Donald J. Plump

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Plus, when you order right in our show name and the how did you hear about a survey to let them know we sent you. Don't forget, there's no safe. Why simply save? Every big story starts with a question. Why did this happen? Who's behind it and what happens next? That's three questions. I'm consider this from NPR. They answer those questions every weekday by going beyond the headlines with a reporting context and analysis that help you make sense of the big story of the day.

The news doesn't stop at what happened. Get the full story. Listen to consider this from NPR wherever you get your podcasts. If you miss some of your favorite crooked pods this week, don't worry. You can now catch up on the week's best moments on MSNow on Saturday night's. MSNow is streaming an episode of highlights from your favorite crooked pods, packing as much analysis funny moments in 100% correct opinions into 40 minutes as humanly possible.

Crooked on MSNow aired every Saturday at 9 p.m. Eastern 6 p.m. Pacific. I'm a little bit nervous and I'm the founder of Yaui. A few years ago, the customer's work and the most specialised object of the company. My role is on Shopify, because Shopify is in the same way as the other platforms I tested with at the start. I've been waiting for all the questions. All the tools that

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Start a new test on Shopify.com. Domic D-Day against Iran, but also maybe against Canada and the American people. We'll also cover J.D. Vance's return to the campaign trail, complete with mentions of his papa, charilla, and his friendship with Susan Collins. We got a quick mid-term update that includes the weird meeting between Hakeen Jeffries and Jared Kushner. The long-awaited,

duffy family reality show finally hits the airwaves. I've been desperate for this to pop up on

YouTube, as have most Americans. And later you'll hear my interview with Congressman Seth Multon, who faces off again, Senator at Marky next week in the last big primary contest before the mid-terms. But first, we have some big news. The newest podcast, joining the cricket media family is called Still Counting, hosted by Nate Silver, Claire Malone, and Galen Druch.

“You might remember this crew from the 538 pod, which we always thought was one of the smartest,”

most entertaining shows about politics out there. Before 538 was shut down by the corporate media last year. But some big corporate mouse. Who will remain nameless? Right. But now Nate Claire and Galen wanted to get back on the air ahead of the mid-terms, and we are thrilled that they've chosen cricket as their new home. So each week on the pod, they're going to dig into the latest in politics and polling to break down what's happening and why. But they're also going to cover everything from

elections to betting markets to AI with their trademark rigorous analysis and plenty of hot takes. You can hear the trailer right now by subscribing to Still Counting, wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube at Still Counting podcast. Are you for the audience? You'd get for us. Huge good. I look. Dan's Polar Coaster is fantastic, and I will continue to listen to it all the

Actually more. I thought it was going to be a more hand, not a but there, but it wasn't. Yes,

“and it wasn't that early. Exactly. Yes, it is. It's like, is like, is like it is basically for”

for potative America hosts, is like signing drugs outside of school. You know, the first hits free

thing. Tell me, I like keeping Dan on his toes. I can hear this and be a little bit like Dan. Hey, hey, Dan, you know, prove us wrong. prove us wrong, Dan. All right. It's not, it's not, it's not a no, but it's not a yes. We're not, we're not a full hard yes on Dan. Despite the yes we Dan merch that's everywhere. New episodes of Still Counting Drop, September 9th. And yeah, we're very excited to have you. Subscribe, subscribe, and

aliens. Subscribe right away. Join in the fam. All right. Let's start here with the news. Donald Trump continues to bankrupt America by waging war against two of our greatest adversaries, Iran and Canada. We'll get to that in a second. But first, we should talk about breaking news. But a third war Trump is losing against another longtime adversary. He's been personally obsessed with for years. Let's listen. Let's go on the fat drug, the fat drug, FAT, FAT people. Anybody

using the table don't ask? And a friend of mine who's very fat. And I want to say, you know, you could be a famous guy's begging me not to release this thing. He's a very highly neurotic, very fat. Sort of a fat slough by the drug. I bought the fat drug. It's that I didn't know you use it because it's so working. And the governor is a big fat slough. We can't do that, sir. You can't call

JB Pritzker, FAT big. Please. You know, some people say, never used the fat word. And I know

I would never call anybody fat. I had my own problems. Well, he sure does. Because here's Sunday's headline from the Washington Post. Doctors say Trump's weight poses a significant health risk. The president has gained about 20 pounds since his campaign, according to his statements and those of AIDS. So back in June, the White House had to publicly refute speculation. The Trump was on an experimental new weight loss drug after stat news reported that a 79 year old man with government

connections got early access to the drugs. I guess the White House was telling the truth. Yes, it turns out that Trump is not like a reckless gay guys in West Hollywood buying compound versions

“of this drug from China. Is that happening? Yeah, I think so. I just want to say for the record that”

Favron, I wanted to lead with Canada and love it locked the door of our production meeting until we agreed to start with the GOP. I just start with FAT. I said dessert fat. Does it hate? It's August? Let's have dessert for dinner. All right. It pancakes for the future. It clearly has been. Yeah, he's eating raw. I love the moment in those videos where he hesitates, where he goes and his person, they're fat. I want you to know, I put that super cut together myself. There was like

10 more clips of him just saying fat, fat, slob. He tells the story about the friend like 50 times. One other thing to note too is this is the this is the figures that they're telling us. I feel like they've been slowly trying to get the number back to a real number. So he may not have gained as much as they're saying. On the other hand, based on the weight and height they've released, his BMI is 29.7, which means if his weight was one pound more, he would be technically obese,

which I'm sure he would not like. And so for all we know, they've kind of brought that number down a pound or two. Yeah, they may have been telling the truth about him not being on this experimental GLP one, or he could just be eaten through it. It has happened before. My favorite part of the story, though, is they as they track his weight, they cite when he was arrested in Georgia. When he was booked, they released that he was 6, 3, 2, 15, which was John L. Ways playing weight when he

won two super bowls in NFL MVP. Isn't it amazing, by the way? Well, muscle is heavier. Isn't it amazing, by the way, that we're just kind of, you can just say something like, oh, you remember when he was arrested in Georgia? Because of his mugshot, because the president is a convicted criminal. But also, gain 20 pounds since 2024 is an 80-year-old, almost obese man.

“I don't know, I even want to say, oh, what's he gonna, he's gonna turn over a new leaf right now?”

Yeah, yeah, he's one to really, he's one to really make a lot of resolutions and try to keep him. Well, no well done burger today, just the steam fish. I was also their response to this story

was to attack Joe Biden who is currently recovering from cancer. So that's a classy move as always

from the way that's, did you see the video of Trump's workout that was on Twitter over the weekend? No, that was actually really good, you guys should roll this thing. This is, this is, that is the clip. I showed my children this morning when I was laughing

And he's like, what does it at work? And I was like, well, sometimes we watch clips of robots falling and then people laugh at them and then we laugh at it and then people watch us laugh at the videos. And Charlie's like, oh, I want to do that, Joe. It's a good job. The kid boom, kind of said about just a point of personal privilege about the robot, Olympia that's going on. The world's humanoid robot games in Beijing.

So they keep saying things like, oh, this is the fastest robot, this is the fastest robot. And it's like, okay, but like, we have lots of robots that can go very fast already because they just don't have human lengths. They have to have a human leg to them. Is that what makes it different? I think so. Yeah. Like you're saying, like, you're saying we're making a shit. The way most of the program, yeah, we got lots of fast shit. Yeah, no, no, no, no.

Yeah, I think it's a humanoid. The humanoid. Oh, it's got to be humanoid. Yeah, it's got to be humanoid. It's got to be humanoid. It's got to be humanoid. There's also like weird dogs in shit getting preyed around. There's a guy riding a giant dog. Yeah, that's not one. That was nightmare fuel. That's really bad. No, I think it's great. That we should give them thumbs. And also that open. I have every once in a while. I was like,

yeah, we lost a couple. We think during the pacemakers now. Sorry, everybody. We're going to, we've realized the error of our ways again. And now we got to,

“we put a, just a, here's the thing. We put a lock on the door. But the, one of our guys fell”

in love with the robot and I rocked it. And so we got to figure out how to make them less sexually charming. But we're not sure how to do that. But you know what, there's only so much we can do 'cause China. Right. Yeah. And the rest of the wasn't cut the China. Yeah. You're doing karate kicks. There's drop kicking, like six years old. And like, so what do you want us to do? If we have a few escape the sandbox, what I mean, that's, sorry, you got to, you know, get cracked, cracked a couple eggs.

I was just a not IPO. Right. Make an omelet. Anyway, uh, there aren't, we do have some more consequential, um, but no less absurd Trump stories. Uh, soybean farmer Scott Besant announced Operation Economic Outcast on Monday, uh, a series of new sanctions against Iran and the threat of much larger sanctions down the road that he likened to the most significant military invasion of the 20th century. But there seem to be a bit of a gap between Besant's framing and the reality.

Let's listen. In the second world war, D-Day marked the historic beginning of a campaign with our allies

to target and drive the enemy from its positions, including those in third countries. Today, in that same spirit, we are launching an economic onslaught against Iran's financial connections around the globe, around the globe. You described this as an economic D-Day, but D-Day wasn't a threat of an invasion in the U.S. didn't give a timeline to Germany. So why not impose the sanctions today? Well, we are giving everyone the opportunity to remedy bad behavior. Why would

I want to blow up the global financial system? Oh, extraordinary sentence. Extraordinary sentence. Crazy. That is, that, I like saw that as like what, what an absolute fucking doof. Because it's like, what, first of all, is that what you're threatening? Why are you the, you're, we're supposed to be the good guys. Yeah. And then also, if you're suggesting that the thing you're going to impose

is basically a global economic crisis, it does signal to the people you're threatening,

that you're deeply concerned about the risk you'd be taking, which you've consistently shown yourself willing to back off of when you get close to the line, because they know that you can back off right before you go through your various threats. Those mules must be terrified, huh? $2,500 Americans died on D-Day. So, you know, some downsides that do. Yeah, the, the pissy could have her calling,

“that's what I call Scott Pissing, calling this economic D-Day. So funny, because I cannot overstate”

how mundane this sanctions announcement actually was. This is just like stuff they roll at all the time. For example, they tried to make it sound like they're sanctioning all these new sectors. So they mentioned gold and the aviation sector. But if you look at US sanctions over the years, we've been sanctioning gold, the sort of gold industry since 2011, and the aviation sectors since 2008. So this announcement today is not going to make the, the Iranian regime, the RGC kind of give up.

I think it's a lot of bluster. It's a lot of rhetoric. It's a lot of them trying to figure out what they do to get through the midterms. The scary thing is, I think the Axios report on the sanctions today mentioned that they're considering restarting the war after the midterms are over. So you'll

love when the wars are timed with the midterms that's always. Yeah, I saw that. Well, in the, in the

blowing up of the globe. So I had to like dig into this because it basically were two things today. There were like sanctions against 60 Iran linked people and to these vessels that like you said are pretty mundane, very like a typical day. And then there's the threat of major sanctions that would blow up the global economic system, which is sanctioning any country that does business with Iran,

“China, for example, which he would not take off the deal, but what also not mentioned. The only thing”

that would matter is secondary sanctions on China to a lesser exact India, maybe Russia, maybe Turkey,

for example, in advance of the Xi Jinping visit. Nor do I think they would do them period, because the Chinese will retaliate against us, then the Iranians will retaliate against us,

“and it'll be a big dust up again, which leads you back to love its original point, right?”

Which is so it's just bluster or else, if it's not bluster, it's blowing up the global economic financial system, which I guess they don't want to do until after the midterms, or maybe they'll just bomb after the midterms. Well, the other part of just the threat in Axios about how we're going to maybe resume the military campaign after the election, which by the way, as I think in part, like I hope it's not true. I hope they're doing politics with their own neocons that they're trying

to keep in line, because they're not doing their retaliation that a lot of these people want, they're doing sort of these sort of threats of future economic sanctions. But if it is a real threat, and I assume the Iranmen have to take it as a real threat, then they are telling you in advance, hey, we should conflate economic activity with military activity. If Iran is going to potentially retaliate against economic sanctions with military force, one argument against it would be that

it would be escalating the war. But the U.S. is promising to escalate the war potentially after the election

“anyway. The other part of it, too. So, it's just in the best-in-op Edwardian now, so this, in a”

written like, like, he asked a large language model to write like a Victorian with a head injury. It's just like over the top, ridiculous thing. But in any set, refers to something called Pascal's

Wager. And basically he says, uh, people working, that was going to be triggering for you. People working

with the Iran should be terrible as well as because of Pascal's Wager, which basically says, you can't know for sure if God is real. So act as if God is real, because if it is, boy, you'll wish you believe, which is, you know, philosophically confusing, but whatever. And so he seems to be suggesting that countries may want to do a deal with Iran, because in the short term, it's quite beneficial to them. But they should be careful that even though partnering with the U.S.

per bestance argument has no benefits whatsoever to the point where you can't even tell if the United States exists, we could exist. And if we do, boy will be mad. That's sort of what he's, that's sort of the position he's trying to direct, I guess, not just to, by the way, also to Korea, to other countries that are desperate to try to figure out how to get out of this sort of the U.S. in one of the most recently cut a deal, seemingly with the Iranians to avoid getting

fired at all the time. Did you guys see the Barry McAfrey tweeted, quote, "In my judgment, U.S. armed forces have probably permanently lost access to facilitate personal and personal faces around now, poised to control access to the Gulf States. U.S. will have to negotiate new access in Western Saudi Arabia, Israel, Southern Europe. It's like an entire recalibration of our security architecture in the Middle East, because we have lost this war. It's just sort of

by accident. Yeah. And in case you're wondering how seriously the rest of the world in the markets took this today, oil went down to an average. Not a bullet. So it's crazy. I don't think anyone's too worried or takes Scott Besson seriously, and it seems like with good reason. Pods of America is brought to you by article. Article makes it effortless to build a home that lasts without the boutique markup. They're curated collections of mid-century coastal and

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Learn more about what America's working forests are doing for all of us at working forests initiative.com. So, the Trump administration did save the more serious action for the far more dangerous adversary, Canada. The president has announced 50% tariffs on all Canadian cars, trucks, auto parts, and steel starting January 1st. Again, after the midterms, because he believes the country has been, quote, ripping off the United States for years. He also announced that quote,

Canada will be treated like a state no longer in threatened quote. Someone should get these clowns to fall in line or the consequences for Canada will be far worse. This all comes after trading negotiations with our once closest ally, fellow part Friday night, which led to Trump slapping 50% tariffs on 20 billion dollars of Canadian exports, Prime Minister Mark Carney's response was that the U.S. attacked his country and is now at war with Canada. He promised to retaliate

dollar for dollar on September 8th. J.D. Vance was asked by a reporter in Maine on Monday what

he'd say to Americans worried about the new tariffs, and here's what Vance said. We have to remember,

Canada is a state. That was actually an accident. Canada is a country that has under-invested its military that quite literally would get invaded by foreign country were it not for the umbrella

“of protection provided by the United States of America. Do you think you got that joke from Rubio?”

The big the joke stirring the administration? That was so canned. For the inslip, Canada is a country not, it's really, it's not suck. It's like politics can be confusing and complicated. The president, someone who comes out of a presidential campaign usually doesn't make you uncomfortable every single second you see him on screen. Just every time he is speaking, you're just a little bit on. I'm just uncomfortable. I'm comfortable. I'm comfortable. You see your weapon, unleash, they finally

unleash JB Vance in the campaign trail again. Let JD BJD, they wrote on a napkin. So for reference, Canada is our second biggest trading partner, which means a lot more products are about to become a lot more expensive for Americans and Canadians. Anyone cared to explain why the president may have just blown up the relationship with our closest ally and made life more expensive for everyone? I can try. If Trump is mad that Canada has been ripping us off for years, he has mad at his own

“team's deal that they cut the USMCA, so that's what we're operating under. I've heard a couple”

of different theories for why the talks blew up. The first theory you hear is that the US tried to insert to 11th hour provisions to the deal. That we're just to bridge you far for Mark Carney, the Prime Minister. Some of the specifically, it's like they wanted to exclude medium and like trucks from the reduction in tariffs the US did, which would have made it unprofitable to produce like the Ford F-150 in Canada. The deal could have weakened some French language protections

that are very important in Quebec. It's a crazy thing. This is like a third rail like you do not fuck with this stuff. Why did we ask for that? It's not of our fucking business with it, by language, by the bilingual labels. I'm sure like certain companies hate having to print stuff in French on the side of a pill bottle. Look, I know it's stupid. Well that's that. If you want to sell in Quebec, you got to put in the front. You have to. And if Carney messes around with this,

the Quebec will succeed from Canada. So it's a big deal. And then there were some provisions that would have impeded Canada's ability to cut trade deals to their countries. I don't really understand that one. There's also kind of a personnel argument that you hear. There's also the

big one was also they wanted exclusive access. We wanted exclusive access to their critical minerals.

Yeah, that Carney was like Canada would never give that to anyone. It's great talking about it. Yeah, we're keeping it open. Yeah. We're keeping it open relationship with our critical met with our tungsten. There's also reports that the US trade rap James and Greer was like professional and, you know, he speaks French like he's like a pro to work on and then later

“let Nick came in at the end of the conversation. That's a new sticky. What's he saying?”

Let Nick got involved in the negotiation that they went to shit. And then there's the politics of it all, which, which the political reality at this point for Mark Carney is the politics of fighting Trump are so much better than cutting a deal that requires you to make concessions and then going to and having to explain that because voters in Canada, remember the whole 51st state thing. They don't think it's funny. They haven't forgotten JD Vance and they don't trust Trump. They think that he's

going to tear up any trade deal that they sign in a year and the Canadian nationalism has been kicked up in a way that's been really durable. Like a friend of mine was in Canada the other day watching TV and the commercials would be like lays potato chips with potatoes grown proudly in Canada. It was like, you know, it's like an ongoing thing. And so the other thing for Carney is like

industry and Quebec it's the cultural stuff about the French language and other parts of the

country it's like lumber provisions and like stitching that all together is a pain in the ass. So for him he's like, you made it easy for me. Now I get just to punch you in the face with my 60% approval rating. You being weak Donald Trump and going into your midterms where you're likely to

“lose like I think Carney thinks it's worth the risk. Well, I mean he's he's not asking to reopen the”

talks. Carney probably for those political reasons. And well also because he gave a speech where he said I am outlining a new approach for countries, countries that are kind of in between these sort of great powers that are battling and it is that we can find a way to stitch together these other kinds of arrangements without conceiting, without giving up. And he can't I mean if he means that

I do that. I do he means it's in Syria. I don't think it's just politics. He has to prove it in his own

negotiations. He can't signal to Europe that they need to stand up to Donald Trump. And then when he's faced with that himself he can he be capitulates. And the Canadian reciprocal tariffs I think going to place September 8th Trump was like ours will go into place in January which is already him kind of you know, caving. Well, at least we're linking. Yeah well we just talked about a run. Right. And so that is an the Axios story right like they might restart the war after the midterms or

you know the the sanctions for the trading partners with Iran or any of them doing business Iran is we're threatening that you know past the midterms right? And now we're doing the Canadian tariffs past the midterms at least on the auto parts. So it is going to set up an interesting dynamic which is it seems right now like the way it has is like okay well we don't want to really some people in the way it has. We don't want to fuck ourselves for the midterms too hard.

So maybe we can delay this stuff to laugh for the midterms. But if they it sounds like whether they lose or do better than expected in the midterms they still want to do all this damage after the midterms which will set up an interesting dynamic for the 2028 primary in which J.D. Vance. So we just heard from presumably is going to want to run for president or maybe Mark Rubier or whoever else and now have to deal with the fucking bigger mess that the administration

seems like they're planning to cause. Yeah also before you get to 2028 take Trump at his word like there are a lot of people running we're going to get to see us in Collins. Donald Trump is saying I am going to put in place a giant tax increase on January 1st on Americans because Congress will not pull back the authority it is vested in Trump to do tariffs without congressional approval. Congress has the power to prevent those taxes increases from going into effect. That seems to me

a pretty big issue that people could be talking about about what happens. Obviously Trump has the ability to veto but it would be nice to get people on record about where they stand on him doing this.

“I think they're all going to run on it. I mean in Michigan obviously the auto industry is like”

the biggest fight they're going to have so I'm sure Abdul is all I know Abdul is all over this in Iowa it'll impact John Deer which is an important industry there but also farmers who sell ag products into Canada in Maine it's all about lumber and I think there's a bigger question of like we know Trump loves tariffs but we don't really know why you know like Jamison Greer seems to want to kind of reorder the manufacturing business and bring it all back to the U.S. from China

and I think a lot of people support that. Scott Beston seems to think the tariffs are a way to collect revenue and just make money for the government then there's another group that just seems to think they're a way to bully other countries and get them to do whatever you want about whatever issue and that's kind of it seems like we're Trump kind of lands on on this like I think I assume he is more interested in looking tough and looking like he beat up Mark Karny then he is in getting

“some extra milk into you know a Canadian. There's one more but the other I think advances sometimes”

started with this is that you accept lower growth and a cost of tariffs because you reorder the economy around old school manufacturing which were the jobs for men and even though you give up service jobs growth you give up all the benefits of a modern globalized economy it like it creates us it is more about the kind of old school values of a kind of work we used about we used as a society view is important even though it is hard to overestimate what he dumb fucking political move this

is the number one issue for voters across the political spectrum is the cost of living everything's too expensive and they don't just think it's about economy they know they blame Trump for it and specifically they blame Trump's tariffs for it like it is maybe his one of his most unpopular policies certainly his most unpopular economic policy over the last several years and now he is doubling down on it if not in fact in a thread at least before the midterm so they're going to be headlines

about tariffs for the midterms and of course he's already levy tariffs on 20 billion dollars worth

of Canadian goods so that's going to you know that'll have an effect on things so people are still

tariffs and we are 60 something days out from the midterms it's fucking nuts not smart okay so let's talk midterms one person noticeably absent from fancens event in Maine was Susan Collins this is the

second time she skipped out on events event in Maine this year though I'm sure she was thrilled

the device president told the crowd in that speech that Susan Collins is a quote dear friend who has been to his house quote probably a half dozen times that's not a dear friend sorry Collins has been trying to convince voters that she hasn't become a rubber stamp for Trump despite voting with him 95% of the time the latest move was a statement asking the president to quote consider the negative impacts his trade war with Canada would have on mayors on the

democratic side things have been relatively quiet since Troy Jackson locked up the nomination to replace Graham Platner on the November ballot but Jackson's campaign is beginning to heat up finally getting on TV this weekend with this great 30 second spot featuring Jackson's mother Troy was born to two teenage parents and we struggled a lot he didn't use that as an excuse he used

that as fuel to make things better for other people Troy never talks about when he's done but

somebody will come up to me in the grocery store or someplace in town and they'll say Troy helped me get a sewer Troy helped me help me get my mother into a nursing home if you need help he's going to be there for you that that is that's who he is I'm Troy Jackson this is my mom and I proved his message what he guys make it the Jackson campaign so far and do you think he's doing enough to nationalize the race so that it is about a vote for Trump versus a check on Trump so there was this

ad there was another ad or video he filmed just sort of sitting on a stube talking about Elon Musk dumping money in the state there's a there's another the the crotch mug shot yeah yeah it was very it was very I'm shot from below for sure I didn't notice that timing notice that but I thought it was

innovator it was good it was good I mean we've used that technique here at I promise I America but the

sometimes against without our consent we will get a video like that hey guys that's three crutches but uh and then alternative name for the punk yeah and then there's others where he sort of say like

“according to our enemies but I say uh let our haters be our motivators but the uh and that's what Troy”

Jackson said as well on that ad but but uh he also is doing a lot of like like kind of he the accent is the accent and he's like look I don't care I don't give a damn if you're I'm not gonna do the accent but Democrat or Republican uh like I just we just want to get these good things done for people so there is a war right now because he is coming into the campaign late kind of introducing himself and as he's doing that right like as much as they'd want to nationalize the race Republican groups

are dumping millions of dollars into may calling him like a dirty politician kind of trying to define him negatively so I I don't know what the mix should be I think he's trying to fight awarded to find himself because he came in so late part of it is all the attention like the national media should probably help nationalize this race a bit because people boy a lot of people stop caring about Maine uh once it's stopped being about Democrat on Democrat and started being about

Democrat versus Susan Collins yeah that I mean that ad was good as a good biospot but it's definitely a older version of politics more pro-kiel version of politics it's like he helped me get a sewer in my community that's not nationalizing and that's not making it about rubber stamping the Donald Trump agenda I'm nervous about this race I mean like shout out to the main Democrat party in Troy Jackson for like turning this thing from Plattener to his race so quickly that's

“genuinely impressive I think it was like literally a month ago right would he accept the nomination”

as long as I do think that it does I do think you know they need to go on offense every day I mean JD Vance visiting name is a gift to the Jackson campaign I saw that he was highlighting Vance calling Collins his dear friend on his Twitter feed I hope they're doing more of that the candidate trade war is a huge opportunity for Troy Jackson like Troy Jackson's political career started because he led a group of loggers to the border of Canada and blockaded the road

to protect a main logger from getting their job stolen from that where he's from he's he's he's from Arusta County which is like the border County between Maine and Canada like he should he could go there today and it's speaking of nationalizing the race and explain what a 50% entire of does to a logging down right some Canadian premieres were talking about blocking electricity to America from from Canada if that happened to Maine it would hurt them a lot they

get a lot of electricity from Maine people love electricity in Maine I don't have to see a lot of pulling on it but my my sense of it in Maine is that they're just hands of electricity data centers

“yeah electricity good you know what you think it be 100 to zero but I think it's about 955 because”

everything is but yeah they're pretty pro electricity up there yeah uh Iran ongoing disaster Collins is not doing anything to stop the war ice is usually controversial soon Collins give a terrible interview the other day she was asked she was asked by someone she got like door stopped at

it was for body cameras that's like that they never turn on when they're killing Americans so

“there's there's a lot of opportunity there for Troy to action to make the campaign about”

Collins as a rubber stamp for Trump there's also this concerning report that Elon Musk is preparing to spend a hundred million dollars on the terms and a lot of that will be focused on Maine so we don't know where that's going to go but maybe you could use it to that back on Collins we'll see but we started to do I'd like to see a little more you know we got to be aggressive we got to make about her especially in this race because like you look at all the polling and this has been

true since planners in the race still true today um Maine does not like Donald Trump Maine does not happy with Donald Trump majorities of voters if they were going to go to the polls

they would vote against Donald Trump and they did in 2024 they voted for Kamala Harris

and so the way Susan Collins gets elected here is and it's a little different from the other races they're gonna try to disqualify Trojax and but the real emphasis in why the White House is gonna like let her criticize them is um showing that Susan Collins is some kind of an independent voice right and so she wins if enough voters are like I really don't like what Trump's doing but I don't really know him and she's actually delivered for Maine and she's kind of like an

independent voice and she came out against these tariffs I just heard her say that you know

“and so like the only way to win this race is to tie her to Donald Trump as closely as possible”

and make and nationalize this race in every way possible and I think Trojax and like has to do that and that was that was the criticism of Platner one of many um like after he wrapped up the nomination as people were like oh he's going after Susan Collins too hard on being corrupt and everything else and being part of a establishment in Washington he's not tying her to Donald Trump enough and that was fair criticism but like that's now that's what Trojax and has to do

as well he has to tie her to Donald Trump yeah I just I'm just I am you have to do that while part of their strategy is to try to define Trojax and as unacceptable or corrupt or worse in some way and he's unknown and part and you know I'm sure people having the back of their minds at Democrats went through this bruising primary with sort of these like unsavory figure in the end and like the he's tired with that so I'm sure it's like a difficult balance of trying to figure

out how to just get people over the line of like knowing who you are that you're okay to vote instead of you know stable reliable Susan Collins so like that's I'm sure that's part of what we're seeing in the ads and the question is how do you make moments when there's a national when J.D. advances there when there's a tariff thing well also understanding probably has to do some work to counteract what will be a day lose about it do you think that 95% numbers she voted with Trump 95% of

the time it sort of reminds me of what we did to McCain and oh wait right there's a senator who was seen as more independent a maverick and all we did for the three four months of the general election was be like this guy voted for George voted with George Bush 90 something percent of the time

“I can't remember now yeah J.D. is trying to get ahead of that by being like and sometimes she annoys”

me by being so independent what a subtle line J.D. you know I know it doesn't very obvious what's he doing in man you know it's like she like he's campaigning for her again like she can't show up and she can't show up it's all a little bit like it's only the only page showed up the the Republican nominee for the main second district not even the gubernatorial nominee showed up the Republican side for J.D. Vance so he's popular positive America is brought to you by

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employers supposed to zipper critter get a quality candidate within the first day try it for free at zipper critter dot com slash cricket that zipper critter dot com slash cricket zipper critter meet your match on zipper critter speak in of him he also recently weighed in on the Michigan Senate race during

of visit to his hometown in Ohio here's what he had to say about democratic candidate abdual

else I had now I else I had this guy running for Senate in Michigan he once argued not too long ago that criticisms of sharia law were rooted in white supremacy I'd love to go back in time and tell my papal that there's a man who claims to stand for working people who says not only should we have sharia law but if you criticize it you're a white supremacist that's not my papal's democrat party my friends that's not my papas democrat party my friends just a just a collection

of real authentic people in there also notice how he just just kind of good in there not only is he think we should have sharia law right what what are you talking about I know it's like he makes abduals name sound weird like I'll say yeah and he's like my ppah my ppah my ppah my ppah my ppah

“yeah I think I said pop lot earlier people are a lot of different names yeah um so abdual responded”

on MS now by pointing out the advance was cherry picking who gets to be defined as american and distracting from the issues what do you think of that response and in general like what is the best way for abdual to handle all of these islamophobic attacks from people like vans from people like Mike Rogers but I've seen a lot of inter just like not even like thinly veiled lies like very obvious lies like who he just loves sharia law he loves sharia that it's it's funny like

this is where vans to it's he kind of performs as like the sophisticated version of trump and there's like a way in which you take his rhetoric you can find some shred they can call it the truth somehow but then he'll go back to their eating the cats and their eating the dogs or he'll go there's like he wants sharia law which is just just a lie just just lying to people uh I think he's doing like I don't know what a more defiant or direct version of what he's already been saying

sounds like but like you can just say what this is uh if this election is a referendum on trump's policies and whether people want in the senate a rubber stamp for what trump will do then Mike Rogers will lose and everything about what their publicans are doing is going to be to try to uh hide that or or muddy that or make noise around that and if this is an election about about health care about jobs about someone looking out for the middle class in Michigan

about someone who will actually kind of go to the senate to advocate on behalf of people in Michigan as opposed to uh for Donald Trump or whatever or or or kind of siding with the corporations

“that are trying to kind of cut their taxes even more deregulate uh that's what the race is about”

then then I'm doing well when they know that pop-off versus sharia yeah yeah his um his response to JD was like called and boring which I like just on the politically true he made a line about Peter T.o which I don't I don't know that most people get like MS now viewers probably get it because we're all political junkies but it most folks don't and then he wanted to this thing about how well you know do you think JD vans looks his wife's parents in the lie and tells them

that they're not real Americans referencing ushe vans and again it's like it's a good point that I have not totally sure everyone would understand it's also what you could make about Donald Trump and Melania by the way if he's her parents or not born in the United States I did like there's the this is a distraction thing I think that is true and it's valuable I did wonder if it's missing a beat that's kind of like undercuts the suggestion that he's an extremist

which is like JD I played fucking college lacrosse that's not the most like sharia compliant activity or like something that just gets that like I love American I'm an American I grew up playing high school football I'm from Michigan my names of dual I'm a doctor I'm a union member like

enough of this fear mongering crap and he does that he says like I'm a dual from I've always been

a dual from Michigan it's also yeah distraction is sort of the right ballpark but you got a kind of

and like Mike Rogers and JD events all these people they're saying all the shit because they have

nothing to say about why everything's so expensive in Michigan they've nothing to say about what a disaster Donald Trump has been for Michigan over the last four years and like they so they're just going to make this entire race about sharia law and a soundpiker and all this other bullshit

“because they have nothing else to say about anything that you care about you know and I think”

that like he's and Mike and they may know that it's a pretty weak argument that Mike Rogers is just going to go to the fucking Senate and have another another two years of doing whatever Donald Trump tells him to do yeah the the thing about the who ship point is like so he's a hypocrite right and like it's just like it's just there this is sometimes like it's just like hey like stop you not going to win on points it's like like that's a logical argument about how you

should like what he's racist toward you but not towards his wife like I don't like it's sort of it's it is beside the point and just sort of done with sort of hypocrisy arguments are kind of well what about this you know well it's learning and their their goal is to sort of lure you into an argument about identity and culture and race right this is like you know a Bernie tweeted today too like well you know you talk about a soundpiker but you know Jake Lang is in Michigan

the January 6 writer and he's got a connection to Mike Rogers which is true you know and then Mike Rogers is like well I'll disavow him I'll disavow Jake Lang but um also will have dual disavow piker and now we're like in a back and forth about you know disavow off I know that's a man classic disavow off I think lamers like a mayor's bed on a sports game yeah there's there is something about that like pretty man those are pretty man the other side of it right now where

this I believe she said these she stakes from Chicago filly whatever I wasn't listening I was waiting for my turn to talk but I was trying to spot what I was gonna say is yes there's like the tit for tat for how you respond to these things right and and then there's sort of the proactive rhetoric whether it's in responding to the soundpiker thing which he did right he's not just ignoring it he is responding to it and then what you're doing proactively to address those kinds of things

and I will say like I read the statement he put out in response to the backlash to a comment from his son piker from his fucking stream because we've all decided that his son piker is the main character in american politics you have fox news on his there is every third figure it's just it's a son trump and then just a socialist that chosen at random basically maybe a trans swimmer

“will get in there but that's it that's what's on fox news and so like his response was also”

and in the third way and some other democrats and and the essay people right like every lot of people are invested in making his own the main character of the mentors but if you look at that statement it like I think all the sentiment inside of the statement is good but it's very like it's very careful right it's very careful statement and not like I that there needs to be if he's going like if he's trying to prove to the Jewish voters in michigan that he would like

to come home despite having had thirty or sixty million sixty million dollars worth of ads dumped

on his head then then like the same language that he would use the defiant language about saying this is why we need medicare for all or like this is why we need to take on the corporations like that level of defiance is certainly welcome in describing antisemitism right it had like like it's a very it's a very kind of careful language as opposed to something that's like it's more more in the style that he's using on every other issue that's all those are

some interesting news about rogers uh over the weekend uh access report that allies of rogers asked apac to rethink their involvement in the michigan general election urging the group to quote get involved without putting the group's name front center uh the new york times followed up with reporting of their own noting the quote apac leaders have privately voiced unease with a plan that makes apac appear is if it is hiding none of this has stopped rogers from fundraising with apac

he attended three apac funders there's in LA over the weekend and a fourth on monday

“what do you guys make a little request from uh from the rogers camp i mean i think it tells you a”

lot about how toxic the apac brand has become politically i think ultimately what they're doing

they're saying just don't spend on your own behalf funnel your money to some other superpac and have them spend it for you which is what apac will probably do although does make apac look incredibly weak if they can't even run ads although they normally don't run ads in a general election they usually just screw around a democratic primaries taking our progressives so this is new for them but it's uh it's a punch in the gut but also apac has run tons of ads

under the name of other organizations and not or they're they're ads during this primer anything to do with israel at all they were about sort of accusing him of being anti-women and other things like that so like they already are running a campaign which at least for most people they're trying to kind of make it about other issues and not about apac seems like they wanted the headline the rogers campaign they wanted i had line up there to say that they are resisting apac

because they know that it's toxic right like that i think that i'm sure i'm sure the

republican and a democrat right like i don't totally understand why he wouldn't want i think

“because i think that it has become so toxic that it is not just toxic in a democratic primer”

now but apac is toxic in a general election right right i guess i guess i guess i want to understand it's who are the voters i guess there are there are some republican voters might just stay home right cuz any right that are like independence yeah voters that are just that are they apac is extremely unbelievable over the event of voters um so but i think it's a i think you know the important thing is he's still doing fundraisers with them like if he's talking it's a double hit

because he it's a he's still allied with apac and doing fundraisers but he's all and he's also talking to both sides of his mouth he just wants them to hide the spending i mean i i he wants

the one's the one's udp to cut a thirty million dollar check to name your fake you know like

the cryptic fair shake so crypto funders whatever it is you know and have them run the ads the time to add another piece this weekend uh with the uh with the headline angriohio voters could turn their state purple again which details how uh ohioan's frustrations over data centers rising prices the worn around could put not just the senate seat but the governor's race in a series of house races in play for democrats and in waly uh a former datan mayor who ran for governor in

22 till the times i've just not seen people this pissed um what do you guys think to get to be true return ohio blue i mean how surprised at how bullish neat silver was on ohio we talked about this the last episode i mean look Jim or not to you the former congressman posted something on social media where he said you can get mad at me for posting this but i'm just delivering the message the biggest issues for independence are Iran war gas prices food prices utility bills rent okay so

today trump is further dragging out the Iran war maybe indefinitely uh that keeps gas prices up that impacts food prices because the fertilizer costs he started a trade war with Canada which is gonna jack up food and maybe utility costs and then trump threatened to veto his only accomplishment on housing so that wasn't it was fine at some moment also then waly had another quote in that piece she said you know it it comes down to you hate everything you can't be mad at the democrats

“because they don't control anything yeah it's like honestly that is what might get us over the line”

it's like at some point you know there's there's there's no one left to blame but there are Republicans that have had complete control over most of Ohio and now the country so um last but not least on the house side uh the times had another story that raised eyebrows the private meeting between house minority leader Hakeen Jeffries and Jared Kushner or the two discussed quote potential areas of common ground uh this comes with democrats reportedly prepared a lunch numerous

investigations into the trump administration should they win back the house in November which you guys think about Jared and Hakeen meeting what kind of common ground i i think i think baby in the west bank i mean yeah i think this this triggered me deeply because i obviously done not a big Jared Kushner fan looked my fear big picture is that uh and there's not really about Hakeen Jeffries but he's a part of this the democrats will once they get the gable and have

oversight authorities waste time with like sternly worded letters and requests for things instead of just subpoenas right out of the gate and uh those demands for documents and oversight have to include the trump family and the Kushner family and Jared's firm and Kushner is going to have

very powerful allies calling around the democrats maybe there are people that he's friends with

who are rich people in the orc or Miami who are also donors to democrats in saying go easy on Jared he's a moderating force he's one of the good guys look at what he did with the Abraham McCord which we all have seen a brought peace to the Middle East members since they were put into place and remember Cory Booker voted to confirm Charles Kushner Jared's dad as ambassador to

“France because of their preexisting relationship so I think that's why those reports were triggering”

on a substantive level and on just a political level it's like why would you take this meeting now it just doesn't make any sense there's nothing you're going to work on absolutely nothing yeah my reaction was like what is the common ground with Jared Kushner he's not a sort of housing policy expert he has no government jobs no government job he's a private private citizen with a lot of interests if you want to talk with the White House about finding common ground on cost of living

go talk to someone in the domestic policy council talk to the president or talk to the speaker that goes talk to the president right and maybe Jeffries is you know and the White House I guess through Jared is is pricing in that you know democrats are going to take the house and Jeffries wants a channel to the White House that is in Trump which is like that's fine but again that's not Jared Kushner he doesn't have a government job and you can't you can't take a meeting

like that quietly and then be surprised when the reaction is you know a signal about how confrontational that you're going to be over the next two years it's like it's just like it's what do you think you're going to do that and quiet me with Jared and then everyone's going

and dan wrote a good message box about why there's so much consternation around this and it is to Tommy's point that people are afraid that as speaker he won't be standing up to trump enough that he'll be too conciliatory but like I don't under what is your theory of power

in a second in in the if you're the speaker of the house you have the Senate you don't have the Senate

is it about launching investigations is it about a publicly defiant posture but you're your back channeling with the administration are you going to be drawing lines like if you do what I think certainly democratic voters want to see from a democratic house majority there will be no successful working relationship with the Trump administration you will be doing subpoenas you will be doing investigations you will be trying every day to get to the bottom of deeply embarrassing

stories about corruption ties to the Epstein files failures chaos abuses of power like that is what

“every day will be about Trump will hate you Trump will want to destroy you Trump will be saying you should be in jail”

he will be putting the DOJ on you so what exactly is Jared who we already did a version of this

in the first term ineffective ineffective feckless careless Jared going to do for you what is your

back channel with this guy who didn't preserve the power of supports really didn't do much of anything going to get you certainly before the election that alone after and now he spends his time spending billions of Saudi dollars on god knows what he's trying to colonize an island off of the coast of Albania that's not going very well he's constantly meeting with a Russian oligarch who is this economics sort of channeled to Putin like everything Jared's doing in Trump 2.0 is

really really sketchy and not something you want to be affiliated with in any way shape or form in something that demands a lot of scrutiny a lot of scrutiny. Chuck Schumer's probably pretty happy about the meeting. This is not him. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't do this one. It's tipped on run. All right the other cushioners find the lakers probably. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Bob. Bob. All right. One last thing before my interview with Seth Molten after months of delays

the Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy finally releases YouTube series the great American road trip.

All six episodes are out now each opens with a disclaimer that no tax dollars were used to fund the show instead there are several corporate sponsors many of which share a theme if you can if you can pick up on it Boeing Toyota shell United Airlines Royal Caribbean Enterprise rent a card lift and the U.S. travel association. The team put together some lowlights for you to enjoy so you don't have to watch the rest here they are. And as I say I've been carrying a luggage

ever since I carry your babies and you carry my luggage. If I do get it I feel like you can't say now. Don't hover. Yeah. Well, me and Bob can say no. They have professional eyes.

“Feel good not how they can take good young girls like you and I think cropped their minds.”

I went to an extremely conservative school in high school and I'm part of a extremely conservative family and that if I go to a liberal setting that's a way more rounded education than if I go to a conservative high school and then go to a conservative college that's just being kind of one-sided anyway. Like they're so good at it you'll see young people go to a conservative school with a conservative family and they get perverted and controlled. And now they can

hold the train and look down and we're a lot. Not me. The house is set up for the two of us room together. We're one world of us fun. It was good. We called our bitch. I did not. Dancing even poorly is really intriable. Maybe we'll have a little dance in our human heart. Here rocks to our for doing the show trip. Thank you. Oh boy. Oh boy. Dude. I did not watch that yet. That was troubling.

“I really am. It's so funny this idea that like there's a kind of this idea in the kind of”

whatever the conservative Gen X boomer mine that the reason their kids turned against them is because they went to colleges where they were as if like young girls had their minds perverted. Meanwhile you look at the discourse around college or like hey we got this problem. Our professors don't seem to be reading anything that's submitted to them anymore. Also the kids are using chatchipiti in the classrooms. No one seems to be doing any of the work anymore.

It just seems like I don't know that they're very good at indoctrinating us to believe in anything. Let alone specific liberal ideas. It was like Alex Jones they turned the frogs gay with the water kind of said that poor first of all this poor kid like doesn't want to hide in this conversation on camera for it to be released to a total of 16 thousand viewers so far and YouTube going great for Sean Duffy. What weird? Well also it's like it's not even like she's saying I want

to rebel against my conservative upbringing. She's basically just like I'd love sort of a well-rounded

like to you know well around the liberal point of view. I'm just like no absolutely not me and Mama will say no.

“It's the other like there's a sound like a slap mom on the ass. It's infantilization. There's like”

there's like oh would you like I you will be like why do you think your kids don't have the ability to hear an opposing idea like what what what what what is it like should be in adults you know young adults like a person going to college or time where people by the way time you are able to serve in the military you're allowed to do all kinds of things in a dub vote and you don't believe they can handle a college professor telling you something liberal like what how little

respect you have for people. Dude you did road rules well what are you lecturing your child about they're like they're learning environment you want real world road rules the challenge like how you and Mama it's it's it's okay to go out and live your life and be around people who are different than you maybe you'll learn something put it potential next White House press secretary Rachel Campos Delphi yeah I don't know about that it is is Scott Jennings

“coming on a little too strong I don't know Trump said something nice about him last week when”

he was asked about it yeah it was very like cursor is good it's funny because there was the there was the Scott Jennings is in the running he had a dinner with Susie Weil's sort of new cycle which was immediately followed by the Scott Jennings is over doing it he's terrible the White House hates him new cycle so you can see a lot of posture in the media it's not at all clear me where Trump is heading we'll see up next my interview with Congressman Seth Molten and also

we are currently out to Ed Marcus team as well hoping to get him on ahead of the primary um that's up next today's show is sponsored by strawberry.me you're probably no stranger to seeing self-professed career coaches advertise their services on social media you can all feel a little at hawk a little vague and might leave you wondering is anyone being helped by this was strawberry.me you don't have to wonder because hundreds of this out of spite clients have left glowing reviews

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favorite crooked pods this week don't worry you can now catch up on the week's best moments on MS now on Saturday night MS now is streaming an episode of highlights from your favorite crooked pods packing as much analysis funny moments in 100% correct opinions into 40 minutes as humanly possible crooked on MS now airs every Saturday at 9 p.m. Eastern 6 p.m. Pacific or not give the site 2013 we're staying far at bekleidung here the greatest

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it's always an honor to be on the pods so thank you very much for having me back john of course

so your primary against senator edmarky is in a week the only three polls taken in august have you down 28 15 33 in the most recent poll do you think the public polling is all wrong or do you think you can make up a lot of ground by next Tuesday what is your internal polling show

“internal polls have this very very close i think the polling has been wildly often just about”

every primary across the country and the energy that we're hearing on the ground the numbers that we're seeing on the doors is incredibly positive people people want change but at the end of the day this will be about who turns out for this election and we have a great turnout operation that will help us win your your central argument is about the need for generational change which has already worked in several democratic primaries the cycle though usually it's been a

young progressive defeating an old or older moderate i know you called yourself progressive in the last debate but do you think it's fair to say would you call yourself more moderate than edmarky no i wouldn't i think there are two progresses in this race and if you look at our policies

in the first fall senator marky and i pretty much agree on policies there's really very little

his like my affordability agenda for example but you know there's there's no policy change that i've

made in this race this is always who i've been it you know take some time for people to get to know

you and as i've been doing town halls all across the state i mean i think people have seen how committed i am to change because it's not progressive without progress and at the end of the day senator marky has been advocating for a lot of things that he's advocated for a very long time and yet fundamentally there are a lot of problems that are just getting worse housing costs keep going up energy bills or twice the national average here in massachusetts and it's just people admit

that the status quo approach is not working and so i've proposed some transformative

“ideas to address these things and i think that's what voters want right now just to look at”

one policy difference like marky's for a medicare for all single payer version of medicare for all your for a public option that lets people keep employer coverage there's a good amount of evidence out there that even a robust public option is the more popular more achievable option even though it's more moderate why isn't your argument that your positions some of your positions maybe more moderate but they're also more likely to win and pass and easily achieve look i think

that achievable is absolutely part of the argument in fact there is an opit and the boss and globe today that said that molten policies are achievable and markies are not i mean he was reelected in 2020 on a promise to pass medicare for all in six years he also promised to pass the green new deal and yet voted present on it himself when it came before the senate has got fewer

co-sponsors today that it did when he first introduced it so again it's not progressive without actual

progress and on this you know the question of health care for all we both support universal health care in fact i've gone so far as to say it should be a human right not even debatable whether you're a citizen an immigrant you know homeless on the street it absolutely is a human right i think that's

“good for everybody in america but i actually want to get it done and that's why i stand with”

president obama which just says yes you can have medicare if you want it literally everybody can have medicare if they want it but if you're a union that's fought for years to get a great health care plan that you really enjoy you can keep it and and i made a commitment to keep going to the VA from a health care when i was elected because we know the VA's got problems and i

wanted to see them first hand there are a lot of that so we want to continue being able to go

the VA as well what's your specific argument as to why markies age matters is it that he specifically isn't up to the job because of his age or that 50 years is just too long for anyone regardless of age i think it's three things i mean first of all it's not personal you know i mean it's kind of against the idea this establishment idea that one person ought to be able to hang on to a seat in congress for 50 years even if the world is you know passing him by so

it's kind of this like establishment idea that the personal power is more important than public service that as a vet i really resent the second point though is that if we win the senate John it will almost certainly be by just one vote and we cannot afford to have someone miss a vote do a due to a medical issue or anything else and potentially have that turn into another conservative Trump appointed supreme court justice the stakes are just too high and we should learn the lessons

of dianfine stein and joe biden and ruthbader Ginsburg and of course on the other side of the aisle Mitch McConnell Lindsey Graham and recognize that there's just simply a risk when you reelect somewhat at eighty he'd be closer to ninety at the end of his next term uh then eighty

“but the third reason which i think is really resonating right now is that you've got to have a new”

generation of leaders to take on a new generation of challenges and opportunities and in the last debate uh we were asked about AI and senator mark he explained to Massachusetts that he can't tell the apps on his phone or iPad apart he doesn't know which ones use AI and which ones don't and that's tough you know after uh after the debate he tried to clean it up by comparing AI to an automobile and saying we ought to regulate it the way we regulate seat belts

I mean how are we going to make this technology safe if if the senators don't even understand what it does? What specific regulations do you favor for AI? Well first of all we ought to learn from all the lessons uh of messing up the regulations for social media and actually senator mark he talked about how he's been the architect of some of those regulations his ninety ninety six telecom

but have absolutely no accountability for things on the internet now he's tried to to walk back

“some of that but we all know the internet is unsafe I mean i've got a five year old and seven year”

old at home i've dread the time when they get on social media and we know that their suicide risk goes up that uh that the harm that can happen just from being on social media it's very real and congress is totally failed to regulate it so number one we've got to make AI safe and that means holding the AI companies actually accountable it number two we do have to win the AI race against china because we don't want to have zero accountability here in the united states because

everyone starts using models um from overseas and then the third thing i'd say is it there will be job displacement now we don't know exactly when it will happen or what will it will be so rather than try to anticipate where that's going like remember a few years ago and democrats said oh we'll just retrain the coal miners to be computer programmers and then they'll be fine i mean even if that was realistic back then these are like the first jobs that are getting automated out of

“existence by AI so i think we have to have almost a femo like disaster fund approach”

to dealing with job loss a federal fund to say look if every paralegal in their country loses their job within a month we're gonna help we're gonna bail them out until they can find new jobs

i think that's gonna be critical as well you mentioned china i feel like this constant tension

with the development of AI is someone proposes regulations someone proposes slowing it down the counter argument is well yes we want safeguards and we want regulations but we can't let china beat us so it's used as an argument to just keep pushing ahead like what is the balance between you know making sure that we're not all using you know chinese AI models or even if we do nothing about AI even if we stopped AI tomorrow here for some reason in the US um obviously it's

still gonna be uh with us it's the the rest of the world is gonna move ahead so like how do you regulate AI without um you know letting china win this race i think it's a great question john and this really is the administration's argument right they they basically say we shouldn't have any rules in fact we should just do exactly what all the AI executives tell us to do because they're the experts and they're gonna win this race against china i do not think these two things are mutually

exclusive at all i mean no one wants to fundamentally use a model at the end of the day that is unsafe in fact there's a good chance the government's will just shut things down that are unsafe so there's no reason why the winning model shouldn't also be the safe model i i also think that the wrong way to do it is for the federal government to say okay we're gonna just make all the rules because we all know

“we're not gonna keep up like we're not gonna keep up with the technology that's why i talk about”

accountability i think the big problem with social media and big tech companies is that there's just no accountability whatsoever if i were just starting to see big tech care because there have been successful lawsuits for the first time against against them for the things that show up on their platforms we've got to make it clear from the very beginning the these AI companies are actually liable

and that will force the kind of of self regulation that we've never seen appropriately with social

media but also importantly we'll be able to to keep up and therefore stay competitive with china and other countries around the world. Bernie Sanders recently wrote a letter to AI leaders Sam Altman Dario Amade and and Mark Zuckerberg following the news that their companies lost control of their AI models first it was open AI and then cloud and then anthropic and and meta said the same thing so the letter said quote in the interest of humanity stand by your words pause AI

development it is not too late to avoid disaster stop building machines that humans cannot control do you agree with Bernie that these companies should pause AI development i mean no john as you said like the world is going to continue developing AI i mean china may only be a few months behind us depending on who you talk to so just pausing it is not smart for the united states for i mean look do you trust at the end of the day uh the united states of america or communist china

to make AI safe i certainly trust the united states of america as many as many problems as we have um back here but again we have to make big tech accountable and so fundamentally i agree with Bernie um that they are not doing enough to make model safe and to show accountability for their behavior right now but the answer it is not pretending that this is not going to happen. Bernie's also got a bill on uh for moratorium on data centers um what do you think about that

would you support a moratorium on building data centers for a year until uh or longer until uh until you know we can figure this out and people in more local communities and states can

control like i think that you know people in communities that are going to be impacted by data

“centers uh both negatively and positively you know should make these decisions and there are some”

communities that want to uh centers because of the tax revenue there are a lot of communities right here in Massachusetts that are really nervous uh about uh dumb jacking up electricity prices when electric bills are already way too high here in Massachusetts uh there are a lot of people who work worried about pollution you know for uh for good reason so my view is that this should be this should be local control these should be local communities making decisions um the federal

government should not be forcing data centers down everybody that anybody's throat um but at the end of the day when when there are local communities let's say no we want this business we want this here we want the construction jobs a lot of unions are very uh in favor of of these data centers because all the jobs that they bring um then it's a good thing for our data to sit in data centers in the United States and not in data centers overseas in China where we know that they

do not respect privacy they don't have proper controls over intellectual private uh property

“um I think it's already a problem that big tech companies and AI companies use uh our data uh”

without our permission or any any benefit coming back to us but it could get even worse if there's actually no control over our data because it sits overseas there was another odd moment in an earlier August debate that I wanted to ask you about at one point you asked Marki why he take a meeting with a lobbyist on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein this was based on a 2015 email in the Epstein files where colleague of a lobbyist named Bob Crowe said he'd had an initial briefing with Marki

about getting the son of a former Senegalese president out of prison uh Epstein paid for that

lobbying but both Marki and Crowe say the meeting never happened three independent fact checks found

the claim mostly false or unsupported um there's no evidence that the briefing with Marki took place or that Marki had any idea Epstein was involved you also took $2,000 from Bob Crowe which you later returned but considering all that like do you still think it was fair to suggest that Marki took the meeting and did a favor for one of Epstein's pals? Well look I mean if you look at the email the the meeting happened um and it's not a surprise that Senator Marki would sadly

not tell a truth about this because he's been lying a lot in this campaign I mean he said that he does not take corporate pack money and he does he said that he does not take fossil fuel lobbyist money and he does the boss and globe and the boss and Harold have documented these things so unfortunately he's been lying to his supporters throughout this campaign and it's not a surprise that he would be dishonest about you know a meeting that emails clearly documented occurred but my

question was actually very simple it was simply just why would you take a meeting because this actually does go to the heart of an issue that I'm hearing all across Massachusetts which is that they don't people don't see the Senator I've done over 50 town halls across the state where anyone can come and it was like hundreds of of individual events but anyone can come to

over 50 public town halls and ask me any question that they want and I often hear we never see

the Senator I've never been able to get a meeting with him I've never been able to ask a question so this simple question I asked is why would you take this meeting on behalf of the lobbyist working for Epstein and not and not to take meetings with constituents and that is representative of things that I'm hearing on the trail but it's possible that it was just a you know a call between this lobbyist or or a colleague of the lobbyist and marky staff and marky had nothing to do with it or

had no knowledge of them and the emails didn't say a brief to staff I mean I've worked in the congressional office for ten years a big difference between oh we brief molten staff or we brief molten right I mean it's pretty it's it's pretty clear but you know look he could at least return the money I mean like the point is a lot of voters ask like why can't we get access to our Senator and this just goes to the heart of that question like the wealthy and the well connected even

if they're connected to a convicted felon seemed to be able to get meetings or briefings or whatever you want to call it with senators and yet ordinary people in Massachusetts can't and that's a change that I would like to bring if I'm elected senator we've actually won as many democracy

“words awards from the congressional management foundation as I think any other office on”

on Capitol Hill and including ones for transparency and to constituent services I mean literally the best office in the country for constituent services and that means people can come to us at all times for anything if I we do get a lot of constituent services requests from other congressional districts since they say I can't get an answer from from that congressman or that senator so we're coming to you and I think that's the kind of service and the kind of

like corruption is a huge issue thanks to the administration and tunnel trump but also it's just you can tell people are sort of fed up with some of the things that you're talking about just broadly with congress and Washington in general so it reminds me of 2006 and when Democrats took the house and it was an anti-corruption message you know back then there were sort of a series of proposed

“reforms if democrats took back congress what they could do on ethics and lobbying I remember when”

I first started working for then senator Obama you know he spearheaded some of those as well

have you thought about legislation ethics reforms lobbying reforms anti-corruption legislation that you'd like to pass if your senator and additionally even if there are things that you can't pass legislation you can't pass just sort of rules for your own office that you want to put into place as senator yes absolutely so first of all I was the first office on capital hill house or senate to ban prediction mark and trip market trading for me or my staff and that's

set an example that other offices have followed but that's a great example of something that we've already done internally and in those bands should of course be passed into law I also think that we need campaign finance reform and we've tried for years to get it as you've said people have proposed this for a long time it's been difficult with a Supreme Court a novel approach that I've been pursuing is to tie campaign finance reform to term limits and the reason why

this is an interesting combination is that campaign finance reform tends to be more popular with Democrats term limits tend to be more popular with Republicans in Congress and yet both are wildly popular with the American public so we could make a compromise each side could eat a little crow

“and we could do something that would I think be fundamentally good for Congress and raise our”

esteem in the minds of the general public but it's been proven difficult to pass without some sort of grand bargain like that I've also co-sponsored three congressional stock trading bands and you know I think that I've also disclosed my whole family's taxes in this race which Senator Marky has not I think that kind of transparency is just helpful and of course some of these were unwritten rules like we had disclosure of taxes amongst all presidential candidates until

Trump came along and just refused to do it I think one of the biggest lessons that Democrats

have to learn after the second Trump administration that we clearly didn't learn well enough

after the first is it just pretending we can go back to normal isn't enough we need these kinds of fundamental reforms so that the next person like Donald Trump doesn't come and just completely abuse a system once again you had a line in one of the last debates that said if you're happy

“with your electricity built tonight vote for the Senator expand on that argument a little bit”

for me like what is the thing Massachusetts doesn't have because Ed Marky has held this seat it's just innovation in change and an urgency to get these problems fixed because electric electric bills are not a new problem and we've had a high electricity rates high gas prices for a long time in Massachusetts and they haven't been addressed and in the last debate Senator Marky you know was he thought rather indignant and he he tried it out a list of things

that he's done on this issue and I said look Senator I respect your work on this I really do in fact I've supported many of those measures by self but we just got to admit that it's not enough when our electric bills are twice the national average it clearly hasn't gotten that done on housing for example there are a lot of tweaks in the system that have been proposed and worked on for a while but housing prices are skyrocketing in Massachusetts and one out of three people here

in this state thought about leaving just last year because it's unaffordable to live here so I've proposed a totally transformative initiative to make it faster than driving to get around Massachusetts by turning our commuter rail system into a fast regional rail system like they have throughout Europe who would finally connect north and south stations where we train from the north would flow through the south and west I mean I'm down on the Cape right now it took like

two and a half hours to get down here that that would be from Salem in like 45 minutes right

now this has been shown by our recent Harvard study to take 155 million cars off the road

and spur hundreds of thousands of units of new housing in fact this is one of the things that the the globe recently cited as a really achievable project that we just need next generation leadership to get done and in Santa Markey has proposed improving rail service to western Massachusetts his proposal would have rail service in two and a half hours which is actually slower than the same trains applied the route in 1950 that's just not the change that we need to

address these problems yeah so like I mean you know you you've said that a lot of your policy views and an ideology or similar to Markey there's obviously a generational argument there

years that a senator marquee does not or would not like what where where would you guys differ in

terms of okay a vote comes in the Senate and you'd vote one way and and marquee would vote another way yeah great question because we really do agree on most policies like for example we were just talking about housing I mean we obviously both agree that we need to break housing costs down I just admit that what we've been trying hasn't worked and we need to do something much more transformative like this regional rail initiative I don't think that really translates into a

different vote in the United States Senate but I'll tell you something that does and that is voting for Chuck Schumer when I started this campaign I said from day one I'm not going to vote for Chuck Schumer I'm not going to run on a platform of next generation leadership here in Massachusetts and then go to Washington and support senator Schumer senator marquee not only supports senator Schumer but just took sixty two thousand dollars from the senator out of the Senate victory fund the

fund that's supposed to flip seats from red to blue in Michigan and Ohio and Alaska and Maine and in other states across the country where we need to flip seats to win back the majority senator marquee took that money out of the victory fund the Democrats of the off-cross the country have

“contributed to it to bail out his own campaign and so that's a huge difference in approach I think”

you know John I've been working for years to do the opposite to actually use my platform of Massachusetts to raise millions of dollars for candidates across the country through my

serve America initiative that's recruited, mentored, and supported amazing leaders like Mikey

Cheryl who the governor of New Jersey who just endorsed my campaign Andy Kim, Melissa Slotkin, in the Senate Governor Spamberger and real leaders in the house like Lord Underwood, John Hays, Chris Hoolahan, Pat Ryan you know these are people who all flipped seats and I think that a senator in a safe blue seat like Massachusetts should really be invested in winning majorities across the country not taking money out of the fund to win majorities across the country

to cling to power for another six years. Last question for you set marquee aside you spent a couple years arguing that this party is broken Democrats are heading into a midterm environment but it's very good for the party but the brand is still underwater if you had to name the single thing the Democrats are getting wrong right now that has nothing to do with anyone's age what is it is that people know one thing about the Democratic Party and it's that we're opposed

to Trump and that's it they don't know what we actually stand for and that's opposition but it's

“not leadership and I think when people are scared and and hurting as so many are across the country”

today with cost skyrocketing and mega controlling everything in Washington and Trump just completely reckless and and disgusting frankly as this racist president people don't want just opposition they want leadership and it's an interesting way that I've sort of illustrated this in my town halls where I'll say okay ask everyone here several hundred people whatever it is how many of you are opposed to Trump's immigration enforcement and of course

every hand in the room goes up right and then I say how many of you can tell me what Democrats immigration policy is that that's this question of thousands of people and you don't get a single hand and this isn't some idol or esoteric issue I mean this is the number one issue today with ice terrorizing blue communities all across the country it was one of the top two issues in the 24 election that we lost across the board and yet for Democrats not people to say what our immigration

policy is now people are going to ask okay Seth what's your immigration policy three quick points prosecute ice yes it should be abolished the the institution is completely broken immigration enforcement should go back into the Department of Justice but it's not enough just to say poof you go away we need to hold these people accountable again that's a big mistake we made

not doing enough of that accountability after the first Trump administration number two

create an immigration system that actually incentivizes people to come here legally not illegally because for many people they find it just easier to walk across the border than actually go through the bureaucracy to become a citizen and then number three we need a path with a citizenship for families and kids who are already here in part of our communities now those are three broad points we could spend you know 45 minutes debating the details but the point is there you go like that's

my immigration policy and you know my experiences you get a lot of nodding heads but when most Democrats can't even articulate how we're going to fix this problem it leaves a lot of people

“feeling that the party is out of touch and I think we just got to get back in touch you know”

last thing I'll say is I ran for Congress because I saw the consequences of failed leadership

there are a lot of people making decisions in Washington that were totally out of touch with

“those of us who were fighting in the sand in the mud in that war of choice and I think there are”

a lot of people across America who feel the same way today that that Washington and these

establishment people who've been there forever are really out of touch with the everyday struggles

of America and the party that can better demonstrate that we're listening we are hearing we are responding with real leadership to fix those problems on the ground that's the party that's going to win I'm confident that Democrats can get there but I'm not sure we're there completely

“and and that's why I've been willing to challenge the party establishment as I'm doing in this race”

Seth Moulton thank you as always for for joining parts of America enjoy the cape

if you pass through North Reading tell people I said hi don thanks it's been an honor to work for your family and and friends in North Reading all right that's very much like district yes

“all right take care take care thanks again thanks to Congressman Moulton for joining”

Dan and I will be back on Friday positive America is a cricket media production our show is produced by Austin Fisher Saul Rubin McKenna Roberts and Ferris Safari with Reed Turlin Elijah Cone and Adrian Hill our team includes Matt DeGroat Benhefco Jordan Cantor Charlotte Landis Karel Pelaviv David tolls Mia Kalman Ryan Young and Naomi Single our staff is probably unionized with the writers guild of America East if you miss some of your favorite cricket pods this week don't worry

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