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Welcome to Platt Safe America, I'm John Favreau. I'm John Favreau. On today's show, Donald Trump catches a ride on a catering truck to escape the Iranians who are trying to kill him and or cause him to lose the midterms, whoever comes first. We'll also talk about how your tax dollars are being used to buy brand new gloves for ICE agents that can deliver an electric shock to anyone they touch. That is true.
Also a wild story about DHS spying on everyone from labor unions and climate groups to random citizens just because they can. Then with the last of the major contested primaries behind us in Wisconsin and Minnesota, we'll talk about why the polling was so far off and why that won't stop us from speculating about November. Finally, we'll bid a fond farewell to White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt and compare our rankings of who we think is most likely to get the job next. Can't wait to hear your list, Dan. It's really outside the box.
I like that. One quick note before we start, friends of the pod tickets for this year's Crooked Con are going fast. They're going even faster than last time I said they were going fast. By the time you hear this, they could be gone. You're gonna wanna go to CrookedCon.com to grab yours if you haven't already.
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So what are you waiting for? Head to CrookedCon slash friends to join today. All right, they're starting to use the keyword to describe Trump's disastrous war in Iran. You know what the keyword is, Dan? There were all kinds of jokes I was gonna make, but none of them seemed to work.
So I'm just gonna go with the right answer. Is it Quagmire? That's the headline and one of the most red Politico stories of the week. The Iran war is a whole new level of Quagmire for the US. Both Trump and the Iranians are claiming that they're in control of the Strait of Hormuz, which can't be true.
And the Strait remains functionally closed, I think only 14 vessels went through yesterday. Gas prices are higher than they have ever been at this time of year in the United States ever in history. The war also continues to deplete our military, the Washington Post reports that we've lost about a quarter of our supply of Reaper drones. We're using up our limited supplies of both Patriot and Tomahawk missiles. And some of our service members have been deployed so long that on the USS Abraham Lincoln, which is an aircraft carrier that's been in the Middle East since November, several of the 5,000 sailors and Marines on board have tried to jump overboard due to the stress and horrible conditions.
That's according to both the military times and stars and stripes. But nothing better illustrates just how badly Trump is getting his ass kicked by the Iranians and the story of how our president was forced to hide in a catering truck and board a secret plane to escape a potential assassination threat involving Iranian proxies in Turkey launching surface to air missiles at Air Force One. When Trump was asked why it was too dangerous for him to fly on Air Force One, but not any of the reporters and White House officials who weren't told they were flying home at a potential target, the president said the dumbest thing possible. I think actually the plane that I flew on was at greater risk. I think it was at greater risk because that would be the plane I think that way that they would be more likely to go for.
Fuckin' idiot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they'd be more likely to go for the plane you were on. Of course, which is why they tried to put you on another plane that they didn't know about, you fucking moron. Yes. I don't know why I say that in such a shocked way, but like that is, it's just like new levels of Trump being a dipshit.
Yeah, what did you make of the whole the catering car caper? On one hand, it is very, very funny that he hid the catering cart, that he flew home on a secret plane, that he handpicked the people who would survive with him, like Pete Higgsath and the woman who prints all of his documents. But he sent- And Dan Scavito. And Dan Scavito, and then he sent Marco Rubio to die with the press. And Marco Rubio was the only one on that other plane who knew what was happening.
Scott Bessett was with Marco Rubio, none the wiser. And there's no protocol here for the reasons. Like maybe Higgsath, you could possibly fabricate some reason, but the fact that he picked Dan Scavino and Natalie Harp, the once again, the woman who follows him around and prints his documents for him, were the ones who got seats in the life raft. And Marco Rubio didn't, is this should be a real tale to Marco Rubio. Also, how do you even press this information?
You get looped in and you're like, which way did Trump's plane? They're like, you didn't make the cut? I mean, where did they think Trump was? I mean, they just assumed he was in his cabin, I assume. Oh yeah, I mean, I know that's what the reporters thought, but I was wondering about the like Scott Bessett, just sitting there, with his buddy Marco Rubio has no idea, he's just a sitting duck for it.
Normally, you would see the president walk up, well, I guess they saw him walk up the steps. And there were plenty of times we've been on the plane when we used to fly on it. The president would just be in their cabin and we would be seated where we would sit, which is not in his cabin. He would have no idea until the plane landed and he did not walk down the front steps. Who do you think was making it in the secret plane with Barack Obama?
Definitely wasn't me. I don't know, it might have been you. Oh, quick, I need a speech. Well, also we would have done it by actual protocol and not by who he likes most. There is like a more serious thing to this, which is.
The Iranian proxies in Turkey were potentially gonna take down Air Force One. Yeah, that's a. Well, I mean that, yes, that. But there's something, this probably sounds really quaint in like the dystopian fucked up world we live in, but there is just something terrible about the fact that the president lied to the press, lied to the country to hide a threat to himself. No one knew where he was.
He could have that plane could have landed anywhere in the world and no one would have ever known. And the only reason we know about this now is because the Washington Post did some really great reporting. Like there is a world where obviously his security, the president security, whether it's Trump or anyone else comes first. So you could, I understand the rules. I don't really understand why you would take Air Force One off.
You would just fly the other plane that they don't think he's on. Right. It definitely seemed like there was a need to protect Trump, even if it was, now we should say too, since this story was first reported, there's been more reporting that suggests this intel about a potential assassination plot came from Israel, from the Israeli government. And then the CIA, our CIA, judged it as low confidence, meaning they didn't think it was like a serious threat, but clearly they thought it was serious enough to put the president in a catering cart and send him on a separate plane. It's not probably not surprising that Israel is one who told this to Trump, because if you read regime change, the making here of a Jonathan Swan book, like one of the themes in there, Maggie talks about this interview with Ezra Klein a few weeks ago, is that Trump is secretly obsessed with the idea that Iran wants to kill him.
And so you tell Trump Iran wants to kill you at the same time you're trying to keep Trump fully focused on the war in Iran, it's not a bad idea. Right, because yeah, BB did not want him to reach any kind of peace agreement, clearly, so. Yeah, I thought it was, I thought it was wild to me that like, it's one thing to protect the president. It's another thing to unnecessarily put the rest of the people on Air Force One in danger. Yeah, you just hold Air Force One on the ground, you take the president, let him fly on this other plane, no one knows what is.
And then after he lands, you say Trump has landed, the Iranians know he's on the plane, then you fly the other plane home. And we're not in the CIA, we're not in secret service, the CIA, we could figure that out. Yeah, it's crazy. It's also crazy, they didn't tell anyone afterwards. Like that's also nice.
Yes, thank you, that is the biggest problem. Like you could do this whole thing. And then once everyone lands, be like, oh, by the way, this happened and we couldn't tell you at the time or whatever, whatever, but like that is wild, that it had to be broken by the Washington Post. And that the administration subpoenaed New York Times reporters for the leak about them not taking the new Qatari force one home, because it didn't have like the right defensive maneuver capabilities that they might need if proxies on the ground were shooting surface air missiles at Air Force One. This is entirely a hypothetical.
I just want to point this out there. But in a world in which, oh, it was right, in a world in which the president can get on a secret plane without the press and have no one over here, that plane can land anywhere. It could land on Epstein Island theoretically. Oh my God. You're really looking for a viral clip, aren't you?
I'm not one of our clip, I did not want this posted. I did not tell the social media, not what this posted. I make a point just to our listeners, the people who tune into this podcast that I'm just using the extreme example to make a point that when the press is not with the president, the president can do lots of things, we don't know what are. He could have stopped in UAE and cut a crypto deal. He could have stopped in Moscow to hang out with his friend, Vladimir Putin.
He could have picked up the P tape. He could have picked up the P tape, right? Yeah, a lot of these things were possible. A lot of these things were protocol. OK.
Well, bigger picture, there's new reporting this week that Iran is tracking Trump's political problems very closely. I guess they're just looking at the RCP average, so the silver bullets and Trump approval rating. And they're looking to continue pushing negotiations far off past November, so that Trump pays a maximum price in the midterms. Seems like, before just going by political strategy, it does seem like a smart strategy on Iran's behalf. No, on Iran's part.
Yeah, I mean, there's no question that they are correct to understand that Trump has very, very little leverage during election season, because the things that would allow the sort of military maneuvers that would allow him to gain an upper hand over the straight over Iran would raise gas prices in a way which would hurt his party in the midterms. So they figured that out. Now, I think the question for Iran is, what happens when Trump doesn't, no one Trump cares what has to face the voters for two years? Like, if you're counting on Democrats to pass a war powers resolution to stop the war, I don't think they're getting to have a group majority of that. Could a Democratic Congress make it harder to fund the war?
Possibly, but this idea, but Trump may feel, but this is bad, I'm going to say, wait, this is bad, but it's not clear to me that Trump, well, it's not clear to me and maybe it's, probably should be clear the Iranians. What Trump does after the midterms? Well, let's talk about what's after the midterms. It is the beginning of the 2028 presidential race, and you've got presumably JD Vance, who wants to be president, maybe Marco Rubio, maybe both of them together. And so there is an incentive at that point for the administration to finally give Iranians what they want to get this off the table so that they don't have any more.
Or win, well, how they gonna do that? Well, I mean, that's ultimately what Iran is trying to forestall right now is more, not that anything that these guys are gonna have ever say, but like Trump taking in Carg Island, for instance, one I think it was on the table earlier, doesn't happen in the midterms. Could that happen in 2027? Maybe. Trump launching all the other bombing.
Yeah, like those sorts of things, like the right now Trump won't use the military stick against Iran to the extent he has the capacity to do so because of gas prices election. In the calendar year of 2027, he is relieves of that political, the restraining nature of politics, potentially. So I don't know when Iran doesn't know either. So like this works in the short term. What happens in the medium and long term?
Who the hell knows? Yeah. Horrible story though, about the USS Chris, the USS Lincoln and all those soldiers and the families have been describing like moldy showers and broken toilets and shortages of hot water and food. They've been trying to like figure this out. The sailors and Marines have been sending messages like, just to end, of course, someone asked Phekseth today about it and he's like, oh, it's all over blown, overblown.
I respect all these guys. They're doing a great job. It always makes me feel bad that we talk about the war purely in terms of gas prices and oil prices because of the effect that it's having on politics here. But it's also like, there's a lot of fucking US forces deployed in the Middle East who are in harm's way and who also just have been away from their families forever. And for what?
For what? And the military did not prepare for this, hence the conditions on the ships. Because they had no, they never believed because they gave this zero thought that many, many months later, they'd still be in a conflict with Iran. Missile stockpile estimates are that it won't recover until 2030. That's a whole nother thing.
God forbid, someone else attacks us. There's another war. We're not gonna be ready at all because we have now depleted all of our military. We've sent soldiers for long, long deployments. We don't have missiles and drones and all that kind of all those capabilities because of this stupid fucking war.
It is it. I kind of think that this is, what do you think about like Democrats, like how they handle this over the next couple of months between now and the midterms? Because to me, it seems like it is the main issue and it's not your usual. It combines both forever wars, which people hate and it's causing high prices, which people hate. So it's like, I feel like the whole, you could run the whole campaign about Trump's disastrous war and what it's doing to prices and all that.
Yeah, it should be the centerpiece of the campaign. Obviously it's best when tied to affordability and gas prices and that, like one of the message I suggested is the, they told us there wasn't enough money for healthcare and food assistance, but now we have millions of dollars for bombs in the Middle East and for wars in the Middle East. That tests very well. It is, I think absolutely, Democrats should have no fear. There's a lot of sort of anxiety at the outside of this that what if we get on the wrong side of the conflict and we must begin every statement with a long throat clearing about how bad the mull is in around our, like we don't, like we were past that.
This is an incredibly unpopular war. It goes at affordability. It goes at Trump's incompetence. It goes at Trump's weakness. It goes to the chaos of his leadership style.
And I think really importantly, it goes to the broken promises. And when you see this in both focus groups and then in polling of people who were voted for Trump who were now to disprove him, one of the top things that comes up is that he broke his promises and one of those big promises is the war, which is tied to the other big promise, which is lowering prices. Right. Today's show is sponsored by Stravary.me. Have you ever written a review about a product or service you've used?
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Here's what will shock you. I apologize for that. That's just the new. Do the joke and then apologize. The new electric gloves.
Ice plans to spend $20 million on so that agents can deliver a painful jolt to whoever they touch rendering the person powerless to move or even stand. Now, Tom Holman, he was on Fox talking about this. This is a, this is, you know, we don't want to shoot everyone now. So we're trying to, this is supposed to be de-escalation. This is the de-escalation.
Right. Here's a compilation of the gloves being put to use from some of the videos that were circulating on Twitter. Oh, no. You guys scream like a little drone, see myself? Go back with your gloves.
Hide your hands. Go get your hands. We're trying to stop visiting. We're just going to stop. It's fucking insane.
A bunch of men just shacking each other for fun. I know. Yeah. That is a whole separate conversation. The manual, this company that makes the product that they put out, the manual says no more than two gloves on one person, generally no more than 15 seconds, never against verbal defiance, never as punishment, and not on the elderly children, pregnant women, or people with serious disabilities.
Guess what ice has done already? Like violated all of those things with how it has handled people before the gloves and the people that it has assaulted, injured, detained. And so I don't know. I think this is fucking awful. Well, I mean, it's just so ridiculous that Tom Holman's, he's like, it's a binary choice.
Well, look, we've only two options. We can kill them in the street with our guns, or we can electrocute them. Those are the only two things, guys. You pick, you choose electrocution or bullets. Also, this is one that leaves not a lot of evidence.
And so the idea that ice is just going to be roaming the streets. And if they see someone who, they don't like what they said, they sort of made fun of ice or criticized them, whatever. They can just walk over and just put hands on them and shock them. And then like no one's going to know, I mean, like who's word against, who's where it's just the potential for abuse on this one is vast. Yes, that is very, very true.
And as Elijah pointed out in the project meeting today, it's only a matter of time till one of these guys goes P with the gloves on. In this administration, that will almost certainly happen. Yes, it's guaranteed. And also with the kind of people they're recruiting now with ice, people who meet no standards whatsoever. Meanwhile, there's been a new uptick in terrifying videos of people being confronted by ICE agents.
On Monday, a mass agent pointed a gun at a US citizen named Carolina Molina at a shopping center in Virginia. ICE and DHS accused her of trying to run them over with her car. And assertion, it's not all backed up by the video evidence. Afterwards, Molina told the Washington Post that it felt like a grenade good situation. Here's some of that scene, as well as other recent ICE confrontations that are making the rounds.
You want those rounds over? I don't know. You want those rounds over? Stop playing. Stop playing.
You are full of shit. All right. You're not funny. You're not funny. I want to rest in.
Keep up. I'm a legal situation. I don't know. Oh, my God. I'm not.
You want. You want. The Domingo family self recording the tense moments when border patrol pulled them over Sunday afternoon. The couple complying with the officers orders then hugging during this emotional goodbye when separated from their five children and detained. I know there's like not a lot of new things to say about this because it's just horrific.
But I think it is worth noting that it is still happening. It is happening all over the place. ICE has not deescalated at all. They are still trying to meet Stephen Miller's dumb fucking quotas. Mark Wayne Mullen, the new DHS secretary, is already in trouble with like MAGA activist in the base, you know, Laura Loomer and Steve Bannon already have said he should be fired because, you know, he's not detaining and arresting and deporting enough people.
So he's already feeling pressure to be even more aggressive in order to keep his job. So this is all happening still. Yeah. And it's just the only thing that's changed is they're not sitting on a press release before they do it. Right.
They're not inviting the MAG influencers along for it. They're not inviting the Fox News crews. They're just doing it and hoping no one videotapes them when it happens. Did you see I heard I heard Tim Miller talk about this in Bullwork pod. The letter in the nation that this woman wrote.
She is so surrounding family. There have green cards, legal residents, a couple of professors. Yeah, they're the husband and wife of professors and then they have a child as well. And because the husband is the son of a woman who was an Iranian official during the hostage crisis, I believe she was the spokesperson during the hostage crisis in 1979 and her son and his family moved to United States, became college professors, had a kid or permanent legal residents. And because like people online decided to make an issue of their association with Iran, then the State Department just decided to on their own revoke their visas.
They picked up the husband. They also picked up the wife and the child and they separated them and they have shipped them to Texas where they've been in detention facilities for the last four months, four months with like just just just holding them holding the hostage for no reason, no due process, not even deporting them, not doing anything, just jailing them just because of an association, the family member, because some fucking idiot online decided to call them out. Several. It's just the whole thing. So just a gross and morally bankrupt.
I don't like I get that this won't be, you know, I think when Minnesota's happening, we probably thought maybe this would be a big issue in the midterms. I'm guessing it will not be as big of an issue in the midterms, but is the best play here? The Democrats have to just hope we get Congress back, be able to conduct some kind of oversight over ice and hold hearings, subpoena officials and documents, and then just change everything if a Democratic president wins. Like it doesn't, what else can people do at this point? So you're right that this is not going to be the biggest issue in the midterms, and it probably shouldn't be the voters we need care about immigration.
They absolutely do, but it's not their top issue. But it's not as complicated as I think a lot of people make it. Trump is 11 points under water for immigration right now. This is not an issue of strength for him. He doesn't win by shifting the issue to rain to immigration.
It doesn't help him. The videos like this hurt him when you track his approval rating drops since 2025. Some of the biggest ones happened during both first the Kilmar of Riggocarcia, Seacott stuff in the spring of 2025 and then after the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Goode in January of 2026. So it matters when these things come up. So we don't want you to shy away from talking about it.
Absolutely not. It's also worth pointing out to voters that once again, not only is ice bad, but we gave by $700 billion and we paid for it by cutting healthcare and food assistance. Like that's what the priority is. People don't like that. But when we, so let's say we get to, we get a majority, right?
And we'll talk about the prospects for that later in the show. People should be realistic. We cannot, we cannot realistically abolish ice, but we can hold hearings. We can, you know, shine away on this. There can be accountability.
We also have, if we have the house and the Senate, but even if we have just the house, we have real leverage in budget negotiations that Democrats are willing to use it. So the one challenge on that one is because they passed so much ice funding through reconciliation, like they could shut down the government. We went through this, right? Like the Democrats could theoretically like shut down the government if we control Congress again or hold up the whole budget over ice funding, but because they have so much funding left over from reconciliation, like they can still do everything they want to do. Yes.
I mean, we're right back in the same spot, but you can, you're a couple of options here. One is you can take a H.E.S. terminology, but you can take a different hostage and the ransom is changes in ice. Other things trumps want, right? You cannot get them.
You can shut down the whole government over it. You can put pressure on them. Once again, ice has money. Like there is a limit to what you can do here up until the moment. You have a trifecta where you have, if we have a trifecta, you can do the following things.
One, you can take that money redirected elsewhere. You could with a trifecta abolish ice in some way, shape or form. Yeah. We have a democratic president. Yeah.
You do all those things. But yes, but for the next, it'll be, it'll be even winning back Congress. It'll be hard for the next two years to do anything outside of threatening to shut down the government over, over ice. But like you said, take a different hostage or probably the most likely path is to hold all kinds of hearings and oversight. And you can get, which will hopefully sort of till the ground for the battles to come when you have the trifecta, but you can, like some of the policy changes we did not get in this time, you can make another run at in 2027, 2028.
I also think it's worth saying that just from a, when we talk about politics and campaigns and what's most likely to help win an election, but when these stories are in the news and when public officials, whether they're local, state or national, talk about them and lift up the stories, like the politics are bad for the Trump administration. Usually when they are, when Donald Trump's approval rating is in the shitter, he turns to immigration to try to get his mojo back. And it is telling that they have chosen, you know, the democratic socialist communist threat over immigration this time around because they just went through a cycle back, I don't know when it was earlier this year, last year, when their immigration agenda was underwater and became pretty unpopular, not as unpopular as how we handles cost of living or jobs or any, the around war, but still unpopular.
Yeah. It's not an advantage for him anymore, which is a huge change in the huge tournament. Yeah. All right. This week's Democratic primaries were one of the last contests before the midterms, a week after Abdul El-Siya defeated the establishment back to Haley Stevens by just under a point in the Michigan Senate primary.
The more moderate David Crowley, eked out an upset over democratic socialist Francesca Hong in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary in Minnesota, the more progressive lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan beat Congresswoman Angie Craig by 20 points in Connecticut, the center left mayor of Hartford, Luke Bronen, knocked off 78 year old Congressman John Larson, making him making Larson the seventh house Democrat to lose a primary this year and the fifth past his retirement age. 2026 is now tied with 2012 as the worst year for democratic incumbents in primaries this century. When you step back and squinted all the primary results this year, do they tell to you any kind of cohesive story about democratic voters and the Democratic party?
It's complicated, but yes. If you look at all the results, all the ones we've had, all of the DSA wins, the incumbents who got elected, the incumbents who got defeated, I think you can take a couple of things from this one. Democrats are furious that Donald Trump is president. Two, Democrats are incredibly skeptical and distrustful of their own leaders, their own institutions and the way the party has done politics in the best. Democrats are incredibly fired up about voting.
They are turning out in huge numbers like in Wisconsin. This is a statistic blew me away. Nearly 250,000 more people voted in this Wisconsin primary than in 2018, the year of the big blue wave. I know that's wild. Now, what I think is when you look at all of this, it's sort of belies the overly simplistic narratives that people who talk about politics are living and trying to jam this through DSA versus centrists, left, first, right, institution, first, anti-institution, even generational.
Like it's a lot of these races. And the thing is the Wisconsin and Michigan races come by if 18,000 votes between the two of them had gone a different way. We would have been like, DSA is dead, long live the moderates or like go comrade, but it's socialist of one. And it's, and it's, uh, it's all more complicated. Voters looked at it and made decisions.
There was some local factors in all of them. I think the one thing that is true is that voters are looking for fresh faces. And those fresh faces are often younger. And we are, we saw that in all the income that you mentioned, it is a fresh face who has come in and beaten them and almost always a younger one. And, you know, and I think that that like the democratic voters are done with the gerontocracy.
To your point about how many more voters are participating in this year's primaries versus 2018 or at least in Wisconsin, is part of that, that people who usually just vote in a general election, but not a primary are now voting in a primary. I thought I saw somewhere that like just the interest is so high that even a lot of normy Democrats, quote unquote, who usually just turned out in a general, but not a primary are now like interested enough and engaged enough that they want to participate in the primary. Yes, that's definitely happening. Wisconsin is particularly impressive. You have the run up because Wisconsin is one of the highest turnout states in the country.
Right. But yeah, I think the stakes of these primaries feel very high to people because I think there's a real question about where our party is going and people want to have a say in that. So they are turning out and it like it does. It felt that way, Wisconsin felt that way in Michigan in these races. It's only I think that for people in New York City in those races or in the Colorado one, it felt that way where it's like, our party's going to go one of two ways.
And I want to have a say in which way it goes because the direction we choose is going to matter not just in the 2026, but in 2028 beyond. Potts America is brought to you by Zipperkruiter with everyday interactions becoming increasingly impersonal. Someone going just one extra step can be huge. Like when my doctor takes the time to call me with test results instead of sending them electronically. Yeah.
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What else is on the list? Let's see. What? What about the first personation? Motivation versus religion.
Left versus center left. Let's see. Orange Man Bad is the best political strategy. It's the first. Yeah.
OK. How much should we focus on Trump? Right. Right. Whokeness is kind of a relatively new one.
I don't know. I'm just kind of shooting from the hip here. How are Democratic voters judging? Which candidate is more electable here in 2026 based on everything that you have seen thus far this year? I think like the pundits of voters don't know who's more electable.
And that is showing up at these races as people are making different choices. What I think is interesting is like the ability there's been this big discussion like vote in the Trump era, Democratic voters care a lot of like about electability. And that is true. But it's also always been true. And it is also an axiomatic thing, which is you want.
Do you want someone who can win or do you want someone who is less likely to win, but agrees with you? People always make the one who's going to win. Even like even before Trump in 2004, when that Democratic primary that you were working on was going forward, people all of a sudden were like, wait a minute, we're going to run the anti-war governor of Vermont against George W. Bush. That's not a good idea.
And then they immediately shifted to John Kerry, the war here. Didn't work out great, but I understand the thinking that got them there. In 2020, electability drove Biden's nomination. Six in 10 voters in a Gallup poll at that time said they'd rather someone who was more likely to beat Trump than someone who they agreed with on policy issues. In the exit polls of the primary states, six in 10 voters, in most cases, said electability was their top issue.
People care about it. What is different now, and I believe you see this in both Wisconsin and Michigan, is that the voters no longer trust the Democratic Party establishment and the experts to tell them who is most electable and they have to see it with their own eyes and make their own judgment. You haven't missed it. Unless it's Tony Evers. Well, I mean, I think we can debate Tony, but Tony, of course, obviously played a huge role in this, but this is where Michigan, Wisconsin is.
All of the voices were saying Abdul is less electable. Voters looked at that race. They looked at him. It was not Patley obvious to him, to enough of them that he was less electable than how he seems. Wisconsin, Evers made electability number one issue down the stretch by announcing that he thought Hong could not win or was unlikely to win if she was a nominee, but then Hong went on a media tour where she did not acquit herself great and raise and sort of amplify the questions that Evers and Rose and voters looked at that.
I think if Evers had said she can't win and then she had done fine, they probably would have still picked on, but because of that, enough of people changed their mind in the final days to do it. And then it was Minnesota where Angie Craig made electability of a centerpiece of Rishu. No one thought we would lose that seat, so they didn't care. I think that's a really important point that's getting lost in the Minnesota example, because I think it sort of, like, I think a lot of voters, especially like highly engaged voters who pay attention to this, who are the voters that vote in primaries, they try to make rational decisions about who's going to who they think is going to win the race. Right.
And if you're in a state like Minnesota, where it just seems like the Democrat is going to win, and now Minnesota is not like a deep blue state, but you can make a good argument that Angie Craig or Peggy Flanagan, whoever won that nomination was going to, yes, it was going to be a heavy thing, right? Like a likely DC. And so in that scenario, as a voter, you look at the choices and you're like, well, now I am free to just support whoever I want to support that I believe in the most. And, you know, Peggy Flanagan wins by 20 points. And in Wisconsin, you have to imagine there were a bunch of Francesca people who really liked Francesca Hong and probably agreed with her more on the issues or found her campaign more inspiring or whatever it may be than David Crowley, but looked around, looked at polls, looked at her performances, maybe looked at their governor that they like very much, even though he's older in establishment and said, you know what, can't do it.
Can't do it. It's too important to win this day. And like that seems to me like an entire, like I know everyone always says, like, well, like the ability is all subjective and it doesn't matter. But like I do think there have to be some sort of objective standards by which to judge electability that I think voters are trying to sort of figure out on the round. There are, I think the way I like to think about it is no one knows for sure who is electable and who isn't.
And the political environment is much more important than the quality of any individual candidate, but there are things we can look at. They give us an idea on people's selectability, one of which is how they hit. What is their history of winning tough races? And do they have it? Is there actual evidence of them winning over swing voters?
This is quantified by split ticket in their wins over placement model, but you can just like we know that Andy Beshear and Josh Shapiro can win over Republican voters. They have proven that in multiple games. Do we know that Gavin Newsom or AOC can do it? We do not know that. Can they maybe, but they've never proven to be for it.
So that's an untested proposition. We should say back because it's actually very useful for people, I think, is the wins above replacement calculation. Basically what split ticket has done is another people have done something similar, but what they've done is they come up with a baseline, right? So if like the base, how did you know, right? How did you know, right?
Democrat too? So what was like the national sort of was the national house vote or and they put a whole bunch of factors into it. So if a regular Democrat or for generic Democrat would win this race by two points and X candidate wins it by four points, then they're plus two win above replacement. If the other Democrat still wins the race, but only wins it by one point, then they're minus one wins above replacement. And you can do this with all the different house candidates and all the other. Now, what was interesting in the case of Michigan is, first of all,
a dual had run once for governor and lost. So he didn't have a long record there. Hailey Stevens was sort of the lowest wins above average of any of the Democrats in the house in Michigan, which I hadn't realized. So in that scenario, you actually didn't like, it seemed like Hailey Stevens was like because she was more moderate and back by the establishment, like maybe it's thinks she was more electable. But in terms of the objective measures you had, that wasn't necessarily the case.
Sure enough, the argument, which is, you know, lecture Jane was the pollster for the argument and does the, and also is split ticket does the wins above replacement. He said that they had in their model, if they have a dual as a 70% chance of winning the general and Hailey Stevens would have been 80% chance. So it's like 10% difference is it's something, but it's not. It's big. It's actually, it's actually, it's between 70 and 80 doesn't feel huge.
Difference between 50 and 40 feels quite big. Yes. Well, that gets you to the other, that gets you to the other measures, which is not the, then you get past data. Right. And so then there is the question of extremism and it is a, there is, it's not always true, but it is mostly true that the candidate who was seen as more extreme loses.
This is the thing that always makes people want to throw their phone in the ocean, but Donald Trump has seen as more moderate than Kamala Harris in 2024 and Joe Biden was seen as more moderate than Donald Trump in 2020. And so you look at that, you say, does have to, like, we take Michigan, for instance, you would say, does Abdul have positions and statements that could be used to make him see more extreme than Hailey Stevens, possibly. I think that's probably where you get to the, the, that, that net difference for them. Then the third thing is candidate quality. And this is all subjective where you're like, does this person seem like they can stand?
This is going to be particularly true in a presidential debate, the presidential election. Can they stand on the stage with JD Vance or Marco Rubio or Tucker Carlson or else and like hold their own? Do they, can they go on podcasts? Can they give a good speech? Can they do those things?
And that I think is where Abdul seemed like he could, like he really showed a lot of candidate skill and Hailey just ran a campaign in the end where she was just not very present in the media. So people didn't see her. Although I would say her post election media tour, she has crushed. Yeah. Um, and then Hong went on this huge media tour, did every interview, seemed ill prepared for a lot of them.
And that people saw that with her and I, so it's like, yes, Eva said that. But then everyone actually saw clips that made them say, maybe this person cannot win or is less likely to win. Well, that's why she was like, yeah, this objective and no one really knows who's electable or not. It's technically true, but all this exists on a spectrum. And there are some people where you're like, who's the more electable candidate?
Well, they're both kind of good on TV and sometimes they make mistakes, but once inspiring for this reason, like, that's a close call with like when Francesca Hong goes on TV and is like, well, let's have to talk about canceling Thanksgiving and why, you know, police exist to uphold white supremacy. Most people, most people who don't pay attention to politics, if you, if you show them that clip, they'd be like, yeah, that's weird. No, thank you. So like that's, that's an easier or or let's take another example, the Biden Trump debate, right? Like, and Biden performs so, performs so horribly that afterwards, it's like, okay, yeah, there's, there's like nitpicky debate, you know, figure skating judge quality to analyzing debates, but that's an easy call.
Most of most people will be like, that's awful. Right. So these are extreme examples, but the problem is it gets harder, like, we're getting to the presidential election, right? And so imagine you're down to at the end, I'm just picking these sort of randomly Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, AOC. Like, they're all tough.
Yeah. Say they're all like, you can make a case for all of them. And then it gets more specific. And then the thing that I think is important to note, and this is like a huge problem in 2020 is the electability discourse is very racially engender coded. And there is just like, there is this particularly true in 2020, where it's just we filter the election through the mind of a white dude in Wisconsin.
And like, who do they want? And people, you hear this in focus groups all the time. People project onto voters. They do not know biases. It's like Kamala Harris did with people to judge is the VP, where you say, well, he's a gay man, that's too much for America.
And that's like a very, and at that end, if you take that, but if you take that, you never like, you would have said, you also would have said Brock to say to Obama too much for America. They're tight. Like it's just, it is, I think the discourse is there are some things you can look at where we are. There are some things that makes it very quite complicated and can narrow the aperture of what you're looking for. Absolutely.
You're not even doing it based on data. You're doing it off of perceived biases, the electorate or small sample sizes of women losing press, elections. Sometimes I think we confuse in the electability discourse, the very real perceived biases in the election in the electorate, right? And the fact that a lot of this electability discourse is absolutely gender and racially coded with, okay, but that's, that is, true. That is how people think and what does a candidate in the campaign do to overcome that?
So yes, people thought that Barack Obama was, couldn't be president because we're, how are we going to elect a black guy named Barack Hussein, Obama from Chicago? Was it the United States when we just lost with the war hero against George W. Bush and, and even black voters in South Carolina at the beginning of the campaign did not think that Barack Obama was ready to become president. So what did Barack Obama do? He won over a bunch of white voters in Iowa and proved that maybe it's not so crazy to think that a black man named Barack Hussein Obama could become president.
So part of this is realizing the biases that exist in the electorate and then, and then putting together a strategy to overcome those biases and prove yourself unfair as it may be. It is the world that we live in. And what makes it more unfair, and this is where it played in 2020 is there's a lot of the campaign that ever happens before you get to actual voters. Yeah. And so it's like, you need money, you need attention.
And when people like, there was a, Elizabeth Warren was at the top of the polls and so there was a New York Times story about all this with Warren, probably couldn't beat Trump. And if she really tanked after that, because the hyper engaged Democrats particularly once in Iowa, New Hampshire, we're like, Oh, wait, we love Elizabeth Warren, like her policies, but she probably can't beat Trump. Well, then we six and 10 of us would prefer to have somebody who could be Trump. And this is going to absolutely shade a lot of the discourse going into 20, eight, particularly because we have lost to Donald Trump two times now. Yeah.
You know, and so like, you know, unfairly or not, it's going to be a huge part of it. And it's going to be, it's going to be, I think hard for a lot of these candidates to overcome it, but you know, stranger things have happened. Barack Obama became president. How do Americans brought you by AG one? The summer winds down.
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We're going to have John Favreau, John Lovett, Tommy B. Torre Stacey Abrams, Dan Fyfer, Aaron Ryan, and many more special guests to be announced and they're all going to help us make sense of what's happening as the election results are rolling. So here's what you need to do. Subscribe to Pause Ape America on YouTube and tune in on Tuesday, November 3 at 9 PM Eastern, 6 PM Pacific for hot takes catharsis and as many results as we can possibly analyze. The polls were off by a decent amount in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota for different reasons.
As the host of polar coaster, you are therefore required to defend the switchcraft that you keep telling us will predict the future. Within your certainty. Yes, that is. All the polar coaster. That's what we say.
The polls are not a snapshot in time. They're not an imprecise measure. They are perfect. So saying. Look, I think if we look at these.
The polls were very wrong, but let's talk about what that means in this case. Um, one, it's worth noting that primary polls are often quite wrong. Yeah, like they have a long history of being wrong. That has become more true in this era where it becomes almost impossible to get anyone to take a poll because polling is now looks much more like election modeling where you're guessing what the electorate looks like in advance and then waiting your very random sample to match that. And so if you guess the, if you model the electorate wrong, you are going to miss everything and that it's easier to model in a general election, particularly now we've had a bunch of them in the Trump era, which is why the polls were more accurate 2024.
So, but that's even harder in the primary. It's particularly hard in Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota because those are open primary states where independence and Republicans can vote. It's one of the reasons that even it appears that the internal campaign polls were all wrong because in those states, you can't even go off the voter file to poll. You were basically doing either these media pollsters are relying on self reported party ID and the campaigns are using modeled support where they sort of guess what there's something in the Democrat, but you go into it. You have no idea how many independents are going to like, they walk in to the voting booth and they pick a ballot.
They get to choose right there. And so it's very hard to know. It is also seems very clear that in these states, the pollsters oversampled young voters and these young voters tend to be more progressive. They're the one supporting a tool and Flanagan and Hong and that that's a misjudgment of how many people vote and they're under sampling working class voters in particularly in Wisconsin and Michigan black voters. And then the other thing I say is most of the polls that we saw were not high quality polls.
We don't have any attempts to see any polls of these races. Marquette did poll. Marquette is a highly really pollster. They did poll in Wisconsin and were wrong, but their polls actually more than a week old by the time the election happened. And one thing is that we, you know, we get a poll a week out and it's says the race is tied and then one candidate wins by three.
Everyone says the poll is wrong. It's like, well, it's also possible. Additionally, that's just being the margin of error. People change their mind, undecideds move and in Wisconsin, in particular, it seems very clear that there was real movement at the end. You had like in that state navigate did a poll that was like five days out that ended up being quite wrong, but in that poll.
So you had 9% of undecided voters. All those voters seem to have gone too. Crowley, you had a bunch of other candidates in the field, who's, including two in Mandela, parts of Saratirigas who had dropped out of the race and they had supporters and some of those supporters went to David Crowley. And so what pulled like she hit her. Francesca Hong was basically pulling around 40%, which is what she got.
And like in some of these polls, she was over. She was four or five points over 40. But yes, it basically got her within a reasonable polling error. Right. They got her number and what happened is everything else moved towards Crowley.
And he had momentum. She was struggling down the stretch. He spent $4 million like in the last week, a week, 10 days or so on broadcast in linear television, which I think made a huge difference. And so we have to remember that people change their minds, but undecided voters decide and that is what affects the final margin and that it's certainly a huge factor in what happened, at least in Wisconsin, probably to some extent, Michigan as well. Minnesota is a little more confusing to me because in that one, the polls towards the end showed it kind of close.
And then instead of Penny Flain again, the more progressive candidate won by 20 points. So they underestimated the more progressive candidate in Minnesota. Yeah, those polls might just be wrong. It just goes to show you, I think that like it's, it's a number of different factors and it's like, I wouldn't think to ourselves as we go into the midterms and you tell me if I'm wrong, that like, oh, no, they're always going to oversample younger voters and the polls are all going to be off because that didn't happen in Minnesota and it hasn't happened in other places. It's possible.
It's also worth remembering that in 2025, they polls in New Jersey and Virginia were off. They were very far off in New Jersey and they under sampled Democrats in that case, or over Semper Publicans. And it's going to be interesting. This is the, I mean, we're getting super nerdy here, but they're in, they were wrong in 16. The polls were right in 2018, 2018 per day, if like a normal midterm, because all these low engaged Trump voters did not turn out in that one.
2020, they were incredibly wrong. 2022, they were actually quite right. Everyone believes that because they're not the right way of coming, but the polls were historically accurate in that race. And then in 2024, the polls were right again, but the pollsters for the most part, there are some exceptions and they come to the times included, but they use basically like statistical sledgehammer to jam more Trump voters into the polls, which worked how they're going to factor in in model Republican turnout in this election and how they're going to try to accommodate, like what the, what is the baseline? Are you, if you do it, what are you waiting?
They waited basically in 2024. They waited the poll to the 2020 vote share. I don't know how they're going to do this here. It's going to be very interesting to see. I should probably bring this up since it's sort of breaking here as we're talking, but Fox News released two Senate polls, Michigan, Mike Rogers, 51 Abdul 47.
And then Sherrod in Ohio is up by the same as he was last time, which is 53 45. I don't know if I buy either of those. I mean, Sherrod Brown is not winning Ohio by eight. Yeah, that would be a, that'd be a 19 point over performance. That's, that'd be seems further off than the.
Yeah, I would say that both of those races end up being closer, closer and they're like two point races. I think there's a world where Abdul could win by four or five. I find it highly unlikely that Mike Rogers could win by that much. Yeah. But I think there's work for Abdul to do.
I think that he has real work to do. And it like he, in all of the polling, even the ones that showed him doing the same as Haley Stevens against Mike Rogers, he was dramatically underperforming the political environment. It should be, this is Michigan's 50 50 state. It should be, he should be starting with six points in his pocket. Right.
Because yeah, for, because so everyone knows even though Michigan's close, if the national environment is six points more favorable to Democrats than it was in 2024, then yeah, that's how you get that. Um, speaking of election forecasts, the promise 100% accuracy Nate Silver dropped his midterm model this week called forecast with leading indicators, polls and expert ratings or flipper for short. I'm going to call it flipper. Um, so Nate's forecast has historically been closer to the mark than I think most other models. He's not known as someone who's, who's biased towards Democrats or Republicans in his, in his modeling.
Um, but it is notable that he gives Democrats out of this recording an 86.1% chance of winning the house. And I said it's a, this recording, 56% chance of winning the Senate, but I bet once he throws in that Michigan poll, that might go down a little. Yeah. The Fox is an aerated poll. And so that will, that will bring that down.
So, uh, and since it just came out, I'm sure he hasn't updated it yet. But by the time you listen to this, we updated it. Um, what do you think of Nate's forecast and, and what should people know about what goes into that besides just polling? Cause I think some people probably just assume that it's a polling aggregator where you just throw in a bunch of polls together and average them out, which it's not. For a long time, the real clear politics polling average was what everyone followed.
And that really was just math where they added all the polls together and divided by the number of polls. Yeah. At the average is if they were in fifth grade math, what Nate does in others, like Lakshya Jane do this much more complicated is they build a statistical model that takes in polling. They then Nate at least weights the pollsters based on quality of the poll. He actually has it in the past, I don't know if he's doing this in the case of established what it calls a house bias that some pollsters over time are tending to be more democratic or more Republican and then he will factor in that house bias.
Into it. He will also includes fundamentals, like how much money the campaigns of the campaigns have raised the larger political environment. The there's a benefit to incumbency in these races and fits that in. And then this time actually he has three versions of his model, the deluxe model, if you will, actually factors in the expert ratings from like political report and others. It's, you know, it's interesting to read his methodology page because the poll's been so wrong.
He's overweighting towards fundamentals this time, or he's putting that over. He's putting more weight on fundamentals than he has in the past. Interesting. Which is, which is interesting. And I'm going to be very, very interested to see what the Michigan poll, which by the time you guys are listening to this, you may be able to go to his site and check it out.
But how that changes is because if I recall correctly, I think maybe this was like a shame, but I don't want to, I don't want to sneer him with cases that wasn't incorrect take, but basically some, in some people's model that if Democrats is winning the house, the Senate are, you know, let's say they're 50 seven or whatever it is, if they lose Michigan, that never drops into the like the thirties. Yeah. So that if Michigan is a, you really need Michigan to take the Senate and if we are a poll that shows us losing Michigan badly, we'll probably move move the Senate forecast a little bit at least. I think the Senate forecast started even higher than 56 percent. It went down to 56 today because yeah, there's an Emerson poll that shows how we go down one in Texas.
I'll tell you what, though, that poll shows how we go 70 percent of the black vote. And if he is down one percent of the black vote in Texas, then he is going to be, he's going to win by firm. I think that is a bad, they probably not enough voters that have it, but he's going to get a lot more than 70 percent of the vote. Now, we're not in the prediction business and, you know, we always warn you about these things. So what good is an election forecast for all of you?
I do think that one of the more interesting parts of Nate's forecast, Nate's model is in for the house races, they show you like what are the closest house races in the country. And that can like that list can update. And I think if you're, you know, if you want to volunteer, if you want to donate money, it is kind of helpful to look and see the closest house races, the closest Senate races. And then, you know, you go to what's a America and we can make sure you're connected with the right people. So you can have something to do and someplace to donate.
So I do think that is very helpful to have like what races are the closest to kind of see it updating over time. It is emotional management for most people. We're going to live and die with several point drops in the forecast. Yeah. Yeah, don't do that because it's going to be quite a polar coaster, if you will.
Yeah, exactly. Until November. All right, last thing before we go, White House Secretary Caroline Lovett announced on Wednesday that she's leaving her post at the end of the month to quote embark on a new chapter and spend more time with her kids. She will, of course, be missed. And as former White House comm staffers, we thought it only fitting to safe farewell with a tribute to some of her finest moments.
He's become a star. It's that faces that brain. It's those lips, the way they move. They move like she's a machine gun. Hatred has no place in the United States of America under President Donald Trump.
The government's base plotted to add about the number of times we've had his hands. We've been telling about that it's about the president is literally constantly shaking hands. Why was Renee good? Unfortunately, and tragically killed. Are you asking me, Michael?
Because I'm not shaking a doctor. You have to sleep till we don't have to fight. Oh, OK, so you're a biased reporter with a left wing opinion. What do you want me to do? Yeah, because you're a left wing hack.
The president had a feeling again based on that that Iran was going to strike the United States was going to strike our assets in the region at this moment in time. Of course, the ballroom is really the president's main priority. He believes that Canadians would benefit greatly from becoming the 51st state of the United States of America. It's well past time that President Trump was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Because it was 2011 when Barack Obama and Seth Meyers said he'll never be president.
Blop, blah, blah. Here we are with President Trump going on stage as a two term president. For the first time, this each tonight will be a classic Donald J. Trump. It'll be funny.
It'll be entertaining. There will be some shots fired tonight. Very, you know, just North Korean propaganda through through. Yeah, it's not that bad. Yeah, I love the kind of.
He does believe that Canadians will benefit for being the first 51st state. Just said with a straight face, which was a thing that actually happened in the politics. Well, kudos to her for saying that all with the straight face. As for who might replace Levitt at the podium, names are already being floated all across the magma media ecosystem. Lots of exciting possibilities.
And it's a wide open field. So each of us without sharing with each other yet has ranked our top five most likely picks. So why don't we, I think we should each go five, five, four, four, three, three. Okay, that's, that's what I was open for. Okay.
They're really going to mess up the punchline of mine, but we'll do it this way. Okay, that's fine. You want to go. Who's your number five? Who's your number five?
Number five is Marco Rubio. That's funny. That's funny. I already saw some of the Rubio on the couch meme is where he's got a long way gone. So yeah, yeah.
I use this. Now my number five, Erica Kirk. Now that is an interesting suggestion. You think it's crazy. You're like, wait a minute.
She's, you know, she's, she's a lot of public speaking, big, you know, big favorite of the Maga world. Who knows? Number four. So before I give number four, I would like to just point out my thinking here, which is down from said five press secretaries. Can you name all five?
Whoa. Oh, because we have to go back to the first term, huh? Yeah. Sean Spicer, Katie Mcklone. Yep.
Oh, what's his name? Scaramucci. Never press secretary. It wasn't for 16 days. Communication structure.
Oh, he didn't step in for the. Oh, yeah. Oh, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Yep. Um, Caroline.
I'm just one. And so now I'm just one, one, right? That I'm missing. Stephanie Grisham. Oh, Stephanie Grisham.
Yes. Okay. Okay. So five press secretaries, the last four of been women. I don't think I'm just going to pick them in.
I don't either. So my number four is. Although I have one man on my list, but I did two obviously, but my number four is Anna Kelly, who's currently the deputy press secretary. You know, I keep seeing that around, but it's like, I feel like he always wants to go for someone who has been on TV a bunch. He's also lazy.
So yeah, that's true. Is a man so lazy, wouldn't even pick a new national security advisor. Yeah, that's true. That would be the, that's a lazy round. I don't think it's obviously one of not one of the things most likely, but I think it's on the table.
My number four is my favorite in yours, Tricia McLaughlin. Oh, God, that's, that's definitely not happening, but that's a good suggestion for content purposes. You don't think it's, I think it, well, I did read somewhere that she might be pregnant. So that would be tricky, at least if it's happening soon. I don't know how pregnant she is or what, but like, but I could see, I mean, she was clearly auditioning for White House Secretary, her entire time at DHS, and she has not taken a new job yet.
Okay. It's look at it. It is on the table. All right. What's your number three?
Trump loves her. Trump loves her loyalists. She is crazy. She's great. She'll fight with the press, but she cares about most.
She's very, she's a former reporter. She's good on TV in a Trumpian way. She's good on TV. Right. Right.
Yeah. I thought about her and I was like, she, you know, Trump likes his spokespeople, like young, like Fox News anchors. Yeah. It's this would be the only thing that, yeah. Well, in my number three, same thing.
This is a departure from this, which is Scott Jennings. Interesting. See, I was thought about saying, but then I went with my whole man thing and then I had to be very cheesy and funny. Ruby, I would not put the money on Scott Jennings, but I put him on my list because we are betting all of these on Cal, she, right? That's, yes, of course.
Yes, obviously. As we do with everything. Okay. My number two, Katie Miller. So I was going to have Katie Miller on there.
And then I, of course, did some research for this segment and in one of the political stories about the search, a source close to Miller said, not happening. Absolutely not. That's exactly. Oh, now that's a Katie Miller's word. Yes.
Maybe what was she? She has a wildly successful podcast. What's she going to do? Do the podcast in the briefing room? Yeah, that's probably good.
She likes attention. She's very combative. Yeah. I mean, she would, yeah, I could see it. No.
I have, isn't my number two? No one just doesn't feel the role continues to have a bunch of dip shits jump into the briefing room once in a while and says, fuck it. I don't even want the press to deal with that. I'm the press secretary. Yeah.
I thought about putting that on my list too. And then I thought that was maybe like a little, a little too try to hard for viral clip, if you will. What that no wonder if I say Trump, if I pick Trump, never one choices, Donald Trump. So that seems like it much. Yeah.
No, that is. I think he really cares about the briefing. Like he wants to watch something. He's going to watch. He wants to watch something.
It is a lull in the Fox schedule during the day. I think he does not watch Will Kane. So usually he put the briefing is during. Well, Kane, and so that's all is that problem for him. Will Kane.
Too dumb. Yeah. All right. Number one, number one, this is a totally out of left field. It's a crazy choice.
Rachel Campos, Duffy. She's on Calchee, but she fell. She started at like 40%. Like, I don't know how they got there. I was like 40% or something.
And then she's like falling down to less than 1%. Yeah. I think I'm not sure the people who are betting couch. What we have to watch for is if all of a sudden there's a surge behind one person. Yeah.
That's what I think of me. Trust God. She's a Fox news anchor. She is very, she's reality TV star. She's very, very, very, very family.
Loyal, Trump likes her a lot. He talks about her a lot back when before Sean Duffy was in the camp that he used to tweet and truth about her all the time. Oh, oh, oh, I could see that one. She was on my list. Yeah, I should have kept her on my list.
I have Alina Haba. That's yeah. I knew she is the favorite right now. I knew in my soul, you were gonna pick Alina Haba first. And so for content purposes, I took Alina Haba off my list.
I know I almost didn't want her first because I was like, I think it's more it's boring as a selection. But I actually think if we're just doing most likely, I would put money on that. Yeah. So you were trying to take this as a serious game. Yeah, of course.
Yeah. Just like I did. I was turningly online, you know, I was doing this for totally content purposes. Of course, of course. Of course.
Yes. Well, good luck to everyone on our list. And hopefully it was good to do some outside the box ones that are not on Cal Street, like Eric Kirk and Trish McGawfam because maybe if we say them, you know, the MAGA, the MAGA verse listens to us. So we just, if we put it out there, maybe we can build some buzz behind these. If you are listening to Pots in America and then you think that we said something about who Trump might harass his press secretary and then you went and put money on that, get help.
Well, that might describe Elijah. He's so far behind help. Yeah. You can hear us still laughing. All right, Dan.
Well, that's our show for today. Tommy will be back in the feed on Sunday with a conversation with tech journalist Casey Newton about the terrifying AI moment we're in. Exciting. And what we can do about it. Casey's awesome.
That's going to be a great conversation. And then, and then John and Tommy, now we'll be back with a new episode on Tuesday. Have a good weekend, everyone. Bye, everyone. Pots in America is a quick immediate production.
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