy Secretary for Counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security, maybe less fine.

Speaker 2:
[45:14] Counterpoint. On the scale of corruption in this administration, this is fucking quaint.

Speaker 1:
[45:21] Well, it's not corruption necessarily. It's just, it's a risk.

Speaker 2:
[45:24] It's also a corruption risk.

Speaker 1:
[45:26] Oh, I guess, yeah. But it's all, but the reason that a normal FBI cares about all of this, the reason they all did interviews with all of us before our security clearance, stuff like that, is the idea is that if you have lied to the FBI or you have secrets that you haven't revealed or some foreign actor or someone can blackmail you and say, if you don't do this for me, I will reveal publicly what I know about you, that you go on this website or whatever, then you are more likely to do the thing that the foreign government or actor wants you to do. That's the whole, that's the whole reason. Anyway, that's that. That's that Dan, sugar daddies.

Speaker 2:
[46:03] For dessert.

Speaker 1:
[46:03] For, sugar daddies for dessert. That's what we got for today. All right, when we come back, we will talk to the Atlantic's Mark Leibovich about the shit show in California. Mark Leibovich, welcome to the Pod.

Speaker 3:
[46:26] Great to be back with you guys.

Speaker 1:
[46:28] Good to see you here in DC.

Speaker 2:
[46:29] Thanks for letting us back in the town you rule, Washington DC.

Speaker 3:
[46:32] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[46:32] Mayor of DC, they call him.

Speaker 3:
[46:33] That's me, yep. You know how all these parties I'm blacklisted from? I'm not even invited anymore.

Speaker 1:
[46:39] Really? Oh man. Yeah, you were blacklisted from ours until we just...

Speaker 3:
[46:42] I know.

Speaker 4:
[46:43] It was just, I just happened to be here.

Speaker 1:
[46:44] That was unintentional, unfortunately, it would be more...

Speaker 3:
[46:45] It's fine, it's all right. Just don't make, no, I won't say it. I won't say it.

Speaker 1:
[46:50] So you visited our fair state to report on what you and Mike Murphy lovingly referred to as the Stupid Circus, aka the California Governor's race.

Speaker 3:
[47:00] Well, I guess I kind of echoed him.

Speaker 1:
[47:01] Yeah, you repeated a few times, which I love, the Stupid Circus.

Speaker 3:
[47:04] Mechanism.

Speaker 1:
[47:04] I think that's a good mechanism.

Speaker 3:
[47:05] Take the quote and echo from it. Good device, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[47:08] You start the piece at a little league game with Eric Swalwell, which you note, quote, felt consistent with the wholesome image that the campaign had been straining to projective late for reasons that would become clear soon enough. Made me laugh out loud. Did you get any bad vibes from your conversation with him?

Speaker 3:
[47:27] I got bad vibes from everything I had heard about him going into the conversation. This was one of those things where I spent the whole week just touching as many bases as I could and Swalwell basically lives here. I don't know where he lives now, but he lives in DC. Back in the quaint days when he was getting heat for not really living, spending that much time in California and that was like a scandal for him. He's here a lot, his kids are here, his wife is here.

Speaker 2:
[47:55] Here in DC?

Speaker 3:
[47:56] Here in DC. Yeah, he lived in a place on Capitol Hill or at least he used to, so I don't know where he is now. But look, I'd heard everything. It was starting to perk up on social media, but that was commensurate with whatever momentum he had, there was definitely some movement to him, and Trump did him a huge favor. Well, I guess Patel did him a huge favor by releasing these completely ridiculous 10-year-old file that found no wrongdoing. So a great way to get elected statewide in California is to be a big target of Donald Trump and Adam Schiff proved that, and he certainly got Prop 50 probably over the finish line. So I thought so, but I was thinking, how far does this have to go before? Do I bring this up at the end, or do I wait for another conversation? But there was no other conversation. There wasn't. Literally three days later, the implosion happened. But you guys know there's a big gap between stuff that everyone talks about and reportable, actionable stuff, and to the eternal credit to the San Francisco Chronicle first, later CNN, I mean, they nailed it down and looks like it was kind of tip of the iceberg. So I mean, I definitely caught, I knew the reputation. I mean, he's a perfectly, he can present. I mean, he's a thoughtful-ish guy. I mean, he's kind of Adam Schiff light in some ways, except with all the personal baggage. But so, yeah, but I knew something was coming and they were clearly very self-conscious about it. It was like, and he was going over the top about his kids, little league thing. I mean, he didn't, you know, understandably, he wanted to keep his kids out of it, but it was a whole dad thing. He brought his wife along. She seemed very nice. So it was a little over the top.

Speaker 1:
[49:51] In all your reporting, like for people who aren't from California, haven't been paying attention to the race, like, why is this the field?

Speaker 3:
[49:59] It's a great question. I mean, the short answer is Kamala Harris, Alex Padilla, who apparently everyone wanted to run. I'm not sure I'd buy that. I think there's a little bit of revisionist history there, but they're big names. They would have, if not cleared the field, definitely would have probably guaranteed 25 percent. Certainly, Kamala would have maybe a little more.

Speaker 1:
[50:23] George Clooney lives in France, as you know.

Speaker 3:
[50:25] Yeah, and Newsom's term limited. I mean, there are quite a few, I think, quite talented members of Congress from the delegation, I think, a couple of mayors. But again, there's not like a giant in the race, and I don't know if Kamala would have been that person, but there wasn't. So when you have just the math of seven Democrats splitting their vote seven ways, two Republicans who were complete unknowns, and I wouldn't think that electable in California under regular circumstances, they're just splitting their vote two ways. This is the math issue. So the Republicans, for anyone who doesn't know, there's a runoff system, jungle primary, top two finishers in the June 2nd primary, regardless of the party go on to the November election, and in a lot of the polls, the top two finishers have been Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, two sheriffs of Riverside County, just basically two Republicans that no one's heard of, but they could get there in November and there could be no Democrat on the ballot.

Speaker 2:
[51:29] And California is interesting because it's such a big state that it's almost impossible for anyone to be known in it. And we've just had this situation where our last three governors were Gavin Newsom, who was quite famous when he eventually won because of gay marriage, Jerry Brown, who had been governor before, and was a national figure, had run for president, and Arnold Schwarzenegger before that. And if you are a member of Congress, you cannot, it's so expensive to run for governor there. It's almost impossible for anyone to, unless you're a member of Congress with a national profile, which Swalwell sort of had, it's impossible to raise the money to run there. And you just have a possible get name ID because we have a million media markets and no one can become famous. And so I even, I think Padilla, who was a statewide elected official before he became senator, even if he had run, he still would have fit into this mix because-

Speaker 3:
[52:17] He's not well known.

Speaker 2:
[52:18] He's no more well known than Javier Becerra, who had been attorney general and HHS secretary.

Speaker 1:
[52:23] That just made me think, not to get us off on a tangent, but don't you think that's the future or where we are now of national politics at the presidential level too? Like it just seems like if you go back, the nominees of each party, who the president ended up being for the last 10, 15 years, just the way the attention economy works now, if you are not famous, it is very hard to become famous out of nowhere in national politics and at a national level.

Speaker 2:
[52:47] You have to be someone who is a master at attention, right? Like Pete Buttigieg is the example, someone who became famous. He's the one example. So every other candidate in the 2020 Democratic primary finished an order of name ID at the outset other than Pete Buttigieg.

Speaker 3:
[53:01] No, but there's a wild card here, which is relevant to this race, which is Tom Steyer, who basically became known, got actually on the debate stages in 2020, was actually finished seventh in New Hampshire in I think sixth in Iowa or something like that. But he's in Philly.

Speaker 2:
[53:15] He finished third in South Carolina, I think.

Speaker 3:
[53:16] Did he really?

Speaker 2:
[53:17] He danced with Juvenile on stage at the end.

Speaker 3:
[53:19] That's what people remember about that. Yes. I mean, actually no one really remembers that Joe Biden was rescued in South Carolina. It was only that. No, so Tom Steyer, I mean, he basically, he's spent $140 million so far in this race. I mean, it's really quite something. I mean, his strategy is spend as much money as possible, put as many ads out there as possible and take the most liberal position possible, and maybe that gets you home. I mean, Swalwell wasn't, was known, but that's because of MSNBC and CNN. I mean, it was, and hearings, right? So, but that's all nationalized political news and very Trump centric.

Speaker 1:
[53:53] Becerra. He's one person like surprisingly absent in your piece. Is that, did they not give you an interview?

Speaker 3:
[54:00] You know, so that was just, I mean, when I wrote it a week ago, he was nowhere. And I kind of had to make, I mean, I had, you know, 2,500 words. I took about 4,000. And still, there's a lot to explain. There are a lot of characters. And Becerra seemed kind of back in the pack. And a lot of it's just logistical. I mean, I was out there to cover this debate. The debate was canceled. I had 72 hours. I basically could only stick around Southern California. He was in Northern California. So, I mean, there's sometimes not a lot of rhyme or reason. He also might just not have wanted to talk to me. As Steyer and Porter didn't.

Speaker 1:
[54:35] Did he? What did you hear about Bezerra?

Speaker 3:
[54:37] Which was a huge mistake on there. Neither. Not much. I mean, I really did.

Speaker 1:
[54:41] I'm trying to figure out, the surge is real with Bezerra. Like, it's now been a number of polls where he's either tied for first or right after that. And the money has followed. And I'm just like, what happened?

Speaker 3:
[54:57] Yeah. Well, I mean, the number's thinned. I mean, Betty Yee, who was at 1%, she dropped out too. So, I mean, that's a number. But I mean, Swalwell dropped. And there was a sense for at least a couple of days that Steyer was just going to be, okay, he's going to inherit the wind here. And I think there was an immediate backlash. And a lot of people I talked to were just instantly just offended by that. Just, part of it is just sort of like the basic American ideal that has hostility towards buying an election, which is basically what this is. And also the guy doesn't particularly present all that well. And I think Becerra, if he ever got a first look, got a first and a half look or something like that. And he's quite credentialed. I mean, he was in the Biden administration. He was the AG in California. He's out there. But there was a debate last night. I don't know how well he did.

Speaker 1:
[55:45] What did you guys think of the debate from what you saw?

Speaker 3:
[55:48] Dan, what do you think?

Speaker 2:
[55:49] I saw highlights of the debate. And I watched parts of it on 3XP this morning in my one hour to do this. If Becerra had delivered a great performance, he could have essentially locked up a spot here, I think. But he did not. And so it leaves the, I think you leave the debate still wondering who the candidate is who could actually solidify in this field. Because people were really hoping it was gonna be Becerra. You know, and California races are largely funded by interest groups, the California teachers, the environmental folks, the trial lawyers.

Speaker 3:
[56:24] And they would rally around him.

Speaker 2:
[56:25] Well, they could have. They were looking for someone to rally around because Swallow had a lot of these labor endorsements. One of them has gone to Steyer since then. But he could have seized the momentum. I'm not sure he did. Also not sure how many people watched any of it. So it's hard to say.

Speaker 1:
[56:38] I thought Matt Mahan was aggressive in a way that like he needs to get attention. Right. And so I thought he did he did well there. Steyer took a lot of incoming, which I was surprised, I guess, because he's the front, still kind of the front runner. And so it was a lot of like people attacking Steyer. Becerra didn't seem like... I thought Becerra and Katie Porter both kind of quiet in the debate. Like they didn't have a lot of big moments.

Speaker 3:
[57:01] Yeah, Porter was a little better than I think. I mean, I don't know. I don't think anyone... I don't know if people are going to give her a second look. She kind of stalled. I mean, she, like Swalwell, had a bit of a national profile, was very effective kind of anti-Trump Democrat during the first term, and didn't get a lot of traction. I mean, there were some pretty nasty viral videos about her that she caused. I mean, one is sort of jumping down the throat of staff, or just yelling at a staff member, yelling at a reporter, a couple other things. So some reputational issues.

Speaker 1:
[57:33] Newsome told you he wouldn't endorse unless it's a break class moment. What's your read from talking to him, both his relative absence in this race and his seemingly inevitable 2028 campaign?

Speaker 2:
[57:46] Or his preference, if you, his preference.

Speaker 3:
[57:49] I would say, okay, I have some, I think some informed wisdom on that. I mean, I think he is as underwhelmed as a lot of other people are, a lot of other Democrats are about this field. I think he hasn't been that shy about it privately.

Speaker 1:
[58:04] Even he told you, he said, I think the field is interesting.

Speaker 3:
[58:07] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[58:08] This man has a great personality.

Speaker 3:
[58:09] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, you know what? I'm not, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So there's that. I mean, apparently, I mean, he, I think, was looking to have some kind of a Sarah breakout. I don't think he has issues. I think he's fine with the Sarah. He doesn't like Mahan. I think he has reservations about Porter. I think he has reservations about Steyer. And for a lot of reasons, but I think that he was really looking for a reason to, to have someone like Sarah sort of like make his decision for him. So we'll see. I don't, I don't know though.

Speaker 1:
[58:46] I mean, I think he would love a real process of elimination pick.

Speaker 3:
[58:50] Yeah, it's not, I mean, unfortunately, you know, Newsome, I mean, he's not always the most decisive guy in the world, but I do think that his indecision here is quite, or his, his hesitation here is sincere. And I think it's reflective of a larger ambivalence among Democrats.

Speaker 2:
[59:09] He did endorse the Lieutenant Governor's race this week.

Speaker 3:
[59:11] He did. He did.

Speaker 2:
[59:12] So he can't do it. He is allowed.

Speaker 3:
[59:15] He has experience as a Lieutenant Governor. Yes.

Speaker 1:
[59:17] So it's your favorite weekend of the year.

Speaker 3:
[59:19] It is.

Speaker 1:
[59:19] Your Super Bowl, the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Speaker 3:
[59:22] My Mardi Gras, the whole thing, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[59:24] I guess the only thing different about this year is that Trump is going to be there at the dinner for the first time since 2011, first time as president.

Speaker 3:
[59:32] Yeah. That will be interesting.

Speaker 1:
[59:34] What do you think, though? Has anything changed? Has the dinner regained any of its splendor from years ago? When are you getting to the Grindr party?

Speaker 3:
[59:43] I haven't been invited to that. So here's the thing. Okay, full disclosure, I've known you guys a long time. I'm 60 years old now, okay?

Speaker 1:
[59:52] Spring chicken in Congress.

Speaker 2:
[59:53] You look great.

Speaker 3:
[59:53] Thanks. I feel great.

Speaker 2:
[59:55] 20 years younger than the median Democrat. That's true. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[59:59] I might be too young for the Senate. I will do a Saturday night. First of all, now that I'm not at the New York Times anymore, I can go to the dinner. The Atlantic has, I think, two tables.

Speaker 2:
[60:10] Oh, yeah. I was going to ask about the Atlantic.

Speaker 3:
[60:12] I went last year, I think I went the year before. They asked if I wanted to go and I wasn't sure I was allowed to say no, but I tried and they accepted my answer. Although I will say, I don't know if this is mystique or lustre or intrigue or whatever, but from a pure voyeuristic point of view, I think Trump almost certainly has something planned. I mean, I think like the gracious-

Speaker 2:
[60:35] Like a mass arrestor.

Speaker 3:
[60:36] No, but some like a really-

Speaker 1:
[60:38] Red Wedding. You have to be the Red Wedding.

Speaker 3:
[60:39] No, I mean, it would not surprise me at all if he was just intentionally antagonistic, prepared something not the least bit clever, not the least bit funny, not the least bit gracious. I mean, to think about all the opportunities he's had to play that game. I mean, starting with the Al Smith dinner when he was with Hillary in 2016. And I don't think he would have accepted this. Well, I mean, I think part of him just thinks, all right, what a spectacle. I'll be in the middle of it. Who knows how many opportunities I'll have to be this. It'll be different. But I'd be shocked if he didn't have something antagonistic planned. And I mean, the media is not organized. I don't know what they're going to do, but it'll be kind of a reality show, which is what he does. And I mean, I don't think there's like a great august and, you know, beyond reproach tradition of the White House Correspondents' Dinner that could be lost and that he could soil like he soiled other institutions around Washington. But I do think that, I mean, there could be some friction there that will be worth watching. And I'm kind of glad I don't have to be there for it.

Speaker 1:
[61:45] Do you think it's going to be a problem when his plan runs headlong into those First Amendment pins that the reporters are wearing?

Speaker 3:
[61:51] That'll do it, man. I, so when I was, can I tell the story? Should I tell it?

Speaker 2:
[61:55] Now you have to.

Speaker 3:
[61:56] So I was, when I went to college, in the 80s, I graduated college in the 80s, University of Michigan, they wanted to give an honorary degree to Nelson Mandela. And there was some regent or some rule, the Michigan regents or something, he couldn't if you can't be there in person to receive your honorary degree, you can't get your honorary degree. Nelson Mandela had an excuse. We all know what that was at the time. And there was an alternative, those of us who were protesting that were like a big button. And I wore, you can see on my graduation gown, or my thing, it was a Nelson Mandela button. So that was my protest there.

Speaker 1:
[62:34] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[62:34] You can tell that story.

Speaker 1:
[62:35] I thought you were going to say you accepted the award on his behalf. I thought that's right.

Speaker 3:
[62:39] Wouldn't have been fun.

Speaker 2:
[62:40] Liberal reporter comes out pro-Mandela.

Speaker 1:
[62:42] Yeah, right?

Speaker 3:
[62:43] You know what? You'd be surprised. Resistance. No. So...

Speaker 2:
[62:47] What do you think about, I mean, Trump has investigated reporters, has trashed the press, has stomped over the First Amendment. His secretary of defense, who is a guest of the Paramount Corporation, has kicked the reporters out of the Pentagon. What do you, like, talk to me about how the press sees things going to that dinner in that context?

Speaker 3:
[63:11] I think it's, well, I think it's uncomfortable at best. I mean, look, I mean, the Atlantic is still going. And, I mean, I assume...

Speaker 1:
[63:18] You guys have been invited to some signal chains, so it's okay.

Speaker 2:
[63:20] That's right. I mean, every one of the group chat gets a table.

Speaker 3:
[63:23] No. I mean, look, just, I mean, this week, I mean, like, Sarah Kirkpatrick, my colleague, I mean, she wrote this Kash Patel story. They served us, I mean, they filed a lawsuit two days ago, which, I mean, there's... That's a little bit standard. I mean, like, nasty story.

Speaker 2:
[63:40] It's a constitutional response, Scott.

Speaker 3:
[63:41] It's a constitutional response. Yes, correct. But I don't see how many... I mean, I don't know a lot of journalists who are excited about it, any more than they would normally be. Now, there's sort of like a sport around, you have to sort of roll your eyes at the whole thing. It's like, oh, I'm above it, but my bosses are making it. And I mean, you can also get a lot of work done. I mean, if you're one-stop shopping and you want to talk to people and stuff. But no, but I mean, I think the dissonance between what Trump talks about, what the administration has done and what the dinner is supposed to stand for, kind of is pretty obvious.

Speaker 2:
[64:18] I mean, will that be highlighted when the Wall Street Journal gets the reward for their Epstein letter story?

Speaker 3:
[64:22] That'll be an interesting scene, right? I mean, I do wonder about it. I mean, I was actually, I still think there's a non-zero chance that he could pull out.

Speaker 1:
[64:31] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[64:33] But who knows?

Speaker 1:
[64:35] 250 journalists, Dan Rather, Sam Donaldson, signed an open letter demanding that the White House Correspondents' Association use the podium to condemn Trump by name and toast the First Amendment. You think there's any chance they do that?

Speaker 3:
[64:48] I was going to say something snarky, but I would say no. I don't think there's a chance.

Speaker 1:
[64:53] Yeah. It's funny because at first I'm like, well, that's not going to happen. But I'm like, well, why should it? I could imagine a condemnation that is not so harsh and unfair. I could imagine doing it in a thoughtful way.

Speaker 3:
[65:10] Yeah, I can see that.

Speaker 2:
[65:12] Who's the president?

Speaker 3:
[65:14] Of the correspondents' association. Well, actually, it's Donald Trump. No, Marco Rubio is now the president of the White House.

Speaker 2:
[65:20] Yeah, so I was going to say, I mean, the whole thing is, it's always been bizarre. It's more bizarre now. The best argument that the media organizations can make is the money goes to pay for scholarships for young journalists.

Speaker 3:
[65:32] Scholarships, yep.

Speaker 2:
[65:34] Are there ways to raise money for journalists of scholarships that don't involve a toast to a president who disbanded the White House press pool? Maybe, but.

Speaker 3:
[65:42] Yeah. The toast to the president of the United States is always, I mean, I don't care who the president is, it just strikes me as distasteful.

Speaker 2:
[65:52] Yeah, the whole thing, even like.

Speaker 1:
[65:54] The toast is crazy. Imagining the toast tonight, tomorrow, whenever it is, Saturday night, it's crazy. It is. There's one thing to be there with them, which is like, you can debate that enough, but the actual toast is just, what are we doing?

Speaker 3:
[66:06] There are two reasons to go. I mean, one, the comedians can be good.

Speaker 2:
[66:10] No comedian this year, is that right?

Speaker 1:
[66:11] Mentalist.

Speaker 3:
[66:12] Mentalist.

Speaker 2:
[66:12] It's a mentalist.

Speaker 3:
[66:13] Forget that.

Speaker 1:
[66:14] The manosphere is mentalist, apparently.

Speaker 3:
[66:16] And there are certain moments when presidents can do, you know, with good timing. I mean, the guy you worked for can do well. I don't think Biden's talks were terribly good. Bush had his moments, I thought. Clinton had his moments. I don't know. I mean, but those days are long gone.

Speaker 1:
[66:35] Last question for you. This town came out in 2013. If you were writing the 2026 edition, what's the opening scene? Who's the central character?

Speaker 3:
[66:46] Opening scene? Oh man, you put me on the spot.

Speaker 2:
[66:50] Can we do it for you?

Speaker 3:
[66:51] Yeah, please.

Speaker 2:
[66:52] You're at Butterworth's.

Speaker 3:
[66:53] No, that story's been done.

Speaker 2:
[66:56] What about that club?

Speaker 1:
[66:57] I thought I texted you about one. There was a funeral. There was another funeral.

Speaker 3:
[67:01] I mean, there have been a lot of funeral. I mean.

Speaker 1:
[67:04] Cause you opened this town as people know it.

Speaker 3:
[67:05] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, here's the thing.

Speaker 2:
[67:08] Oh, there was a funeral.

Speaker 1:
[67:09] Was it at Carter's? Were you at Carter's funeral?

Speaker 3:
[67:11] I've done a lot of.

Speaker 2:
[67:11] Was that the most recent one?

Speaker 3:
[67:12] Okay, so here's the thing. Since that book came out.

Speaker 1:
[67:14] Or Chaney.

Speaker 3:
[67:14] The New York Times, I did do a Chaney piece. Then I've been assigned a number of pieces. I remember one of the last pieces I did for the New York Times. I was kind of playing out the string, cleaning out my desk, and Elizabeth Buhmiller, my boss, walked over to me and said, hey, you know Bob Dole died. And the funerals at the Kennedy Center, or not the Kennedy Center, at the National Cathedral on Friday, you got to cover it. So I mean, there were several moments like that where I was kind of became the funeral guy. That was during COVID too, I remember. And it was a huge deal.

Speaker 1:
[67:46] What a fun beat.

Speaker 3:
[67:47] To wear a mask, because you were in a cathedral, you were packed with elderly people, signs everywhere, wear a mask, wear a mask, DC rules, the whole thing. And I remember looking, I was sitting in the press area right above where the Senate was seated, where most of a lot of the sitting senators were. Every single one of them was wearing a mask, except for Ted Cruz, who was being completely ostentatious about it. And we're talking elderly people, there's no vaccine yet, right across the way. And it was a church, just the whole thing, and he probably got a shout out for it. Anyway, the problem that, I mean, Tim Russert, that was a thing though. I mean, the critique, which seems very quaint now, was that there was this one world, one Washington, you know, overly chummy world between the media and the money people and the lobbyists and the former people and the elected officials in the White House and Congress. And that was what was insidious at the time, which of course in retrospect seems like a comedy of matters. I mean, the fact that Trent Lott and John Brough, a Democrat and a Republican, a Republican and a Democrat, would go into business together and make money. I mean, that was like a scandal. And I mean, again, it's almost, I'm not embarrassed by it, because it was just a, but it just gives you a sense of how much time has passed.

Speaker 1:
[69:07] And the second book was Suck Up Culture, but it was really around Trump.

Speaker 3:
[69:11] Trump, yeah. And that would be...

Speaker 1:
[69:12] And the second term does feel different.

Speaker 3:
[69:14] I mean, I do think, okay, so I think that it's kind of running on two tracks now. It's Suck Up Culture around Trump, which is orders of magnitude worse now. I mean, it's just, it's gone beyond cult level. But there's also... So my book was called Thank You for Your Servitude. I don't know if I could talk about this, but I will anyway. Jacob Weisberg has a book coming out called Profiles and Cowardice, which I read like a part of it, and it's a similar way. There's a lot of that. I mean, it's sort of of a piece to that.

Speaker 2:
[69:49] I don't know.

Speaker 3:
[69:50] I mean, I do think that it's hard to think of like what the one, what the merger of MAGA and sort of normie politics as we know it, whether independence, Democrats, some Republicans.

Speaker 2:
[70:04] Yeah. I mean, I've been gone from the city for 10 years now, but my sense is there is just less of the stuff that was at the center of your book, which is basically this idea that everyone, you know, cosplayed rivals during the day, and then they went to the same cocktail parties at night and all hung out and it was like one party circuit. And doesn't seem like that's necessarily still the case in the same way.

Speaker 3:
[70:31] Yeah. I don't see how it could. I honestly don't. I mean, I just have people who, I mean, believe me, I mean, you've all lived here. I mean, it was actually possible to have bipartisan friendships for... Yeah. It's hard. Like, I mean, the MAGA just like it's a whole different dimension and they don't seem to want to have much to do with mainstream journalists, mainstream Democrats, people who have been critical of President Trump and vice versa.

Speaker 1:
[70:59] Democratic institutions.

Speaker 3:
[71:01] Yeah. I mean, again, I mean, I always thought that and other presidents have tried variations on this, but I mean, blowing off the White House Correspondents' Dinner would have been a great move for any president, not just when Trump started doing it. I mean, I thought Obama, Bush, whoever would have gotten credit for it in some way. It might have been some grudging out there. People would have complained, but they would have walked into your office.

Speaker 2:
[71:24] How disrespectful to the First Amendment.

Speaker 3:
[71:27] Yeah, that would have been terrible. Yeah. Anyway, no. But Trump was obviously, he wasn't onto something, but he just trashed the whatever polite society existed here that was probably too cozy for its own good.

Speaker 2:
[71:45] But now he's trying to just run it because he went to the alfalfa dinner.

Speaker 3:
[71:49] He did.

Speaker 2:
[71:50] Yeah, which makes the White House Correspondents' Dinner look like a Buffalo Wild Wings. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[71:56] That's a good line. No, I've never actually been to the alfalfa dinner.

Speaker 2:
[71:59] I staffed Obama at it once.

Speaker 3:
[72:01] Really?

Speaker 2:
[72:02] I ate Burger King in the back room while he spoke. Because they didn't have food for the staff. So Reggie and I, Marvin and I had to go to Burger King to eat.

Speaker 3:
[72:12] That's perfect. You probably had the best time of anyone.

Speaker 1:
[72:16] Mark Leibovich, thank you so much.

Speaker 3:
[72:18] Thanks guys.

Speaker 1:
[72:20] Come to our party, we'll toast you. We'll do a toast to the First Amendment specifically.

Speaker 2:
[72:24] Bring your First Amendment pins.

Speaker 3:
[72:25] Oh, I totally will. Yeah, actually, you know what though? There'll be like a kitty for us to put money in for the scholarships, right?

Speaker 2:
[72:32] Yes, yes, of course.

Speaker 3:
[72:33] The Pod Save America scholarships.

Speaker 2:
[72:35] For young podcasters.

Speaker 3:
[72:36] Young podcasters.

Speaker 1:
[72:38] Just starting out. All right, thanks Leibovich.

Speaker 3:
[72:40] You can buy the tight t-shirts. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[72:43] Thanks to Mark Leibovich for coming on. Tommy will be back with an interview with Sarah Longwell on Sunday's PSA, and then Tommy and Lovett and I will be back with a new episode in your feed on Tuesdays. Bye, everyone. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com/friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked. Pod Save America is a Crooked media production. Our producer is Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reid Cherlin is our executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglen and Charlotte Landis. Matt DeGroote is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Hayley Jones, Ben Hefkoat, Mia Kelman, Carol Pellivive, David Tolles and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.