Can Dems Put Woke to Bed?

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Tommy's off today on today's show the White House tries again to limit the number of vaccines for kids based on unproven conspiracies about autism. Todd Blanch officially becomes the attorney general thanks to the Republican Senate. A. O. C. says woke one was crazy as Wisconsin and Minnesota Democrats head to the polls just he waters does not want to talk about women sports and hunter Biden sits down with Tucker Carlson. Then Montana house candidate Sam Forestag a former smoke jumper stops by the studio to talk to love it about his candidacy and the politics of his state.

He's really interesting. I really recommend listening that conversation. This is a person who decided to run for office. He literally is jumping out of planes to put out wildfires and then spending the rest of his year like organizing and doing union work and he's just a really interesting person a firefighter. My kids would love this. Yeah, speaking to firefighters right now. Well, they're going to listen.

I mean, a lot of our listeners are going to be big into fire writers after this. All right. All right. But first let's check in on how the president's war in the Middle East is going NPR.

Here's a headline from NPR haunted by Hoover. Trump searches for an endgame in Iran. See an end decided to go with Trump has a Carter style Iran problem is the economy drags before the midterms. We got a Hoover. We got a Carter. It's almost it's more Nixon for the trifecta. Yeah, no, he's definitely doing he's yeah, he's definitely doing Nixon didn't Nixon at the Department of Justice Carter in the Middle East Hoover Hoover on the bread lines. I mean, he's really it is really all of them. And and and in fairness, the comparison to Carter is even more apt than that because the straight-of-war moves is a hostage. That's the context for lots of reporting over the weekend that the president is desperately looking for a way to accept defeat in Iran after the regime made it clear.

They're not giving up control of the straight-of-war moves. Trump is also weighing dropping his demand for a nuclear deal, told Axios that he is quote low-keying it with Iran and only semi negotiating at this point. And then on Monday responded to Iran's demand for reparations by demanding reparations from Iran. Take that. Not an eocons losing their semis. Sorry. I don't think Tommy's down here. They were never never semis. Yes, right. The word he talked about. Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that the Iranian regime is intentionally dragging the war out so that Trump loses the midterms, probably because they're watching clips just like this.

You said in June that this was quote the strongest job market in your lifetime by what metric the bottom line is that if you look at the overall economy, then things are really really booming.

Trump's administration has only added 548,000 net jobs so far, which is considered very slow growth. It's growth, but very slow.

“Two million jobs were created in the last 18 months of Biden's presidency. Are you really arguing that your numbers are better than that?”

Well, I disagree with your number. We'll have to follow up on email. I know you don't negotiate with the Iranians, but you do talk about the economy and you said your bullish is going to be a heck of a lot of traffic moving. They're every single guy. I wouldn't call it a heck of a lot. How do voters feel about the president's work on jobs? These are the types of numbers that will make a lot of Republican members of Congress lose their jobs. Come November. You can see it right here. I mean, just look at this trend line. Trump's not a perverating on job. He is now 20, 2 points on the war to swim and what the fish is like.

It's like an extra New York. How does old Donnie wriggle his way out of this one, love it?

“If on the beginning, they hadn't said they were going for unconditional surrender that they were going to prevent Iran from being able to project power in the Middle East.”

They were going to fundamentally reorder the power and this critical part of the world and what he had done, not unlike what he had done when he had

the Midnight Hammer in the past or killed Solamana, like done a series of strikes and then claimed that the nuclear program was set back in a way. Barack Obama could have never dreamed through his deal. Maybe they could call bombing the nuclear sites and incapacitating a large percentage of Iran's military as some kind of victory if they reopen the straight. But now Iran has proven that the US military despite all its might combined with Israel cannot stop it from controlling this vital waterway. Trump looks weak. The country is not behind it. There's all these reports about our depleting military capacity and now at the end of it, the best he's going to accept is we're back to where we started.

Now to be clear, I hope that happens. I would rather us get back to the straight being open and not having this on again, off again, war in the Middle East and all the instability and danger and chaos that that entails, but it's still a total capitulation by Trump. And I don't think the straight is going to be open because Iran has recognized correctly that this is their sole point of leverage now.

“And that's why, you know, there was always reporting last week that Iran and Oman were like heading towards a deal.”

And I guess they haven't negotiated it, but Iran's basically like, yeah, we negotiated this with Oman, but we're not opening the straight until the US ends of the blockade.

US forces out of the region compensation for the war sanctions relief. They're asking for all of it because they don't really want the deal because they actually want to lord it over Trump. And, you know, and from Trump's perspective, he does it like, he keeps going, you know, they talk about exit ramps. He keeps going past different exits on the highway. Yeah, each time he goes past one, the next exit is worse than the last one, because now what can he actually do? He can't, he doesn't want, he's not talking about a military strike, remember he's talking about horrible, the worst military strikes in his world of war too.

And we're going to destroy them as early as last week. We were just talking about that. And today he was asking, so you'll see, you'll see. But we don't have the munitions, we're running out of munitions. We, there is no intelligence that said that any further US strikes would bring them to the negotiating table or do anything or cause them to change their behavior in any way.

So basically what he wants is for the straight to reopen and then say a nuclear deal will happen some other time, but he can't even do that because they're not going to open the straight.

And they're not cooperative rhetorically, right? He really, really what he wants is for this all to just go the fuck away. Like, everyone just shut up about Iran, I don't want to talk about it anymore. I don't want to think about it anymore. We won. I'm done. It's over. Everyone's stop complaining. Yeah. And so he, he does these threats to say they're coming back to the table. They don't cooperate and say we are back to the table. They have this annoying way of not helping him with his PR problem. Right, because they can read the news. Yeah. And watch clips like we just did.

The Guardian says that there's two factions in Iran arguing about their strategy on this. One things that have Trump is weaker after losing the midterms.

“He'll have less reason to deal. The other things that losing Congress will force Trump to negotiate. What do you think?”

My instinct on this is that it is no easier for Iranian political factions to predict Trump's conduct that it is for us to predict Trump's conduct. I think that there's a third door, which is, and this is, by the way, something that some of the neocons have been wish casting for, which is Trump is a little bit constrained by the politics right now, because all of these Republicans he's dealing with do not want to be saddled with an ongoing war in the midterms and the the cost of gas. And, and the anger from the part of Trump's base that were convinced that they were voting against foreign wars.

So they want all this to stay pretty quiet. If Trump, whether he wins the midterms or loses the midterms, there are those who believe that will give him the flexibility to finally do the escalation that they're desperate for him to do. He'll be, he won't be running again. The Republicans can criticize, they can be a debate about it in the, in the 2027, 2028 Republican primaries, but there's a version of this, where losing the midterm may weaken him politically, but might put him in a position to do something drastic and quite terrible.

Yeah, I was thinking about the other way, and that like, because I don't know that escalation does anything at this point,

I do think he could give them more. He could capitulate more, and you could see him doing that again after the midterms,

“just to get it off his plate, and to go around saying that he ended the war, and he's a peace president,”

and like it's a terrible deal, and everyone tells him it's a terrible deal, but he doesn't care because he just lies. Yes, and then he gets, you know, he's, he's doing his big kind of president at the end of his term, yes, doing his sort of like big diplomatic achievements that he can put in his museum tower. Part of this is a wish that the elections are somehow a hinge on which there could be some change in the dynamic. The other argument is the Trump we have today is the Trump will have six months from now.

He doesn't give a fuck what happens to these Republicans for the most part, other than how it affects him. He's already said that in many interviews. What's driving him is what will drive him then, which is how his ego is reflected in the embarrassment of losing a war, being able to claim that he got a better deal than Obama. What have you? That's the case in January as it is today.

“One person who seems less afraid of pissing off Trump these days is BB Netanyahu.”

He just rejected the US backed peace plan for Gaza saying that the IDF won't withdraw any forces until Hamas completely disarms, and that they're not afraid to quote stand up to the US. That would be Israel. What do you think that's all about? Yes. He also said again that as long as he's prime minister, there will be no Palestinian state, neither in Gaza nor in Judea and Samaria, as what he says, but the West Bank. And that's regardless of whether Hamas is in charge.

So they can negotiate and deal with what it means for Hamas to be disarmed, and there may be legitimate disagreements inside of that, even though Benjamin Netanyahu is not a good faith actor, and there is no disarmament that would be acceptable to him, obviously, but there is an actual policy question in what it looks like for Hamas to be disarmed when you're leaving those weapons

inside of Gaza. Fine. But if he's saying there will never be a Palestinian state,

but he's been saying for what? Yes, but he's saying even now after they've leveled Gaza, even as Hamas has agreed to the terms of this deal, which means handing over power, even in the deal in which there will be an international force. Like all of these steps, the steps that would have to happen, and that should be what determines the creation of a Palestinian state that Israel recognizes. He is saying that that cannot happen on his watch. So you have Trump now saying,

you know, on the bad, the Trump administration kind of quietly saying, he's got an election in October. He's trying to protect his right flank. Let's wait till after the election, which by the way, is a large SD does not afford people like John Coranan and Cassidy and the rest, but okay, he gets, let's say they they then y'all who manages to just stay in power. He gets

the other side of this election, then what? He is saying he will never agree to a plan in which

the Palestinians have a state, which means he will never agree to a plan in which Israel is not the sovereign in Gaza and the West Bank. Right, which means that they will he'll never agree to a plan where Palestinians and people who are living in the West Bank in Gaza are anything but second-class citizens with fewer rights than Israelis, which is if people, you know, people who are probably Israel get upset when you call it an occupation or that it can act like

an apartheid state, but when you're talking about the West Bank in Gaza, like, what do you call it? If there's never going to be a Palestinian state and Israel is just going to control both areas the entire time. Are they going to make them full citizens of Israel? And it probably doesn't sound like it. And you have Israel taking more and more of Gaza for this security perimeter. They no longer even really recognize the original border of Gaza as where a Palestinian state would begin.

You have settlement expansion going on at a pace. They are doing everything they can to make any kind of a Palestinian state, both politically and practically impossible. Meanwhile,

“you have those who, I think, are rightly, incredibly disgusted and critical of Israel,”

saying that a two-state solution is now ridiculous and stale and dead talking point because of what's happened. They want a one-state solution in which Palestinians have equal rights. Those that are pro-Israel, that is anathema to them because they believe in a Jewish state. If you believe in a Jewish

state and you find it repellent at the idea of Israel being an apartheid state, then the answer is a

state in which Arab Israelis and Jewish Israelis have equal rights, but there is a Jewish majority. That requires a Palestinian state in which they can govern themselves and live freedom and autonomy. That is the reality and Benjamin Netanyahu is the obstacle to that possibility and everything else.

this is really government and these really people backing it that are now making Israel this pirionation around them. Yeah, and I don't know that an election, even the get-for-even Netanyahu, is going to fundamentally change too much about that scenario that you just described. So let's see, but by the way, I just think we should just keep arguing. I think we keep arguing in our social media and accuse each other of all kinds of things. Yeah, I know that it was too

it. We're very close. We're very close. We're very close. We're very close to the solution there. Very close. Pots of America is brought to you by Zibiotics. We love Zibiotics.

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That's Squarespace.com/Crickad. Once a prize addition to the White House schedule on Monday and executive order on childhood vaccines, the order changes the federal government's official guidance about which vaccines kids should get and how soon on the completely unproven theory that combining different vaccines into single doses and administering several vaccines in a single doctor visit,

which has happened four decades, might cause autism. Specifically, the E.O. calls for the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine called the MMR to be given as three different shots, even though they're not available separately, it asks states to revisit vaccine mandates, which is their choice. And it pairs down the group of vaccines that should be recommended for all kids taking a HEPA and B vaccines, the flu vaccine and the COVID vaccine off that list of recommended

vaccines. Somehow, though, what Trump, RFK, Jr., and noted health experts, Steven Miller, said about vaccines in the oval on Monday was even worse than the E.O. itself. Large amounts of that vaccine are currently pumped into your child's body, which you know, there are some groups that have virtually no problem with autism. And you know, I have to say to say, their groups that aren't big into the world of vaccines. And nothing bad can happen from what

we're doing. Nothing bad can happen. It's possible it doesn't work. I don't think that's much of a possibility, frankly. We don't earn a lot. The U.S. passed all of 2025's measles total by July. So far of this year, 2371 cases 37 new outbreaks versus 2000 for all of last year, a little over 2000 for all of last year. MMR coverage among kindergarteners has fallen from 95.2% in 2019, 2020 to 92.5%. So good job, everyone. And now we're going to be telling kids to

our families to slip the shots up somehow, which will mean more missed visits. Yeah, what do you think happens? If you tell everybody that they have to go to doctor three times instead of one time,

“we can answer the question that countries have done this. I think Japan split up the MMR vaccine”

and what do you end up with? You end up with outbreaks of months and rebellion. That's just what

Blanche. This is somebody who is in position of power. He is a doctor. He believes in vaccines.

“He had a moment where he could have stood up to this. And he took the ridiculous false assurances”

from RFK Junior at face value because he wanted to be convinced by RFK Junior so he could avoid the hard vote and voted RFK Junior out of committee. And now we have as destructive a health secretary as you could imagine in this job. Being alive is already challenging. We don't need to put it on hard mode. Like that is what this is. Like vaccines are a miracle. This is all based on false science. Like even this idea to like, oh, you know, we give our kids 72 jobs or whatever number of

jobs. Like just that is a number based on giving kids the flu shots and that they are not counting the shots. The other countries also give their kids just not real. And then on top of that,

because they think of vaccines as somehow harmful, even though there's no evidence that they are

harmful. In fact, they are one of the great miracles of modern life. They have changed the world. They've made being a parent of a different experience than what it had been a hundred years ago.

“When other countries don't give kids vaccines, they react by saying, can you believe it?”

We're giving our kids more vaccines. Yes, that's cool. They're not willing to spend on some of those vaccines. They're not willing to add them to the schedule. They're rationing, fucking health care over there in Europe. The day the days are rationing, the health care. We're giving more vaccines than they are. And part of the reason we have to do that is because our health system is so much fucking worse that we don't catch a bunch of stuff that they might

catch in a universal system. And so when you remove some of these vaccines and say, what could happen? Well, what's going to happen is this is going to be a bunch of kids that get happy. This is going to be a bunch of kids that don't get vaccinated for road of virus or what have you. And they're going to get sick in that window because the doctors that recommend these vaccines

“and recommend them happening when kids are born or early on are not fucking malicious. They're”

not looking to harm kids. They're not sadists. They know that if you increase the window, if you cause more delays, if people don't show up to the doctor inside of that group of kids, our people that don't get hurt may be permanently injured, maybe die. That is what's going to happen. I'm bummed about it. Wow. I'm really mad. Well, I'm going to need a hearing check. Makes me really sad. It's a CDC in their own website still says that there's no published evidence

of any benefit from separating MMR. It's just in the way these things get sort of seep out into the public consciousness. We're getting another example of it. We got one just today because they have, they're still trying to do a number on Fauci. And so they got his phone as government phone and they released all the texts. Yeah. And there's one text where he's like, "Oh, one thing we should look at is we're developing these COVID vaccines is if there's any

effect on on miscarriages." Right? Because there's like a thrown out of hypothesis. Like that's something that we should look at. These are new vies, a new vaccine. It is a new technology. Like let's make sure that if it causes some kind of response by the body that there isn't a higher incidence of miscarriage, we need to know that about this vaccine. A completely reasonable

question for Fauci to ask. So it was January 2021. Yeah. He said that the second dose of the COVID

shot theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the first trimester. So that's something to think about. Then they tested it. Of course, it was like by the time it was widely available, like it was fine and they had all the right recommendations. It would held approval by the way for pregnant for a while. For a while. Because for this reason. Yes. So they did like everything they were supposed to do. Now everyone is like, Megan McCain is like, put him in jail. I'm serious.

I'm in jail. And then now they're they're recirculating this debunked theory where there's this study that apparently shows that I know it. You don't they are they are numerically illiterate. They are. Yeah, Katie Pavlitch. The mandated and doctor recommended COVID-19 shot for pregnant woman was effectively an abortion shot. According to new documents just released by Senator Johnson and Paul. The authors of this study claimed a miscarriage rate of 12.6%. But the

raw data revealed an 82% miscarriage rate. Is that what happened? An 82% miscarriage rate. No, they're they read the study running. They read the numbers running. They're all fucking idiots. And every single right wing. Not every single one. But all these right wing accounts now are putting out that there's an 82% miscarriage rate for the COVID shot. So completely irresponsible and fucking dumb. It's also we all live in the world. A lot of pregnant. It's going to got the

that would be one of the worst health catastrophes that would be. It would be like fucking children

amen out there. And they're just first of all to get to they're just misreading the number. Even

that 12%. That might sound like a lot, right? If you're just casually consuming this information,

“the point like a lot of first trimester pregnancies end in miscarriage. That's why people don't”

tell their family until they're through the first trimester. What they found is when you looked at all the data, there wasn't a spike. It didn't go above. There wasn't a statistically significant increase in miscarriages. That's all that and they look at it and they do the best they can. They weigh the data against the safety that the COVID vaccine provides. And these are scientists and doctors doing their best to try to protect pregnant women, to protect children, to protect people

from all kinds of viruses and because of the conspiracy-addled minds of the people in that room, they can make none of them doctors, none of them doctors, and then with medical degrees. And forget even the recommendations. Like forget like the, maybe that J guy, the seat went over J buck or whatever whatever his name is. But like, okay, these are these are these are recommendations that would harm people. 100%.

Just the way they talk about the vats of vaccine, injecting the little ones, the jabs, the 70. It's all meant to, it's it's all meant to make people question, be afraid of these vaccines. Meanwhile, the vats scenes we give today are so different than the ones that were given even 20 or 30 years ago. They have much less of the antigens in them. They're much more precise. We've learned a lot

about vaccines because scientists are amazing. And so the dozen or so vaccines that that kids

will get in early childhood today actually have less far less like a tenth as much of the kind of antigens that were as in one protest of shot 30 years ago. We have, we have figured out how to do this in a way because because the people doing this research care so much because they didn't become, you know, become, they're not researchers in vaccines because they're, uh, what like power-mad, COVID mask people. No, their, their doctors trying to provide us do the best care to do the research

for the reasons they got involved in medicine in the first place. And there, these people are like who decided it's a fucking conspiracy to give kids autism. Meanwhile, I don't know, given the state of our fucking, uh, our education system, our healthcare system, uh, our infrastructure,

maybe we could use a little more autism. Get people on these fucking spreadsheets,

figuring this stuff out. Don't laugh at that. Don't laugh at that staff. God forbid, we have a, we have more people in this country that don't like that, that, that like staying inside and doing fucking math. It seems like a little bit of a self-interested. I got every vaccine and look at me. I know how to make eye contact. It's not that hard.

“Look at a John right now right in the eyes. He can't look at me. Who has autism now?”

Neither of us. Speak. Well, uh, one, one light-hired moment. Uh, in this whole thing, uh, was someone, uh, one of the reporters asked Trump afterwards, "You're a proud father. Would you have vaccinated your children differently?" In this man, with that, like, straight face doesn't even skip a beat. Just as I did, I did. I took, I took my children for five different vaccinations. I went with my wife and we took each of them

for it. We separated out all the vaccines. Mm-hmm. Do you think that man has ever taken any of his children to a doctor's appointment ever? Do you think he knows that they, do you think he ever knew who their pediatrician was? Can you imagine Donald Trump in the same room as one of those toys where you move the, the little things along the wires? With, imagine him sitting against the wall and there's just like, uh, kind of big red strike behind him,

you know? Uh, and he's walking into the suit and tie to, he's got to take, take work off because he's got to take Don Jr. to get him back. Come on, buddy. You'll get a lollipop at the end. It's me, Donald Trump. Take my son. He and Ivana were two going together to the doctor's session. I would have loved someone to follow up on that question, be like, oh, when did you,

“when did you do that? What pediatrician, where did it, where did they go?”

Famous hypocondriact Donald Trump sitting in a waiting room with a bunch of coughing children, inconceivable, inconceivable. He didn't, he just, he just missed his son's wedding. What are you talking about? Anyway, right before the vaccine event, Todd Blanche was sworn in as the next attorney general and a private ceremony in the Oval Office. On Saturday, the Senate voted to confirm Blanche, um, and the only nose were Lisa McCowsky and Susan Collins,

but three S's from the three members of the so-called Yolo caucus of Republicans, John Corne and Tom Tillis and Bill Cassidy, who had this to say. And on giving his family protection from IRS programs. That's totally wrong. Totally wrong. And so I will go back. This

but no American should be above the law. And that frankly, almost weighed to vote no. Wow.

“Actually, it's a, it's quite a black and white decision. There's, there's a yes vote and there's a”

no vote. He's either, he's either confirmed or he's not confirmed. I will say that, uh, in the, in that oval, um, the vaccination event, uh, some reporter was like, so was the, weaponization fund dead and he said, well, that's up to the attorney general now. Mm-hmm. Just like we thought. Yeah, they're like thicknessness of Cassidy and Corne and Tillis. Three people that Trump's personally ruined their careers. He got involved to get them out of office. He successfully did it. He, he has now put

forward as his attorney general nomination. Someone has over saw the politicization of the Justice Department, unlike anything before in American history, which is a tough category. RFK was the attorney general, uh, who, uh, personally met with Galane Nass Maxwell, uh, uh, uh, oversaw her transfer to a Kushier prison, has overseen a Justice Department in which they've gone after Lisa Cook and, and James Komi and fucking, uh, uh, the, the, the, the sandwich thrower all the way up and down,

“uh, in any, like, so beyond the pale, so obviously unfit, so clearly a moment to just stand”

up and say no, as you could ever imagine in the Senate. And then this guy has, has the audacity to then claim it was a hard decision. He talks about tearing up in this interview with the, given the incredible amount of responsibility on his shoulders to have stood in those hallowed

halls and been responsible for such big decisions, much like he always imagined it could be to be on

that in that storied Senate chamber. And he is saying it as someone who completely failed his moral responsibility, he will, that he completely gave up that power to Donald Trump in a way that is pathetic and that defines him. His whole life is defined by his decision to be a tool for Donald Trump, a stooge for Donald Trump. And he's giving interviews about how we be he was at the out having had the opportunity. I mean, look at it this way. Sometimes we say, these people do this

for Donald Trump because all they want is their job and their title and their afraid. Honestly, it was none of those things. He lost his job, lost his title. He doesn't have anything to fear anymore. He's just, and he just thought, OK, sure. It's, it's Todd Blanch. It's kind of laziness. He said something about like, well, it wasn't about like the perfect attorney general, which was like, maybe another one would be worse. What are you talking about? I really think they've sorted

“Todd Blanch into the serious guy who talks honestly behind closed doors. And that's what they've”

convinced themselves. But this is where this is how they all like love Rubio still in their mind, Rubio's like the adult in the room, even though he is like, capitulated on just about everything that Donald Trump has asked him to do. Right. And says crazy things in public. Now the same way they can see Doug Burgham, even as a serious and reasonable person, even though he's out there saying that the reflecting pool was destroyed by by Vandals. The other part of this too is they act.

They're acting so powerless. They had so much power. Cassidy Collins, Mercowski, Tillis Cornan, they could have come together and said, we want to ban by law, any kind of insurrectionist fund. We want a public assurance from Todd Blanch that he won't consult with Donald Trump about ongoing cases. They could have, they could have in law. They could have passed a law that said no settlement with the IRS could carry forward into the future that it can only be, there's all

kinds of things that they could have done with their actual power that was not impossible. Just required some work, like actually getting together and figuring it out and carrying it up to do something without acting like every vote that happens to you is the like there's no forward planning to it. It's like, well, that's the vote today. Nothing I could do. He's acting so it doesn't fucking matter. It's really wild. I would love someone to really, I mean, this is, no, I wouldn't

because what's going to happen is Todd Blanch will continue to do horrible things and then someone will ask them, you know, what did you think about Blanch doing that? And maybe they'll say,

oh, I'm so disappointed that he did that. I never thought he would do that. I was reassured,

you know, he gave me his assurance. Yeah, boy, it's like, you know, it's like how Susan Collins talks about Brett Kavanaugh and Dobbs, you know. Yeah, that is the, and like Susan Collins now gets to have this vote, no. And as the everyone, the point people have made again and again is that she only votes against Trump when it doesn't have a consequences. What's happening here? But I do think there's like an alarm that's not going off a dog that ever barks with Susan Collins, which is

what kind of fucking non-leader is she? She has all this power in the Senate. She had of the appropriations committee. She could have gotten some out of it. There's so much she could have done with this group of people. She's still good. They could do it right fucking out. They never will. He is desperate. He is, it is a, it is a close Senate. Mitch McConnell is quote-unquote recuperating at home. You know, his, his doctor, Jonah Salk says he's getting better. Clara Barton says he's

All right, so that's it. Todd Blanche. Todd Blanche is our new attorney general. He was the old attorney

general. So, no good. We're not going to notice much of a difference. He's just going to continue doing whatever Donald Trump tells him to do personal lawyer. Now, the attorney general, but still the personal lawyer. All right, let's get to the midterms. On Monday, Speaker Mike Johnson launched an exciting new messaging effort called the contrast for America. They transpired by Newt Gingrich's famous contract with America, which Mr. the people alive don't remember anymore. Aiming to reframe

the election as a fight against actual communism. That's when a joke gets said, if you go to the website, which I don't encourage you to try. But if you go there, it shows the history of communism

and different milestones and different communist takeovers. And then it compares, then it compares

Democrats wanting to raise taxes to that they call that communism now. That's now, that's communism, raising taxes. Republicans are betting that they're only chance to win the midterms now is to capitalize on the Democratic infighting over a few DSA candidates and also more progressive Democrats like Abdul winning their primaries, the cycle. Here's AOC giving her theory of the case to ABC's John Carl on Sunday in response to questions about Wisconsin frontrunner Francesca Hong

and Abdul doing his best to pivot to a general election message. What do you make of those controversial statements? I'm sure you see. I mean, she's, you know, the Thanksgiving dust up. She says she doesn't,

you know, still believe that. But, you know, the abolished prisons abolished police.

My understanding is that is, is that Francesca Hong has made clear her present stances to her role. Yes, she's moved away from a lot of things. Right. She's moved away from it. And I have a

“local city councilman that has this saying woke one was crazy. And I think that we all share”

in the goals of having as low a crime rate as possible. I think that, you know, during lockdown, of course rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today. When asked about a songpikers comments on 9/11 Senator Bernie Sanders called it a dumb statement. Do you agree? Do you disavow those comments that America deserves 9/11? Of course. Of course, it was a dumb statement. And of course, I think Hassan himself would say that was a dumb statement.

He disavowed it. I want to be held accountable for what I say and what I do. Look, I'm less concerned now with who I'm campaigning with a lot more concerned about who I'm campaigning to. So Republicans are hoping that democratic quote unquote extremism will be for this mid-term cycle. What the doves decision was for 2022, sort of a way to change the subject away from a deeply

“impopular incumbent. What do you think? You think it could work?”

I don't because one is a fear-mongering message about Democrats trying to make every Democrats sound like the craziest thing people saw on the internet. The other is a real decision having real negative consequences on people's lives. That the Republicans actually did. I also think it is part of, you know, they can't, there's no campaigning that they can do to diffuse the fact that they overturned row. They did that. They wanted it. And in fact, a lot of the people who were

very happy to see row overturned also supported abortion bands at the six-week mark or with no exceptions for rape or incest or the life of the mother. So they were settled with their actual position. This is fear-mongering about Democrats to make people think that they can't have, I don't know, universal healthcare and a tax code that was as high as they were in the communist days of America in 1993. I don't think it could work. I mean, it could work, but I think that

it'd be one thing if Republican candidates and an alternate universe were out there being like, you know, Donald Trump. We break from him sometimes because he can be extreme and these Democrats

“are extreme too. We're the only thing holding the line between crazy Donald Trump and crazy”

Democrats. Of course, that's not what they're going to do. They're all in for Donald Trump. So I think that, I think it's a tough, and also it depends on like, most people when you are, I mean, we saw this in the New York Times Santa Poles of the Senate Battlegrounds from last month, which is you'll get a majority of voters in that poll in the Senate Battlegrounds, at least, said Democrats are too far to the left. They think the Democratic Party is too far to the left.

But when you ask about the Democratic Senate candidate running in their state, they don't think necessarily think that that Democratic Senate candidate is too far to the left. And so, in midterm, this goes race by race. And if, you know, if you're a Democrat running that race, and they try to tag you as a DSA candidate, or they try to say, you want to abolish prisons like,

I have this agenda, that it's not my agenda. And so, you know, they'll, I mean, on the margins, for, you know, voters who aren't paying attention until they go cast a ballot could this work? Maybe, I don't know. But I think, in a midterm for most voters, it's probably going to be, going to be tricky when you get down to the individual race level. Yeah, I guess will it work? Well, yeah, it's going to work on some people. This is, they're trying to make Democrats their job.

Fundamentally, what is American policy today? It is, from the right is an effort to make extreme Republicans seem reasonable, and reasonable Democrats seem extreme, and to pretend that

politics is ultimately not about what the tax rates are and who gets health care and who doesn't.

“That's what, everything, that's why they got a fucking former NBA guy trying to get into the”

WMBA. It's like, that's all part of one big thing. The, the, I was thinking about Francesca Hong, because I, I joked about it, love it, I believe it. And I went through the tweets and they are quite silly. And this is the moment we're going to talk about these things, because the primary is wrapping up. We're having an intro party debate right now. This is the moment where I've dual pivots to the general where there's the most sore and hurt feelings, where we're trying to figure out what worked and

what didn't, you're trying to reconcile all these things. I think in Wisconsin, whatever happens in the election, let's say Francesca Hong is the winner. Maybe she's maybe she's not. Either way, Tom Tiffany, right? Like, oh my god, I can't believe she tweeted that about Thanksgiving.

Tom Tiffany, uh, objected to Wisconsin's electors. He signed onto the, to the, to the, to the Ken

Paxton lawsuit to try to overturn the election. He continues to say that there were hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes in Wisconsin. He said that the Trump should cut off funding to Madison, that Wisconsin, the state he's trying to lead should get less money, because it is not going along with Trump's immigration policies. He did not, he refused to say that Trump shouldn't invoke the insurrection act. He has, and he's, he, uh, sponsored a resolution in Congress to support

Trump for sending people to fucking secaught in El Salvador. He's an extreme and radical person. And if you ask people, do you want a governor who, uh, was in a bad mood in Christmas in 2020? Or somebody who believes in, uh, deporting people to a foreign Gulag and, uh, support sending more money to ice

“and cutting taxes for billionaires like where do you actually come down on this? I think people”

have given the choice faithfully, uh, would choose somebody who maybe said some cookie stuff in the

past. And that's our job. It's like get back to that. I know that there's voters were going to be like, well, her Thanksgiving tweet was crazy. It's going to be, they're going to think, oh, she wants to abolish police. She wants to, and I'm afraid about crime. And so she's going to have to do if she's the nominee reassurance of people that she cares about public safety and do it in a way that is convincing. I also, um, this is my own, maybe this is makes me a bit of a neolib shell. But, uh,

there was a time when Democrats really enjoyed hating communists and like really kind of got into it about how stupid and deadly and dumb and ideology is. That like, there was a kind of consensus that fascism and communism were programs for morons and losers, uh, that were deadly and stupid. And we should fight them with everything we've got because we believe in a Democratic and the broader and which, uh, we protect people from the worst kinds of destitution and have a safety

net and give everybody opportunity, but also support the freedom to say what you want and pray how you want, but also start a business and create products and, uh, uh, uh, try to, uh, build things and innovate like that was sort of what we all used to believe and one way to deal with the communism's crap is to have Democrats out there who are willing to say like, I believe in free markets as long as they're fair and give everybody a chance, which is something a lot of Democrats

used to be a little bit more comfortable talking about because they were less afraid of being attacked by people on Twitter. Well, I mean, I think a duel, even in the primary, it's towards the end was talking about like, because he would be asked, oh, our U DSA, too, and he was like, no, I'm, I, I believe in free markets. I like free markets. Yeah, you know, and, and look, Francesca Hong in fairness, she's like, uh, she's been saying like, while I'm a, I was a small

business owner, you know, the challenge is like, when you call yourself a socialist, it's like, well, what does social is a mean? And this is the whole thing with, you know, well, defund was actually just a slogan. And abolish is just an aspirational, abolish police and abolish prisons. That's just an aspirational, that's not real. Well, then don't use the fucking slogan. No, it's just extremely unhelpful way of achieving my vision. Right. It's like, it's like,

then you're, then you're upset that people don't understand that you actually have a nuanced few of public safety because you embrace the slogan abolish police. Like, of course, they're not going to understand that you have a nuanced view if you use that slogan or you just say you're

“socialist. That's what you probably shouldn't call yourself a socialist. Right, because I,”

because it, like, I think there are plenty of people that are democratic socialist to our socialists, but a lot of people ascribe to it because they think being a Democrat is correctly cringe.

Democrats, right? That's what they are. They are social Democrats, which, and I really do think there's

a lot of people that have convinced themselves that Democrats are just sort of incremental socialists,

“right? In both directions, but I think there's socialists that believe that about Democrats.”

And I think there's, there are people that there's a kind of, and there are lefty Democrats who believe that about that somehow we are that really to be a liberal is just to be afraid to say what you really want as opposed to having a framework for viewing the world in which government helps to address inequities and solve problems, but fundamentally you do believe in all kinds of freedoms, including the freedom, the freedoms that go along with the free market.

Well, yeah, it's just, if you believe in Medicare for All and in a wealth tax on billionaires or abolishing ice or whatever it is, just say you believe in those things and just talk about those policy. Like the labeling doesn't seem like it's helpful in any way shape or form, but I don't know. That's just me. Pods of America is brought to you by Hems. ED is more common than guys talk about the good news, getting real treatment as simple. And through Hems, it's 100% online. Hems connects to you with a

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sold NFL is the generic version of Viagra. Viagra is a registered trademark of Viatress specialty LLC. Hems is not affiliated with or endorsed by Viatress. The what-a-day podcast you know and love is shaking things up. You already know the five days a week. I, Jane Coston, bring you the need to know news and expert analysis on the big stories shaping today in tomorrow. Stories like how social media warps our perception of the world

and the strange reality of who is signing up to work for ice. All in less time that it takes to roast a chicken. And now, what-a-day episodes will be hitting your YouTube and podcast feeds in the afternoons. You'll get the breaking news even faster. Check out what-a-day, now dropping in the PM on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. How do you feel about woke one was crazy as a way to explain the excesses of a, I guess it's

“just 2020, maybe 21, whatever that time period was. First of all, I think it's- it has the”

benefit of just being kind of true. And I saw a few people talking about this, which is, okay, we're now saying kind of more publicly what we were all saying to each other in private, like, boy, we've lost our minds a little bit, haven't we? And to me what's interesting about it is like I- like whenever I care less about what people were saying on the internet, it more about what our candidates were doing. And I think about everyone raising their hand about decriminalizing the

border or kind of taking kind of more lefty positions. It's what saddled Kamala with the sort of the- that questionnaires from the height of this moment of woke one point out. And images like the, you know, probably the, you know, Pelosi kneeling with the Kentucky cloth was maybe,

maybe that was a little much. And- but what was happening then was, first of all, there was,

we were dealing with a once-in-a-century pandemic. We were having a genuine and important conversation nationally about systemic racism and policing. It did lead to a lot of important conversations about reform. But I do think that a lot of people felt like they were performing something they didn't totally understand or believed. And they would leave the criticism to others, because they just weren't going to take on that work, right? And so everybody kind of went along with

certain parts of it that they weren't totally sold on, right? Or they maybe didn't say it themselves, right? But they didn't want to get in the muck. They certainly weren't going to go out there and saying, "I actually don't believe in defining the police." There wasn't a lot of equity. There was a lot of value in poking your head up above the trench line there. Yeah, well, I mean, when you think back

to like, what was woke one, right? Because never just saying, "Oh, it was all crazy." And you're right,

people like, at least people on the left kind of instinctively know what that means. But it's like worth talking about what it is, what it was. And I do think it's like three different things we're talking about here. There's policies, right? So there was defund the police. It was the big one,

from then, but now we're seeing all the tweets from back then. A abolish borders or open borders or decriminalize all that. So there was that. Then there was language that was used. And there was there were words that no one actually uses in real life that were chosen to replace words that

had been deemed offensive, but weren't always offensive. Well, even in your interview with

Frances Gajong, she talked about justice impacted individuals. Right, which is a funny thing because I remember when I interviewed Andy Bashir. And he, and I was like, what a Democrats do wrong, or whatever, I asked him some question about Democrats and what he would change. He's like, well, we use language that, you know, people, I don't know if he said faculty languages, but it's back kind of idea. And he said, you know, like justice impacted individuals. I remember when he said that to

me, I'm like, is he just saying that phrase to like pick out something to mock because I'd never heard that? I was like, what is he talking about? And then she said it to me and I was like, oh,

oh, I guess that is something justice impacted individuals. So there's a whole bunch of language that

made the left and Democrats seem like completely out of touch and that they don't speak the language that most people speak, right? Then there was the public shaming. I won't say cancel culture, but public shaming, right? Which is there was a tendency, and this was mostly on the internet, though it get led into the primary a little bit in 2020, responding to like someone's statement or position that you disagree with by trying to yell at the person, label them bad, shame them,

instead of persuading them that they're wrong or calling their idea bad, or their statement about like they were bad. Yeah. You know, like that's, it's like also the difference between like

that statement seems a little racist versus like you are a racist for making that statement

or sexist or whatever it may be. And so there was a little, there was as we were discussing real problems to be solved, systemic racism, police violence, a brutal way of treating immigrants, whatever it may be. There was this belief that if you yelled loud enough or took a strong enough stance and and called out the people who were taking the opposite stance loudly enough that like

“that would be the way that you fight it. And I think that since then people learn that maybe”

the most effective way is to try to like bring people along to persuade them and then, you know, if you can't vote against them or organize against them, right? But it's just there was a, there was like a substitution for real politics because the discussions were happening online and people were just doing a lot of yelling and name call it. Yeah. It also like there was it followed. So Trump wins in 2016. Me too happens in 2017. You have a series of terrible killings by the police that

follow and then into the end, into the pandemic and then the death of George Floyd. And it was this moment of saying, look at what we've tolerated, right? Look at how much injustice was sort of baked into all of these systems. Look at how much we were ignoring that was in plain sight all around us. Now is the moment. We're going to tear these things down. We're going to tear these systems down.

“And that was exciting. And it was exhilarating, I think, for people, especially for activists who”

suddenly found that there were millions of people in their homes or seeing their messages. They weren't out at bars. They weren't at, they weren't in an office. They weren't, they weren't, they weren't at a park. They were home watching their screen. And all of us collectively were taking in a lot more of this and more receptive to it. I mean, we were, we were, you know, we were doing pods from our homes. And you just knew that you'd put everyone was seeing it all at once. Right. There's a lot of people

going out to do jobs that they had to do. But as a side of our culture was being made by people fully paying attention all the time from their couches. And all of that was it meant that everything was heightened and you lacked the feedback loop of being in the world. Right. You lacked the feedback loop of talking to someone face to face and trying things out and also by the way stepping away for a little bit. Right. Well, there was also a thing too where so, you know, George Floyd's murder

and a very important discussion afterwards about reform reform policing systemic racism. And then, you know, there would be some vandalism and, you know, Windows being broken and, you know, people spray painting a cab, all cops are bad. And then some people will be like, well, that's not great. You know, just to do that kind of stuff. And then the response you get is, how can you care about

“that when there are these bigger issues? And the truth is, the reason you care about that is because”

the rest of the country is watching as well. And there's a most people, a majority of people who think

in general as a concept. You know what I'm saying? It's like, for those people, if you tell them,

“no, no, no, it's also okay, uh, looting in vandalism and saying that all cops are bad. Like,”

that's okay, too. Like, they're just not going to agree with you. Well, I also, I do think that there was an impulse. And especially in like a kind of a political show like this or political debate more generally, there was a, I don't remember what the book was called, but the thesis was something like looting. A, okay. I work for a major news organization. My book is called looting. Yes, it's terrific. You know, it's like sort of, but it's sort of written as some academic speak like

looting in the praxis of freedom or something. And I remember feeling this at the time because it was so heightened and the internet was such an intense place that you would, you would say, like,

we'll hold on a second, these things are counterproductive, right? Like, this leads to backlash,

we're trying to avoid that backlash because the cause is so just, right? Like, because the cause of accountability for for violence against people by the police is so important because it's like,

“yes, but because the cause is so just and important, that's why you have to be careful.”

Well, well, it's why you have to be extra, extra, like think harder about persuading people. Well, and, and so then you say that's, and so therefore, because the looting or the damage will be taken out of context, even if the vast majority of people are peaceful, it will be, it will cause a backlash. But even in that moment, there was a kind of a social, pressure, again, simply saying, because looting is wrong, because that, that business being

destroyed hurts the people that work there, the people that own that business, even if it is a big company, by the way, but it hurts the people that work there that aren't for a big company who's jobs depend on it, but a lot of them are going to be small businesses. And that is just simply morally wrong, even if the ultimate cause for the anger would lead to the protest itself is just, it is just wrong, even if it weren't counterproductive. And there was very little space for that,

but here we are years later, and actually the failure for more politicians and people in authority to, to remember those lines and assert those lines. In the same way, by the way, a Bill Cassidy or a John Quinnon are afraid to draw those lines. They are paying because they went along with a kind of style that the country has now looked back on with a lot of disdain. It will say on the

other hand, after AOC made those comments, I saw a lot of center left folks who sort of always thought

that the woke one was a little crazy, just not being very thrilled that she was just laughing it off, and they want a more serious explanation about what actually was crazy and what progressives have learned and sort of like more of a maya culpa on us. And I understand that, but also it's like political leaders on the left, moving away from some of the fringeier, unpopular positions that they took in the past is a good thing. One way to incentivize people changing their minds like

“that is to welcome it when it happens and not complain about it because I think changing your mind”

is good. Apologies are good, recognizing that past positions weren't the best is good. You sort of want us, it's almost like in a different way, it's when a Trump voter is like, "Oh gosh, I didn't think the deportations were coming to my town," and it's like instead of being like, "Well, you're an idiot." You know that the response should actually be like, "Great, well then welcome, welcome to our movement." Well, look, the term woke was stolen and turned into a

pejorative, but one of the ways it was used at the time was it doesn't matter when you got woke if that you are, right? Like you just like that, that you've woken up to what's happening in our society and that's a good thing. Like to me, the other part of the woke one is crazy,

is part of the problem is okay, fine, time is flattened on the internet and in political ads.

That the fact that now people are walking away from certain styles of rhetoric or positions that were more extreme than they want to take right now, good. Those old clips are still coming out, Kamala paid in blood for what she said in 2020. We are all paying in blood for what Kamala said in 2020. So part of this-- - And it wasn't just her to be fair. - And of course not. I've more than that, random. - Of course it wasn't just her. It was everybody. It was a cultural kind of like whatever,

a cute cultural moment of people kind of kind of in the sort of reverie. But regardless, one way to get past it, it's not just disavowing it. Like I appreciate a dual now saying that was dumb, but people can smell when someone wants to say something. And like there's a difference between saying, and hung to this well, there's a difference between saying like what I'm running on is what I'm

all of them and people evolve versus just being like, look, I said some stupid fucking shit in the past and like I looking back on it, I don't really think that anymore and you can trust that I love. I-- that as a governor of this state that I will support the police, I believe in policing. The people-- the people-- some of the most vulnerable communities in our society depend on

“having good, responsible community policing that they can trust. That's what I want to build.”

I don't want to abolish the police. I think that that's dumb and I regret embracing it as a slogan because it doesn't actually capture what I think. Like there is a way of talking about this, I just can honor your values that doesn't just-- you're not just going to get past it. No one's just going to

get past it. You can't do the robot like these are my positions now. I will never talk about what they

were before. And by the way, like AOC knows that of course. And I'm like AOC, like that. Well, she-- I think she-- I liked it. I agree. Yeah, I thought it was great. But no, but I think she's trying to signal showing like this. There is a way to talk about this in an honest and authentic way that helps people see past something you may have said a few years ago. Yeah. You know where people are going to be able to hear a lot more about the best path forward for Democrats and maybe

we'll even have a conversation about whether woke one was crazy or not. Where John? CricketCon.

“CricketCon. It's happening in DC that we can following the midterms then we've said this before.”

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to grab your tickets. And if you haven't subscribed already, become a subscriber. Get ad free episodes of all of your favorite pods and support independent media. And a bunch of episodes you can only get on our subscription feed. All kinds of secret episodes. All of your friends are talking about them. That's right. So before we move up this, it's election day. As you're listening to this, both in Wisconsin, where Hong has been in a commanding position for a while now. And in

Minnesota, where the Democratic primary for the open Senate seat, the Tina Smith is vacating is happening between Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan. She's been on the show in Congresswoman Angie Craig. We tried to get her on the show. And it's tightening more than more than people expected.

“Any final observations on either the Wisconsin-Goobinitorial race or before we move on to Minnesota?”

I did notice there's one last state navigate poll that has Hong at 44. Crowley at 22. He gained seven from their last poll. Undecided nine, Calderoys at 11, Brennan five, and Barnes is still at six in that poll. Yeah, we'll see. I do think like the fact that the Republicans have gone behind Tom Tiffany has meant they haven't had any kind of fractious primary on their side. We've had one on ours. I do not think we have shredder, salsa and glory in this primary. I don't think it

look particular. You have the Lieutenant Governor dropping out because of some sort of alleged campaign malfeasants by the campaign manager. It didn't reflect very well, especially in a state that's been dealing with a scandal around fraud and Medicaid. You have Crowley who got out and got back in at the behestive of Tony Evers. The governor who could have run again, people thought he would if they decided not to. And so the end result is people feel like,

oh no, we ended up with somebody that has these kind of crazy old posts and has that sort of been mired in this sort of right wing scandal for a few days. And all of that, I do think has obscured the stakes in this election. The next Wisconsin governor may oversee the the presidential contest that could be close. That person will be responsible for certifying the election. Tom Tiffany is an election denier. And I Democrats, we have these big emotional, anxious debates

about our candidates. We worry about them saying the wrong thing. We worry about them having extreme positions that are out of step with the voters. The Republicans are not doing that. Tom Tiffany, the voters of Wisconsin do not want an election in iron. They believe that they believe in free and fair elections. And they believe in a society in which when you lose an election, that's okay. You live to fight another day. You don't claim Donald Trump won and try to

tell a bunch of your fellow citizens that their vote doesn't count. They don't believe in uh, using the insurrection act. They don't believe in deporting people to foreign google logs. They don't believe in uh, this nasty deportation scheme in which our cities are overrun by ice agents. Uh, and so we have to remind us, we have to focus on painting the extremism of Tom Tiffany as the real threat to Wisconsin. And after the Wisconsin after this primary, we have to like get our heads in the

fucking game. Beyman talks a lot about Minnesota. Um, Angie Craig would say is the more moderate candidate. Um, she has been uh, uh, Peggy Flanagan has been sort of attacking her on her vote for

the Lincoln Riley Act, which Craig first defended and then backtracked on um, Craig is more

pro-israel, but she's called off, or she said she doesn't want a pack money, then the way a pack was still um, doing some fundraising uh, and some spending for her um, she also won't commit to uh, not voting for Schumer. Peggy Flanagan is committing to vote not vote for Schumer as leader.

Israel that they took uh, Angie Craig didn't vote for that. Um, and Peggy Flanagan is wanted to,

you know, reformize she's not gone as far to say abolish. So it's, it's what we've seen in some of these primaries, but not I would say the differences aren't as stark as they may be were in Michigan or some of the other ones. Um, what do you think about this race? The polling sort of all over the place we don't know. It reminds me a little like they're all saying about like, you know, why, why is the fight so contentious? Well, because the stakes are so low. I'm not saying

the stakes. The stakes are low. They're actually quite high. They're big differences between them.

“But I think it part because people think we can win in Minnesota and because uh, I think Peggy Flanagan”

is not um, uh, uh, uh, uh, sort of a DSA city council person. She's uh, right. Uh, Lieutenant Governor that a lot of people really respect for his Andrew Craig is maybe a little to her right or more you say a lot to her right. Whatever, um, it feels a little bit less, uh, um, it's got a little less, certainly national intention and honestly a little less tension for me. I've had Peggy Flanagan on the show. I really like her. I really like her. I have no knock on Angie Craig, but I just, Peggy Flanagan

is just a really inspiring person to me. She doesn't be the first woman, uh, Native American to be

elected to the Senate, um, and just a really dynamic and interesting person. I think it is because well, you said whoever wins, I don't know that it changes like the race rating. I don't think it makes it more of a toss up if Flanagan wins versus Craig or vice versa. Um, I, the other reason I might have gotten closest, uh, Angie Craig's been going after Flanagan for her connections to the states, fraud crisis that walls has been dealing with, that the Republicans have been

all over. It's remember it's what originally led Trump to send in ice to Minnesota and all that. So, she's been trying to tag her with that, so that might be, and basically saying, making an electability argument saying that a Flanagan wins, that Republicans will spend the whole race tying her to the fraud crisis as well. Now, you could argue that they'll probably do the same to Angie Craig even though she's not the lieutenant governor because they'll just say any politician in

Minnesota is part of the fraud crisis, but, you know, that's, that's, that's, uh, one, one argument they're having there. Um, all right, uh, speaking of the Minnesota primary, I don't know if you saw the story about, uh, Royce White over on the Republican side. He is a former NBA player, uh, who has run before for federal office and is now trying to, um, get in on the discourse about the WNBA and trans rights by declaring that he's entering the WNBA draft, um, uh, and this can't

Canter Freedom has also made this another NBA player, has also a former NBA player, has also made this announcement as well.

“White even put on a wig and interviews with Alex Jones and Benny Johnson, because that's what we're doing now.”

Most folks on the writer eating this up. It's also causing some conflict because it's forcing them to talk about women's sports. Here's our board Jesse Waters struggling with this very problem. This is week three of the five covering the WNBA. And I have to say I am done.

I hate the WNBA. I mean, I don't mind women's basketball, my girls play basketball, but I don't want to cover women's basketball. I don't want to be a WNBA analyst. We get paid to have an opinion about everything. And this is something I don't care about.

Every time I open up the rundown and see the WNBA in it, I feel like Jesse almost failed every day. We have to do this again. Really? This again.

I don't know. The father of daughters. A father of daughters. You know, as you know, John, then I'm a season ticket holder to Angel City. That's right.

That's right. The women's soccer team here in Los Angeles.

That is because I am married to someone who used to basically be a lesbian.

And they just kept the women sports when they transitioned. So we go to the game, so we have a great time. And there was a little dust up about this. A couple months ago, a player wrote an op-ed about about about this and believing that people that were born as a biologically male shouldn't play in women's sports and that there should be a regime of testing. And this led to a, you know, the debate we've had at Nazim about, well, if you have a regime of testing, that just punishes women who are forced to be examined.

When this ends up putting more power on the hands of the men. And it really kind of creates a situation in which women have to prove that they're women. And all of this debate is happening.

“And do you know how many trans athletes there were in the National Women's Soccer League at that time?”

Zero. Zero. Same as the WWE right now. It's zero. And so they really like talking about this.

They really like talking about women's sports. And I suppose that they can keep doing it. And if these guys, and there are people who believe that if you've gone through a transition that doesn't give you any advantage or others who simply say, if you went through male puberty, you haven't advantage doesn't matter what happens.

However, if they would like to play in the WMBA, they better fucking transition.

Let's get them on some fucking hormones. Let's get them in the, let's get them in the, let's get them for a couple years. Let's see it, boys. I mean, not to get into it, but they seem to think that all you, it's just based on self identification that if you just say, I identify as a woman that you are eligible for the WMBA draft and nothing in the rules says that.

“The, the league is going to have to figure out what the rules do say or like or or what the qualifications are because it says you have to be a woman.”

But like what does that mean if someone ever wanted to who has transitioned or someone ever wanted to play the WMBA that they're, they're not dealing with that. They're dealing with a couple of men. Yeah. We have not transitioned. They're just saying that they're women and putting on wigs, which is a very different thing.

But yeah, that's, that's, that's what we're doing right now.

Just to, to two men who really want to get attention is, is where we're at.

And even Jesse Waters doesn't want to give it to them. Even Jesse Waters is bored by this. Uh, yeah, I don't, uh. That's, that's what's happening. That's what's happening.

Good luck fellas. Well, again, some attention. Uh, all right, last thing before we get to Levitt's interview with Sam Forestag. Tucker Carlson's new coalition includes Marjorie Taylor Green Thomas Massey and maybe Hunter Biden. On Monday Carlson released a highly anticipated, I guess, two hour interview with Hunter Biden.

He's just, he is just making the rounds. Hunter Biden. Here's a clip. Here's the, here's how it went. I'm supposed to hate Tucker Carlson because he's an anti-Semite and he's this, I know you're not, you're not an SSMite.

I mean, 100% know you're not an SSMite.

“Yeah, no, that's what my point being is that that would just say so.”

My point being is, is that like, if it's anti-Semitic to point out that BB Netanyahu is evil incarnate, then, you know what, I don't know what to say to, I don't know what to say to people anymore. What do you think about all this? He started by talking about how much energy loves Candice Owens because he can't as it shows too.

You know, it's like, he, he's got like all Joe Biden's ego, but none of the civic bindiness is how it always feels to me.

Well, it was very, it's um, he's just doing like a pander thing, right? Which is like, it's a little Bideny where he wants to be sort of nice and gracious to the person he's sitting down with. But he does it in a way by being like, oh, yeah, everything you say is amazing and great. What, oh, I have disagreements with you, just agreements with you. But like, I don't think you're an anti-Semite, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And it's like, also going after a BB Netanyahu, like that, too, and I'm like, where should that on this one? Well, it's also, it's so fun to only argue with the dumbest version of your opponents. That's true when you put a wig on and try to join the WMBA. It's also true when you say, it's anti-Semitic to say that BB Netanyahu is evil. What, what are we doing it? Well, actually it's, I say, why don't you have a,

maybe, maybe sort of interrogate a less stupid version of this and see how far you get there. Like Tucker Carlson has had Holocaust deniers on his show. He has embraced a whole host of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. He has been flirting with all kinds of anti-Semitism. He has accused so many people of having dual loyalty.

He has engaged in a ton of anti-Semitic tropes. He has used anti-Semitism in how he makes his arguments whether you want to sit there and sort of be the, the arbiter of whether or not Tucker's an anti-Semite. For whatever reason, white people tend to be circumspect about saying to other white people, you're not a racist, right?

But somehow when it comes to anti-Semitism, there's a lot of people that aren't Jewish that are a lot to be like, I've checked and you're not. Well, okay, buddy. Great. Thanks for letting us know. We were waiting for the Hunter Biden impremature on Tucker Carlson to let us know whether Tucker Carlson is an anti-Semite or not. And now there's one last thing to worry about.

Here's my thing about the whole Hunter Biden media tour on all of the various right wing hosts and all the different places he's going. I'm not like, this is not a debate for me about the platforming and you can't go on someone's show that you think is all full, whatever. It's like, if you're going to do that, have a discussion that is about the places where you disagree, have a little debate about it. You don't have to be screaming at each other if you don't want, but like, if you're just going to go there to be like, oh, you're actually awesome.

And then like wait for Tucker or Candace or ever to be like, and I'm sorry that I went after you so hard, Hunter, when, you know, your dad was president.

“Like, what is the point of that? Well, like, who gains from that other than you?”

It's my question. Like, what kind of good are you doing? Are you introducing Tucker's audience to Hunter Biden's views on the situation that are different than what Tucker Carlson believes in? Because if that's the case, that's one thing. But that's not what he did there. That's not what he's doing with Candace Owens.

Yeah, to what end is all of this? Exactly. To what end? To what end? To what end aside from like your own attention? Yes, right? That's the, and I like, again, I don't want to sign motivations, because maybe there is some other motivation, but I don't know what the intention is other than sort of just because all he keeps doing is just going in these shows and pandering to the host. It also is like, there's a certain kind of sort of broken brain person on social media that's been just really eating up the hook or the Hunter Biden tour.

But I love it. They love it. It's like like he's some kind of sort of world-weary truth teller. You know, like he's trying like he's traveling around, kind of telling these sort of forbidden truths. Like the forbidden truths being that like, I guess Mike Johnson's gay and Tucker Carlson loves Jews.

“Like that's what we've got about the Mike Johnson. Yeah, and all of these Republicans are in the closet thing.”

And that that the closet talker see he called it is like the is actually the bigger threat than Oleg Arki, which is like, okay, man, and that just it's this weird. But I guarantee if he sets out on one of those interviews with one of their Republicans that he had accused of being in the closet, he would be like, oh, not you.

I think you're great. No, I think you love it. We just, we definitely, we disagree on a lot, but you're amazing. You're amazing.

It's just, it's just, it's just very predictable. What's going to happen? We're all so excited. And like, you know, I agree, like actually like, boy, politics sure seems not like no fun when you talk about hard issues and get into the nuance of things and question Tucker Carlson about his views and actually sort of interrogate some of these difficult and thorny issues that we're facing or why the right has become so radical and conspiratorial and extreme or what actually drives politics did not work for people when you're not saying it's because

Josh Hawley is secretly gay and and and actually anti-Semitism isn't that isn't isn't connected to what's happening on the right.

“Whatever you want to say like, yeah, it gets, it's almost like, becomes like work. You have to really focus on it.”

It's been a lot of time on it. And it sucks. I agree. Anyway, come on, positive, American anytime. All right, when we come back, Montana House candidate Sam Forestack.

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Stories like how social media warps our perception of the world and the strange reality of who is signing up to work for ice. All in less time that it takes to roast a chicken. And now what-a-day episodes will be hitting your YouTube and podcast feeds in the afternoons. You'll get the breaking news even faster. Check out what-a-day. Now dropping in the PM on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you so much for having me, John. So first of all, let's just give people some background on who you are and what led you to run for Congress.

Your smoke jumper and this is your first time running for office. Just tell me about yourself. Yeah, it's my first time running for anything higher than vice president of my union local until seven months ago I worked as a smoke jumper for the US Forest Service. So in this short version of that, as we parachute and remote wildfires to put them out all they're still small. And I was a leader in my union's local and all the dose cuts began. And what that looked like in Montana is in large part, you know, they said it was all about government efficiency, but the people we lost for the lowest paid workers we've got in our agency.

I mean, when they had fired 360 Montana's just in the Forest Service just on Valentine's Day two years ago 85% of them were GSX's are below making nineteen seventy an hour or less. And my agency was people with the people who swing the tools. And conduct the science to maintain our public lands. And when I reached out to Ryan Zanky, they're a public in the seat, who should be the person you can reach out to.

Just so people understand like how just to get when those comes in and makes cuts to save money.

Sure, what happens when you're trying to say, put out a fire quickly before it gets bigger. Like, while people through what happens, if say the equipment used to rely on is no longer available, like day to day, what did it mean for them to try to make government more efficient? Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty clear none of this was about efficiency, it's about power and consolidating that power in the hands of the select few, including the richest man in the world who happened to be at the helm of this thing.

But on the ground, what it looked like, even last year, and I know it's worse right now is public safety was hampered. I mean, I jumped a fire in early July last year, a time when usually you are not in a state of resource scarcity. Resources being the manpower and the people you need to help fight a fire, if you don't catch it with those first aid jumpers on the ground. And I'm setting up a task force and I get told, hey, I know you're requesting three hot track crews, they're not available. And the region, so we're going to order six contract hand crews instead because they don't have the same capabilities.

“So we're going to need more people, and that's the only way we get any help to you in the next few days.”

What it means on the ground is we all pay so much more for so much less, and it takes longer to fight those fires. And I mean, those stories are endless. And so you're making, and I even do this for about seven years, and you're making $19.95 an hour, seven years in, and because of these cuts, they have to bring in contractors and private companies that are going to make much more money. And cost a lot more than what the kind of, the train people would have done. Yeah, I mean, the real goal here was cuts and privatization to turn into another source of profit.

You know, another story is last year I jumped a fire outside of Steamboat Springs in Colorado.

And you know, as jumpers, most fires we catch with the first, you know, four, eight, twelve smoke jumpers on the ground.

But when you don't, you set back and you set up a large incident to make sure that you can save houses. We had hundreds of houses at risk in the immediate vicinity. This fire, we ended up catching around 500 acres. And on the second day, I put in order for pumps and hoses, which is a pretty basic firefighting implement, just to get water to the line. And they tell me, well, we used to have a gear cache here in Steamboat last year, but they cut that, they shut that down with the cuts.

So you're not going to get those pumps and hoses until the end of next shift, because we have to overnight air mail. The pump and hose kit from Denver to Steamboat and we got to drive it up to the line and then we got to get it up to use. So you're not getting it till the end of the day tomorrow. So not only is our firefighting hampered, I mean, I cannot imagine a more expensive way to deliver hundreds of pounds of water pumps than that.

So you're a smoke jumper and just that basically you're going to the places where cars can't reach vehicles can't get to to try to solve problems before they get bigger.

“What does that look like if there's a smoke jumper in Congress?”

What do you see as the problem you're trying to surge to that you view as failures get enough attention right now? I'm really smoke jumping like a lot of firefighting, right? We're not so different from hot shock crews or and then cruise your training crisis management. And whether it is the housing crisis that we're dealing with in Western Montana, where we have the least affordable housing market in the country. That's a surprise to a lot of people. Yeah, I think that.

Yeah, I didn't realize that until until learning about this, it's you know, you're making 19 say $19 an hour in a area that we think of as rural, so must be cheaper, but the average house is what like $500,000. Now days in Missoula, it's just shy 600 K, you go to Boseman, it's around $900,000 in a place where a decade ago it was probably closer to 200,000. The flathead valley in northwest Montana, not so different. So I mean, the crises are, you know, it's in housing, it's in healthcare.

“It's in childcare, where again, median wage is $60,000 in Montana.”

The average cost of childcare is just shy 19 K if you can make it through a waiting list. And these are all crises that so many people have felt like our elected leaders at the federal level are dealing with any sense of urgency with. I mean, we had leadership nationally, not so long ago telling us the economy's better than you think it is. You know, meanwhile, yeah, me and a whole lot of my coworkers, well at the end of four years of democratic control, I'm learning to democrat. Well, yeah, we're making 19 bucks an hour.

And you're in a community where you'd be lucky to find a home for less than 500,000 bucks. And life did not get better if you're in a situation like that over the preceding four years. And people felt like the folks in power at the national level are not listening to us quite clearly. And what better articulation of a disconnect than to tell people things are better than you think it is, while homelessness just doubled or tripled in every major city in Montana over the preceding five years.

What's interesting is when you say we've had leaders saying the economy is better than you think it is. I genuinely don't know if you're talking about Joe Biden or Donald Trump. One thing you said recently is that the national party did everything they could to make it hard for a Democrat to win in places like Western Montana. What do you mean by that? What I mean is we had people at the national level who quite literally were not listening to us.

Places like the Yellowstone Club where you got to be a multimillionaire just to be considered for membership.

“And you go 20 miles up the canyon. You're in Boseman. Well, we have homelessness that's doubled or tripled. You have people living in the back of their cars or trailers.”

And people who felt like, rightfully, they're problems were not being solved to the national level. And when that's the case when things are that bad. Process is not an adequate excuse for not dealing with those things. And I want to note, I would offer the national party that all they could to make it hard for a Democrat to win.

Democrat did just win the seed I'm running for. It's Montana's first congressional district, John Testier, one Western Montana.

While he lost the state last year by just shy of a point, even in a tough environment like that. So we know we can win this thing. And the project here is to win in a meaningful way and rebuild the coalition we used to have when we could win statewide. And when Democrats could conceive of ever having a meaningful majority in the U.S. Senate. You know, you've seen people talking about like abolishing the Senate. It seems like for a lot of people, it's easier for them to wrap their minds around fundamentally changing the constitution than winning in places like Montana statewide again, even though.

John Testier, you know, represented Montana in the Senate at Max Bakus. What do you think right now is like if if I want to maintain it as a bunch of people. When when when you think of a Democrat, you think of blank. Like what do they what do they think when they hear about a Democrat? I think right now people think about John Testier who was our senator until a year and a half ago. And not so long ago, Democrats had serious power in place like Montana.

In 2009, we had a 50 50 split in our state Senate. We used to have in 2016, we had a Democratic governor Steve Bullock who was re-elected on the same ticket as Donald Trump. 2018, John Testier re-elected again in our state. Democrats have found a way in Montana to win even when Donald Trump is gaining power. I mean, 18,000 Montana's voted for Donald Trump in John Testier in 2024. Those are the people who deserve a candidate who's actually going to speak to our experience and talk about how government needs to be a thing that can make your life materially better when the market is not meeting that need.

“And government has also been failing on that job for a long time. And I think clearly you look at what's happening around the country or even in our race, right?”

Where I started this primary, nobody knew who the heck I was in December of last year. And we had a crowded competitive primary that included a candidate who was the Democratic nominee for governor last year. People who had been running for a year. And what we saw is that people are really hungry for candidates or for just anybody who can actually reflect our experience and say like it's not just your problem. The fact that people can't afford a house, it's not just your problem that when your car makes a funny noise.

Well, that might mean you can't afford rent next month because I've lived it to, it is our problem. And of course, people are going to address problems with more urgency if you've lived them. How much do you think the way Democrats, obviously there's a huge problem with the Democratic brand, how much of that do you ascribe to say right-wing media, sort of hammering people kind of pulling the most extreme versions of a Democrat and then how much you actually laid at the feet of the Democrats themselves.

John, I would say we hold these truths to be self-evident. The Democratic Party messed up pretty damn bad and they got us into this situation. We had four years of power. Yeah, people were facing massive issues. I mean, between fire seasons, I helped put together the Montana Coalition to solve homelessness. We pulled the dozen homeless shelters together from around the state.

And we ended up getting some legislation passed and our Republican Supermajority, the first one in state history.

And the reason that was able to happen is because the problems were so damn bad. I mean, quite literally, I'm not exaggerating. We have tripled a number of on-house people in a place like Montana, we're in the Northern Rockies. It is not a hospitable place to be living on the streets, people die every year. And I mean, if you were working two or three jobs at a time like I was the entire time, I was going to college and still graduating with that. And you look up in people are telling you the institutions they just need to tweak a little bit. That does not inspire faith.

“Yeah, and that doesn't give anyone a reason to be hopeful or engaged with politics. And so what happened?”

A lot of young people did not engage with politics last year. They did not turn out in vote. And we are now quite literally not the party of working people. Most working people most folks make none or 100 pages voted for Republicans or I'm sure unions, right? I come from a union background. We have the Gibraltar of Unionism in Montana.

It's beautiful. Most incredible town you can go to.

From Montana. Well, half a union member's voted for Republicans last year. And a lot of young people didn't turn out. Those are all the people that are the base of the Democratic Party. I want to be a part of. And if we can't give those people a reason to actually engage. And we can't show them that there's a place in this party for them, not just for the people who are rich enough to make it through these processes that we create for federal candidates. Well, then we don't deserve their support. So let's win it back.

So Joe Biden. He's this, I think, long time centrist figure. He wins in 2020.

He governs much further to let anybody would have expected Joe Biden to govern.

Still not as far as some people would have wanted him to go has some success. And Democrats are largely punished in part because of all the obstacles like the filibuster in the Senate, the Supreme Court. Like Democrats are in some ways punished because he's unable to fully achieve his agenda. And then they, and then who wins the Republicans who are then immediately deregulate past massive tax cuts to the rich overturn. Put on judges to overturn row and environmental and union regulations and gutted all.

“And so, so when you're talking to people in your union that voted for Zinkier voted for Trump, like how how do you how do you talk about this like what what's your argument?”

My argument is that I understand why a lot of people like my co-workers and union members some of them voted for the slubs who are tearing all this down all around us. And man does it piss me off as somebody who spent a year and a half working with members who, I mean, I remember Kara who lost her job in one day of no cause. No notice 15 years under a federal service because she just happened to have taken a lateral transfer that year to do more remote work during chemotherapy. You know, members are getting texts in line at the airport to go to their grandmother's funeral saying they lost their job.

They really making 16 bucks an hour at in the first place.

But, you know, what I also work with a lot of people who, well, if you're making 16 bucks an hour and you're working for the federal government and housing costs have just doubled or tripled in your community and you can't conceive of ever owning a home. Well, your life just got worse. And as far as I'm concerned, there are two primary roles for the federal government first and foremost it's to protect your constitutional freedoms, right? A lot of those in the bill rights are freedom from the government.

Second, it's to make sure you can meet your basic material needs when the market is not meeting them. And the market was meeting them even worse after four years of democratic control.

“And, you know, what if you were working two or three jobs at a time?”

Or if you're working a thousand hours of overtime, like I had to just to scrimp by through a winter on my mortgage for a 980 square foot home. You might not have the time to follow the intricacies of policy making or politics. You shouldn't have to to be able to judge the people in power on what sort of results they delivered for you. And so I would just say like the people we need to win back are a lot of the people who got these folks elected. It's a lot of working people. It's a lot of union members.

And it's folks who you don't start a conversation with by telling that they're wrong. Because it frustrates me so much to hear people's what I hear often say like, well, Do they see like why are people voting outside of their own self interest? They're on material self interest. It's not more in your interest to vote for somebody who's going to make your life worse a little slower than the other guy. Yeah. Also, don't tell people what their interests are, presumably.

“So there's also been a part of this debate about sort of how did the Democratic Party lose the men?”

What happened to the men and the working class? And a lot of people tend to better place to address them in a podcast. This is too like that. Yeah, two guys in a podcast studio. This is where we're supposed to solve it all. But you know, I think tester has talked about wokeness as being part of this.

The use of something interesting in the day, which is just that basically, if you have a member of Congress who's worth millions of dollars trying to be a tribute for the working class,

that person may feel a little bit more afraid to say push back on trans issues or have a position that might not have a majority, but actually, they want to be supportive of trans people. How do you think about this? Like, what do you think that the social issues are part of Democrats? Like, Bernie has because he's such a kind of people understand what Bernie stands for. He's had, on the other hand, more room to say, you know what?

I don't think we should define the police or we do need to have a strong border. I think a lot of it comes back to credibility. And I had this fascinating split screen for the last eight years of my life, where I'm doing wildland fire in the summers, six to nine months out of the year. And then I was doing organizing an advocacy in the winter's between that.

And I worked for, yeah, the coalition of homeless shelters. I mentioned for the state library association, even for the ACLU. And when I, well, when I would be in the middle of fire season, there's not a lot of other jumpers to go to policy work. And so you bet your tail, everybody wants to ask me about whatever they might have seen on the news. Maybe it was on Fox News. And if we got time in between digging line or cutting line, you know, I'd tell them, you know, that story will hear the people that I know in the winter,

so we're just trying to live their life with dignity, without government telling them how to do it. And I think that that's the piece that that has been lost. And I'll tell them what else I saw when I'm at the state legislature is, well, we just saw in 2017 deep cuts in a dismantling of our mental health services in the state when we had a budget shortfall. And over the following eight years, when we had surpluses, did they reinvest in all those basic public health services that they cut? No, they invested in tax cuts to cut the top income tax bracket year after year after year.

And that's the same thing we see at the federal level. And it's what it is, is it is big brother not watching you because they don't need to know, even though they can,

a lot of my coworkers are pretty pissed and they weren't pissed about what they saw on the news.

“They're pissed about the fact that that is why I am poor. And that is why I am poor in a world where we just meant it the first human trillionaire.”

That's something that should make us angry, and that's the sort of grievance of all the festering, misdirected grievances, that kind of economic grievances, what government's supposed to be here to help address. So let's talk about your opponent. Zinky won this race most recently, but you said don't Jon Tester won one more votes there. Even as he wasn't able to eke out a victory, it's very, very close right now. What is the case you're trying to make in the closing days to try to get more people to understand why your opponent just,

sort of a Trump back, chalk radio host is not exactly what Montana needs.

I mean, yeah, the contrast here could not be any better. If you ask me, I mean, yeah, the fellow I'm running against, he was the hand-picked successor for rinsing. You dropped out of this race about four months ago and good riddance, and he dropped out because he saw that wasn't going to be easy for him. After a whole year spent gutting basic public services that people like me might have to depend on as a kid, someone who just barely was full thanks to food stamps sometimes, gutting our public lands, where if there's a consensus issue in Montana, it's our public lands.

And so what did he do? He dropped out with 48 hours until the filing deadline and immediately endorsed the spell iron flint. It was a far right talk radio host. He spent the last 10 years in the air condition recording studio spewing hate and hot air and nothing against their conditions. I don't think you're losing me a lot of good work in an air condition recording studio. Sorry, continue. Well, and we got the guy is a political pundit and we have plenty of pundits and political puppets in Washington right now.

I would offer weed. There's no dirt of those. We got enough of them. What we do have a lack of is working people who know what it's like to be working three jobs at the time and still paying your rent on a credit card. I know what that's like. People who actually know what it's like to have your belly full because of food stamps or thanks to food stamps. When your parent falls on her time and like people who don't have that perspective are going to perhaps fight with a little bit less urgency when snap benefits get used as leverage during a government shutdown like they did this last time around.

Half of my members were furloughed at the end of those six weeks and a lot of them were showing up at local food banks that are also having to curtail food benefits because some of that comes from snap. It just feels like across the board there has truly been a lack of urgency when we had the political will.

“To pass really big and important legislation like like you mentioned like the IRA right well a whole lot of that money never actually got out the door.”

People are hurting right now. I mean if you were on the edge of not having your home like Kathy who's house I was at Kathy lives in mile from my house. She's in now one of four thousand mobile home lots that are owned by out of state private equity firms in the state of Montana. And Kathy's lot rent has gone from three hundred seventy bucks a month to over eight hundred dollars. Kathy doesn't have ten years to wait for all of these resources to propagate through the system and for half of them to go large corporations.

And it's like you know it's a lot of people who live in their life gets better like Kathy needs help right now and it feels like we did not deliver that help to people who really desperately needed it. And what happens the party out of power gets elected and it turns into something really scary and dangerous. There's also a big fight in Montana now over data centers is a lot of there's a lot of outside money they seem you know Montana it's cool. A lot of land built a lot of big facilities. I'm building data centers in Montana and how does that contrast with the Republicans.

Yeah well my opponent got the better part of a million dollars from American mission one of open AIs super PACs just in the month of May.

To get them through his primary even though they tried to make sure no one could run against the guy. So what we're up against is a pretty terrifying amount of money that this industry is planning to leverage in this election.

“I think 150 million. They're planning to drop on elections just this year. For us while we have a proposed center that is in theory going to use more electricity than every residential home in the state of Montana.”

And our power rates have already gone up 30 or 40 percent in the last three years. So what I would offer is we need to pass a dam law at the federal level saying they can't build these things until unless they showed that they're going to provide all their own power. It doesn't have to be on site. Offsides even better put power on the grid. We need it ideally carbon neutral power. Making sure that they're not going to dirty our air and water. I mean you see these terrifying videos of dirty water. Well, there are more water efficient cooling systems.

They cast a little bit more of this industry. They can afford it. They're planning to spend four trillion bucks on data development the next seven years. Right now we have none of that. All we have is an executive order trying to preempt to state regulations on AI and. Where I am too I'm coming at this I'm also relatively uncandidate. I think that this technology is perhaps the biggest existential threat that we've got as a country. I mean we've read the sci-fi novel before we're all living in it right now.

This is if their promises are true. Well, this is a technology that could it could cure cancer or it could kill all of humanity. And we, and it's a big delta. It's a big difference. Yeah. And right now it seems like we're only using it for all the bad stuff and what in less two weeks you're probably tracking we had two instances of these models breaking out of the system and hacking into.

And if we can't get our arms around it and have real federal oversight and make it so we're ready to pull the plug on this thing if it poses a threat to the future of our children in our country like we're going to be in a tough spot.

“One other issue that's been royaling in Montana is because in part for what all the reason you're saying the Democratic brand is can be pretty toxic you have an independent that has a lot of backing from this is the first effort about this.”

Basically, there is an independent that's running the backing of a lot of Democratic politicians is also a Democratic candidate on the ballot today as a recording this is the last day for that Democratic candidate to drop out so that everyone can coalesce around the independent candidate.

Do you believe that Bank of India drop out?

Right now today's the deadline I think they just had a press conference last couple hours things the third or fourth and last week between the two of them yeah each one announcing I'm still running I'm still running yeah they're both still running yeah still here. Yeah it's an interesting like game theory problem because they're like they've been a brinkmanship but what do you want to have it's what do you want to have happened before midnight today. I wanted to make sure Kurt all me who's the Republican running in that race is not our next senator and I will be entirely honest I am so deeply frustrated with the entirety of how this thing is played out yeah I mean the probably north eight million dollars has been sent to spent.

To manufacture this situation we're in right now we're neither candidates going to have a chance to win against the Republican as long as they're both in this race. That's obscene yeah like that is actually disgusting and we have all whichever angle you're looking at this from we've all swallowed a spider to kill a fly. And I mean eight million dollars again that is pearls before swine in a state where people are being pushed out onto the streets because they can't afford the basics. At this point of coin flip would be better than what they got going right now and what I've been telling the both of them is that I really hope that they will both sit down in person in a room and sort this out because a lot of how we got here as a country.

And the national leaders were putting their own ego before they go to the country and it feels like nothing changes and well the reality is nothing changes unless we go change it ourselves.

Yeah it seems like got a coin flip but work can we just do that wouldn't I mean like basically after you we want one candidate to go up against. The Republican and one of them would have to drop out but neither one wants to do it is basically where we're at. It sounds like you would you would you just want one of the drop out and buy the end of the day yeah I would better than the situation we're in this this stand off. And but I will tell you to that center race. You know I have faith in them to sort this out and to do the exercise the basic skills that my dad is a kindergarten teacher is teaching his students right.

Oh I sit down look at each other have a conversation. But if they whether or not they do that western Montana Montana's first is where we have a chance to win. We said Democrat just one by just by almost one percent and I think there's a real temptation to just spend all your time talking about whatever.

Yeah the if it bleeds or eats you know wherever the controversy is but this is a place where we just had turn out in the Democratic primary up 17 percent.

It was down for on the Republican side and this is a place where we can have a foothold in a place like western Montana or the Rocky Mountain West or rural America something the Democrats don't really have right now. So yeah we're spending all our time talking about that and whatever way that race goes I think both of those are very different kinds of candidates.

“Yeah and whatever happens by the end of the day that's what will happen and then we have to focus on doing whatever we can to win your seat and the center race.”

And people can go to Sam for Montana dot com if they want to help out. They can go to Sam for Montana if they want to help out and you're going to have a lot of money coming up against you and in a state like Montana like you know a million dollars dropping that race can have a huge huge impact. What do people that that what are Democrats not understand about mental like forget even just the politics just as a place what people care about. I think there's a lot of kind of assumptions people make about like rural voters how they view the environment how they view public lands like what do people miss.

I mean our public lands are a way of life truly I mean protecting your gun rights and protecting your public lands are just the two consensus issues in a place like Montana because. Well that's what people depend on to keep your freezer full if you go to your public lands and use them for hunting.

“That is how people find sustenance that's what people depend on if you can squeeze in a Sunday afternoon between your three shifts.”

Just to go hike in or skiing like that's what makes it worth living. And that is not a Democrat or a public an issue I mean part of what pushed me into this race in November when I was thinking about is it worth leaving behind smoke jumping. Which is the only retirement the only health care I had the only career I really had to run for this office because whatever. The administration tells you the hatch act exists and you cannot run for public office. I don't play.

I got a mailer from Ryan Zinky saying that he's the Teddy Roosevelt to public lands. A year into all of these these cuts where my members lives are being turned upside down where we're down 20% we've lost 2000 red carded firefighters.

And he's sending out a mailer with this little Teddy Roosevelt hat on and his boy scout outfit.

“Everybody claims they're for public lands but it's a lot like these other issues like public lands aren't just lines on them out.”

There are a lot of people most of them not making a lot of money who work their tails off to make sure you can make it up a road to the trail header up a trail. To access your forest and a lot of those people are core to the rural economies. If you go down to Hamilton well you got Rocky Mountain Labs who's lost 30 or 40 employees so far you have forest service outposts these are a core part of our community and our economy and we all just got gutted.

And so people are pissed and they should be pissed but being pissed is not enough and you know when people say well or your friends might have voted for these guys ready to see they were wrong.

That's not what it. I think right now people are just angry at both parties because you're paying for 20 of a gallon at the pump for unleaded and we're in another war that this guy started this time that none of us wanted and we're spending billions overseas and all of our lives are worse. So we got to move past being pissed and being angry and talk about reimagining a lot of the programs that Montana's helped past like Mike Mansfield is was the leader of the US Senate from Montana who ushered through the great society and create help create Medicare and Medicaid and NPR and PBS.

And these are all the things that are under attack. They're all the things we're called under reimagined and expands so people can meet their their basic needs and have time for the kind of empathy and compassion that your neighbor deserves. Sam I am 43 on about to turn 44. It looks great.

I spent fantastic thank you for sending that could I be a smoke jumper how how athleticism how much is required and my past my prime is it possible you know I fell a rookie at 47.

I'm looking at you. I mean you look pretty darn fit just from across the microphone, but no what's required is it's a six week rookie training program most people got five or six years five to ten years a fire experience before you get picked up and about 40% of people make it through so it's six weeks a. Get in the hell beat out of you and PT and learning how to pilot a parachute. I want to know what a parachute. Now I can't do it. I forgot about the jumping part. I want to know what the like physical I would like to know what those like what what is like the physical requirements that I would like to do a smoke jumper training.

“Yeah, and maybe I don't think I can jump out of a plane. I actually struggle from a high diving board to jump into a pool. So I think that's like probably not for me, but maybe I could do the training.”

Sam Forest Act. Thank you so much. I keep forgetting the website. What's the website again? The website is Sam for Montana dot com or you can find us on socials. It's just at Sam forest egg across platforms and I need all the help I can get it is a rare thing to see a working person in the halls of power. And I need if everyone pulls together and helps out, well, we can actually make this happen and we can start changing our country for the better. Thank you so much. Thank you, John. That's our show for today. Thanks to Sam Forest Act for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday.

Positive America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts and Ferris Ophariate with re-churlin, Elijah Cone and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hefco, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kyrl-Celevieve, David Tolz, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young and Naomi Single. Our staff is probably unionized with the writer's guild of America East. The Water Day podcast you know and love is shaking things up. You already know the five days a week. I, Jane Coston, bring you the need to know news and expert analysis on the big stories shaping today and tomorrow.

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