9/29/26: UK Terror Suspects On Bail, Texas Diesel Emergency, Trump Diehards Jump Ship

24:28Right. We're still at$100. Yeah. So it's not like the crude oil prices are reflecting a pre-war reality. It's still much elevated over the pre-war reality. So that is some signal. I mean, I think it seems very clear that what Trump is trying to do is like jawbone his way through the midterms without things getting worse. And ideally for him, getting a little bit better in terms of gas prices. You actually have a number of governors, Republican governors in particular, Greg Abbott in Texas, who is himself facing a very tough, unexpectedly tough reelection bid, declare state of emergency on diesel prices so that they could get rid of any state taxes and bring down prices even just a little bit.

25:13So they recognize this really dire. So in any case, I think Trump's plan is let me go on my way through the midterms and then after the midterms potentially go back to some sort of bombing campaign, do something. The other factor that we haven't talked about as much recently in all of this is Israel, because we're going to talk about this later in the show. Netanyahu, who is a survivor of all survivors politically, he is the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history in spite of being constantly embroiled in all sorts of controversy and scandal, etc. He is facing very difficult reelection.

25:47He is under a lot of pressure because of some of these reports about his failures to do anything to stop October 7th in spite of receiving significant warnings from multiple directions, whether it's their country or his own intelligence or other countries with his own intelligence services. So in any case, he may feel like I got to do something before my election to secure my reelection, make sure that I can stave off the opposition. So there might be a lot of pressure coming from the Israelis in advance of midterms because this is his strategy of political survival. This is what he has done when he is under political pressure or when he's facing corruption allegations, serious ones that could land him in prison, he goes and attacks somewhere and starts another war.

26:32And that's the way that he holds on to power and maintains some semblance of political support. So I think that's an important thing to just keep in mind that that's hanging out there as well. And as I said before, those elections are happening just before the American midterm elections. They're basically timed to be at exactly the same time. So that's another factor to consider here. And obviously we saw at the beginning of this war, how influential by the admission of Marco Rubio, and of course, Joe Kent saying the same thing in his resignation letter, how influential Israeli opinion is about what we should be doing and how we should be conducting this war.

27:08Great point. Phenomenal point. So I just want to, you know, picking up a little bit on what we said yesterday, where the Iranian strategy, like a lot of people fully trust that Iran's strategy, because it got them to where they are now, has been the right move. But they are still in this weird strategic doldrum where, yes, oil is 100, but that is not going to kill the U.S. economy. It's just not. I mean, look, America's a very rich country. And at the end of the day, as horrible as$4 oil, and obviously I oppose all of this. I don't think it should be any of this at all. We are surviving. Now, I'm not saying we're thriving, but we're surviving.

27:48To beat the United States of America, you will have to make it completely intolerable and a long war, even though, you know, yes, their population is on side, et cetera. Watch what has happened now. Like we've poured the full force of the empire into the Strait of Hormuz. Of course that will work. I mean, nobody can stop that entirely. Is it sustainable in my opinion? No, especially if something else happens. But this, they're just letting themselves, I think, get stuck in this position where if they don't do something soon, I think that things are beginning to tilt more in the U.S. direction.

28:24I could be wrong. Of course, they still have escalation dominance and the ability to do, you know, really they need to decide are we all in or not? Like, you know, they keep, you gollop off today. If we can't export oil, then nobody will. Dude, you've been saying that for like four months, right? And it's like, guess what? Saudi, Kuwait, they got U.S. Marines on their tankers. They're exporting plenty of oil. Not enough, definitely not enough for the global market, but you're exporting some. So I don't know. I feel like they just got to put up or shut up at a certain point because they're getting ground into the dust over a period of time.

28:54I'm not saying they're dead and I'm definitely not counting them out. But I do think, honestly, this makes the situation much more dangerous. They've got to change the paradigm in some way. Exactly. It's just not working. Very likely capable, although we have more insight, frankly, into the U.S. military difficulties than we do into whatever is going on in the Iranian inside. But yeah, I saw one of the officials was making a comment about, oh, we have these new weapons that we can unveil if things continue. And it's, again, similar thing. Like, OK, we've been hearing that the whole time. So we'll see if they just allow a status quo to continue that is much more punishing to their economy than it is to our economy, not to say that it's great if they just sort of allow that to continue and hope for the best or whether they do something to try to change the strategic calculus.

29:38Agreed. OK, we got our friend Logan standing by. Let's get to them. This is Jacob Goldstein from What's Your Problem. Running a business is hard enough. Don't make it harder with a dozen apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. That's software overload. Odoo is the all-in-one platform that replaces them all. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, fully integrated, easy to use, and built to grow with your business. Thousands have already made the switch. Why not you? Try Odoo for free at O-D-O-O dot com. That's Odoo dot com. Did you know every 36 minutes, a child in the U.S.

30:22is diagnosed with cancer? Which means some of the bravest warriors you'll ever meet aren't professional athletes or superheroes. They're the kids in this fight. That's why I'm proud to support Hyundai Hope on Wheels. For the past 28 years, with support from Hyundai, their dealers, and every new Hyundai sold. Hope on Wheels has contributed over$300 million to childhood cancer research, helping save more than 40 ,000 kids. But we're not done yet. Let's bring every warrior home. Join our fight at HyundaiWarriors.com. My name is Tuba Nguyen, and enrolling at Rasmussen University was essentially a handshake to a lifeline, a career, stability, and a future for myself.

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31:21All right, we are joined once again by our great friend Logan Phillips of Race the White House to break down the very latest in terms of the midterm elections. Great to see Logan. Great to be on. Yeah, of course. So we wanted to dig into a couple of really interesting developments here. Let's put this first one up on the screen. You have a report from the Wall Street Journal that Democrats led by Chuck Schumer are actually urging Democratic donors to put money into the Mississippi Senate race. You have an incumbent Republican there because of course you do. It's a state that has went some 20 plus points for Trump.

31:56However, the polling has been scant and Democrats are feeling very confident. And some of the rationale that's offered in this piece is that maybe we won't win this time, but maybe we can do some good work building something for the future. What do you make of this? Is this just like preposterous thing for Democrats to be throwing money at this year in a year, especially when they are really being outspent by Republicans? Or is there some there there in terms of their political calculations? Well, I think this is one of those states where they are asking outside donors who aren't necessarily giving the money directly to the party that the party is then redistributing into this race.

32:28So it's less of a sacrifice. It's not in the area where the party itself is going to spend, especially as you said, in a year where they're getting outspent by so much. However, I think the thinking is this is one of those cycles that has potential to have a random race or two that just shocks the country. You'll certainly definitely see some of those in the house unless it ends up being a way smaller wave than we think. But the real question is, if this ends up being huge, if you put a little money into some of these places, it might make the difference between, oh, you actually had a chance because maybe there's a surge in black turnout, or maybe this is the year white voters are a little less polarized than Mrs.

33:06Hippie due to economic concerns. And so I wouldn't look at it as just Mrs. Hippie. It's looking at all of these types of races, Mrs. Hippie, South Carolina, et cetera, even though I think South Carolina is a lot more likely. Combined, maybe one of them crosses the line. Interesting. So what's the big question to me, this is what Mississippi, yesterday we covered South Carolina. This just feels like hubris. You know, Crystal brought up a very good point yesterday about how Hillary, in retrospect, you could say, you didn't even go to Wisconsin. You're spending money in New Mexico. There's something about this which just seems outrageous, obviously, in our current political paradigm.

33:45But what are you seeing just in the numbers? Like, what does your gut tell you about some of these different plays? My gut tells me that Mississippi is going to go red, right? I can give you the reasons of what it would take for Democrats to win, if you'd like. Yeah, Dallas. Yeah, okay, sure. So in 2024, this is completely different than the rest of the country, where normally, yeah, Republicans cleanly won white voters, but it's a very competitive block. Mississippi, not so much. They won 17 % for Democrats, 82 % for Republicans. Wow. and black voters were literally the opposite uh 82 for democrats 17 for republicans yeah and so you can leave it on for now uh so for democrats to break through here they're gonna have to need in my view at least 26 percent of white voters they're gonna have to get black turnout up from 32 to 36 percent and they're gonna have to win some of those black voters under 45 who wandered over to republicans now the last one that's the easiest of them to do because gen z voters are down on Republicans.

34:43But I think for the first one with white voters, which is the hardest part by far, these voters are voting much more along cultural means. Like A, it's evangelical. And that's a huge part of it. Like much higher percentage of evangelicals here than most of the country. But that doesn't explain all of it, right? There's a reason that Cindy Hyde-Smith is talking a lot about transgender issues. And so essentially you need Scott Colum's argument, the Democrat, where he's saying like he's talking about Medicaid, he's talking about the cuts to Medicaid that Cindy Hyde-Smith voted for could shut down all these rural hospitals.

35:16And that's a huge concern. Essentially, need the voters to say, like, why are we talking about these issues that really have no impact on their life at all when you're taking away some of the key services that in a place that's as poor as Mississippi, people rely on a lot more than they do in most of the country. Yeah. So we actually pulled some of their ads to give a flavor of what you're talking about. And so you have Cindy Hyde Smith, who's the incumbent Republican, longtime state level legislator as well. So well known in the state, presumably very tied in with like the farmers in the rural areas, at least among the white population.

35:50And then you have Scott Colom, who is a district attorney, who is the challenger here. And so the ad we pulled from him is sort of like he actually talks about the Epstein files is kind of funny, sort of like giving a permission structure for some of the white voters who previously were voting Republican to maybe change their vote or just be disenchanted and stay home. And then her ad, she's calling him the quote unquote transgender defender. So let's go ahead and take a listen to the two of those because I think it lays out your argument pretty well. I voted Republican for 20 years, but I won't this November.

36:24When Cindy Hyde-Smith voted to block the release of the Epstein files, I was shocked. It's just wrong to protect billionaire pedophiles from being held accountable. If Cindy Hyde-Smith will not stand up against child abuse, she won't stand up for Mississippi. Cindy Hyde-Smith has lost her way, and that's why I'm voting for Scott Cologne. Scott Cologne for U.S. Senate, because Mississippi matters. Meet the most radical Senate candidate in our lifetime. Scott Cologne, twice nominated by Biden, Beholden to the far left. Has DA violent crime doubled on his watch? He supports sex change surgeries for minors and men in girls' restrooms.

37:07They call him the transgender defender. Colombe bragged, you can't run to the left of me. Believe him. Mississippi's better choice, Cindy Hyde-Smith for U.S. Senate. I'm Cindy Hyde-Smith, and I approve this message. So you can see Scott Colombe's calculation there is he needs to persuade some previous white Republican voters to vote for him. Do you think that that is feasible and plausible in this year? Yes, and I do think he will. I don't. The question is enough. Yeah. Do I think he has a chance? Yeah. I do see some signs in how they're overperforming in some of these governor races. Cindy Hyde-Smith is the lowest hanging fruit of the GOP in Mrs.

37:46Hippie. She only won by 10 percent last time. Oh, wow. Interesting. And that is in a year where Donald Trump won by like 16, 17. Well, back in 2020. Yeah. Oh. So the problem is like 2020 wasn't like a bad year for Democrats. OK, it was worse in the House and Senate races than the presidential. But the gap alone between what we're going to see this year and what happened that year isn't going to be enough to push it over. Right. It's going to have she's going to have to underperform even more or it's going to have to be a much bigger wave than we think. and the fact it was 10 points actually is making me think huh because i mean it's i don't think it's crazy to imagine a 10 point swing in favor of democrats just given the level of disenchantment with them so um you know i would say still very much a long shot but it makes it feel a little bit less crazy to me that she was such an underperformer previously yeah i mean there's also a difference in opinion among people like me i have it at like 11 nate silver has it i think to like two or three percent.

38:46My thinking is one of the things my model does is when there's like different indicators pointing in opposite directions, it starts to increase the uncertainty in a race and say, OK, something could be wrong here, even though like the most likely outcome is a clean Republican win. There's a possibility for things to go haywire here. Interesting. Can let's talk about the models and, you know, again, to this discussion. Can we put B4 on the screen? I talked about this yesterday. Chris and I had a big discussion about it. I'm curious for yours. So this was Lakshar Jain. This kind of set the polling election sphere on fire.

39:16He said, Our model is built on a lot of polling, including our own. It really bothers me how absurdly different the drop-off of white respondents are in our polling. Whites who completed our polls swing 10 % to the left. Whites who don't barely swing at all. I'm guessing this is not unique to our polling. If the model whiffs badly, it'll probably whiff on whites, and it would mean that far more lower propensity R's showed up to vote. And, you know, TLDR for people. That is the same thing that has happened in every polling mess in the last decade. Like 2016 on, it's like for some reason they just can't poll working class whites and specifically like lower propensity Republican lean-ish voters.

39:53And that kind of comes to my mind when we're talking about Mississippi, South Carolina. Before the show, we were all talking about these Marist polls, right? Like Ohio, for example. What is it? The generic ballot for Democrats, they have it like 50%, right? And Republicans under a couple. This is a state where even in a bad year for Democrats or for Republicans, J.D.'s winning the state by six. People are like, oh, God, he underperformed, right? It's like, OK, he won the state by six points. I'm just pointing out like that one particular race. So there is a fancifulness to a lot of this type of polling, which just given my experience looking at this over the last decade, I have a lot of questions about a potential same error, especially white college educated Democrats.

40:38everything that Trump has done is like poster child of like everything they don't want to do. So they're going to be the most motivated to answer polls and to be upset. But we don't have enough of a sense of like what the rest of the country potentially feels. We have an idea, but we don't know for sure. How are you thinking? Yeah, I think I think it's a great point. Yeah, I would say Democrats should be feeling confident going into Election Day, but they also should be aware that there's a chance for things to go wrong here. Because think about it, right? Almost every single state, it seems like in the country that is remotely competitive, Democrats have like a zero to 5 % lead in.

41:10That's true for Ohio. That's true for Kansas. That's true for Maine. That's true for Michigan. That's true for Iowa, Texas. So if things really go south, it could go badly. Okay. That being said, there's a chance it goes in the other direction on that same logic in this particular cycle. Absolutely. Because pollsters are trying really hard to overcorrect. Not to overcorrect. They're trying to just correct for this. And if the drop off in response rate is reflective of the fact that these voters are depressed about what's happening, because he is underperforming a lot on average with almost every group.

41:46But that includes rural voters, includes white working class voters. Right. So it could be a sign that they're just not going to turn out in the same rate. Good point. They mentioned not vote as well. Wasn't the midterm election in 2022, everyone thought red wave, red wave, red wave was not a red wave. the polling miss was in the other direction. Yes. So what has been the story of the polling misses in midterms? Because it seems to me like when Trump is on the ballot is when you most see this dynamic of a lot of infrequent voters who aren't being picked up by the pollsters show up to vote that were not included in any of the calculus.

42:25Yeah, I was actually talking to the pollster for Qantas, who is a smart guy, leans Republican. And we were talking about, I personally have a theory that the reason the polling miss is a lot bigger, especially for the Senate races in presidential years, is because there's a lot of Trump voters that don't love the GOP, but they're going to choose the GOP if they have to. And so they're saying they're undecided going into the election. And that's not necessarily even a polling miss. It's like, now that I'm here, I guess I'll vote for Cindy Hyde-Smith versus I love Cindy Hyde-Smith. And so they're going to underrate that, right?

42:59Because those undecideds who are Trump voters are going to break very hard for Republicans. Some of those voters maybe just don't turn out in midterms. Right, right. Yeah. That's a good point. Here's the other thing. Put B3 up on the screen. I don't know if you saw this. This is anecdotal, but I feel like these are different anecdotes than we've gotten in previous elections, where it genuinely looks like some of Trump's previous hardcore supporters are questioning or have actively moved and feel the sense of betrayal over a combination of whether it's the terrorists, the Epstein files, the war.

43:32I actually think the Epstein files is a big part of this. But Politico talked to some of what they call front row Joes, which was a roving band, they say, of the president's most ardent supporters who would sort of compete with each other to show up as many Trump rallies as they possibly could. And they talked to a couple of them and have completely turned on Trump. So this one woman, Tricia Hope, she says that Trump is a fraud and a liar. Rick Frazier, another one of them, says he can't be trusted. They say Hope joined the Front Row Joes in 2018 after publishing a book of Trump's posts on Twitter called Just the Tweets, which helped pay for travel to rallies across the country in RV.

44:08She bought after giving up her apartment in Texas. During his impeachment, she spent two weeks in Washington roaming Capitol Hill to defend the president. Now she says the one scenario that would bring her back to Washington for Trump's sake, if we do lose the midterms and he's impeached, I will be walking the halls of Congress in support of that impeachment. And you had a similar story from Rick Frazier, who's just completely disenchanted with the situation as well. They hope actually named Epstein vials as she describes it as a quote, dagger in my heart. It was like a light switch went on, a veil lifted.

44:40I saw him for who he was. I've not been able to unsee it since. OK, anecdotal. However, we do see that within the Republican Party, you now have more people saying I'm a Republican, not a Trump supporter. Like that's where my primary loyalty is. You do see a huge erosion in the number of people that say they strongly support Trump. You have a lot more tepid support there. And then you just have the economic numbers where some of his strongest supporters are the people that are getting screwed the hardest because of the choices that he has made. So it does, if this midterm ends up being more of a wave, then we have seen more than the typical sort of like partisan swing backlash.

45:21These types of people, to me, will be the story of why that happens. Yeah, you know, I think the best way to think about the Epstein files is it's not what most voters are thinking about when they're going into the polls. But it was the moment that Trump lost the benefit of the doubt. It was a catalyst. Yeah, exactly. That has been his superpower. It's the benefit of the doubt. And controversy after controversy, people assume he's fighting for the right reasons. Right. And he's going to have their back even if they don't like everything. But at that point, it was something where people, almost everyone, like 80 % of the country could say, like, this is clearly wrong.

45:50Why is he doing it? And it created an opportunity for future things to be viewed in a much more negative light, much like Afghanistan did for Biden or sometimes positions that Democrats have on Israel do for voters under the age of 35. Great point. This is Jacob Goldstein from What's Your Problem? Running a business is hard enough. Don't make it harder with a dozen apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. That's software overload. Odoo is the all-in-one platform that replaces them all. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, fully integrated, easy to use, and built to grow with your business.

46:30Thousands have already made the switch. Why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's odoo.com. Did you know every 36 minutes a child in the U.S. is diagnosed with cancer? which means some of the bravest warriors you'll ever meet aren't professional athletes or superheroes. They're the kids in this fight. That's why I'm proud to support Hyundai Hope on Wheels. For the past 28 years, with support from Hyundai, their dealers, and every new Hyundai sold, Hope on Wheels has contributed over$300 million to childhood cancer research, helping save more than 40 ,000 kids. But we're not done yet. Let's bring every warrior home.

47:09Join our fight at HyundaiWarriors.com. My name is Arnold Bogarty, and prior to me enrolling in Rasmussen to become a nurse, I spent 16 years in the military, 12 in Special Forces as an Army Green Beret, and I was recommended to Rasmussen by a former student. She said she loved the culture. It was a family atmosphere. I went to visit the campus. The facilities were amazing. I knew before I left that that was the school that I was going to attend. Rasmussen University. Are you ready to be your own hero online and on campus? Learn more at rasmussen.edu. Let's take a look at Ohio. So, or sorry, Iowa, where Trump recently announced yesterday in the Oval Office, kind of interesting, Ashley Hinson, the candidate there, she had previously been like, hey, this war needs to end.

47:56I'm working with Democrats. But apparently Trump, I guess, dragged her to the Oval Office. I don't know if that's to her benefit or not, to announce some new, you know,$15 billion steel plant. And he was asked about some of this. Let's take a listen. And now we're going to continue to be a part of the American manufacturing story. And with 1 ,700 jobs, I just think about the countless opportunities for Iowa families and what this means for them. It is a game changer for our state and, frankly, for the country. And if you look at the jobs numbers that you've been posting every single month, they're not government growth jobs.

48:29They're private sector jobs. And that is what is so critical for our economy to move our economy forward. The working families tax cuts, the certainty that we provided families. I think we should make those all permanent because people love them and we need to make sure that they can rely on those going forward, Mr. President. So thank you for what you and the entire team did to solidify this investment in American greatness and American manufacturing. Well, and I'm going to come to Iowa. I got more votes than anybody in history during the last election. All three I went up, up, up. And I think I'm more popular now than I was then.

49:00Why are Republicans, do you think, having to work so hard to hold onto the seats? I don't know. I love Iowa. I've always been very strong with Iowa. There's been some things that the Democrats have done that are very bad for our country. You know, they had high prices. I've reduced the prices, but they like to say affordability. But they're the ones that caused the affordability problem. They're the ones that caused all of these problems. And they were unwilling to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon. They said, let somebody else. Of course, I can say that about many people. We have stopped them from having it.

49:35They've never had a nuclear weapon. And they understand that. And they're willing to say that. But I'm surprised. First of all, the polls are fake. What do you think? I think that Trump needs to work on making the American people feel that he has heard their concerns. But he can't because then that would invalidate everything that he's done. Yes. And that's his biggest problem also in general is that he can't admit that he's not perfect. And voters, I mean, oh my gosh. Kennedy after he completely blew the bay of pigs in one of the biggest foreign policy mistakes in American history. His approval reading surged because he said, I messed up.

50:10Americans love when you can be humble, especially if you're not, it doesn't sound like it normally. I agree. That's not going to happen. It wasn't his fault. I don't want to go to this room. It wasn't.

50:20That's the antithesis of the Trump inequality. So what he would say back to you is this is the way I've been operating. You know, never say, never say you're sorry. Keep barreling forward. and that's the way that he's ended up in the White House for two times. What I've learned from Tucker, he believes he's touched by God, basically, right? You know, or whatever, some force. I don't know about God. But he believes he's been touched because you see this in his comments about Iran. He's like, it's going to work out. It always does. You know, people die. It happens. You know, we all got to die some way.

50:53Disturbant. To be honest, I mean, every time that they counted him out, he has won. 2016, the indictments, 2020, two impeachments. I mean, you know, he won the popular vote. Like you can understand the psychology of somebody who were a bullet misses you by millimeters to that could have blown your brains out. And then you become the president, right? So all of this is understandable from like a, you know, from a far away distance. But in this particular instance, it does seem like, okay, it's cooked. But that's part of why I've just heard it so many times that it's really hard to reconcile with like, wow, well, Trump is going to Iowa.

51:33And candidate behavior, I guess that's a real question. How indicative is candidate behavior? Like, do they really have better data than us? Because there's always an assumption like, oh, they must have better data. The internals, I'm like, well, internals are kind of bullshit sometimes. Ashley Hinson's behavior seems to indicate with what we see in the national mood. But having seen this story before, sometimes these candidates just know just as much as we do. They're all on Twitter reading the same polls. I think they know more about their race because we're focusing on everything. That's true.

52:03I also think that the data they're seeing is a lot better than the data they're releasing because they're not going to release. They're either like Roy Cooper trying to convince everyone that, no, North Carolina is still like this close. Gotta spend money here. He's the only guy that releases polls that I have to turn off the bias for the internal polls because they're going in the other way. That's funny. That's interesting. Right? Yeah. And like, but normally, you know, they're only going to show us things that make them look good. But their actual data is going to be a lot more substantive.

52:26And they also have qualitative data where they're talking to voters all the time. That's true. And they have a whole network of people talking to them about what they're seeing in their community. So I do think they know a lot more than we do. They're making calls. They're knocking doors. They're marking down, oh, this Republican is now sitting on the fence. They're now voting Democrat. So they do have that sort of granular knowledge. You know, sorry, back to your broader point, though. So I actually think the thing that is most unique about this term is this is the time that political gravity has finally actually caught up with Donald Trump and the rules of politics, which are not iron cloud like the rules of physics, are starting to actually affect him in almost everything.

53:01OK. When he is because he's completely ignoring polls, what voters think. He surrounded himself with a cocoon of Natalie Harp lights or telling him what he wants to hear. and the one time as they're finally trying to make him look at some negative press he starts banning news networks in response right and so i think that like if you do things voters really don't like you make their lives worse and then you pretend that everything is fine and you keep going further with another trade war of canada people aren't gonna be thrilled about it but like why that why right i've seen him do so many things right why this like i could rationally could understand okay finally inflation etc we had high inflation in covid like you know it's not like 2020 was a dream year exactly he won a ton of votes so i'm just like what makes this all that different yeah no it's fair first of all it's a midterm yeah and that you're you are fighting a losing battle to begin with yeah second of all i mean he did lose in 2020 yeah and then third it doesn't mean that he's now going to lose everyone it just means like even if there's a big polling this.

54:03Like he is you can understand to a degree, like I think the patients wore out on COVID for Biden eventually. Yeah. But it hadn't yet fully. People understood what was happening here. It's like this isn't forces beyond Trump's control that's causing these problems. It's like, wow, this guy literally campaigned on lowering my prices. I think that's a really important part because COVID you could the handling of it was bad in a lot of ways, but it wasn't his fault. Like he didn't cause COVID. No. He reacted poorly to something that was thrust upon him. The Iran war, that's all him. And by the way, in these farm states, the tariffs are a big deal too, which we can't lose sight of.

54:41That was like a first economic blow that maybe farmers were willing to kind of like, okay, maybe there's a plan here. But then once you get hit with freaking$6,$7 diesel prices, you're going under. In fact, we can put this Axios report up on the screen. We'll add this in post about how they're seeing a farm crisis. the headline here is brace for losing everything. Farm crisis fears grip GOP in Iowa. And so when you have a combination of you're being screwed and it's very clear who to blame. And I do think the Epstein piece was an eye opener for a lot of people because it went so contrary to the brand that he had cultivated among his own base of I'm going to be the one to come in and expose all the wrongdoers and clean up clean house and drain the swamp.

55:26And then when push comes to the shove, to shove. Not only are you doing the cover-up, your name's all over that thing. Turns out you were Jeffrey Epstein's bestie. So I think it was very, and they never really came up with a story that was going to land on that. They just kind of moved on. So I do think that opens some eyes. And then when you look at your own material conditions, it creates a very different landscape than what we've seen before. And the reason why, you know, I'm not buying that they're going to win, that Democrats are going to win Mississippi or Kansas or these things, although I don't think It's completely insane to think it.

55:55But the reason why has less to do with the polls, more to do with the way we see the candidates acting. Trump is going to campaign in Texas and Iowa and Alaska. These are places that should not be on the table. And that's where his people are sending him saying, well, you got to do what you can in these places. So you see that. You see the way the candidates are behaving. And then you also see these special election results. When real voters have showed up at the polls, the swing towards Democrats has been enormous. So to me, when I put that together with the polling data, which continues, by the way, just to get worse and worse for Republicans, the generic ballot keeps widening in favor of Democrats, etc.

56:32When I look to that to put all of that together, I say this seems like this is a real phenomenon that's happening. Yeah, I think so, too. And look, I have a little system that I build for my forecast that takes all the special elections in the country and what happened in the Alaska open primary, California and Washington. Yeah. And that number collectively, which suggests a D plus eight cycle. and since then the GOP's polling has fallen off a cliff. Got it. So I don't know for sure what's going to happen. I think we all should be humbled after we've seen three presidential elections where there's been a big miss against Democrats.

57:03I mean, overrating Democrats, but there's a lot of indicators suggesting that it's bad for Republicans and the polls can still miss by a lot and it can still be bad for Republicans. So I'm looking at your forecast on the Senate. Let's talk about this. You've got 70 % chance of Senate majority. That's very bullish, I think, compared to some of the other ones. your mean projected seats is 52.5. You even have Texas lean D. So talk through some of those races for us. Sagar, that lean D for Texas makes me nervous. It's all quantitative. Dude, I'm from it. I'm not putting my finger on the weight. Yeah, you have Maine.

57:35And Texas as lean D. That would be a weird math. You know what? Voters are getting depolarized to some degree in this particular electorate. I think that they don't like either party. And so maybe we're having more decision makers that are basing it off of candidates. That's a good point. Yeah. think about that. Yeah, maybe this is the beginning. You also have very different demographics, Texas versus Maine. Maine is like literally, I think, the whitest state in the country. And Latinos. Texas is majority minority. Yeah, like we talked about last week, Latino voters are, along with Gen Z men, are the groups that are swinging the furthest against Republicans relative to the last presidential election.

58:09And so that's what creates an opportunity in a state like Texas. But it's also Susan Collins is Joe Manchin, basically, except she's a Republican. This is a very hard person to beat. Right. What about Alaska? So you have Alaska as a toss-up. You actually have Peltolla at a 56 % chance. You want to talk through some of the dynamics there? Yeah. I think there's two things in Alaska that are particularly important here, right? And this is a very small state. I know it's the biggest state, but it's also one of the smallest states in population. It's fish and it's the price of gas, which is really hurting Alaskans who often need to buy a lot in advance.

58:44And then— It's$5 a gallon. Yes. You can't have it right now. Yes. And, you know, their price of fish, which is the vast majority of the food that Alaskans eat, has gone up. And there's a massive fishing industry there that has been crushed by climate change. I think if there's any place where climate change is hurting the U.S. the most, it is Alaska. And it actually has caused the state to be the fastest moving state in the country to Democrats. It's not the only reason, but it's a big part of it. Interesting. It used to be like 20 points to the right of the country plus. Now it's like 12 to 10 and it's been moving at such a fast rate it probably will continue.

59:17Interesting. Just wanted to say, I pulled up Nate Silver's model, very similar percentage likelihood of Democratic control of the Senate to yours at 71 % for Nate Silver. So very interesting stuff. We could talk to you all day, but instead we'll just have you back next week so that we can dig into some other races and some other dynamics that are unfolding. Great to see you, Logan. Race to the White House dot com. Check it out. Logan is the best. Thank you, man. Thanks, guys. Great to be on.

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