The Audacity of Pope

Welcome to Pod State America, I'm John Gabbard. I'm John Gabbard. On today's show, we'll talk about JD Vance's global face plant from Budapest to Islamabad. Trump's new ploy to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by blockading it, his new war with the Holy Father, and his blasphemous depiction of himself as an AI Jesus. That's that for a sentence.

That's fucking...what a stupid era. Then we'll get into the big news in the California Governor's race as horrific sexual assault allegations and Eric Swellwell's campaign in his time in Congress. We'll also talk about the latest encouraging sign for Democrats Senate hopes. That's for some good news in there, right? Then love it's it's now with our pal Nithya Ramen, the LAC Council member who launched a last-minute surprise challenge to Karen Bass about why she's running for mayor on a very Yimby platform.

Yeah. Quick reminder, please consider becoming a critic media subscriber if you haven't already, so that you don't miss out on any of the great content we're putting out there for our friends and pod subscribers. Get our new extra episode of Pod Save America, called Pod Save America Only Friends, other subscriber-only shows like Polar Coaster with Dan Fyfer, access to all of our excellent sub-stack newsletters like Pod Save America Open Tabs, ad-free episodes of all your favorite critic pods, and you get to feel good about supporting one of the few independent, proudly pro-democracy media outlets left in Trump's America. That's us. That's us guys.

So head on over to kricket.com slash friends and subscribe. We're past 50,000 now. And so I just want to thank all you guys for who signed up in the last couple weeks to put us over the top there. Now we're going to get to 100. Yeah, let's go. Let's pick up the pace here.

Let's pick up the pace. All right, let's get to the news. JD Vance and his New York Real Estate duo did such a bang-up job negotiating with the Iranians in Islamabad this weekend that Trump has ordered a naval blockade of all Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz and might resume military strikes according to the Wall Street Journal. The 21 hours of direct talks between the US and Iran broke down over some minor stuff like the fate of Iran's nuclear program, control of the Strait of Hormuz, nothing big. Vance, who is just absolutely crushing his audition as future world leader, sandwiched a quick statement about the failure of the talks in between stumping for Hungarian loser Viktor Orban and watching silently as the moral and spiritual leader of his church was insulted and attacked by his boss, the president.

Here's Vance in Islamabad. We've had a number of substantive discussions with the Iranians. That's the good news. The bad news is that we have not reached the agreement and I think that's bad news for Iran much more than it's bad news for the United States of America. It's quite a good news bad news there.

You tried that again on Fox Today. Everyone's talking about what went badly but not what went well. But then things went away from us. It's the first time I think since the Iranian regime took power that we sat down for face-to-face talks. It's like, yeah, why did that happen?

Because you bombed the shit out of them and now they're holding the global economy hostage. It's not good news. If you've had talks and the bad news is that the talks failed. It's not good news if you're playing flies almost all the way to your destination and then crashes. It's just that mountain at the end.

It's inputs, outputs. How's the play? How's the play? What kind of situation? Well, Vance was in Islamabad trying to negotiate and failing.

Donald Trump was monitoring the situation with his secretary of state and other important figures. Let's take a look. I'll give you a minute. Let's go. Good.

You are some fighter. Thank you, man. Thank you. So there's Donald Trump and Miami hitting on USC fighters. It goes on.

He tells the guy he's hot like two or three times. He is hot. I'm very confident. Nice to see a kind of non-toxic version of masculinity on this plane. A man getting mired of other men being attractive without resorting to, you know, sexual innuendo.

That's how I feel. That's how I feel about it in the middle of a high stakes negotiation or the future. Oily wrestling. Hey, one thing for Donald Trump to be there, which is bad enough but we don't expect much of Donald Trump. Very weird that the secretary of state and national security.

And national security guys are not realizing from Florida but just hanging out with Trump and Miami at a UFC fight. You got anything better to do, Marco? It's ridiculous. Why isn't Ruby able to part of these talks? Why isn't he leading the talks?

Probably because he wants to stay out of it. Too much to. He's on a bogg news. He's like, yeah. He's like, remember, I'm a guy who got my duro.

The famous closer, Marco Ruby, I did that other war. So Trump claimed Monday morning that actually the Iranians just asked for another round of negotiations. So who knows? Vance didn't seem quite as forward leaning on that during the Fox interview as Trump did. But why do you guys think JD Vance, the closer as he's known to no one, couldn't get it done in Islamabad?

Tommy? Three problems as far as I can tell. One, both sides seem to think or at least say they're winning to trust and then three just major substantive differences, especially the straighter who moves in around nuclear program. I think in terms of the winning question, obviously the US is winning every military battle as we often do, but we are losing the broader economic war. And the Iranians know that they can just kind of wait it out and continue to increase economic pressure.

And then on trust, I mean the US, we don't trust the Iranians. But the Iranians don't trust Trump for good reason. He pulled out of the JCPOA and then we in Israel bombed bomb them the last time we've been having talks. So there's been a lot of goodwill. Literally kills the people that we talk to.

Literally kills the negotiators often. And then using negotiation as a pretext to do a surprise to do more bombing. Yeah. And the substance like Trump wants to straight arm was open. The Iranians want to de facto control it and charge a fee.

And then the nuclear program, the US position was reportedly and all nuclear enrichment dismantle enrichment facilities and hand over the highly enriched uranium stockpile and taking that position going into the talks was doomed to fail because Iran has repeatedly rejected those positions and assert their rights to peaceful civilian nuclear enrichment. It sounds like they might have proposed a middle ground. It was a 20 year halt on enrichment activities, which is interesting because we're always told the JCPOA was really awful because there was a 10 years sunset now that proposed a 20 year sunset. Obviously, so if they took it, they could say well we doubled the Obama deal. But the Iranians, we've all seen their 10 point wish list.

It's like control the straight arm moves sanctions relief. Get the US bases, close them down in the Middle East. So I think the Iranians think Trump's going to get bored of this. He's going to taco. He's going to give up.

Meanwhile, the Iranians are like, we literally have nowhere else to go. So see you next time. Love it. Trump did say, right as the negotiations are about to happen. The Iranians don't seem to realize they have no cards other than a short term extortion of the world by using international waterways.

The only reason they are alive today is to negotiate regardless of what happens we win. We've totally defeated that country. Do you think that set the negotiations up for success? Like I was starting with this just like watching all this unfolding. Okay.

So this is going to Islam about for high stakes negotiations. Oh no, the negotiations have fallen apart and now we're doing a blockade. But wait, the negotiations are back on. It's all in like, we're allowing like Trump's attention span to like describe what's happening. And like, oh, you didn't resolve this intractable situation in 21 hours.

Of course you didn't. Oh, people have walked away, but they're going to maybe reapproach the negotiating table. That's how these laws. Super-revealer. Right.

It's like two years. Right. You're trying to get to like a clean like least least terms where you're rolling all in on the front end. Like it's a complicated negotiation. There should be kind of complexities to take time to unwind.

Like, oh, it's a stalemate. Wait, we're back on an hour blockading. Like, I don't know who knows what the actual strategic logic is of a blockade. But if anything, it just shows that clearly they feel as though they need a deal that's better than what Obama got out of Iran. But because we fought a war, we have created all these conditions that require us to give on all these other things that have to be in some way compensated or the consequences that we'll have to be dealt with.

And so what do you have to do to get to a better deal? You have to find some other place to ratchet up to pressure and make it harder for Iran to walk away from people. It all just seems like maybe work, but it's an envisioning interest. The New York Times hopefully reminded us of what Trump said during one of those Easter events a couple of weeks ago about JD Vance going. He said, if it doesn't happen, I'm blaming JD Vance.

If it does happen, I'm taking full credit. I'm saying like, that's where he's great. I completely look. I say the team at Love to Leave It, I cannot fail. I can only be failed.

I can respect that ethos from Trump. Double fail, though, from JD Vance after his little rally in Budapest. Yeah, it didn't. And he said that on Fox News. He was like, look, we can read polls.

We didn't think the victor was going to run away with it. He's not personally based with him. He's like, but you know, sometimes you just do what's right, which is stumping for an authoritarian and he's an Arabic. I'll say a couple of years ago when Scott Bassin said we were jujitsuing Iran by lifting sanctions on them to increase. We'll let's talk about the blockade.

Trump announced it shortly after Vance's bad news announcement, which the military then had to explain is not a blockade of all ships entering or leaving the Strait of Hormuz, as Trump initially said, but a blockade of Iranian ports. Trump also said that other countries would be joining us, but once again, that hasn't happened yet either, though Israel approves. Tons of questions about what all this actually means. It's two babies. Even Israel's like, are they helping with the blockade?

No, but they're like, go for it. We're not getting dragged. Tons of questions about what all this actually means, which Trump attempted to answer on Monday morning in the most natural setting, a press event where a self-described door-gramma knock on the door of the Oval to deliver the President, McDonald's. Here's how it went. Do you think that men should blame women's sports?

I really don't have an opinion on that. You don't. I'll bet you do. I'm here about facts on tips. I think you're really nice.

Would you like to do a little news conference with me? These are not the nicest people. They're not nice like you. You know this, right? I'll do whatever you ask me to do, sir.

Iran will not have a nuclear weapon and we're going to get the dust back. We'll get it back either. We'll get it back from them or we'll take it. Did you hear that participation as the President that other countries will assist in this effort to blockade Iran and those crimes?

I think the threat was for, because Iranian Navy has been destroyed according to the President. If ships are going through smaller ships and drones could still launch attacks. Yes, there are multiple things. He said multiple things. That's one thing he said.

He said he was talking about the small attack ships. He also made a separate point about going after any ships that try to violate the blockade. I hope that he's completely unclear and the military's been clarifying it. We have no idea what he means. We don't know how this is going to be implemented.

I hope that's what he means. It's not clear that if a ship is not listening to a ship. Who knows? And the other part of it is are we now saying that we're going to have the US military board ships that may be hostile? This is also something that sets up a whole bunch of horrible contingencies.

Shrips being grabbed, people dying in accidents because boarding a ship in the fucking sea doesn't want to be boarded is a complicated endeavor. Who knows where this is going? It all puts him in a position if he wants to escalate and reclaim it because of some incident that took place on the sea. It's a dangerous thing to be pursuing without understanding. He's known to be a bit in precise in his language.

The military said it was the latter thing you said, which is that for the blockade it's about them stopping and trying to board any vessel. Of course that does raise the question. When it happens when it's a Chinese vessel that's trying to bring oil to Iran or an Indian vessel. And Chinese said we're coming. We have contracts and we're going to go get that oil.

By the way, the problem is once you start operating in the street it removes. It's 21 miles at its narrowest choke point. But the Iranians can fire missiles and drones from anywhere along their coast and your reaction time to respond to that with missile defense is nothing. So this is getting real risky. So people understand the purpose of the blockade because I don't know if I explained it.

By having a blockade of all Iranian ports, the idea is Iran has to get its oil exported out to the people who are buying it through all of its ports. And if it can't do that, then Iran's going to lose billions and billions of dollars. And that is how they get most of their money. It's like half their oil and gas revenue is right. It's right.

So if you're blocking all the Iranian ports, they can't get anything in, can't get anything out. And that's how it could also, by the way, continue to squeeze the Iranian economy. But it's also going to raise oil prices everywhere else because the rest of the world, and the oil prices around the rest of the world, depend on Iranian oil, to some extent. So in the short term, it's also going to raise oil prices for everyone else as well as squeezing Iran itself. And the question is like, will can the Iranians take the pain more than the rest of the world and us here in the United States who are very sensitive to higher gas prices?

And so far, they've shown. Yes. What are you trying to get out of a deal that Iran is not currently willing to give you, but that they will give you after two to three to four to five weeks of pressure from a blockade? And we just don't know. Maybe that is known to that.

Maybe they have some sense of what they're trying to achieve, but nothing public is made clear with the point of this pressure is other than just what they're trying to achieve. What the point of this pressure is other than just to get to some sort of deal, I guess. Yeah, it seems like their idea is squeeze the Iranian economy even more so that either suddenly there is a popular uprising because now we're not bombing them anymore and people are upset. Right. It's crazy.

And so this will, and then the leadership will say, okay, let's just make the deal and let's give up. Let's give up the dust and make the promises and give them what they want on nukes and I guess reopen the straight and then maybe lift economic sanctions for the Iranians as well. And that's the J.D. Vance, Donald Trump view of this. The dust is what he gave Justin Trudeau before he went off to burning a sartre hotel.

So I don't know if that's wrong. He's talking about the nuclear material and Brett Bair and he knows of course that it's called in rich uranium and he understands all this but he has to go. Some people call it dust. One person calls it dust. You fucking idiot.

That's all I did. Right. There is a question like what does the blockade do? I guess it chokes off the ability to have revenue to run the government. But yeah, the idea that people are going to rise up again like the RGC is all the weapons, the decision militia is all the weapons.

You're running people have nothing. Well, the other thing. You're bombing them. It's a history of blockades is it usually hurts the people more than it hurts the regime that it's directed towards. I was also just to end on top of that.

I do think on some level it is about making the pain felt outside of Iran to make other people feel that they're kind of dragged into this conflict. It's a tricky knot. Especially them or something. Spokesman for a round response to the blockade on Monday by calling it an attack on the global economy and asking is it ever worthwhile to cut off one's nose to spite one's face? Trump doesn't seem too bothered by it.

He's a fan of cutting off his nose to spite his face. Here he is talking to Maria Bartiromo on Sunday morning. So a lot of people are like, that's all they have. You know, they have a talk to that you start with a hundred grand. You come out, they cut off your nose to spite your face and you're done.

A lot of filler. A lot of filler. A lot of fiddle. A lot of spited faces. Spitted.

Spitted. Anyway, let's play the clip. Do you believe the price of oil and gas will be lower before the midterm elections? I hope so. I mean, I think it could be or the same or maybe a little bit higher.

It's the full range. The full range. As someone did someone tell Maria Bartiromo, hey, you know, we can attach a lot to your shirt and you can speak naturally. You know, boom across the room. I'll keep shouting at it for no fucking reason.

You have to mic on your shirt. You don't have to shout. It's crazy. She's just like a real boomer with just the TV on constantly when you walk into the house. I also just like the idea that like the Iranian regime is posting these sort of like, a and it looks like Joe Biden's approval a month after the Afghanistan withdrawal, which we all remember essentially ended his presidency.

And so maybe it'll come back, but it just seems like the energy shock is just getting started. Oil prices are back up and Trump seems to think he said earlier, he seems to think that he's like, I would ever we drill our own oil, you know, we'll be fine here. It's a global market. And then the financial times today had a report out where it said that US crude exports will be up about a third this month in demand from Asia is also increasing. So that's going to put upward pressure on all the prices here.

It's like, it's going to hurt. It's already hurt. It has not like the real pain hasn't hit yet. And all of the energy analysts keep saying this. And we're getting very close to that point, where it's like, you can look at the oil futures all you want, but like the actual physical manifestation of the oil futures is about to hit.

And I remember when we were in the White House, David Pluff would always say gas prices are a hit to the entire enterprise. Yeah. Like the whole thing could collapse, like the whole political project could collapse on gas prices. And that's when they went up like, I don't know, a dime, five cents here and there. This is, I mean, you know, the parliament speaker, Galabaf that negotiated with JD Vance, he said, soon you'll be nostalgic for four to five dollars.

Yes. So on the Iranian point, I know, I was talking to you today reminded me that Iran prepared for this by taking a bunch of oil and placed it in tankers outside of the street over moves. They something like 130 million barrels kind of sitting in anchor in various places. So at current prices, that is 18 billion dollars. So that's a nice little cushion for us.

You know what's funny about that is that they prepared for this. But the United States, which is the one that launched the war on its own timetable, its own decision making, did not refill this strategic petroleum reserve ahead of Trump launching only 6% full. So it's almost as if VV and Pheksa persuaded Trump that this would be faster and easier than it actually was. Yeah, I was looking like, we were watching Vance before we came in here and he said, you know, look, obviously gas prices being up is bad, but we had such a low benchmark. We were doing so good and it's not nearly as bad as it was under Biden.

And it is true. There was a moment during the Biden administration where gas prices shot up to higher than they are now. I think five dollars on average higher in more expensive places. And that I think actually was the rising of prices, putting gas prices into that. I'm going to throw all the probably were the one two punch that kept Biden below, you know, low approval for the rest of his presidency.

But right now today, gas prices are higher than they ever were after that week right now. And there's no hope that they're going to or at least we don't expect them to go down between now and the election. So it's just not true. Even to job losses and within the realm of price increases, there is nothing that people are more sensitive to than gas and they have eyeballs and they see them everywhere. They are posted.

Long play are docuseries exploring the people and forces shaping the South is back new slash the South is the new political epicenter of the country Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own reckoning in the South to bring the final stretch of them in terms and the political map has only gotten more competitive with new states and districts emerging as potential for lips. So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground. I'm Erin Haynes, journalist and expert on all things southern politics and I'm Jennifer Palmyri as potential for lips. So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground.

I'm Erin Haynes, journalist and expert on all things southern politics and I'm Jennifer Palmyri, former White House Communications Director. Tune in on Mondays to long play series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Long play are docuseries exploring the people and forces shaping the South is back new slash the South is the new political epicenter of the country. Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own reckoning in the South to bring the final stretch of them in terms and the political map has only gotten more competitive with new states and districts emerging as potential for lips. So Trump was also asked with DoorDash grandma by his side whether he regretted the holy war he decided to launch against the Catholic Church, the world's largest Christian denomination that includes more than 50 million Americans.

The background here is that Pope Leo has been speaking out with increasing frequency about the church's opposition to Trump's brutal treatment of immigrants and his war of choice in Iran, which reportedly led to a meeting where a Pentagon official allegedly berated the Pope's outgoing ambassador to the US. It also led to a 60 minute segment Sunday night where the three most powerful American Cardinals who were close with the American Pope spoke bluntly about the church's issues with the church's own country. The president was watching 60 minutes because right afterwards he posted a lengthy tirade that read in part, quote, Pope Leo is weak on crime is a sentence that I will think about. It was like I was shocked, but I also couldn't stop laughing. Me too. It's like they're on some debate stage in Iowa and you're like you're soft on crime,

you're soft on nukes. Also, Pope Leo won't take an axoron. Week on crime, week on nuclear weapons, and in wrong for American friends with the axoron. That was interesting. I started mentioning my name.

I was talking about the American president. I was talking about the American president. I was talking about the American president. I was trying to mention my name. I just talked to Ax today about it.

It's just wild. It's like you knew what the Pope and then suddenly it's a rabbi in a priest walking to a barn in Chicago. Have you ever had ham? No. Have you ever had sex?

No. You've got to try ham. I did ask Ax if he brought the Pope Manny's as an interfaith offering. Oh, that's nice. I guess they didn't mean Chicago.

Anyway, the Trump also warned the Holy Father to quote, get his act together. Okay. And he took credit for Leo's selection as the Supreme Pontiff of the universal church. That is Trump's doing. For good measure, Trump also posted an AI image of himself as Jesus healing the sick.

Truly? Did you just say no? Yes. He really did. I would love to just, we should have done a whole video going through the actual image.

It's an AI slop image for sure. There's a lot of confusing things in there. But what you really need to know, Trump, Jesus, healing a sick man in bed. Who cares for Joe Biden? Or Jeffery Epstein.

Also maybe, there's some more Jeffery Epstein. I thought it was Jeffery Epstein. I just look at divorce. It also looks like there's like a demon behind him and maybe some GI Joe's. I thought he saw a Ninja Turtle maybe.

Yeah. And Ninja definitely. Anyway. So the Pontiff was asked about all of this on Sunday night. Here's what he said.

I have no fear of neither the Trump administration or speaking up loudly about the message in the gospel. And that's what I believe. I am going to know what the church is about to do. Less than other peacemakers. I do not look at my role as being political, politician.

I don't want to get into it to make with him. I don't think that the message to the gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some of the people are doing too many innocent people are being filled. And I think someone has to stand up and say there's a better way to do this. The Pope was also asked directly about the post and he did say that true social was an ironic name for the one for the one for the one for the one for the one for the one for the one. I love just just a pope and just just Chicago English.

It's so strange. It's so surprising. First American pope. Truly America. Yeah.

Do you think he flies business? I thought to say what kind of oh he cares about the least among us. What's he flying? What's he flying? What's he flying?

Him and his Marxist Pope. Marxist Pope. Marxist Pope's an ex-a-son piker and tell the one. Bernie. He is.

Here's what Trump had to say for himself when he was with door dash grandma. What he calls him lying. I think he's very weak on crime and other things. I'm not. I mean he went public.

I'm just responding to public. There's nothing to apologize for. He's wrong. The other thing is he didn't like what we're doing with respect to Iran. Did you post that picture of yourself?

Did Jesus Christ? Well it wasn't a picture. It was me. I did post it and I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with Red Cross as a Red Cross working there which we support. I just heard about it and I said how did they come up with that?

It's supposed to be me as a doctor making people better and I do make people better and make people a lot better. Such a funny lie. So funny. Just a health care provider. I'm dressed as Jesus.

It's one of those lies I'm like why does anyone have time on it? Anyone with eyes knows that it's not. Even JD Vance was asked about it when we were watching the box just now. What a couple answers from him on this. First of all he said the whole thing was not newsworthy.

The President of the United States picks a very public fight attacking the pope, the bishop of Rome as weak on crime and weak on nuclear and warns him to get his act together. JD Vance says it wasn't newsworthy. He said that the AI Jesus, Trump was just joking. So it wasn't meant to be a doctor. He's joking.

People don't get Trump's sense of humor and it's good that he posts his own stuff on social media and doesn't go through a filter of press assistants and people who work for him and everything else because it's good that he speaks directly to people. He also said that the Vatican should stick to matters of morality. Not the policies of the most powerful nation as it retains the war. I guess you mean like what? Just no divorces and the rhythm method?

It's just basically all that they want. That's what they want. So revealing that he said that. I was like I said about this even before he said that is to JD Vance and to a lot of the right wing Catholics and especially evangelical Christians in this country. Issues of morality are issues of personal morality.

And so that is why for so long they have been focused on abortion and sexual orientation and what Pope Leo and Pope Francis before him have revealed is that the core of Catholic social teaching is about matters of war and peace, is about preferential option for the poor, is about treating immigrants with dignity and respect and valuing life. And I think that is all more explicitly mentioned in the Bible, in the New Testament and from Jesus's mouth than anything related to abortion or sexual orientation or any of the other personal morality issues that become political in the United States. Look, it's Thomas Aquinas over here. Look at this guy. Thomas Aquinas.

Actually, no one is talking about the. I'm like, yeah, yeah, bad. Yeah, the I'm Protestant. Not since Henry VIII has a divorce slob. The Pope had overstepped his bound, but at least he didn't, at least Henry VIII did bury in Berlin on a golf course.

You know what I'm saying? I think smart fight to pick. Let me tell you, we've talked about Trump picking fight with Muslims, which he has obviously there was the Muslim ban and you know, also in United States, especially attack Muslims in the United States. He has talked about dual loyalty and has had plenty of anti-Semitic things about Jews in the United States. There's 20% of the country are Catholic in the United States of America.

It's not that much. Yes. There's not. There's over 50 million Catholics in the United States. There's a lot of Catholics.

There's a lot of Catholics. It does politically this feels worse. I mean, remember, this is not his first big fight with a pope. Remember he talked about Pope Francis. If and when the Vatican is attacked by Isis, which is everyone knows his Isis is ultimate trophy, I promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president because this would not have happened.

Remember that one? I forgot about the one. First of all, it's like mood music. Things are a little rocky for Trump, especially with his far right followers. I don't know if you and Dan covered the op-ed length street attacking Meghan Kelly, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Alex Jones from last week's.

I read it aloud. Yes. Trump's biggest supporters are not in the mood to defend him. It also comes right after the Easter tweets where he offended a lot more Christians by us tweeting close the fucking straight and plays a la on Easter. Yeah.

He offended Christians and Muslims in one tweet. All over the I started a little holy word there. And then, you know, it is an American pope, which is like, what are you doing? He posted a picture of himself as the pope in May of last year. And I do think that like he said, he's done.

Like you said with Francis, he's done this before. I actually think he's just doing it at a time when he actually no longer seems kind of tough and plustery, but it just seems sort of sweaty. And so he's getting attacked from like people that would previously have never said a word about something like this and would have done what Banstead and say, oh, he's just kidding around. That's our president. That's our big boy.

But instead they're actually saying what they think about it. Yeah. If you guys listen to the full 45 minute Tucker Carlson monologue attacking the Easter tweet that led into a broader around critique, it actually started by pointing out that Trump did not put his hand on the Bible when he was sworn into office. I hadn't realized that. I didn't realize that either.

I miss that. I mean, basically that Trump thinks he's got and thinks he has God like powers in that that is wrong and evil. And it's also kind of like kicking up a debate again about whether Trump is mentally well. He was asked this at the press event the other day. People think you're crazy.

Yeah. And my view on that is he's been like this forever. Yeah, I just I listen, it didn't make sense when I saw it as a kid. But as I get older stupid is that stupid does, you know? I think he I think watching the 60 minute segment is what obviously that is what said him off and reporting on this.

But it is worth watching everyone. Norodonal does a pretty great job talking to the free Cardinals, the Archbishop of Washington, Chicago and New York. And I mean, they use the White House of Gamification of Warfare calling the administration videos, the enough videos, sickening quote where we're de cardinal, we're dehumanizing the victims of war by turning the suffering of people and the killing of children and our own soldiers and entertainment. Cardinal Tobin called ice a lawless organizations that they hide their identities to terrify people. I mean, it was just it went on and on.

And I think that for Trump when he hears that, he's like, oh, this is a personal attack and I get to hit back just like anything else. But it's like what they are revealing is that it's not just Trump's own personality, but like his entire political agenda is incompatible with not just Christian Christianity and Catholic social teaching, but like most of the world's major religions. Yeah. Because it is like based in like, because they are based in empathy and compassion and grace and banning abortion, which he kind of already gave them. So we're on the other side of the game.

A pretty big win. And now they're turning on him side note, not as important. Interesting that 16 minutes air that piece given all the concern is very wise would be spiking anything kind of critical of Trump. So I guess good that made it through. And we wrote this story about them saying that they're going to get the papacy back to Avignon.

Yeah. So like on the politics of this, I mean, I don't know what it'll do lasting damage. Like a lot of Catholics might be like, yeah, I was weird. He deleted it, but he overturned Rovers is way. So like we're good.

It is interesting, I think that once again, the anger and the criticism falls into the character values bucket. This isn't like you didn't give us the tax credit or let us like be mean to the, you know, the cake artist who won't make an LGBT wedding cake or whatever. It was like the people in truth social saying this is a creation. Trump is the anti-Christ. Trump thinks he's God.

I've heard from people who like they have mag relatives who are like, this was it. This is it's the extremely political types who like their first issue, even more than their Catholicism is abortion is one thing like you're saying. But I think for most Catholics, when you started attacking the public like that and then you put yourself as a Jesus, like that is a pretty it's it's pretty much it's pretty blasphemous. Yeah. You know, and it is it's very Trump too because with Islam and Judaism, like there's like Catholicism has a head of the church.

And so there's someone there is like a person who can be a threat to Donald Trump, who is a moral leader around the world. He's not used to that. He's just being like, see that that politician like they're just as bad as everyone else. We're all the same. We're all bad.

And so it's not the first not the first leader also just to think like, Oh, what could the pope do? He doesn't have any armies or anything. The I do wonder if maybe could Trump could be like, go on the road to Canosa and then walk all the way to the castle and then take his shoes off and then beat on the doors for a few days until the pope lets him in and then he can apologize and then the pope would absolve him and then he could go back to leading the Holy Roman Empire. That's good. What about that?

That's a good idea. Did you see the other interesting thing before we move off on the on the CBS on the 60 Minutes thing is that the pope has decided to spend the Fourth of July in Leidusa, which is the Italian island where tens of thousands of migrants have landed and on the way to Europe and you know, nor asked if that was symbolic and yeah, of course. No, no, they're great spritzes there. It's the I was because on the coast on the it's on the waters. You're really selling that.

You're hare doing it curly. It's like what a contrast with you know, Donald Trump celebrating July 4th with what he's going to do with all of like literal violence like you have seen matches and he's meanwhile welcoming migrants to the shore, which is what you know, this is one of the Cardinals said, which is a statue of Liberty Swiss represent. Also tough for a Vances. I became Catholic book tour. Yeah, big time.

Yeah, like I said, my road was like the road home since it's been a long road back to Catholicism. I know that Catholicism up to the Reformation. That's a very end of my memory of AP European history cuts off. It's a tough. It's going to really ruin the book tour.

It's what is it called? Communion. It's my way back to faith. He found his way back. How many books about himself is that guy going to write?

Jesus Christ. That's too many already. VP Bud. Long play are docuseries exploring the people and forces shaping the South is back. New slash the South is the new political epicenter of the country.

Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own reckoning in the South too. We're in the final stretch of them in terms and the political map has only gotten more competitive with new states and districts emerging as potential flips. So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground. I'm Erin Haines, journalist and expert on all things southern politics. And I'm Jennifer Paul-Marie, former White House Communications director.

Tune in on Mondays to close the road and look at what's happening on the ground. I'm Erin Haines, journalist and expert on all things southern politics. And I'm Jennifer Paul-Marie, former White House Communications director. Tune in on Mondays to long play series on YouTube for wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, let's get to the big development here in the California governor's race. Eric Swalwell, who was one of the leading candidates, has dropped out after four women accused the congressman of sexual misconduct, including a former staffer who has offered a detailed and corroborated account of Swalwell raping her in a New York hotel room after a night of heavy drinking in 2024. The women spoke to the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office has now opened criminal investigation into the allegations. Swalwell was initially defiant, but after losing most of his endorsements, he ended his campaign on Sunday night writing an statement on X that he was, quote, deeply sorry for mistakes in the judgment and that he, quote, will fight the serious false allegations that have been made just before we recorded.

Swalwell also resigned from Congress. What are your reactions about the news and in general, it's secondary, but just the audacity to run for governor knowing that this was out there? Yeah, I mean, it was shocking. I mean, I think there were a lot of rumors about Eric Swalwell kind of being one of the younger members of Congress who would go to bars, get to drunk, can you out with staffers, maybe fraternize with them in inappropriate ways, but nothing. I'd never heard anything like this.

No. So I read that scene and I thought he should drop out of the race, he should resign from Congress, then he should hire a criminal defense attorney because there's a damn good chance that guy gets prosecuted and could see jail time. And then shortly after the Manhattan district attorney announced an investigation. So it's horrible. I'm glad the Democratic Party moved quickly to push him out.

It's a contrast with how the Republicans operate and the Tony Gonzalez to Trump to many in between, but it's despicable. Yeah, it was at first, Swalwell was issuing these denials that sort of referenced to mistakes in judgment, but that, oh, he'd never done NDAs and it never been members of staff. And then those were, I think, disproven or they were reporting that those weren't true. So then those statements sort of change, hard to get into the mind of somebody that would have this in their past and think that they could run for governor because you can't even say, oh, he, because this is not, I don't know what stories people tell themselves, but he's not the first person to have terrible skeletons in their closet and still believe that they could do whatever they want and keep rising and be brazen and brazenly ambitious.

And right up to the end, the video he recorded reportedly at some billionaire donors home in Beverly Hills, his staff wasn't around, where he refused to drop out and said he was going to say, the woman who came forward on this, she, if you read this again and say this is a go-cronical story, she has text messages to a friend saying that she was sexually assaulted by Erks Wallwell saying exactly what happened, like right after it happened in 2024, she had told multiple family members, her partner at the time, and then you have three other women having similar things, the woman who alleges the sexual assault also got tested for how to pregnancy cuts and test for STDs and have the person at the lab for Senator and note that said like you're a survivor, hang in there, I mean, there's so much, a lot of everybody.

And to like read that story as Erks Wallwell, until like see that once and just be like, I'm in a film video being like, fuck it, I'm hanging in here. And then his lawyer gave this insane interview with Alex Michelson on scene and Alex did a great job, but it was just like, it was so hard to watch because he just was like sitting there not getting any answers on anything, like why did you even go on TV? Yeah, we've seen like a lot, I also, there's a story I think people tell themselves that, oh, like I've been, you know, I've stepped outside of my marriage and I've been unfaithful, but I've never done anything, like I've never been hurt anybody, never, I've always been sensual, always consensual, and then these stories come out with us. You know, we've seen over and over the powerful men that they truly like cannot, either they are in denial themselves or just lie in perpetuity, but they cannot accept that what they've done is not just been unfaithful, but actually been sexually assaulted.

Yeah, and there was a story in the Times about, you know, it's indicative, like this whole thing was indicative of how, what a shit show the California governor's race has been, and people were like clamoring to get behind some kind of candidate because Kamala didn't run and Padilla didn't run, and so Swell welcomed, and then they're like, okay, this is our guys, our guys are starting to insult it. There were rumors, some of the rumors like that you were just saying something that like, you know, maybe you've been inappropriate, and people kept going to him and saying like, any truth to this, and they said that his denials and his categorical denials even in private, like one-on-one before endorsements were like so intense that they were like, okay, I guess he's saying absolutely not, nothing's gonna come out, you know, mag has been after me for a while, wouldn't they have surfaced this already? Well, there was also this thing where, you know, there was a report that Cash Patel was gonna put the, you know, I have saw on from the FBI on Swell, like inappropriately released investigative files, so I think there was, there was also, I think, legitimate concern that maybe like the Trump administration was going to use the power of the government in some inappropriate way to target him, which right, like I think it led to maybe more second chances for him, but then I was thinking back to that weird video he released with his wife, where they're like walking in Santa Monica, and it's like his wife like, enforces his

candidacy, and we're like, what is this? What is the context? And it's just like so clear that that was running these controversies, by the way, as we were recording, CNN and some other reporting that in battle, GOP rep Tony Gonzalez announces he's sitting down from Congress. So, this is another absolute scumbag on the Republican side. Yeah, so people know like the Swell well being brought up, these other has members who they all thought that they maybe would try to expel together.

So there's Swell well, Gonzalez who wouldn't have an affair with the staffer who later committed suicide, Democrat Sheila Churchill, as McCormick, who has ethics committee femme guilty of stealing COVID relief funds for her campaign, Republican Cory Mills, who's under investigation for committing campaign fraud and sexual misconduct in domestic violence. And so now Swell well has resigned Gonzalez has said he's going to resign or retire tomorrow, and so now I don't know if we'll go forward on Jeff Lewis McCormick and Mills or the whole thing we'll get dropped, but wow, so there's a lot about the house just to come in when we go, someone doesn't think that. Let's get them all together. Let's expel them all. Yeah, it's like, there's a chance was basically the first person expelled since what, like, reconstruction.

And with that, it was like, oh, well, so obvious that you should have this person removed because it's so brazen and there's so many examples. But they had to do something so like, look, I'm glad Swell was resigning all these other people should be resigned and expelled. But there's something so ugly about like, oh, we have to do it in pairs because we're only going to enforce our ethics, you know, bipartisan way, which tells you that actually what you need is some kind of a standard or process at the end of the window. There's a way in which you say, all right, this is this standard has been met. We will vote to expel that won't be kind of abused or politicized or ignored by either sign.

Yeah. And it is why I get why when sometimes people face these expulsion votes, they say like, well, we need, we need either the House Ethics Committee to have completed investigation and find the person guilty through the House Ethics Committee or like an actual criminal conviction outside. It's some kind of legal determination. Because you do want that because otherwise, I'm going to start saying, well, you did this, you did this expelled, right? Like the indentiary standard.

Yeah. And like, I'm glad to that there was a genuine reporting that I get like, because there were like random posts on social media, like, oh, Swallow's a creep and some of this is just a hit piece. This is by the opponent. And it's impossible to know. You can't go by that.

Right. And so thankfully someone that these women came forward. Yeah. So it was a combination of people kind of drumming this up online, including people sort of outside of traditional journalism and then getting kind of journalistic outlets, putting in the resources to go and kind of run these things down, which ultimately I think is why it was able to successfully make the story break through and get into a zone. So let's say what happens now in the California governor's race.

We can do, you know, JD Vance, good news bad news, bad news is this. Good news is I feel like the lockout fears are over at this point. I don't know. I think I can revive them when he gets that. Yeah.

Well, let's talk about it because I think now that Trump has jumped into endorsed D. Felton, Swallow Wells out. So now you have California's roughly 60, 40 state Democrats, Republicans. So you have two Republicans splitting the 40, but one endorsed by Donald Trump. And then now you have Tom Steyer, Katie Porter.

And then I guess, you know, Matt Mann from the mayor of San Jose, Javier Bursera, former AG and Biden administration cabinet member and Antonio Riosa, former mayor of LA, sort of vying for, you know, the third slot. Yeah. What do you guys think? So most of the people I've talked to in the California political world since the Swallow news think that this race will go down to Democratic side, Steyer versus Katie Porter. Katie Porter's campaign has said, I think, to Politico today that they and their internal polls, they get half of Swallow's vote.

Steyer's team, I think, said they get a quarter of Swallow's vote. So we'll see. The prompt for Katie Porter is no matter how much she raises or how hard she campaigns in the next couple of weeks, like it's going to be impossible to match the 120 million that Steyer has already spent. And the prompt for Steyer is spent 120 million. He's still kind of stuck in his machine.

Yeah. He was spending millions attacking Swallow, which at this point means he has set that money was wasted. Yeah. And so most of the candidates, as you said, are polling significantly lower than those two. The X factor seems to be Matt Mahan, who may get like a ton of money from a bunch of tech industry, a billion already has, may get a ton more.

And maybe that'll move the needle. The prompt for him is like, California's so big. We have what 10 media markets, they're all expensive. Even spending 20 million is like not going to get you that much. So, you know, that's the assumption to wear the SoulSash out of the good news for all of us is everyone's in the field right now with polls, campaigns, media organizations, packs, hopefully we'll get some new data.

I think the scary scenario is a situation where you have Mahan, Porter and Styer all splitting the Dem vote. Then you could see a Steve Hilton, Chad Bianco lockout scenario. It is very unlikely. It is more likely, I think, that the Democratic Party comes into the DGA, comes in and elevates Steve Hilton further in some way to ensure that it's a Republican Democrat general election. But we'll see.

Yeah. And the reason that it seems unlikely that there's going to be a lockout now is if you've got, so Bessera, Virgoza and Mahan have like, maybe in one or two polls, one of them has hit five. No one's got the more than five, right? So say you generously give all the candidates who aren't Porter and Styer 15%. That still is 45% between Styer and Porter and divided by two is as long as they're over 20, neither Chad Bianco or Steve Hilton is getting over 20% because it's 40% of the voters are Republicans in California.

Yeah. The argument for this, all of the redounding to Porter is, Styer has spent whatever it is over $100 million. He's gotten to wherever he's gotten. He's gotten billions of impressions and he's sort of stuck where he is. Katie Porter hasn't really spent anything, but she's been very little on ads.

And I hope that this would be an opportunity to go spend that money. And so before you even get to where the voters go, like where does Swalwell money go? Doesn't make sense for which to go to Tom Steyer. He's a fucking billionaire. So like where would Matt Meghan?

Maybe, maybe, but we're like some of them. Because Matt Meghan is like a lot of the tech focused people, you know, so he's got a lot of money, a lot of money, a lot of money, a lot of money. Now again, he's got some similar issue with Steyer. He's jumped in the race later, but a lot of money spent and still sitting around 45%. I don't know.

Maybe we'll see. But like the idea that a bunch of people that were behind Eric Swalwell are not going to go to the more kind of like, they're not going to go to the other traditional dam in the race. I don't know. I'm just waiting because you're so outgunned by Steyer. It's also like at some point in this environment where attention matters most and people barely watch ads.

Like I do think finding a moment to capture attention is more important in some ways than how it is Tom Steyer has found out. Yeah. I've been spending a whole bunch of money and it's a challenge in a statewide race, especially as it is because California because you have a huge state, so you have a huge fucking audience, but everyone's talking about national politics all the time and we have a couple of big debates coming up and do we think California voters are all going to be tuning into those debates? You hope so, but I don't know. Because we have forum tomorrow night, which will be the first time I think they've all been to comment on Swalwell.

I do think that will be a newsmaking thing and we'll see something coming up there. Luckily, there's lots of better news for Democrats to focus on. On Monday, the political report shifts outlook for several key Senate races in Democrats direction, North Carolina and Georgia. This is wild from Tossup to Lean Democrat, Ohio from Lean Republican to Tossup, and Nebraska from solid Republican to Lean Republican. In Iowa, a survey commissioned by a Democratic group gave Iowa State auditor Rob Sand an eight-point lead in the governor's race.

While the same poll has Republicans holding only a narrow lead in the Senate race where there are two strong Democrats in a tough primary. Over in Alaska, Mary Pultola raised almost $9 million in the first three months of the year quadrupled the amount raised by Republican and Republican Dan Sullivan, probably the most money ever raised in that state. Do you think the Democrats' chance of taking back the Senate has been underrated? I feel like it might have been underrated by now. Am I underrated?

Yeah, I'm just a picture of an Ayatollah coming to the microphone, the deputy election and saying we didn't set out to change the American regime, but the regime did change. It's interesting to think about. Yeah, I don't know if it's underrated other than it was rated correctly and then we launched a war and gas prices are through the roof and now it needs to be rated according to what's happened, so we're overtaken by events. It was maybe a toss-up when gas was $3 a gallon, if it's $5 or $6 a gallon, suddenly the Senate is not just in play, but like a real chance of taking it. Yeah, I've long felt pretty optimistic about North Carolina and Georgia, just because those are great candidates in states that are genuinely swinging.

Ohio and Iowa, tough dates in 2024, I think Trump won't buy 11 points, won't buy 13 points, some big headwinds, but Ohio, we get shared Brown, he's probably the best candidate we could ask for, he's the winner primary, but he's the winner primary. And then in Iowa, we will not have a candidate until June 2nd. I interviewed Josh Turic a couple weeks ago, folks will listen to that. We're out to Zack Walls to try to get him on soon too, but I would have a really strong candidate at the top of his ticket and Rob Sand who's reportedly up eight points. Randy Feenster, this is a component, he's not that popular, got a lot of baggage.

And between high gas prices, high fertilizer prices, and then tariffs, Trump has done everything he can to piss off farmers and fuck over Iowa's economy. So there's just like, there's just a lot of tailwinds for these candidates. We should know that Cook in the same breath as moving those races also still doesn't think the Democrats are favored to win the Senate because they basically think we'll pick up one to three, we need four, and so there must be kind of Maine, North Carolina, and then either Ohio or Alaska or Iowa and not two of the three. Now we also think Texas is a good chance to, but they don't really, Texas is still being Republican in the ranking of them.

I would also like to see, part of this too, who does gas prices hit? Obviously geographically it's going to hit states where people are driving a longer distance or driving bigger cars. I would bet if you looked at who are the kinds of people that were kind of soft Trump voters and are now open to voting for a Democrat, it's going to be people that they're not driving Teslas, they're driving SUVs and they find Democrats talking about these issues pretty annoying, but they're pretty fucking pissed about how expensive gas is because we went to one room. Yeah, and it's not just gas, it'll be supply shortages and the cost of other, I mean inflation is still a problem. And then the argument that why are we spending X billions on bombs to drop on schools and run when we could be spending on anything else here, like polls through the roof and everyone's going to be able to use that.

Right, we do find how much this block K is going to cost us this day. Yes, billions. Trump was, Trump, right before the election in Hungary was promising like economic help for Hungary if they elect Viktor Orban, which he's on so many times. Like Bernie, if they're a bit of the Argentinian bailout, like he keeps doing that. It's insane.

It's a brazen election interference and JD Vance goes over there and it's like the bureaucrats and Brussels trying to interfere in your election. I won't, but also vote for Viktor Orban, but I'm not here to say like, what are you doing? Absolute loser. It's insane. I wasn't doing it to when he was doing it because they're friends.

He was doing it to help a friend. All right. If you don't love JD Vance at his Viktor Orban, you don't deserve him. He's the most corrupt person I remember. Finally, before we get to love his interview with Nithi Arahman, one more quick item for you.

Well, plenty of political leaders from liberal democracies all over the world posted statement celebrating Viktor Orban's defeat over the weekend. One in particular caught our eye from former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, not because of what he posted, but where he seemingly posted it from, Coachella, where the 54-year-old was spotted in a backwards hat with girlfriend Katie Perry in a series of viral photos, which drew this comment from Twitter user at the departed rat, quote, when you're faded and need to squint one eye to type, but you're trying to tweet about Hungarian politics. We have a picture. There it is. This picture is in raging.

This picture is in raging to me. He looks so vital, young and happy. He looks half his age. Look, maybe there's hope for 54. I guess.

I just like, I, for me, all Coachella is a great weekend where the traffic is less in L.A. And like, there's the former Prime Minister just living in the best fucking life. I like that there's like a video that's coming up to one screen. Yeah. He's like, what are you doing?

What are you doing? What are you doing? I was talking to Canadian friend today who said I was getting shit in Canada. I was talking to Canadian friend today who said I was getting shit in Canada. I was talking to Canada.

Yeah, the one thing is that there's something up there. I was talking to Canada. Because he pushed for a plastic cup in Canada. And as you can see there, he's got a red solo cup. That's why he was getting shit.

That's one of the reasons people are also making fun of him for wearing relaxed clothes. Would you expect him to be in like a blue suit? Like a suit? What are we talking about? I'd be like the back of the hat.

I'm enjoying some Chinese food in the... Yeah. I like your own Pazade the World. Check out Pazade the World. Subscribe anywhere you get your tuckas.

Sure. I guess my advice to him would be like post about Coachella or post about the Hungarian elections. Oh, too both. I'm sorry. He's dating a pop star at Coachella.

We're fucking here. He's crushing it. He's living in the most important stuff. He's doing great. He's posting about Victor Orban throwing back the ketamine loss in his crush.

It is a very relatable situation. We've all been there. Oh, no, we've got to do some work. Oh, yeah. We're looking at Twitter.

Here we are in a fun time. We've drafted a convention speech from Vegas. We've done it all. Was he just there to see Bieber? Or was that just coincidence?

A lot of the reporting connected them because they're both Canadian. I mean, she's there so I'm sure she was just there to see everyone and get all the... She's getting parries. She's getting parries. I'm not sure you're tripping balls.

I think he's got the good passes. Definitely. You've got to pee. You've got to pee. You've got to pee.

Bernie was a Coachella last year. Right? But he spoke. Remember that? Yeah.

I think he was open for Skrillex. That's right. I'm talking about my references. I was a bear naked lady. I did say, who is a fuel company?

No, Wilco. We were... We were... We were... Yeah.

Hey buddy, a little man said we go down the road. No, no. That's next weekend. Actually, she actually started out with a band called No Doubt. Alright, I was there.

We're just jealous. That's a fair fight. Very sure. Anyway, when we come back, love it talks to Nithia Ramen about her race for Ellie Mayer. I'm Erin Haines, journalist and expert on all things Southern politics.

And I'm Jennifer Palmieri, former White House Communications Director. Tune in on Mondays to Long Play series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Long Play, our docu-series exploring the people and forces shaping the South, is back. News slash, the South is the new political epicenter of the country. Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own reckoning in the South too.

We're in the final stretch of them in terms, and the political map has only gotten more competitive with new states and districts emerging as potential flips. So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground. I'm Erin Haines, journalist and expert on all things Southern politics. And I'm Jennifer Palmieri, former White House Communications Director. Tune in on Mondays to Long Play series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Joining me in studio, she's a city council member and candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles. Nithia Ramen, welcome to Potts A America. Thank you so much for having me. We have a lot to get through. I'm going to go pretty quickly.

I also do want to disclose that I've been a supporter of yours for a long time. But I was really excited to see you jump in the race, not just because you're you, but because I thought Los Angeles deserved a big contentious hard-fought mayoral campaign. And we were about to not have one. Yes. You had endorsed Karen Bass for Mayor.

Yes. She was a political ally of yours. Then literally in the hours before the noon deadline, you decided to run. What happened in the month between endorsing your former political ally and deciding to run against her? Well, the endorsement requested come months prior.

So I just want to be very clear about that. It wasn't like an overnight change of fire. Yeah. But I will say that I had been getting really frustrated with the way that things had been going in the city and in the way that things had been going in city hall. On so many of the issues that I really cared about on housing and housing production and the cost of housing, the extraordinary cost of housing here in Los Angeles.

I felt like the city was actually fighting against state mandates to build housing. The city was fighting affordable housing. And we didn't have any clear direction or urgency around the issue at all on issues like homelessness, where people were demanding accountability that is possible, absolutely possible to deliver things that I have actually made progress on in my own district and in my limited way as a chair of the committee. We were just not doing on a system-wide level and we didn't feel any urgency around it. And I feel like that lack of urgency was everywhere in every issue that I cared about.

And I kept trying to push back against it and kept hitting a wall. And I think I got increasingly frustrated. And I'm not a traditional politician in that. This is what I want to be doing for the rest of my life. I actually didn't even really think that I would ever run for office.

But I really care about Los Angeles. And the idea, exactly like you said, of having a mayoral election where we weren't even talking about the fact that LA is struggling right now, that a lot of people feel like it's moving in the wrong direction, that the city hall needs to be doing things differently in order to address our biggest problems, that we weren't even going to have that conversation. I mean, it made me crazy. It made me absolutely crazy. And so finally, in the last couple of days, I seriously considered running and then on the very last day through my hat in the ring.

So let's talk about what's wrong with Los Angeles, which would be too long of a conversation to have. But stepping back, the city of LA has a budget of around $14 billion. Yet we can't fix sidewalks, repaved streets. We don't plant trees. We can't replace the bulbs in our street lamps.

Why? In the richest state in the country, in the fourth largest economy in the world, is Los Angeles such a basket case. You know, I think a lot of it has to do with really poor fiscal management here at the city. We are making decisions that undermine our capacity to be able to deliver basic essential services for our residents. And I think that's a shame because it is, again, it's completely possible to do it.

We last year had a billion dollar budget deficit. That definitely had some kind of impacts from the fires the year prior and from, or a few months prior, and from heightened liability claims that are impacting a lot of municipalities across the country. But the biggest issue was that we signed, unsustainably large contracts, beginning with the police union, which is one of the biggest players in local politics. We signed an enormous contract with them that everybody at City Hall knew would lead to hundreds of millions of dollars of shortfall. And yet we signed it anyway because the mayor and many other city hall leaders, I voted against it, many other city hall leaders knew that the police union is the major player in local elections.

They're the biggest funders of independent expenditure committees of campaign funding here in LA. And so we signed that contract. We knew that we would be hundreds of millions of dollars in the hole as a result. And then exactly as everyone knew, we ended last year with a billion dollar budget deficit and a thousand six hundred layoffs on the table. And because that happened, we are now in a situation where we have 30,000 streetlights off across the city of Los Angeles and an average repair time of a year to fix a streetlight.

We haven't paved a single mile of street this entire fiscal year because we don't have the money. We're filling fewer potholes because we have the trucks to fill potholes, but we can't pay for the drivers to fill potholes. We are doing everything worse than we could. And now we're going back to residence and asking them to pay more in order to deliver these essential services. So you would, if you were to become mayor, you would inherit these contracts.

How do you fix it? How do we dig ourselves out of this hole? And how do you do it when it's not just the mayor that's making these decisions, but also the city council and other people that feel the hold into these groups, even if they're supportive of making sure public employees receive good benefits and good benefits. 100%. 100%.

And I think you can offer, I think we had, can have a vision for Los Angeles where we are paying public sector employees what they deserve, giving them raises to be able to live in the city that is so extraordinarily expensive, but also negotiate adequately in order to make sure that we're also delivering basic services. And that inability to negotiate, that's what we're losing in a system, which is so insular here in LA, where the people who are really constituents of city hall politics are a very small group, as opposed to all of the residents of the city of Los Angeles for whom the decisions being made in city hall really matter. Can you talk about what happened with the convention center? Yes.

I think this is a good example. There was a proposal to expand the convention center. You just tell people what happened, how much it's going to cost and what happened there. Yeah. So there's been a proposal being kicked around for actually a decade to expand the convention center.

We have a convention center in downtown LA. It is pretty old. It's smaller than other convention centers. And there's been kind of a discussion to see whether we should expand it and brighten it up. Suddenly, just a few months after we had a billion dollar budget deficit, the convention center was back on the table.

And by this time the costs had ballooned significantly. Now the cost of rebuilding that convention center with debt service were going to be close to $6 billion. That would mean that we were going to be paying out $100 million annually out of our general fund. Those are our discretionary dollars that we use for providing basic services here in LA, everything from public safety to streetlights. And that proposal was pushed through very, very quickly, despite the fact that we were in a fiscal crisis, despite the fact that we have the Olympics coming up, despite the fact that local and economic headwinds are very, very uncertain here in Los Angeles because a small cluster of downtown businesses who fund local elections really wanted to push it forward.

And for me, I represent a district right now that is very vocal about their views. It's one of the relatively wealthier districts and they know how to get in touch with City Hall of Make Care. I didn't hear from any of my constituents saying that they wanted this project to move forward. That's very unusual for big decisions in front of the city. How long would the project take to?

How many years would it take to build this convention center? It's going to take a couple of years. And what is interesting about it is that we actually have Olympics events that are scheduled to happen at the convention center. And so in order to make sure that the Olympics events are happening, what we have to do is to move the project forward until it gets to Olympics readiness. It won't be done by the time the Olympics are happening, but we need to get to Olympics readiness and then we're going to kind of put walls around the remaining parts of the convention that are still under construction.

Then we're going to have the events there and then afterwards we'll finish the project. And there's going to be $6 billion. With debt service. With debt. So all the costs plus the borrowing and all the rest in the cost of the city $6 billion.

And how long would it take us to make back that $6 billion? I mean, we are going to be paying the debt for that for the next 30 years and the revenues will never cover the costs. I mean, this is terrific. Love that for us. All right.

So how does it get to the point where a small group of people, Democrats or left associated people are all coming together to make these decisions, not Republicans that are causing these problems. It's not Donald Trump. This is a problem generated by the only thing between us and solving these problems is Democrats. And so for people that may be aren't from Los Angeles and see this, what have you learned being in the city council about what it takes to get a group of people that may be ideologically aligned to care about just the basics of good governing? I don't know the answer to that, to be honest with you, because that is not what we have right now here in Los Angeles.

So I don't know what the solution for actually caring about good governance is, except that I think it is absolutely necessary at this moment. To me here to live in the city, to think about the fact that I have to look my constituents in the face and say to them, you trust me, I'm going to address really complex issues, like affordability. I'm going to address really complex issues, like homelessness, but I can't fix your streetlight for a year. And just trust me, I got this. That felt unacceptable to me.

That felt like an absurd situation to be in with my constituents. And that is really what pushed me into running. At this time, I had actually been so frustrated with the way that things were going, that I had started to lose hope in how things could get better here in Los Angeles. And I think in the context of a federal environment where I feel relatively helpless and hopeless as well, feeling that locally has also been really, really frustrating. But I will say that since I started the campaign and since I've been going on and talking to communities about these decisions and talking about how the city can do better, how we can achieve all of the goals that we want to set out to achieve, if we're honest with our constituents, if we're open, if we're transparent, and if we really work towards good outcomes, I really do feel like people are excited by that message.

People are getting enthusiastic. People are organizing their own meetings so that I can meet their friends. Like it is a message that is getting a lot of positive reception, which is really exciting. So let's talk about one of the key challenges for like, which is housing. I actually interviewed Zorun Nandani about this when he was running in New York.

He had actually evolved, somebody that was associated with the DSA, the socialist, democratic socialist, that he had come to see the importance of not just rent control and measures to control the cost of housing, public housing, but also market rate housing. You've had a similar evolution. Can you talk about what is standing in the way right now of Los Angeles building enough housing supply to meet the need? Yeah, I mean, I think I definitely had that same movement. I was very focused on affordable housing when I first started my first race, building more affordable housing, building more shelter, making sure that we were building kind of what people talked about needing here in LA.

But as I was in office and I started getting calls from constituents who were struggling with their rents, I realized these were often people who would never qualify for affordable housing, but they had no choice but to live in a unit with a terrible landlord in terms of housing. Because there was simply nothing else available to them here in Los Angeles. And LA is a city where there has been an active anti housing movement that has shaped our local politics for decades. In the 80s, there was an anti-manhattanization movement that downzoned, that reduced the capacity to build more housing along every major boulevard in thoroughfare, that reduced capacity to build multifamily housing across the entire city, leading to what estimates, what is an estimated shortfall of something like 500,000 units here in the city of Los Angeles right now.

But I think we can actually fix it. There are ways in which the city of Los Angeles can build more. A huge change would be getting the city out of the way, rezoning so that we actually have capacity to build more housing, building more density, particularly near our major transit corridors, building more gentle density like duplexes and triplexes, even in some single family neighborhoods that can be more walkable that are near transit. I think that's a key change that we need to make. We need to get the city out of the way. We have enormous red tape standing between an application for a new housing unit coming in and when it is actually approved.

And so we're approving housing are double, even triple what other jurisdictions are, which leads to significantly less housing being produced. And by the way, more expensive housing being produced because the longer you have to sit and wait for your permits to come, the more expensive that housing becomes ultimately. And the fewer projects that get started because the people building those projects know they have to be able to make money on the end when it's going to be a huge delay. Yeah, I also wanted to say that we really have a culture in city hall where delay and denial are kind of rewarded and saying yes is not. And I think we have to completely flip that around. We have to build a city where saying yes is the goal of our housing processes, not the opposite.

And that is a culture shift that has to happen at every level of the bureaucracy. It has to be enabled and undergirded by technology that allows cooperation between departments and it has to be rewarded at the highest levels of government. And that's really what I think needs to happen. Yeah, like after the fires in the Palisades in Altadena, there was this sense, even from the mayor, that like we're going to make this process faster. We're going to make it work better. Of the 4100 that have applied for permits we build, fewer than half have been approved.

Only 34 homes have been built. So even when there is impetus, even when there seems to be an understanding that we need to move faster, it's not happening. Is that a technical problem of the rules? Is that leadership? Is that the mayor not? What's happening?

Well, I think it is leadership. I think it is a I think the mayor here in the city of Los Angeles has while it is a weaker mayor system than in other places. The mayor has the capacity to hire and fire every department head. And that means that the mayor has the capacity to determine the priorities of every department. They're getting motions and legislative efforts from the council members to push them in a thousand different directions.

The mayor is the one that departments respond to. And so it is up to the mayor to set housing production and permitting timelines as a priority. She can set deadlines for by when these things have to happen. You can appoint leadership that is responsive to those goals. You can create metrics through which you can hold department heads accountable. And if they meet those goals, you can reward them.

And if they don't meet those goals, you should replace them. That is not happening here in the city of Los Angeles at all across all of the departments that are involved in the housing production process. Also, we haven't had a deputy mayor of housing for almost two years in a city where the cost of housing and housing production and rebuilding are key issues for this city. We need a deputy mayor for housing, but you know, that position has been left empty for I think inexcusably long time. We're in this crisis in housing. We've lost 54,000 people in the county. Los Angeles passed something that's called ULA. It's the Mansion Tax.

People would know it. And I actually supported the Mansion Tax because I thought, okay, I don't think it was written in a stupid way by people who seem automatically illiterate. But it put a tax on houses over 5 million and then a bigger tax on houses over 10 million. And I thought all things considered better to have it than not have it. I didn't understand what I voted for it honestly. But it also applied to multifamily housing because that was so, I wouldn't even have occurred to me that I would do something so fucking stupid.

Truly. I feel stupid that I voted for. I would have voted no. You tried to fix it. And you say, hey, we'll keep the Mansion Tax, but we won't apply this to new multifamily housing because all the evidence is not in the city of the city.

All the evidence says that multifamily housing is being stopped and this is counterproductive. And yet the Council doesn't do it. What is the, it was enraged. I'm mad sitting here. What is the logic of it? How do you show up with these people?

And what is stopping them from doing that? It's like sputtering to a stop. So fucking stupid. Why didn't they support what you were trying to do? Well, I mean, I think because people, hey, people don't believe the evidence. So there's, I mean, I was very convinced by the evidence.

There were real differences in L.A. City versus L.A. County. L.A. County is producing more housing, we're producing less.

more housing reproducing less. San Diego, which is facing the same macroeconomic conditions that we are, is actually increasing permits, while LA has seen a 25% drop in permits. I mean, to me, the evidence was very clear that this was impacting multi-family housing production. I think there's two things that are happening here that are preventing more robust action from being taken on issues that are obviously addressing housing production. One is that there is significant pushback from, again, those same kind of insider groups that have huge sway in City Hall, both the ULA coalition that I worked with very closely to try and negotiate a pathway forward.

I was talking to them for many, many months to say, because I too was a supporter of ULA. I really value the money that it provides to the city for. Rent relief and other things. And so I worked very closely with them to say, hey, can we craft an exemption that allows for this much needed housing to be built here? Ultimately, we just were not able to come to an agreement on what that would look like.

And I got extremely frustrated because to me, this is the single most important issue that is, you know, hampering our future resiliency that is making Los Angeles into a place of less opportunity. Secondly, I think both labor groups that funded the effort also were not on board with making any changes. And so with nonprofits and with labor groups that had supported the effort, not making any changes without a real push from the mayor and from other leadership to really move this forward, this effort died. It is now going through a committee process, but I'm not sure what is going to come from it. So I think more than half the council had already endorsed Karen Vass before you decided to run.

I think all stuck with their endorsements, but I assume behind the scenes, others on the council are as frustrated as you are. You have to have also been somebody that endorsed Karen Vass but was unhappy. Are you hearing from them privately that they actually want you to win, but they're afraid to say so publicly? Well, I look, I don't want to betray my private conversations. I still have relationships with people in the council that I'm working with and, you know, whatever happens in this election, either outcome, I will need to work with them going forward as well.

But I will say that, you know, I've interacted a lot of local political figures here, not just people on the council, but across the entire region. And I think there have been a lot of questions about the lack of leadership on issues. And I think that's the most perplexing thing here in LA, which I think Angelenos can feel on the streets, which is just like a, there's a rudderlessness. There's just a lack of pushing. There's a lack of urgency on the things that I feel really urgent about and that I think residents of the city feel really urgent about.

There's a lack of just kind of being out there and fighting, like Angelenos need a fighter at a moment when things feel really bleak here. And to not have that fighter in City Hall, to not have that person really articulating a vision of how things could change, whether it's on the cost of housing, whether it's on our transit and safety infrastructure for our streets, whether it's on homelessness, whether it's on ice, whatever it is. We're just missing that kind of that leadership here in the city and this is an incredible place. This is an incredible place. It deserves that kind of leadership.

It deserves that kind of vision. It deserves someone pushing with all of their might to push it in the right direction. And I just, I know I felt that absence and I don't think I'm the only one. I really don't. So I want to ask you about MacArthur Park.

This is a beautiful park in the middle of the city. Yeah. If you go there right now, we drove there right now, it's the middle of the day, you would see basically an open air drug market and the mayor and the police, they set up chain link fences on the sidewalks around the park. They're blocking off. They're not coordinating it again.

They are, it's hard to believe that this is the solution. They have built boxes of chain link fence to close the sidewalk so that people do not use those spaces to sell drugs. This was touted as a temporary solution. Years, it has been devolving. There was a plan for like about $27 million trying to beautify the park over a long period of time.

You're the mayor of Los Angeles. How long do they take until MacArthur Park is a place that's safe for families? Is it a, I don't, I personally like, look, I can be told why I'm wrong, but the idea that it's a six month problem as opposed to a one month problem, two week problem to really kind of make the place safe again. Like what would you do and how long do you think it takes? Yeah.

With real attention to make a place like that reflective of the kind of city we think Los Angeles should be. Yeah. I think it, I think it would take six months to a year to change it because I think it takes repeated engagement and presence in that location to address longstanding issues. And I think you have to address both the homelessness crisis that is on the streets. You have to address the mental health issues that are out there and you have to address very obvious criminal activity that's happening there, drug dealing and other kinds of things for which you need police presence.

They're dealing with really ugly issues that are out there that require their attention, investigation and arrests. And I think if you do both of those things, if you are really again robustly engaged, pushing with all your might on that issue, I do think that you can make some real improvements there. I, you know, we have had in Council District four where I've been engaged. We don't have anything that resembles that scale of crisis, but we did have very large encampments, very, very large encampments, 30, 40 people that were there when I first got elected. And each of those, addressing each of those took that kind of effort.

We were able to offer shelter services, housing and really push on the system to be able to address issues. There were cases where we had to work a much longer time to address people who had severe mental health issues, who, you know, despite repeated engagement, even arrests that came about from their own behavior would end up right back in the same place. That requires engaging with the Department of Mental Health. That requires engaging with mental health clinicians. It takes time.

But again, with time and effort progress can happen. And I think the key that missing link here, the thing that I keep articulating over and over again, is that you have to put in the time and the urgency and the leadership and the focus on these things that can actually push things in the right direction and it has to be sustained over time. Yeah, like what I'm hearing too is like a lot of this is pushing back even at times on your own constituencies, whether it's a public employees union or maybe advocates for the on-house. You know, Gavin Newsom has almost taken as a given in some quarters that Gavin Newsom was performatively cruel in the way that he wanted to clear encampments. But at the same time, I imagine most even Democrats in California would say, oh, that's what I want.

I want someone who's going to be aggressive about doing that. Like is part of the job of mayor making decisions that are humane, that are reflective of like our values as progressives. But at the same time, like sometimes the advocates are going to be out there protesting if you do need to clear any cam bit or sometimes you are going to have to go against a labor union, even if you broadly support unions. I think that for me, like on the issue of encampments or the issue of homelessness overall, to me, I think it is and actually let me take a step back, whatever issue that we're talking about here here in the city of Los Angeles. I think the issue for me as a person who is deeply progressive, as someone who believes in the power of government to do good things and to make our lives better, my goal is to ensure that you as a resident of Los Angeles and every resident of Los Angeles feels like the government is working for them and that they can they can palpably feel the positive presence of government in their lives.

And I think you have to do what it takes in order to deliver those results. On homelessness, I happen to believe that for the kind of the encampments that I've dealt with in my district, housing, shelter, services focused work has been what has reduced homelessness significantly in street homelessness significantly in my district at almost every encampment that we've worked in. And that is the work that I would be doing is create that system of sustained effort to generate results on reducing street homelessness, on addressing mental health issues, on making our streets safer, cleaner, brighter, fixing street lights, whatever it is, you have to push on these issues.

And I think that is really, I think for me, my governing principle as an elected representative and as someone who is a very proud progressive is like, I want people to feel like the government is working for them. When you're on the council, you supported what would become mayor of assets of signature policy to address homelessness with a $300 million program to get people off the streets. The city spent about $259,000 per person housed 40% of the participants, more than 2,000 people ended up back on the streets. What went wrong with that program and what does it tell you about how you do it differently? So initially, I thought the emergency response of the inside safe program was necessary for LA.

We had a, I also supported declaring a state of emergency on homelessness. I think street homelessness is a crisis. It is an emergency and we should respond to it at that scale. And the kind of effort that it was where you, again, you was renting hotel and hotel rooms and using those as shelter to go to encampments and get, offer that shelter and then moving an entire encampment off the streets. That's called encampment resolution.

It's not unique to inside safe. It's something that I've done in my district. In fact, we did it, you know, years before the mayor came into office. We've done it in Venice. It's been pioneered across the city and it's very effective by really focusing encampment by encampment and offering real shelter to people that were able to actually move people indoors and then clear those encampments and then those areas stay clear because you've actually addressed the reason why people are on the street in the first place.

So to me, that kind of encampment resolution focus response is really important. The issue becomes when the intervention that you're using is enormously expensive and you're not doing the work to ensure that you are making it into a physically sustainable response. So inside safe, motel rooms cost an average of over $80,000 per person or per room per person per year and people are staying in them for an average of a year. And sometimes they're costing as much as $100,000 per person per year. That is an enormously expensive intervention that I think was appropriate as an emergency intervention, but needs to be made into a real, fiscally sustainable system that actually can respond to the crisis on our streets with the dollars that we have because this is not sustainable.

And so to me, I want to build that system. I've actually in the city generated data about the performance of our homelessness investments for the first time working with Lhasa that shows us where beds are vacant, where our permanent supportive housing units are available. And through that work, I've actually brought people into these beds, filled every bed, filled every unit. We need to be building a system which is costs less per person but is actually working better at actually bringing people indoors, filling every bed, filling every resource and then doing the work when they're in those units in those shelter beds to get them the case management they need to transition to whatever is there next step, whether it's reunification with family, whether it is moving into a permanent supportive housing unit, whether it is coming into self-sufficiency, getting a job, being able to actually live independently.

These are all things that the system can do, but you have to design that system. You need to make sure that there is leadership there and resources to create that system, to make sure that people are moving through it into safety and to permanent housing appropriately. But that kind of work is not happening right now despite despite pushing within the city to create oversight, to create responsibility here. All right, a couple final questions. Okay, I realize it as Mayor of LA, the Middle East has very little to do with your portfolio, but you've been hit from the left for not speaking out enough about Gaza.

You also would be running to be the mayor of the city with a very big Jewish population that is deeply concerned about the way in which anti-ignism bleeds into anti-Semitism. What do you view your role is in speaking about this issue and what do you think people in Los Angeles should know about how you feel about it? Well, you know, I have spoken about the issue in the past. I called for a ceasefire, introduced a ceasefire resolution in city council. I've called what's happening there, which is incredibly horrific to witness what's happening in Gaza.

I've called it a genocide and, you know, I've been deeply disturbed by what I have seen at the same time in my role as city council member and what I imagine in my role as mayor would be the impacts on people here and kind of the knock on effects from what's happening in the Middle East, I think have to be also the focus of our work here in the city. So in my district, we've had increases in really horrifying incidents of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. And I've had to respond to both of those. And as mayor, I would need to do more of that. I would need to ensure that the city is a place where people are able to express their political opinions freely, where people are able to express their first amendment rights, but that they are not victims of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

And when those happen, we have to speak up about it. We have to make sure that this is a place that's safe for everyone. I'm sorry, the film industry briefly. There's so much to talk about. I know.

So LA, we had only 19,000 on location film and TV production days that's a 16% decrease from 2024. That's the lowest number of production days ever recorded outside of COVID. What would you do as mayor to bring production jobs back to this city that mayor Bass hasn't been able to do? Yeah. You know, one of the big things that I think we need to be doing is making it easier to film here.

And there have been some efforts that are making their way through the council around kind of reducing restrictions on how production happens, on reducing costs for production, improving how film LA works. These have been moving, I think, all too slowly. There's no reason why through executive directive these fixes can't be made immediately and that the bureaucracy that's standing in the way of people producing here, actually making films here cannot be eased more quickly by a mayor who is deeply focused on this issue. But I think there's more that can be done. Last year, we had a conversation about a tax credit that increased.

You know, I wanted to see more advocacy from our mayor for a tax credit that would have no cap and that would be guaranteed a decade into the future, right? That's the kind of system that studios are looking for as they're thinking about where to invest and LA should be the loudest advocate, the leadership of LA should be the loudest advocate for the kind of tax credit system that other states are putting into place and actually getting production moving there. Like in New Jersey, we should be advocating for that same system here. Okay. Sacramento may not listen, but the leadership of Los Angeles should be fighting as hard as they can to make sure that that tax credit system is put into place.

I would also say that, you know, I think we need to be really engaging with studios. We need to be engaging with companies that are headquartered here and saying to them, what do we need to do to make sure that you're shooting here? What do we need to do to make sure that we are having production stay here? How can we make sure that this industry, which is so central to Los Angeles, so central to Los Angeles stays in Los Angeles? How can we make sure that the incredible talent that we have across the city can work here, a place that they move to to build their dreams to work in the film industry?

I think that's that's the kind of engagement that I want to see. I haven't been seeing that kind of engagement happening. That's what I would want to do if I were mayor. Oh, and then can you read up in New York? Like, oh, I don't know if I can.

I would love to figure out why it's closed for so long. What's going on with the archive? I don't know. Yeah. Let's go talk to that property owner.

Okay. Thank you. All right. We're done. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cone, Haley Jones, Ben Hefkot, Mia Kellerman, Carol Peloveve, David Tolls, and Ryan Young.

Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America, East. Long play. Our docuseries exploring the people and forces shaping the South is back. New slash the South is the new political epicenter of the country. Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own reckoning in the South too.

We're in the final stretch of them in terms and the political map has only gotten more competitive with new states and districts emerging as potential flips. So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground. I'm Erin Hain, journalist and expert on all things Southern politics. And I'm Jennifer Paul-Mary, former White House Communications Director. Tune in on Mondays to long play series on YouTube for wherever you get your podcasts.