Trump's Revenge Leads to Republican Revolt

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I'm John Faber. I'm Dan Fyfer. On today's show, we're going to talk about how Donald Trump's revenge tour is backfiring in a way that just about everybody could have predicted. With everything from his ballroom funding to his insurrection, a slush fund, now in jeopardy,

we'll also talk about how Trump may have made things even worse for his party with his endorsement of Ken Paxton over John Cornan in Texas. And then, just to prove that Republicans aren't the only ones stepping on rakes, we'll talk about the long-awaited release of the 2024 DNC autopsy, and whether Ken Martin's job as DNC chair is in jeopardy.

We'll also talk about new results from this week's New York Times poll, focused on what Democratic voters want from the Democratic Party. Then you'll hear Tommy's interview with California Gubernatorial Candidate Matt Mayhand. And finally, we'll explore the question none of us thought we'd have to ask. Is Donald Trump going to skip his son's wedding?

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It seems like just yesterday because it was that the White House warned us to never again doubt

Donald Trump's political power and certain journalists proclaimed "unincredible few weeks for the president's political operation." This is all because Trump's handpicked primary challenges defeated Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy and Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massey. Well, 24 hours later, here's a text from a Republican senator to punch bull news.

"Our majority is melting down before our eyes." So what happened? What happened? Well, the Senate was supposed to be voting on Trump's bill to fund ice. But then he also demanded $1 billion for his ballroom and he announced that he's stealing $2 billion from taxpayers so that he can potentially hand out cash payments to January 6 rioters

justice system. Neither of these things sat very well with some Republicans, including people like

“Bill Cassidy, whose career Trump just ended and after a reportedly tense meeting about the”

insurrectionist slush fund with acting attorney general Todd Blanch, where some Republicans proposed restrictions on the slush fund. Senate majority leader John Thun canceled the vote entirely and told everyone to go home until June. Here's Blanch and J.D. Vance earlier in the week,

refusing to rule out taxpayer-funded payouts for violent insurrectionists. You know, who never

ever gets an ounce of sympathy when it comes to that disproportionate sentencing is people who voted for Donald Trump and participated in the January 6 protests? Well, individuals who assaulted capital-hill police officers be eligible for this fund. Well, as it makes plain, anyway, it's just let me know if they're eligible for the fund. As was made plain yesterday, anybody in this country is eligible to apply. You're not going to submit this proposal to any federal judge or

“in that there is no judge. Any independent authority? What does that mean in independent authority?”

It means not somebody who's getting to pick five of the members who is the president's former personal attorney. That would be somebody who would be independent. And the acting attorney general, okay, the fact that I used to be president Trump's lawyer is just a fact, but I am the acting attorney general. So don't say the president's former personal lawyer will do something. The acting attorney general will do something. Mr. Attorney general, you are acting today

like the president's personal attorney. And that's the whole problem. That's the good shit right there. It's the good shit. What a fucking liner. So after Senator Republicans were in revolt and the majority

knew smelting down. Trump has asked about it in the oval on Thursday. Here's what he said.

Okay, well, we'll dig into that in a little bit. An incredible week for Trump's political operation, Dan. Just an incredible truly unbelievable. Let's start with the slush fund. Oh, you and I talked about this on last Friday's episode. And we talked about how Trump potentially settling the IRS lawsuit by personally pocketing billions in taxpayer dollars was maybe the worst political move we could imagine. And then they did the slush fund. Right, as we were finishing the

recording. So we only briefly get to talk about it. What do you think? What do you think about the political move of instead of Trump just pocketing the cash deciding to put it in a fund with no accountability whatsoever. So they can secretly pay out whoever they'd like. Look, these brilliant

fucking geniuses in the Trump political team. The same ones who spent $20 million to defeat a

public and congressman, a district that Trump won by 35 points. Really, figure this one out. So instead of giving billions of dollars to one criminal, they're going to give 1.776 billion, which is so clever, to an untold number of criminals, many of whom committed violent offenses assaulting the capital and assaulting police officers. It is a move so bad that even Republican senators can figure out that it's bad politically. Just so I mean, part of this is it's such a politically bad

move that's I've been shocked by it. I've been laughing about it because how could you be so stupid. It's fun watching the Republicans freak out about this and everything fall apart. But NPR did a story about it where they started going through some of the potential January 6th convicted felons or people who were going to be on trial until Trump pardon them and to talk about how this would play out. This guy Jake Lang, he admitted to using a bat to attack police. He was on trial for assault

when Trump pardoned him. He's now a white power activist who's on video saying the N word and giving Nazi salutes when NPR called to confirm that he plans to apply for a payout, which he did, he confirmed it. He answered the phone, Jake Lang's office, America's newest billionaire, and he said that the message he told NPR that the message Trump was sending with the fund is, and this is a quote, from the insurrectionist who beat police officers with a bat. "If you do the right thing in the

“face of evil, you will be rewarded for your bravery and patriotism." That's what's happening there.”

That's what's happening. Another January 6th writer, Andrew Paul Johnson, is currently serving a

them, quote, "my Trump box that he expected to get as part of a restitution fund." And then

that exchange re-wash between Van Holland and Blanche, Van Holland was asking about that case and asking Blanche to rule out that that fucking guy could apply for a payout from this slush fund, and you heard Blanche like he just, he won't rule it out. I mean, it's pretty clear what happened

“here is Trump wanted his money. I think he, someone was able to convince him that him directly”

taking the money was probably a bridge too far politically, and plus he's made so many other billions from so many other crooked schemes that he could take a pass on this one, but he obviously wasn't going to let it go. And they were facing this deadline, because if they did it because there was a court of post-edience or the day before the court in post-edience, they hatched together a poorly thought out plan that they thought would appeal

to Trump, right? It's not as bad as Trump getting the money, although that is actually debatable, but would, you know, it would still fit with his does need for revenge, and it's pretty like perfect Trump. Like these people, these are my people, I'm going to help my people, I'm going to hook up my people, and they didn't think through any of the consequences,

“they just assumed every problem would be for it, and as you said, they stepped on a rake.”

It's like a very obvious, very clear, very politically damaging rake, but they did it, because they're kind of morons. And there's no oversight, no accountability over this fund,

whatsoever. We may never know who they pay, how much they pay them, who applies, who gets,

who gets accepted into this fucking slush fund, who gets denied, none of that, because Trump picks the people on the board, except for one gets appointed by Congress, who, you know, he can find a lacking in Congress to give him whoever he wants. Trump can fire them at any time. The report is not required to be released to the public in any way, shape or form. So the whole thing is just a fucking scam, and it seems like it's, I guess, two January six police officers filed a lawsuit to try

to stop this, but there are going to be, I guess that's the best case they can make for standing, right, because they were police officers harmed in this. But the challenge is to have, like, who has standing to sue on this, and the fact that it is a, it is legal, because Congress passed

a law to give the Justice Department, basically, an unlimited fund for restitution in the event

that people sue the U.S. government, and then the Justice Department would have to pay it out, which is like, yeah, of course, right, if someone sue the federal government, and they win, the federal government has to get the money from somewhere to pay them out. But I don't think anyone envisioned that the fund would be used in this way. No, just driving a corrupt truck through another giant loophole in our system. Here's a statement on the, on the fund. So the nation's top

law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops, utterly stupid,

“morally wrong, take your pick. Guess who that came from, Dan? I think I know the answer. So”

it was to pretend like I don't. Was that a resistance Democrat? Was that someone on MS now? Was that a, was that, was that, was that a Wednesday's episode of Only Friends with Human Tell me? It was. Subscribe now. Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell. Well, Mitch, the reason we're in this place, by the way, is because of you. Yep. Just you had just had the courage that could have, could have, Mike then said, could have convicted him after January's fix, and then none of these writers have

been getting any money. How likely do you think it is that Congress will impose some kind of restrictions on the slush fund? Legislation was introduced today Thursday to ban the entire slush fund, not restrictions, just ban it. That was, that was by, introduced by Democrat Tom Swazzy in the house and Republican Brian Fitzpatrick, who's in a swing district in Pennsylvania, and who Trump just threatened yesterday with a primary challenge in response to a question he didn't like from

Fitzpatrick's fiance, Fox News reporter Jackie Heiner. Well, it's really clever of Trump to, threaten a primary challenge on Wednesday when the primary was Tuesday. Which is also, it's notable that all of the sudden Brian Fitzpatrick has found his courage that after his primary, yeah. Do you think, I mean, I know that we were, like, not scared to talk about this, but on that note, like, I do wonder if a lot, like, we're, we're certainly

going to see an outbreak of courage among Republicans now that most of the primaries have passed. It's, I mean, interesting political calculus. Like someone like Fitzpatrick, who is in, he might be the most vulnerable Republican in the country or he has a lot of, he's, he's up there. We got some people who have been redistricting it out of existence, but of the people who remain in

which is, on one hand, Trump attacking you would seem favorable, like, just hit, if I was Fitzpatrick,

“I would think, in that district, I think about taking the footage of Trump saying that he votes against”

all the time and put it in ad. But in mode, but the challenge is, they also need Republican turnout. And if Trump is trashing you, are that people going to turn out for you? And that's the, that's the real question. Yeah, that is a good point. Well, so then, what do you think about getting restrictions on this slush fund? Because it does seem like they're going for restrictions in this ice funding bill, which is reconciliation, which means that you would only

need, you know, 51 votes in the Senate. There's two things happening here. One is, as we mentioned, the Republicans recognize this is terrible politics. And they don't want to vote for it. And they

know how bad it is. They feel the same way about the ballroom, which I'll talk about in a second.

The other thing is happening in the Senate is, people are just pissed to Trump. Like, they, he took out, Tom Tillis, and, you know, Tom Tillis retired rather than face a primary challenge. But Roy Cooper is much more likely the next Senator of North Carolina, because he's running against a anonymous RNC chair that Trump installed as the nominee. They took out Bill Cassidy. They did, he just endorsed, as we'll talk about, just endorsed against John Kornin, the number

two person in the Senate for Republicans. And so he's basically taking other people. And so they're, they're both pissed like on this personal level that he keeps taking out their friends, but they're also, he's making, and almost all of these cases, he's making it less likely they

“keep the majority. And so I think they're starting to get restive here and are looking for some place”

to show that they have some measure of spy. Now, are the restrictions they're going to put in, be, you know, likely be pretty weak? Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the, that's the case. But I, I would be surprised. I would be surprised. And I know it's ever made a lot of money bedding on congressional Republicans to do something brave. But I would be surprised that this bill passed without some measure of something that at least is a punitive fig leave of restriction on this

slush fund. The challenge here is I don't think they get any, they're not going to get any Democratic votes for it, right? Even though even though Democrats would want to ban this, if it goes in the ice funding bill, the restrictions, Democrats aren't going to vote for the ice. Where you'll get it on the amendment in the, in the, in the, in the, in the Votorama. Oh, so Democrats can get it in there and vote again. Okay. I think I just way outstripped my

expertise on Senate budget procedure. But I think that's right. I think that's good enough. That's good enough for this episode. Today's show is sponsored by strawberry.me. You think about switching jobs? Yeah. Ask yourself these questions. And my growing, we're just repeating the same experience over and over again. Okay. Ladder. The tough question to ask. Do I feel energized by my work? Obviously, or am I constantly

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Next up, the billion dollars Trump wants for his ballroom, which he then just said he doesn't need.

On Saturday, the Senate Parliamentarian ruled that the money couldn't be included in the ice funding bill because it doesn't comply with the Senate's budget rules. Trump then demanded that Republicans fire the parliamentarian, but Republicans decided to remove the funding instead of the parliamentarian. It meaning that they didn't have the votes anyway, probably because enough of them realized that asking taxpayers to fork over a billion dollars for a ballroom, no one asked for is a

fucking crazy. Trump meanwhile took reporters on a tour of the construction site this week, which is, you know, that's his passion. And he defended the project as a military necessity and he said that the roof would be a drone port that protects all of Washington. Does he think it's, is there just like an iron dome over the White House now in Washington?

“Because of the, because that's what the ballroom is. He also announced how many stories”

deep the bunker would be, which is probably not a piece of information. You just want to hand out to the public? No, no. Is the ballroom in jeopardy? Like, does Trump, Trump then said he doesn't need the money. It seems like he wanted the money pretty badly, which is why he told them to fire the parliamentarian and is getting really pissed about this. Is he going to find a way to just steal the money from taxpayers? Like he's been doing

now with this slush fund for insurrectionists or maybe he just extorts more rich people with business before the government, just give donations. Yeah, it's hard to say. I, once again, it seems

that no one in Congress wants to vote for a billion dollars for a ballroom. And they're going to,

Trump is trying to do the wife trying to do it. Well, it's not really for the ballroom. It's paid for by all the rich people who were buying access in turn and exchange for the ballroom. But it's the security, the necessary security underneath the ballroom that is the cost of billion dollars. It's too late for that. It's the one billion dollar ballroom. That's everyone understands it and actual impressive democratic messaging victory in this day and age. So we should applaud that.

Maybe Elon Musk fresh off the SpaceX IPO comes in and gives a billion dollars to build the rest of it. But I don't know how they're going to get. It doesn't seem like they're going to be able to get money out of Congress for this year. No one wants to do this, this close to the election. Maybe they can throw something into an end to the year deal after the election. I don't know,

“but seems hard. And I don't think that I think that the reason they ask for Congress for the”

money in the first place is they can't, they can't use private donations to fund like,

yeah, I should never get security. Yeah. But then that says it's not something before we did.

I was going to say, I mean, who do we let, do we let Michael Dell pay our troops once? Do you see the news that he also said he doesn't need congressional approval to build his 250 foot arc? I have to say, I've tried really hard to be calling it an arch or an arc arch. I think it's an arch arch. And it's an arch. I think it's an arch. Yeah. Sorry. That's the fuck it is. We got arches. We got ballrooms. We got Katari Jets. We got, I don't know.

I've lost track. We got, we got new Kennedy centers. We have new marble armor rest of the Kennedy center, right? New marble armor. We have new marble armor. We have new marble armor. Time and energy on that. New hellepad. We got a new hellepad coming. The drone port. I've tried really hard to not focus on the arch, as you call it, on the arch. It just seems, I mean, it seems crazy. I was probably today because we're doing this on the podcast. I found they looked at where

the arch was going to be. It's in Virginia. It's across the river. But it also like, the New York times did a good sort of AI rendering of what the views would be like. And it kind of just like, it blocks the view of the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington cemetery. It's like bigger than anything else. Yeah. It's like, I mean, yeah, if I was like, I was a DC resident. I'd be fucking annoyed. But well, like no one's asking for it. No one wants it. Don't forget they were, we forgot they were

flexed. Yeah, we are also, yeah, we are repainting the reflecting pool. Once again,

“a taxpayer dollars, I believe. It just, I mean, we're defining empireship. It just, he is obsessed”

with home renovation projects. Like this, like, that is his true passion. He cannot be bothered with like, he likes stealing money, revenge, and interior design. It's like, it's like the most cartoonish version of corruption by like an aging dictator. He's just stealing money, cats, you know, smashing grab anywhere he can. He's just putting gold everywhere in sconst in his fucking DC home that he's turning into a fucking Versailles on the Potomac, you know, pardoning all of his friends,

yeah, it's fucking great. It's fucking great. It's fucking great, man. One more vote Trump's having trouble with in part because he ended the careers of Republicans who support he needs.

I'm measure that would force him to end the war in Iran on Tuesday. The Senate finally voted

to take up the war powers resolution with newly defeated Senator Bill Cassidy flipping to vote in favor. The resolution now moves to the House where retiring main Democrat Jared Golden says he now plans to flip his vote in favor as well. And all this comes as Iran is reviewing the latest U.S. peace proposal, which Trump says he'll give them a few days to do. He also said that the U.S. in Iran are quote right on the borderline between war and peace and that he's quote in no hurry

to make a deal as the price of gas inches towards $5 a gallon. What do you make of the latest

“developments in Iran and the shift of Republicans now being in favor of the war powers resolution?”

Just the cycle. It's every week. We wake up on Monday. There is a either true social or an

exeos post with multiple sirens that tell us that we're on the verge of a deal. We are right there.

They're circling around it. That reality lasts like five hours. Then we are on the verge of war. Trump is right. We really are on the verge of both. Then we are making war plans. We're threatening to bomb people. We're ending civilizations. And then at the moment right before the bombing is set to begin. Things get tacked and we are back to stalemate. And it's just we've been on rinse and repeat of the cycle for weeks now. I will say that each with each and each new draft of

the peace proposal looks less like peace and more like a meaningless extension of a ceasefire. Yeah, well this is the latest one is just like this will be like a memo that gives 30 days for peace negotiations. But like nothing happens within those like the straight doesn't open in

those 30 days. It's basically just where we are right now. But a more formal ceasefire for another

30 days. What have they been doing for the last 30 days? I know. What's different? I don't even

“understand what the point of the memo is. Like theoretically people are talking somewhere. Right?”

People are talking somewhere. People are talking somewhere. Well and it seems like the Iranians of course have every incentive to continue to kick the ball down the road without having to give anything up because they don't want to get bombed again because Trump keeps inching closer to resuming just postilities. And BB is reportedly pushing him towards that as well. Apparently there's a tense call between Trump and Netanyahu where Trump was like give peace a chance. And Netanyahu

obviously was like no let's bomb the shit out of them. And so yeah like what would I be what would I be shocked if this time we actually get some kind of a deal this weekend? No but I would be shocked if it was actually a meaningful peace deal that ended the hostilities and actually for permanent. What do you think is more likely this weekend? We take a step towards peace and I'm not a bit not peace but even like some like a memo for another debate or we invade Cuba.

“Oh I think Cuba is how anymore likely. Oh I think peace. I think I mean not peace. Can I just say the memo?”

Yeah I say memo. I say memo over Cuba. Do you know when we're doing rapid response three hours after this, the rapid response of the middle of its wedding about the Cuban decision. Yeah they will I will not be doing rapid response. Tom Tommy has to do he's got to speak to the people. Well you know what will be at the bar when you wave to Tommy. All right one other rake Trump stepped on this week that we got to talk about you mentioned this the president has

endorsed scandal plates Ken Paxton over the comment John Corne and the Texas Senate primary runoff much to the delight of Democrats in dismay of Senate Republicans. Trump called Corne in quote a good man but said that he wasn't there for him when he needed him when times were tough and then he dubbed Paxton of true Maga warrior who would presumably vote for all the ballroom funding and insurrectionist payouts that Trump asked for. To say that that's the big one. That's the same back

right where we would remember to say back we talked about forever and then that's just that's dead. Yeah I guess Ken Paxton will revive it in the next Congress. Uh runoff is Tuesday. What do you make of Trump's decision? What in saying? A truly insane decision. It's in the immediate aftermath let's just go back in time a couple months to the Texas primary which honestly feels like 10 years ago but Corne did better than anyone expected. The assumption was that

Trump said he was going to make an endorsement. Everyone assumed he was going to endorse Corne and Paxton was going to have if Corne Trump had done that Paxton would have probably had to drop out. His campaign would have dried up and Corne would be the nominee. Instead he invaded Iran instead of focusing on this, dithered for a long time, could have just stayed silent and then endorse Ken Paxton with a week to go. Almost ensuring the Ken Paxton will be the nominee.

polling. There is a slice of Republicans who will vote for Corne in overtellerico, but will vote

for a telerico over Paxton. It's just like he is so like, this is the example he's so focused on vengeance that he decided to go after John Corne. We were already, we're just talked about the consequences in the Senate and just even more practically. Like this day, I think I think the cook political report moved this to lean Republican. They said they will, if they will, they will, if Corne, if Paxton is the nominee. But so they probably still have advantages here,

but the NRSC, all the superpacks are going to have to spend ungodly amounts of money in this race to try to just win a state that should see they should have already won. All because Trump just could not help himself. Could you make a political argument? Yeah, I realize it wouldn't be a good one. It's not one that I favor. That it's possible, John Corne would be a weaker candidate than Ken Paxon, because the Trump, like the hard-core

macabase would be pissed and maybe stay home with Corne and was the nominee. And so you would

“sort of, and you need to turn out in a midterm, like is that, is that a thing? Maybe we would have”

made that argument of Corne and what? We made that argument of Corne and was the primary on the Tuesday, so stay tuned. Hey, that's true. And the next week gets, next week's polar coaster. I think that argument is hard to support. I mean, I look, if you, all the polling shows that Tyler Rico does better against Paxton than Corne. But only by a pointer to, in some of this polling, which in Texas could be everything, of course, probably would be everything. He's not

winning by more than a pointer to FYI, right, right. But I, I felt that the delta between the two in the polling would be bigger than it has been. Now they're having been that many polls. But,

you know, and then there's also, uh, in these polls, there's, you know, like 10 to 12 percent

undecided. And we have to look and see who makes up that undecided. But then I'm just, if you are in Texas, I just, I think that it's just, it's, it's like, let's not overcomplicate this. Ken Paxton is a man who is an absolute crook, a serial delta, a fucking lunatic. And he's terrible at raising money. He's on staff called the FBI on him. He's on staff. That to me is my,

“that's my favorite thing is like, how many people have their own staff called the FBI on him?”

And no one here, right? Nice. Checking. Um, they're all on the left. But Paxton's such a perfect foil for Telereco. This nice, thoughtful guy who can talk about his religion's faithful. Like, he just, they're the exact opposite of each other. And that is, that it really helps Telereco. In a way that is, it's not just Republican Democrats, like a good person, a bad person. And that, that is going to help Telereco. There's, we can put, we can pretend like corn in,

because he sucks as a politician and is in very good on the stop. And it's kind of, uh, he puts on a cowboy hat every year for an ad and it looks fucking ridiculous in it. Um,

it looks like it's basically Photoshopped on his head. Um, but Paxton running his Paxton is way

better for Telereco than corn. Yeah. I mean, I get, you make the argument that, that corn and basically is generic Republican in a, in a, in a ballot. And Paxton is less, is, is, is more vulnerable than a generic Republican. Because he, again, is, uh, committed bribery and corruption. And the, the thing about how close Beto came to be dating. Yeah. Uh, this is what, tank. I'm going to talk about this on only friends, which I was like, there's, there's like three factors

here, right? It's three questions for does, does Telereco win? Do you think the overall national environment is bluer than it was in 2018? Do you think Telereco's a better candidate than Beto? And then do you think, um, Paxton is a worse candidate than Ted Cruz? I think on all three measures, this is better for Telereco than it was for Beto. And Beto came within three points. Yeah. I think that's pretty right. Well, now those last three points. That is a long,

I might, I'm a sexist. I also said that that's where I came down. I'm like, and he could do better than Beto and still lose, like, just a little. But, uh, you know, I think he's a, I think he's a special candidate. I have for a long time. I know you do too. And like, I think, you know, everyone should, if anyone can do it, this James Telereco right now, and this environment, again, can Paxton. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by the Obama Foundation. Democracy

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I'm Dan Fyfer. For years I've heard from candidates, activists, and political staffers who turn to positive America for political strategy and messaging advice, because they don't have access to a political consultant or a pollster. That's flattery here, but it's a huge problem. We're going to defeat maga and protect democracy. We need everyone to have access to the

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Whether you're running for office, staffing and politician, organizing your community, or working in communications at any level, message box pro is built for you, to learn more or sign up good at messageboxpro.com. All right, Dan, some breaking news this morning on the 2024 DNC autopsy, Ken Martin finally agreed to release the full text of the report, which CNN published

after the uproar that followed his interview with us a few weeks ago. This is from Martin's statement, quote, "I didn't want to create a distraction, but by not putting the report out, I ended up creating even bigger distraction for that. I sincerely apologize." He also said, quote, "It does not meet my standards and it won't meet your standards, but I am doing this because people need to be able to trust the democratic party and trust our

word." Well, I agree with him there. The 192-page report is riddled with inaccuracies at times in coherent. Ultimately, incomplete, the section in headline conclusion comes with an annotation

“that says, "This section was not provided by the author." Still, Joe, you need to know.”

There's also no mention of Biden's decision to run again. His age, Gaza, inflation. Dan, do you have some thoughts you'd like to share? I feel like I've said plenty on this. You have more to say, I hope. This is so fittingly stupid. This is what we suspect all along, which is Ken Martin hired the wrong person to the report, the wrong person did a terrible job. Instead of starting the report over or saying that,

Ken Martin just started lying couldn't stop lying and just got himself into this incredible

hole. He doesn't get points for transparency here because CNN got some parts they were able to get from some sources, parts of the report. Once the CNN had that, then the DNC made the decision, which was the right decision to release the rest of it. It could not have been handled more poorly. Just every part of it. I'm going to go through a couple things here. One, this is just a management disaster. This is supposed to be a huge priority for Ken Martin. He hired someone

to work for free, who no one in the Democratic Party would have picked for this role. There was no actual process set up. There was clearly no monitoring of the process that were oversight or anyone working on or tracking what was happening because when he got, he was shocked

“when he got the report. Why weren't you getting in or weren't their calls every week?”

Why wasn't someone on your staff in charge of doing this? Why wasn't there a committee of people? I can think of dozens upon dozens of very, very qualified, very, smart Democrats who would have volunteered to be part of this process to do it right. I know this because there have been a bunch of other autopsies that have come out where they've gotten really, really smart people to do it and completed the work. Someone that we know reached out to me and said, "We wrote a 700-page

post-mortem on the 2012 campaign, the Obama campaign, and it was done in January."

That's just an absolute management disaster. The second piece is the line.

The line is so crazy and I go back to the interview with you, which is, we talked about this when we did the interview. We talked about it since. I just want everyone to fully understand. We did not seek out Ken Martin for the purpose of talking to him about the autopsy. We had no interest in talking to Ken Martin about the autopsy. He complained to you about tweets sent by someone who's not you. Ben Rhodes tweet. Ben Rhodes tweet.

Kicked it off. Then he came up to you with the grinder party. Sure did. Express this is Matt. You can talk about how he expressed it. The response was that he would come on the podcast and discuss it. He sought out the opportunity to do it to continue to push the lie. The argument that they were made, Ken Martin had due points in

the word playbook 10,000 times I'd interview. We can't release it because it would be a distraction

“and divide the party before the election. The last part is, yes, it would be a distraction. But”

the main reason not to release it was embarrassing to Ken Martin or not to come, come clean with why you weren't releasing it because it would be embarrassing to Ken Martin, not because it would be better for the party. Yeah. It's, if it was just the autopsy and this was just one incident here, that would be one thing. But the fact that it goes to trust issues and credibility and as Ken says in his statement, we need to be able to trust the democratic party and people need to be able

to trust us again. It is indicative of a larger issue that he has had since taking this role as chairman at the DNC and it looked no further than the April fundraising reports that came out the same day today that say once again, the Democratic National Committee has negative

$3 million in the bank when you account for the debts that they owe and the Republican National

Committee has $124 million in the bank. And then when you look at the fundraising of the RNC versus the DNC, the RNC has raised many, many, many, many, many, many more times. The amount of money as the DNC, but when you look at the fundraising between the D triple C and the Republican congressional campaign committee, when you, the two house committees, you know, the Republicans have out-raised the Democrats by a little but not as much as RNC versus DNC, same thing with the Senate committees.

So it's not a democratic party-wide problem fundraising problem. It's a DNC problem. And the DNC in one of the reasons what the DNC is not able to raise money. And Ken Martin has disputed this, but many, many the owners have said otherwise, is the autopsy. Because the autopsy has bred just frustration that DNC didn't do it. Questions of trust about Ken Martin, what are we giving our money for for night getting it? And this is, I mean, Barry the lead here, but this is why

I think Ken Martin should step down. I think this is a bridge too far. He cannot repair the trust here. He's not, everything we've seen here is he's not the right person for the job. I'm sorry that seems like a harsh thing to say, but it is clear. Well, there's, he has an impossible job. Being even under, we have worked with many, many DNC chairs, even under the best circumstances the job sucks ass. It is really, really hard. No one has ever seen a successful DNC chair.

People are hammered for it, but thing is that Ken Martin is now the distraction that he did not,

“he was trying to avoid. And because you're the distraction, then you should go, like, he said it,”

like he says in his post, my job is winning elections. Well, the best thing for the DNC, for the Democrats to win elections is to have a fresh start at the DNC. Both now and in 2028, where the trusted issue matters so much more, because the DNC is going to run the presidential primary. They're going to pick, they're going to set up the debates. They're going to pick the calendar, which is a huge thing. They're going to make decisions about how delicates are allocated. They're

going to deal with states to try to jump the calendar, all of this matters. And when people don't trust the DNC as happened in 2016, when all of the emails came out as part of the, the Russian hacks of DNC emails that showed that people at the DNC were favoring Hillary over Bernie. People didn't trust the DNC. They didn't trust the process. They thought it was right. And it hurt. It hurt in the general election. We need people to trust the process.

And I say that as a success fan. But we need people to trust the process. Well, and what he has opened up to now is any candidate who runs for president in 2028, who complains about unfairness to the DNC, whether those accusations are fair or not accurate or not, like no one's going to believe Ken Martin, because he has this credibility issue, right? And same thing with the excuses on the money. He did a whole thing with me in the interview about like,

“you know, we're actually fine and we're investing in state parties and you need to spend and”

all this kind of stuff. But like, I don't know, can I believe that now? I don't know. He had this other life for a long, long time and tried to hide it, tried to cover up this report. So yeah, I guess after it was released today, there was a call for DNC members, a private call

just for all the DNC members and it touched some people who are on the call. And he basically just

read the statement that he gave CNN, essentially, and apologized again. And then also said that that Paul Rivera, who he put in charge of this report, is no longer helping out of the DNC, because part of the CNN story said that even after he fucked up the autopsy, Paul Rivera was still

that he had fucked up so badly. So he said that Paul Rivera is no longer working and then no questions

on the call. No questions from many of the DNC members after this. I also got something from some of the DNC saying that a lot of the outlets are mistaken and saying that there's no pathway to removal for Ken that it's actually just a simple majority vote of the DNC. So that's interesting. And there's at least one congressman representative Mark VZ said that it's time for Ken Martin to go. So I don't know. I mean, I tend to think, do you think his job is safe? Do you think he'll

resign? Like it seems, it seems like a tall order, but I don't know. I mean, I hope he would be willing to look at the reality situation and recognize that because of the mistakes that he made,

“that the best thing for the party would be to step down. I don't think he's going to do that.”

We're in this mess because he was trying to protect himself, not the party.

So hard to say, I mean, you know, is the, are we really going to take the, even if it's easy, it's an extra ordinary step to remove the DNC chairs. And then we're going to do that five months before the midterms. I'd be surprised. And then you think if the DNC standard is a real question before the 2028 calendar is set is to whether we have to do something different here. Also the other problem is no one seems to want the job. That's good. So you need someone else who would

want the job. You need someone else who, you need the donors to say that if someone else takes the job, then the money will start flowing again and they'll start donating, right? Because you don't want the new, you want a new chair to still be stuck at the same problem financially. And it does,

you know, people have been complaining. This is a distraction. It does, it's some point eat up a lot of

time and energy, you know, as we're getting close to the midterms. But the challenges after the midterms happen, if they are as expected and things go well, again, you can just, you can hear the DNC taken credit for it in advance. And they will have nothing to do with the victory. Again, if things don't go well, it's still not the DNC's fault. They just don't have that much to do with with midterm elections at all. But as soon as the midterms are over, we're fucking into the

presidential primary. And people are going to start putting their campaigns together and you're going to need the calendars and all the stuff that you were just talking about. And so, I don't know. They just, all right, it's fucking mess. Fucking mess. I'm so stupid at the home. And we're not digging into the actual autopsy because it's a joke. I was just, like it's not worth talking about anything in it because it's not endorsed by the DNC or anyone else. It's just like Paul Rivera's

ramblings that are the basis of him talking to just some people involved with the 2024 campaign who aren't even most of the senior people on the campaign. Yeah, there's been a lot. I would say to people who were interested in what happened. There's been a lot of actual autopsy from outside groups. Way to win has one. Catalyst has their report. We've talked about Rob Flarity's bulwark piece the other day. There's one from I think the shooting victory fund, if I'm saying that

correctly, has one. There's actually some pretty good, pretty exhaustive work about what

“happened in 2024 that's what the people want. They should go look at. But looking at this version”

is not worth doing. Because you could look for it. You could, I would say read the executive summary, but that was also not provided. So, right, right. All right. Well, you think you'll come back on the pod? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe you guys will meet up again at next year's grander party. I think it's crossed. Maybe they'll be alcohol this time. All right. Speaking of Democrats being unhappy with Democrats, the New York Times released new results from their latest poll that we

talked about on Tuesday. This installment is focused on Democrats and independents who say they're planning to support Democratic candidates in the fall. Overall, more than half of these voters disapprove of the Democratic Party, more than half also said the party should move to the center rather than move to the left in order to win the 2028 presidential election. But when asked that question about specific issues, the results were more varied on economic issues. 36% said moved to the

left. Pretty competitive at the 42% who said moved to the center. And on health care, 45% of Democratic voters want to move to the left compared to just 27% who said moved to the center. And 26% who said don't move in either direction, health care was the issue where the biggest percentage of voters thought the Democratic Party should move to the left. And then I would say

“economy was next. And then when you get to issues like crime, I think was the top issue where”

the highest percentage of Democrats said that the party should move to the right or at least move to the center. Sorry. And then immigration. And actually, you know, when we can talk about this too, but trans issues was not as there weren't as many people. And this would go against sort of the prevailing narrative. But there weren't as many Democrats who wanted the party to move to the center on trans issues as there were on crime and immigration just still at the top two.

So what did you make of this novel line of questioning in the poll, which they did ask voters like,

direction do you think the party should move in? And then they asked which direction you think the party should move to win. So they did both. But the move to win basically asking voters to be

pundits is a is a new one. Yeah, I generally hate that idea. Like it's always it's just I much

rather more, much more interested in what voters actually think. Because you would like to believe

“that that's what informs voting behavior. But I will say that this is a very interesting finding.”

One, it just proves that among Democrats, the narrative that Democrats lost because we were too for the left, too woke, too liberal, has taken hold among Democrats that the plurality of Democrats believe that, at least on a core set of issues. It's just, it's like that's interesting, the other point that that has, you know, there was this battle after the election, did we were we too moderate or too left? And at least for the people responding this poll,

it was clearly the problem was we were too left, not a lot at left enough. And the other reason

I think this is someone informative is, electability is become the preeminent issue in Democratic politics. You know, it was a huge issue in the Texas Senate primary. It was a huge issue in the main Senate primary before Janet Mills dropped out. It's a giant issue in the Iowa primary that it's having a couple of weeks. And it's a big issue in the Michigan Senate primary that is in August. And so it's interesting to know what voters think makes someone electable or in this case may

make them think someone is less electable. You know, looking at the numbers, it is, did you dive into the cross-taps? If the cross-taps are not that, they're not that surprising.

I figured you did, but I did too. Yeah, I was reading a note about some cross-taps of people.

Some real nuggets, but it's sort of, it's what you, the findings are kind of across the board. What would be interesting would be if there was one group who really thought they should move to the left, but really just kind of across the board people or not moved to the right of whatever it is, but they, everyone kind of, all feels the same way, just in varying degrees. The college split on these issues is notable to me. Yeah. That non-college voters tend to want the party to move towards the

center and college voters want the party to move to the left. And then it splits on racial and education lines in a very interesting way, which is non-college, black voters and non-college Latino voters, along with non-college white voters, very much want the party to move to the center. And really, the only demographic group that most wants the party to move to the left is white college grads. Also, some black and Hispanic college grads, but it's just a larger chunk of the

electorate is white college. And more with younger people, I mean, it all skew younger, and all this. Yeah. And particularly on issues, again, against the prevailing narrative, on issues of immigration and crime. Yeah. You see that you see black and Latino, non-college, Democratic voters say they want the party to move to the center. Oh, yes, yes. I mean, that is the,

“I guess, I think we like, I felt like we were past that prevailing narrative, or that even”

that narrative is kind of, but I guess, it depends on where you're getting your news these days, right? Yeah. Just wait a week, get to the next primary. Yeah. I mean, and it's like, I would say the ability is going to hang over the 2028 primary in a massive way. And so this, this will inform that. I think the healthcare one is very interesting. On economic issues, it's only a six point spread, which I think is also notable. And then what I found also interesting

is that there is, they asked people, they asked Democrats if they thought the economic system in the country was generally unfair to most Americans, 88% yes, only 11 cents at fair to most Americans, and whether the political and economic system needs to be changed. And so 63% said major changes. 20% said torn down completely in 15% said minor changes, and 1% said no changes. Who that person is, the which Democrat thinks they've realized no changes, I'll be interested in.

“But I think there is this paradox here, which is you have people saying we think the party should”

move right on certain issues, but there is an appetite for big bold ideas on the economy and healthcare. And like people want real change. And so nibbling around the edges is not going to be sufficient, both in the Democratic primary and the general. People want to see that you understand the scale of the problems affecting their lives, the ways in which the system is broken and corrupt. And you have big ideas. So the sort of, not to pick on common Harris's economic

buyers. It's a good policy theoretically, but it just seems small compared to what people actually want. Building more houses would be a better policy. That would be a better policy. You can do both. Yeah, you can do both. But yeah, I mean, there was a line in here in the right up of the piece of the poll, which was, and when presented with two opposing economic visions,

more than two thirds of Democratic supporters, now 65, 66 percent, said they favor to candidate

who would go after corporate monopolies in price caption. Well, just 30 percent prefer to candidate who promised to lower prices by easing housing regulations and expanding energy production. Now, you know, some of this is in wording, but that doesn't sound very exciting to ease housing regulations and expand energy production. But just to give people a baseline,

“because I thought this was interesting. So they asked, how do you think about the parties?”

Is it too far left? Is it too far right? Or is it not too far either way? 55 percent said not too far either way. 20 percent said too left. 17 percent said too right. So right there, you're a candidate trying to win the party's nomination. You've got like a little more than half of the electorate that you're trying to get who thinks the party is ideologically good where it is right now. And then you've got almost similar percentages on either side. So that is a tough thing to navigate.

I also thought the the delta between when they asked people, what would you personally like, where would you personally like to see the party move? And to win where would you like to see the

party move was actually not that different. So 28 percent said they personally like to see the party

move to the left. And 25 percent said that to win the party should move to the left. And then 47 percent said they personally want it to move to the center. And 52 percent said to win, they want to move to the center. So you do have a percentage of people who are saying, oh, personally, I want the party to be more left. But to win, it should move to the center. But yeah, not a ton. It's the the delta wasn't as big as I thought it would be.

Well, it's mean for the reasons we should talk about for many years, which is the median Democrat is a is a voter that didn't didn't go to college and it's more moderate than most people listen to this podcast and we are personally and that's the party that nominated

“Joe Biden in 2020. And that that remains true. I think these questions are a little confusing”

and how they're ordered like, but it is just notable that 52 percent are generally okay with the direction of the party is now. How many of those 52 percent could name what the direction of the party actually fucking is right now? Well, it's good. I was just going to say the other thing that stands out in some of the questions that they asked is, and we always talk about this. But it's a good reminder for everyone is how like those of you listening to this podcast, you are so different

than like 70 percent of the rest of the electorate in that you pay closer attention to politics and know more about what's going on in politics day to day than most of the people who will show up and vote in elections. So they asked about Schumer and Schumer's approval rating in this poll among just Democrats and and independence that they're going to vote Democrat is 26 percent in favor

“31 percent opposed and you're like, well, that's kind of low. 35 percent never heard of Chuck Schumer.”

Joe Rogan, 11 percent approved 48 percent to approve the rest never heard of Joe Rogan. Nick Funtis,

what does that 9 percent approve? I didn't even see Funtis in there. Yeah, Funtis is in the cross tabs. They asked I guess just for fun. Have you heard maybe Ezra got this question and have you heard of the abundance movement? 91 percent of people in that they hold all of whom, again, all of these people said they're going to vote in the midterms. 91 percent never heard of the abundance movement. So it's just it's it's a good, a good reminder that people who are

even in Democratic, even in midterms, right, which is a more engaged electorate, even midterm voters are just not paying as much attention to all the shit that we talk about every week. These are registered voters, right? Yeah, but registered voters who said they're going to vote in the midterm. The Israel numbers crazy, only 20 percent favor more aid to Israel 74 percent do not. 15 percent sympathize with Israel over the Palestinians and 60 percent Palestinians over Israelis. The highest

group of support for Israel of any demographic is 65 plus unsurprising there, even that group 65 plus only 27 percent so that they have more sympathy for Israel and the Palestinians. That is just a just a massive shift on that issue. Joe Biden, Donald Trump and BB Netanyahu for that. Yeah,

had no opinion. Every age group of Democrats has a federal opinionist. They also support socialism. And they have a favorable opinion of it, which is important. That may be a distinction for

“that difference in the ads that will be running, but I think it does matter what people will say.”

But yeah, even voters over 65, I remember correctly, Democrats over 65, by a more narrow margin,

have a favorable view of socialism. Oh, last one I wanted to ask you about 49 percent of

voters said it was important to choose leaders with a fresh approach, 48 percent want to choose leaders with proven experience. It's a real... And guess, guess which, guess what young people wanted. Experience? Yeah. By like a lot more than other age groups. It was a sort of... I think that this one is, I think this is a confusing question. And I don't think it says exactly what you think it says. I think the backdrop for this is our reality TV show president who has no real experience in

this fucking app left and right every single day. And so I think the better the question that will be more interesting as we think about the 20, 28 Democratic primaries. Do you want someone

to who is a part of the establishment? Or against the establishment. Because everyone is everyone who's

running is going to have some answer on experience. It's just what experience means like we saw this in 2008. Like everyone can define experience the way they do and then you either sell it or you don't. Because if you don't, you no one wants someone with insufficient experience. That is true. That is true. While we're on this topic, there's a bit of a mess brewing in the Democratic primary and Texas's redrom 35th district where Sheriff's deputy Johnny Garcia is now in a runoff with a sex therapist

named Moringolindo who was posted wildly anti-Semitic comments online, including calling Judaism the synagogue of Satan and promising to turn an ice detention center into quote, "a prison for American Zionists and former ice officers," adding quote, "it will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles, which will probably be most of the Zionists." Disgusting. A mysterious super PAC called lead left, which was formed earlier this month and whose website initially linked

to the Republican platform, Win Red, has now spent about $600,000 to boost Golindo. Demolines super PACs have now just about match that spending to defeat Golindo and everyone from James Telereco to keep Jeffries to AOC, his condemned her. What do you make of this? It's a mess. It's an absolute mess. I mean, good for everyone for speaking up and trying to defeat this person. The Republicans are pretty devise in what they're doing. They're going to do this

in multiple places around the country. They've already tried to do it in a couple states including Pennsylvania. I mean, we have been involved in Democratic groups have been involved in primary as before, so this is not beyond the bounds of what's acceptable or what's appropriate, but at us, the list of people condemning her and hoping she does not win. Yeah, and if you are in that district, if you're a voter in that district, if you know voters in that district, like tell them to go

“vote for Johnny Garcia. She got more votes in the primary. I know. I know. That's what we're all worried”

about. This is on Tuesday. She got, so this is the runoff and she got more votes in him the first

time around. I can't even begin. The most generous explanation is that people who voted for her did not know about all the comments and all the positions I hope and that she obviously had a lot of money and spending behind her, so her name ID was better than Johnny Garcia. So he needs better name ID. Maybe this controversy getting kicked up will help sort of focus people and that 35th district will hear about this and be like, "Oh, that's crazy. We've got a vote for Johnny

Garcia, but anyway, we should everyone should get the word out because this isn't just someone who's like crazy, lefty. This is like a fucking concentration camps for Zionist or you fucking kidding me, like it's awful." And Republicans, of course, are so fucking cynical and having a field day with this and being like, "Oh, Democrats, Democrats are the ones voting for the anti-Semites and the people who want to put Jews in camps, not Republicans and meanwhile, of course,

not saying anything about the fact that there's this like mysterious super PAC linked to the Republican group win red that is spending on this race, which is just crazy." So Johnny Garcia, go check it out. All right, one last topic today. There are two very notable weddings taking place this Memorial Day weekend. As we've said, one is our own John Love It and Ari Schwartz, which we're all very excited to attend. The other is Donald Trump Jr.

“and Palm Beach, socialite, Bettina Anderson, which Donald Trump Sr. is maybe skipping?”

Let's listen to what he said in the oval.

just a small little private affair and I'm going to try and make it. I'm in the midst."

“I said, "You know, this is not good timing for me. I have a thing called the rad and other things.”

That's when I can't win on. If I do attend, I get killed. If I don't attend, I get killed." "What?" "Do you've got to interrupt?" "I saw this this morning. It is four o'clock in the afternoon. I am still stunned by this." I mean, we have joked for many, many years about how Donald Trump does not love his children and they act this way because he does not love them and he can barely identify them

and really didn't know parenting. This kind of proves the point. Yeah, just generational trauma, just in action. We're just watching it unfold right in that clip. That's just awesome. You know what? I got to do Donald Trump's famous for skipping festivities and any kind of leisure activity because he likes to be focused on the nation's business. He's well known for that. No one would kill him for coming to his son's wedding.

No one would kill him. No one would kill him. He doesn't have a lot of dumps.

I wouldn't even see anything. He's playing golf. This would free pass for this one. "In the Bahamas, I guess. Air Force One can go to the Bahamas." "You can go anywhere, yeah." "You can go anywhere." "I mean, he's just pisses on at Mara Logo because he wanted to charge his son."

"That is, I can't even imagine." "I can't imagine," that was so funny. "I hope he can marry." "I hope he can see." "He also wasn't even, it would have even been different if he was like, "Oh, I can't make it."

You know, like he was definitive and he had the excuse. But he did the worst of all worlds, which is just like, "I'm going to try to make it, but I don't know. I don't know. It's not good." "It's about me." "It's not good timing for me."

"Yeah." "Not good timing for me." "It's really it's your fault I'm not coming to your wedding." "Son." "Good stuff."

"Anyway, anyway, congrats to John Jr. Congrats to John Jr. We'll laugh." And John Jr. And John Jr. Just cut from the same cloth. When we come back, California, Gubernatorial Candidate Matt Mayan. Positive America is brought to you by a new truffle.

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That's newtrafold.com spelled NUTRAFOL.com promo code crooked. I'm Dan Fiper. For years I've heard from candidates, activists, and political staffers who turned up positive America for political strategy and messaging advice, because they don't have access to a political consultant or a pollster. That's flattery here, but it's a huge problem. We're going to defeat maga and protect democracy. We need everyone to have access to the best

“information and advice possible. That's why I recently launched message box pro, a subscription”

consulting product for people working at every level of politics. Subscribers get weekly strategy

members, data-driven messaging insights and polling analysis. Plus you get access to an incredible

community of smart, committed, political pros. Whether you're running for office, staffing and politician, organizing your community, or working in communications at any level, message box pro is built for you, so learn more or sign up good at messagebox pro.com. My guest today is the mayor of San Jose. He's running to be the next governor of the great set of California. That man. Great to see you. Thank you for coming into the

crooked media grand offices. What do you think? It's beautiful. I love the art.

got a motley crowd of field of candidates in this race, election day is fast approaching.

People are already voting. I got my ballot at the house. I'm an undecided voter. I want to talk you about it a bit. Why are you the best candidate to lead this state? Thanks for having me on.

“I think I'm the best candidate to lead the state because I'm the only Democrat in the race who”

has a track record of challenging the establishment within my own party to make our government deliver for people. At a time when we've got authoritarian president who is trying to take the country in a very dangerous direction, we need Democrats who can govern and make people's lives better. The way we win in the long run is proving that we can implement policies that make people's neighborhood safer and cleaner. Their schools better make housing more affordable. If we're

delivering bad outcomes and people are dissatisfied with our leadership, it becomes very hard to fight

for democracy and get people to care about climate change and many of the kind of longer-term goals that we have. I grew with a lot of what you're saying, but we're in LA, we have this mayoral race happening that's kind of goofy, sure you've seen. We've got care and bastion coming to the Democrat. We've just got a challenge from the left from Nithia Raman and then a challenge from the right from like a washed-up reality TV participant. I don't even want to call it star.

“Spencer Pratt, who lost his home in the Palacades fire and I think his channel very understandable”

anger about the response into a surprisingly effective campaign and he's tapped into this rage at the government rage at the system. I think it was bubbling below the surface for a lot of people

and not just people who are feeling like the economic pinch, like a lot of rich, powerful people

in this city are like pro-pratt now. Are you hearing that anger on the campaign trail? And if so, how to Democrats address it and speak to it when we're in charge of everything here and have been for a while? I am hearing that frustration and in some cases outright anger and that's exactly what I'm talking about. When I ran for mayor of San Jose, which is the third largest city in the state, I was hearing deep frustration with the most basic things. There's crime in my neighborhood,

sprawling, tempting, campments, or schools are failing. I can't afford the right. I mean, the stuff that really keeps people up at night and affects them in their daily lives and I realized very quickly when I was out knocking on doors and talking to people that we have to own those

“shortcomings and offer people change that is pragmatic and responsible. We, I believe we are”

almost continuously in a change election mode because government today is failing to get the basics right. In San Jose, I focused on things that are very simple but have an outsized impacts, speeding up, permitting, creating a neighborhood quality of life unit within our police department, building basic, dignified, interim housing and when it's available requiring people coming doors, partnering with our county to get more people into drug treatment. My focusing on very basic

issues that people see and feel every single day that you sadly see go viral on next door and everywhere else. We've increased trust in city hall by 40% in my time as mayor. I think that's the playbook. It'll look different in different cities and different states. But again, I go back to this core premise that we have to be outcome focused. We have to look at the outcomes that matter most to voters and they're pretty clear. They're telling us it's cost of living. It's quality of

schools. It's public safety issues. It's very basic issues. Now it's the cost of gas. Yeah, we could spend all of our time arguing. How much of the cost of gas is Trump's war versus a lot of it. Yeah, the last $1.5 $2 something like that is thanks to Donald Trump. But the dollar 50 before that is largely our own policy decisions. We need to be honest about that. I've argued that the gas tax in California has become the most regressive tax that affects people

living in the kinds of communities I grew up in. I grew up in a small farming town on the central coast. People can't afford an EV. California's were driving farther because they live in rural communities or out in the suburbs and they're commuting every day. We should keep it, but we should write size it. In fact, I would convert it into a flat fee that makes sure EV owners are paying their fair share. That would be fair. You provide some relief to people. And you'd show that

the Democratic Party is still fighting for working people and trying to make a real impact in their daily lives. Let me be annoying and ask a process question. We'll get geek out a little bit. So you got into the race pretty late. It was a crowded field. But now you've been running for a couple of months. And there was a poll out earlier this week that had you at 4% of the vote. How do you turn things around if that poll is accurate between now and election day when it's

what month out, less? Well, I mean, look, there's a lot of fluidity in the polls. We also recently had a poll that showed us a 10%. When it's a low turnout race and voters are holding on to their

happen. I believe people are listening. They're not thrilled with the choices that they perceive to be the front runners today because they have some very legitimate concerns about Tom Stier and Havir Bessera and certainly Steve Hilton. And I'm offering an alternative that is resonant with those who have heard it. What we see in our data is when people have seen our ads and heard our message, we go above 20% and we're in the top two. So my focus is on communicating

directly with voters through every possible channel, including thank you very much. You know, this is an opportunity today. I want to talk to people about what we've done to get housing under construction to make San Jose the safest big city in the country to reduce homelessness faster than any other city in the state of California and offer a different view of how we make Sacramento work for them. I mean, we have to own as Democrats, the fact in the last six years,

we have increased spending in Sacramento by 75% that's $150 billion per year more than we had

six years ago. And none of the outcomes that people care most about have gotten better. That is

“a systemic breakdown. And that's why I'm trying to offer very concrete solutions, fun prop 36,”

expand treatment capacity, do high dosage tutoring when children are falling behind to make sure every child's on grade level for reading by the end of third grade. These are things that work that we have not done largely because of special interest, capture in Sacramento. We don't build condos in the state of California anymore because the trial lawyers like the fees they collect from using construction defect laws to sue builders of condos. So the city of Miami builds more

condos every year than the entire state of California. Why does that matter? That's the most accessible form of home ownership for young people. We wonder why people are getting priced out of our state. So I'm running against the special interest capture in Sacramento and the status quo. I've done that as the mayor of a large city and it's worked. We've delivered meaningful outcomes. I want to ask you more about home ownership and young people in the state. I just want

more sort of process thing which is like, look, I'm literally not a side to voter in this race in part because as you know, we have this stupid fucking jungle primary system here where there's

a runoff, there's a first round in June 2nd, the top two candidates go to the runoff. So that leads

to strategic voting. There was all this anxiety about Democrats splitting the vote to Republicans ascending and right then we have a definto Republican governor that probably won't happen now because the Chad seems to touch Cuckoo and Trump is chosen. The British Short King is his guy in California. Yeah, what's going on there is Fox. But then, but then if people like me, we're just like overthinking it, right? Because I have candidates that appeal to my heart and I worry, though,

that if they can't win, then maybe I'm doing a harm reduction vote because I have candidates that

“I think are bad and I want to vote for someone to displace them. Why do we have this dumb system?”

I hate it. Well, I hope I'm speaking to your heart. Well, we'll find out. We got about 15 more minutes. Yeah. You let me know at the end. I don't think people should overthink it. It is almost statistically impossible for two Republicans to get through. There are not that many Republican votes in the state of California. Donald Trump is not on the ballot, which means turnout will be lower than it would otherwise be. Bianco is hanging in there with his third of the Republican

party, but not any more than that. And I think it's more likely we'll have two Democrats than we will have to Republicans by far. It's just not going to happen. So I think people should vote for the Democrat who they believe will do the best job. And I get rid of this process at some point, though. Uh, the voters can't. They can't. It's annoying. No one likes this. Who is this for? Well, at the theory, I do want to try to articulate it because look, they're they're trade-offs.

Partisan primaries also tend to drive candidates to the extreme, agreed. And so I don't know that there's a, I've heard another interesting alternative, which is, um, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I was intrigued when someone pitched me on this the other day, having the top three or four candidates advance and then in the final, the second round do ranked choice voting. I would do ranked

choice for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like that's always a problem. If you, if you win over the field

from 62, which is literally what we have on our ballot today, which isn't something someone named Barack Obama, I believe. Yeah. Yeah. Good move on his. Well, plates are. Yeah. If you narrow it to say the top four, then you're almost certain to have ideological and partisan variety. And then because it would then theoretically, if you did ranked choice, you would then optimize for whoever's kind of the best overall choice. So I'm here since something like that. I worry if you go back to a partisan

primary, you get the most extreme Republican, the most extreme Democrat, it's all, it's all decided

“in the primary. And that's by the way, looking at the other side, that's how you ended up with a”

Ted Cruz in in Texas. He got 5% of the vote, but because it was enough to make him the top candidate

come. Well, he has a very appealing human being, so I can see that that's 5% that 5% drew that 5% in. You have come out against this proposed one time billionaires tax, a 5% well tax and billionaires in California. This could be on the ballot this fall. Why? What's your opposition to this plan? Yeah. So it's not because I don't think billionaires should, shouldn't be pain more.

“I mean, I look, I think there are a lot of loopholes in the tax code. We should close. I'll give you”

one example. Today, very wealthy people can borrow against their stock options or other assets that they have not yet paid capital gains on and then deploy, use those dollars as a way of funding

their lifestyles, their investments and then never having to pay capital gains. That's a loophole.

We should close that. Actually, I give you one more. Elon Musk, if you were to die today, would pass his stock onto his airs, 500 billion or whatever it is and it would automatically get reprised at market rate, meaning they, even if they turned around and sold it the next day, would never pay capital gains on it, fundamentally unfair. So there are a whole bunch of things in the tax code I would fix. I also think with automation, capital gains will probably need to go

up so that we can lower income tax on those who are working for a living. But when it comes to this wealth tax, the concern I have is it's going to punish the middle class in California. We've seen about a trillion dollars of capital flight from the state already and this is right in line

with what we've seen in every other place that's tried to wealth tax. It's trillion dollars in

wealth asset value, right? Not taxation. Correct. A trillion dollars worth of wealth of assets that people hold that no longer reside within the state of California because their owner now has a primary residence and another state like Reno or something. Yeah, Nevada, Florida, Texas, whatever.

“And that's what we've seen. So there are 14 European countries that have tried wealth taxes”

at the national level, not even the provincial or state level. And what they have generally rolled them back or had to significantly modify them for a couple of reasons. One, they have seen the overall tax based shrink as they've had capital flight. People with high, very high net worths moving their assets and their primary residence out of the country out of the state. The other is to assess people's wealth is not a trivial thing. You actually need to have an army of assessors go out

and go through people's belongings and figure out what all these things worth and value them and then tax them. And there's a lot of distortion area effects. I just think it's likely to backfire. It's likely to be very costly and ultimate. I think it's the middle class. It's going to be left holding the back because there will just be less revenue, you think. And that's not just me. The legislative analyst office, the independent policy shop in Sacramento, says that we've probably

already taken 10 billion a year off of our future revenues based on the capital that's already

left the state. Right. But if we could recoup that with this one-time tax, I mean, it's estimates that it could bring in up to a hundred billion. I mean, it's hard to pencil out the math, right? Because we just don't know how many people will leave. I also feel like there's this concern. We're talking about like 200 people, right? Like 200 billionaires in California. If they all left the state, do they all really have that much income that gets taxed?

Like Jeff Bezos famously pays himself 80 grand or something and has since 1998. But all of his wealth is in often unrealized gains and Amazon stock, right? Which is not getting taxed no matter what happens. It's like how do we get at that money? Well, that's that's why I point to those other two reforms that I think make a lot more sense. One is, if he's borrowing against those unrealized gains, there should be a cutoff at which point it's considered

“realized and you have to, you can't just endlessly borrow against your unrealized assets. I think”

that's a way smarter way to do it. That's less distortionary. And I mean, it really ideally, that would be a federal policy. The other is inheritance. The best wealth tax is a one time inheritance tax when you pass things on. And if you don't want to actually force people to sell assets because it's a family business or a farm, that's fine. But don't re-best base the value of it at market rate at the moment the person dies. Leave the original cost basis so that

when your air sell, they pay capital gains. That seems only fair. Yes. And there's so many carve-outs from farms and like, it's like tens of millions of dollars is already exempted from the wealth tax. It's insane that we're not focusing more on that. So you're in the air of a city at the heart of the American tech industry in the past life you worked in the tech industry. Americans, I think increasingly have a negative view of a lot of tech companies, right? I mean,

as recently as 2015, Pew found that 71% of Americans thought technology companies had a positive effect

people are worried about the data centers. There's polling that finds an increasing number of Americans are more concerned than excited about AI. People getting booed for mentioning AI at college commencements this past weekend. What would you say to voters who are furious at Silicon Valley because, you know, certain, you know, tech CEOs got fabulous, he wealthy while they did not. The news media got hollowed out. They feel like harms were done by social media. And now it just

feels like the same companies, the same people, they're getting to run it back with AI,

which we're all told is this unbelievably powerful like step change new thing. And I don't trust

those people. I don't trust Elon or Mark Zuckerberg or Samuel then to be in charge of it.

“Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a very real fear and I understand it and on some level I share it.”

I don't, I have little kids. I don't want them on social media or AI. I've argued that and as governor, I would fight for policies that require parental consent for using social media, ban cell phones in public schools. I've actually got experience with regulating technology because as a mayor, our city is precuring and using technology and constantly thinking about the trade-offs. New tools can give us new capabilities to improve things. We've sped up our public buses,

we've improved language translation and our meetings were identifying pot holes proactively. We've done a number of things that are making government more responsive and efficient, which is great. That's really cool stuff. On the other hand, people's fears around privacy, manipulation of elections and just misinformation, more broadly, job loss, environmental destruction,

“are all very legitimate and that's why we created something called the GoVaI coalition.”

San Jose was the founding member of a platform that helps over 900 public agencies navigate technology adoption and it's all about the ethical and responsible use of AI. So we use licensed plate readers but we don't allow facial recognition. We don't sell data to third parties. We don't even share it with the federal government because we don't trust how they will use it. We deleted every 30 days. On the other hand, it's helped us solve murders and kidnappings and rapes and all kinds of horrible

crime. So striking that balance of how do we harness the value of tools and I think we want to continue to be a state that is innovative and that is at the cutting edge, but we have to regulate and protect people from these changes. Data centers, you mentioned, I believe this should be a national standard, but certainly for California. Any new data center needs to pay the full cost of the infrastructure they require, the full cost of energy. They should be required to use the

cleanest energy. Their investment should help facilitate the clean energy future that we all want.

“They should have to use recycled water. So I think that we can use the bar. Some people want to pause”

on building those so that's too far. And that's kind of my point. You have this sort of much more laser-fair approach on the right that is sort of like, "Oh, you know, business is good,

capitalism is always good unless you just have the sort of unbridled capitalism and see what happens."

Yeah, I reject it. David Sachs approach, we're laser-fair until Silicon Valley Bank is going to collapse and then we're screaming. We really need that welfare. Exactly. So I reject that mindset and approach. I also think though that there is a more extreme version within my party that wants to just hit the brakes. And I think I just believe we were better served. And I think historically we have been better served by regulating, managing, shaping technological change, but having the authority to do that,

then just saying no and having it happen elsewhere. And I think there's a balance to strike there. I put out an AI accountability plan that's all about striking that balance. It's about investing in workforce development, putting strict guardrails on the way that children interact with technology, accountability for data centers and robotics companies. We need to have an AI shared prosperity fund that is paying this, taking tax revenue from these hyperscales, these big tech companies,

and paying for the upskilling and reskilling we need to make sure that people are prepared for the jobs of the future. And look, if it gets really dire, we haven't seen this yet, but we should have a plan be if job loss increases. We're going to have to talk about things like a UBI. We need to have a whole other set of tools, a totally different safety net, if this plays out in a way that some of us fear. What's your AI drug at choice? You a graph guy, Claude, chatGPT,

what do we use in business? I go between Claude and chatGPT mostly. Although I end up by default

on Gemini a lot, just because of the browser. Yeah, everything that's always wrong.

There's Claude. Yeah, I was using chatGPT, and then Sam Almond did something shitty. When he swooped in, it was like, I'll take your Pentagon contract to build the autonomous killer robots. I'm out. Then you went to Claude to see a buddy. Yeah, who's just a secretly building the autonomous killer robots, who knows. So you raised a bunch of money from folks in the tech world.

“CEO is a Google Dropbox Snapchat twitch. I think some prominent venture capitalists.”

What's your response to people who worry? Look, when you take all that money, there are strings, and it could make you behold into the tech industry. Yeah, I feel like it's a very fair question. And my response is one, I've regulated tech,

and as an elected official over the last six years, I have never done one thing to benefit the

biggest employers in Silicon Valley over the people of San Jose. And I sure as heck, I'm not going to do that in Sacramento. I'm actually running against special interest capture in Sacramento. And I'm not going to replace one set of interests with another. I have been very willing and have consistently put restrictions on how we use technology, how we interface with tech companies. I think the, the honest reason that there are tech employees, tech leaders, investors,

et cetera, who have contributed to the campaign is I lead the largest city in Silicon Valley. And they've seen that we have led the state in reducing crime, reducing homelessness, building housing,

“fixing our problems. And I think people are drawn to results in competent leadership. And I'm”

just better known in the Bay Area where we have a number of tech companies. But it's why I'm spending so much time traveling around the state, getting to know people in other places and really making the case for good government. But I put out a very clear AI accountability plan that is based on everything I've done in San Jose over the last six years and is where I am on these issues. And I put that out transparently for everyone from voters to my donors to see it. And if donors

don't like it, they can find another candidate. One donor named that surprised me was kind of Joe Lonstale. He's a co-founder of Palantir. Big Republican mega donor. He's like a big Elon

stand, give a million to Elon's like approach from super PAC. Next up to you. What's up with that guy?

He seems a little crazy. I don't know. You'd have to ask him. I mean, I have probably thousands of them out. He's not like someone going to you back in the day when he was a Palantir or something. No, I know he's from the Bay Area. I don't know. I think he's just an aggressive tweeter. We've

“crossed paths. That's what you guys have been tweeting that each other. You know, look, we all have”

our weaknesses. And that's one of mine. It does feel like though, there was a time look. I was in Obama administration and they kind of await through 2013 phase of like the, there was a lot of excitement around tech. There's a lot of cooperation between the administration and tech industry. Probably too much to our discredited and the Obama world. Now it seems like a lot of the tech industry guys are like gloves are off. Fuck this. We're battling regulation, right? Like

in recent horror wits, according to New York Times, is made more than 150 million, 115 billion dollars worth of disclosed federal contributions to candidates or entities working on the upcoming midterms. That's like 50 mil for like a AI pack, another 47 million for crypto, super pack. Like, does that worry you? Does that discuss to you that like this one VC firm can dump 100 million to advocate for like, it's, you know, book of portfolio companies? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm

worried about concentrated power and politics in all forms. The biggest donors and tech now is becoming one of the the largest industries or donor bases in the country of any industry. You've had oil and gas. Instead of California, it is worth noting there are other groups as well from public sector unions to trial lawyers who spend a tremendous amount of money. Yeah. Sometimes for things I agree with that I think are generally good for society. Sometimes for narrow interests that are,

that are not always good for society. I actually got involved in the way I ended up in tech was building

tools for grass roots organizing the early petitions like the change.org tools, early fundraisers, go fund me these kinds of early tools to try to basically help people organize at a grass roots level and make the system more accountable to the people than to the donors. I've always been worried about the influence of concentrated money and power in our politics. So it does worry me. I do think though that the Democratic Party has to also recognize there's a split within the

party right now. And we have also driven away many people who have started companies or not just talking about a tech. Generally speaking, as I go around the state, just set tech aside.

the regulatory burden in California is a real issue. And I think we become very dismissive of it,

as do regulations, a Republican thing. That's just because they want more profit. I don't think that's the case. I mean, we broke the housing market by over regulating it in California. That's making building more housing, creating room for new people, for future generations, making housing more affordable is actually a very progressive aim. I totally agree with that.

“I think we're just so far from over regulating social media companies. I think Australia is banning”

accounts for kids under 16, right? I mean, we're doing nothing. Right. And that's part of my proposal is actually to require at least parental consent up to 16. So yeah, I think that's fair. But I do think we risk losing natural allies of the party. If our answer to every problem is another

regulation, another tax. And I think, look, within tech, maybe it's appropriate. The regulatory

environment is not very mature at this point. But there are plenty of other industries like housing and agriculture, where you could argue, we're punishing, we're actually restricting economic opportunity and pushing people out of state. You've criticized Governor Gavin Newsom for focusing too much on trolling Donald Trump. I think you said he made a quote, "blind leap into memeland." Gavin and Trump have kind of a ross and racial will. They won't they, frenemies,

you know, antagonistic thing going. It's probably unique to them, right? They're big larger than

“life people. But Trump and the conservative media, they love to beat up on California, right?”

Fox News all day is like some video, something that happened on the street. So I don't think the

Trump attacks end when Gavin is gone. How would you manage that relationship differently than him?

Or, or continuity would ever. I mean the way I think about it is there's a set of things that are just red lines for me and for the state of California. We're going to fight to protect our vulnerable neighbors. We're going to push back on ice. We're going to fight to protect constitutional freedoms. We're going to fight for our fair share of federal funding. There are a number of areas where, unfortunately, we are going to have to fight fire with fire as Governor Newsom has said.

And in San Jose, we've led us to sue the Trump administration multiple times. We've used our budget to backfill cuts. We've we're funding legal services for immigrant neighbors who are at risk of deportation. We've banned ice's use of masks and they're use of public property. So I will use every tool in the toolbox. Legal, budgetary, bully, pulpit, whatever tools we have to fight back. I do want to go back to the place I started, which is I also think that we've got to take

ownership of our shortcomings and start solving highly visible and visceral problems that affect people every day. I mean, I this may sound superficial, but when people drive around Los Angeles and see the state of the freeways and see thousands of people living outside in misery and tents and trash and fires and graffiti, it just undermines our credibility and undermines trust and government. It makes it that much harder to stand for something different that people can believe in.

And I'm not pretending to Republicans have got it all right. They've got plenty of problems and red states have plenty of problems. We we do a better job in many ways that being economically

“inclusive and certainly more welcoming socially and politically. But I just I think we've got to”

also fix our fundamental problems starting with the high cost of housing until we grapple with that. I don't think we're going to be a very effective resistance. Yeah. My last question for you is about housing, which is in California, we have something called Prop 13. Sure, you know about it, listeners, nationally down. It was passed in late 70s. Younger Californians mostly hate it because it means that new home buyers pay much higher property taxes on like the identical house to someone

who bought it 40 years earlier. You can correct that if I'm getting this from short handing us. It creates this general unfairness and it can lock up housing supply because if you're a senior, you're not going to downsize if that means you're going to pay much higher property tax, right? You want to work in that privileged tax rate. Over time, Prop 13 is gutted revenue for California's public schools and like smart kind of wonky people I know. Almost literally will

blame it for like all of California's problems, right? They're a number of books to them. Yes. And so like sadly, it feels politically impossible to repeal the thing because high-prepensity to vote seniors like it because it keeps their property taxes low. So like what do we do here? How do we bring some fairness to property tax collection, unfreeze the housing market, with this anchor around our neck? Yeah, how many hours do you have? Yeah, I mean, look at that Thursday.

I think one is just across the board our housing issues come down to a lack of supply. So we need

which will help moderate property tax increases. The reason Prop 13 was passed was property

tax increases were happening so fast that people were literally getting pushed out of their homes because they couldn't keep pace with the rising cost. So it it doesn't freeze it but it capsid at a one and a half percent increase per year, which you could argue is too low. Maybe it'll properly have a more functioning market. It should be higher, right? That's a debate you could have.

“I think there are some pragmatic things that it could be politically feasible. One is,”

we should enable older residents to take their property tax benefit with them if they downsize so that we can free up that housing stock. So if you're an older couple or you're living alone and you've got four bedrooms and a suburban neighborhood somewhere, if we could incentivize you to capture that benefiting continue to have low property taxes by moving into a condo by the beach, like great. We should allow for that flexibility and fluidity in the market.

Another thing that could be done is you could say, well, having property taxes go up more than one and a half percent per year could price people out but what if some of that actually accrued over time and then was assessed at the time that you sold the home and so that way you're not getting hit each year with a larger larger property tax bill that you can't afford when you're raising kids or whatever else you're doing but when you eventually sell the house, presumably the house has appreciated

“that's why your property taxes are going up. That thing gets paid back in. But I would also just”

note, I think property team reform is about fairness and distortions in the market. I think

it's a mistake for Democrats to make it a big revenue generator because the truth is while it

did reduce revenues to the state and to school districts. After it passed, we went and found a bunch of other sources of revenue. We created an income tax. We tax capital gains. We tax businesses. We tax everything. So our overall tax burden is the second highest or third-high dependent measure, third highest in the country. I've noticed, yeah. Yeah. So you're experiencing it. We found other ways to tax. You're right. We could talk about this forever. But you had a lot of

things to do. We're going people find your campaign if they want to get involved, support you, knock doors, donate, whatever. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. I appreciate all the great questions and my website is MayhandMAHAn for california.com. You can find me on social media. If you have any follow-up questions to this interview, shoot me an email. Otherwise, hope to see folks out there. Excellent. Mr. Mayor, thanks so much for coming in. Thanks for having me.

That's our show for today. Thanks to Matt Mayhand for stopping by. Alex will be back in the feed on Sunday with a conversation with our buddy Norm Eisen about the slush fund and all of Trump's other self-dealing. Check it out. Everyone else have a good weekend. But everyone. Positive America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Ferris Safari with Reed-Chirlin, Elijah Cone, and Adrian Hill.

Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hefko, Jordan Canter, Charlotte Landis, Kirill Pelavee, David Tolz, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is probably unionized with the writer's guild of America East. I'm Dan Fiverr. For years I've heard from candidates, activists, and political staffers who turned up positive America for political strategy and messaging advice because they don't have access to a political consultant or a pollster.

That's flattery here, but it's a huge problem. We're going to defeat Matt again and protect democracy. We need everyone to have access to the best information and advice possible.

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