Trump’s UFC event descends into chaos

23:54Nothing sketchy about that. We don't know. Oh, he refuses to say it. Now he claims it was a threat to her life. So that's why she had to go to a country club. Yeah, I guess. So do you think that that Todd Blanche is going to be able to effectively bury this thing? I mean, so this New York Times report is an excerpt of the new Maggie Abram book. That's about how Todd Blanche, who is currently nominated to be Trump's attorney general, was sitting in the situation room at meetings conspiring to cover up, suppress, otherwise just like kill all of these horrible allegations within the Epstein files.

24:25including ones that Trump had sex or sexual contact with one of Epstein's victims. Yeah. You know, it's really awful stuff. So my hope is that Democrats, if Todd Blanch really has confirmation hearings, Democrats should hammer him on this. What were you doing in these meetings? Like whatever happened to the Department of Justice having some distance from political decision making in the White House, right? Like this is totally inappropriate collusion. I wonder if there's going to be Republicans who are going to be willing to buck Trump and actually join in on this effort to get some transparency here because we've also seen what happens, and I think this was by design, we've seen what happens to Republicans who aren't willing to toe the line.

25:04And, you know, Thomas Massey is out of Congress, John Cornyn out of the Senate, Bill Cassidy out of the Senate. And so these are not like squishy, squishy libs, right? Like these are people who have voted with Trump more than 90 % of the time, in some cases all the time. And yet whatever they did, whatever one thing they did that caught his ire was enough for him to cut them off. And so when Todd Blanche shows up for these confirmation hearings and is posed a tough question by a Republican, do they become persona non grata in the GOP? Does that mean that their career in Congress or the Senate is effectively over?

25:39Yeah, I don't know. I mean, hopefully some of them have a little bit of courage. I mean, interestingly, today alone, it sounds like Republican efforts to get rid of Bill Pulte or his nomination to be the director of national intelligence finally worked because Trump announced he was naming someone else. Like ultimately, there is a line. We just have to help Republicans find the courage to touch it. I also I also presume that Bill Pulte is not is not a hill that Trump is really willing to die on. But the Epstein stuff is different because that directly implicates him. Yeah. Although what he was hoping to do with Bill Pulte is install him as director of national intelligence and then use that job to find all the information and authorities.

26:19Sure. But he could find some other hack. He can find some hack who's easier to get confirmed. For sure. But like. And do you think is it Jay Clayton who is. Yeah. It's like the Southern District of New York. And do you think that that person is going to be as as malleable as Bill Pulte would have been? I know nothing about Jay Clayton, but I know that Bill Pulte has literally zero qualification for the job. I mean, this guy is like overseeing Fannie and Freddie's working in the mortgage world. Before that, he was going to conferences and encouraging people to pump and dump Best Buy stock. I'm sure you've seen the video of like him at this conference where someone's just whacking another guy in the face with a dildo.

26:56Drew, cut that in here. Here's the first ever, man. Live fucking dildo slap on the PP live. Palti, look at this fucking thing. All right.

27:10Come on! Hunter, daddy! All right, fine. There you fucking have it. The first dildo slap in history, live. So, Bill, this says, Bill Pulte fucks. All right? Thank you. And then if you notice on, it's got a tramp stamp with a butterfly on the back. I like Only the Young. One ass cheek. Yes, it does say Only the Young on the back here. Only the Young, December 14th. That looked pretty badass. We have a mushroom stamp on the head of it and bed bath on one cheek and GME. Oh, fuck. GME on the other. I got too excited there. So, you know, that's like someone who's like that. What is like a Kash Patel, right?

27:56Or Bill Pulte, who is like literally no business in the job only because you're doing Trump's bidding. Like that's when I get the most nervous. But that's the whole cabinet. I mean, Pete Hegseth is not there because he is competent at running the military or any department. But Pete Heggs has served in the military. You know what I mean? Sure. I guess if the bar is that low and Bill Pulte doesn't even meet that low bar, then that is them missing the point. Tulsi Gabbard, right? Yeah. Like, she was served in the Army for, like, 20 years. She was a member of Congress. She was on the Intelligence Committee.

28:24I don't think she was qualified for that job. I don't think she was the right person. Right. But she wasn't, like, just, like, coming out of the, you know, owning a chain of, like, Quiznos or something like Bill Pulte is. like i like we were we were doing oppo on him like digging for research for pod save the world and we found a podcast an interview he did on a podcast that specializes in hvac issues you know that hvac to intel intel community pipeline is strong yeah they build pipelines to connect your heating and your air conditioning to the nation's uh intelligence infrastructure Yeah. Anyway.

29:00Yeah. Well, you know, on that point, it was funny to see when the Knicks played game three to see like Howard Lutnick on the sidelines. And it is a bummer because, you know, that should be the ultimate a political event and something that New York desperately needs. and it's been really fun to watch the Knicks really run this entire series. And it was great watching the entire— I mean, you know that that moment, the whole world was waiting for that moment just as much as they were waiting for the actual game itself to see how badly Donald Trump would get booed. Dude, and it was so awesome because they clearly tried to set up the one shot of Donald Trump to be during the national anthem.

29:41Where you can't boo, presumably. Where you can't boo, and New Yorkers were like, Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. This is New York. Hold my fucking beer. I'm going to boo the shit out of this guy. Did you see the cuts from Bryant Park and like all the all these other places where they were just viewing it in the city? Yeah. People were going nuts. Yeah. Oh, it was great. Also, there were so many politicians at the game that night, like Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, was there. Yeah. Bloomberg was there like two nights ago. Yeah, I think somebody one of the one of the guys like fell into him.

30:08Like you don't realize how frail these people are. Until you have like a seven foot tall basketball player fall into their lap. That's what's crazy about watching an NBA game. It's like on TV, they're taking charges and taking jump shots. But up close in person, these guys weigh like 280. Yeah. They're just killing each other. If they fail on a regular human being, let alone a frail old guy. There is. I think I brought this up to a group of my friends the other day. Would you rather have to survive 10 seconds in an NFL game and you can make$10 million or just get a million dollars? get a million that I think that's the right answer do you have 10 seconds in an NFL game I think would just do you understand what getting hit by an NFL cornerback would do to you okay now imagine it's an inside linebacker yeah now imagine it's you know Miles Garrett dead yeah dead look man that's why I asked the question you know there's like medieval you know those medieval tortures where like they pull you from every angle and like all your limbs come up That would be me on the field.

31:12Just like, ah, splayed out. Yeah. Is this good content? You'd like that, wouldn't you? Is this why people come to your channel? You're disgusting, Tommy. Disgusting. It's not that kind of a show. The nice part about this was watching, knowing the fact that the only game the Knicks have lost now is the one that Donald Trump showed up to. Yeah, he definitely jinxed them. I mean, they were on like a 13-game heater, and the guy decided he had to go to the game. You ruined the fan experience. Second longest streak in NBA history. And then the next night they came back like the greatest comeback in NBA finals history.

31:42Yeah. Donald Trump not there. Yeah. It is pretty awesome. Like this is where Trump is annoying. Like like because of the conservative bent of like the sports media in particular. If this had been Joe Biden, he would be getting absolutely killed for this. Like it would be like a national meme of like Biden, you know, the jinx or the loser. I feel like Trump's not getting the commensurate about a shit. No, no, I agree with you. But I think that it's becoming less and less like in style and fashion to like in vogue to to step to stand behind Trump. Oh, absolutely. In the sports world, especially with the Epstein stuff bearing down.

32:16It's like there's a very easy retort to anybody, you know, in the barstool world that continues to like advocate for Trump. And it's like, all right. But like guys like pretty deeply mixed up with pedophiles. So I remember like earlier on in the first term, they were like NFL players doing the Trump dance in the end zone. Yeah. So I like it was like a Mon Rossi Brown, I think, was the first one I did. Like a bunch of players are doing it, like cool, good players. And it made me very mad. And also like he was in the cultural zeitgeist. Like people were showing up to the inauguration and now like Milli Vanilli is canceling on them.

32:48You know, although although what really hurts as a lifelong Giants fan is like the one player that didn't get that memo is Jackson Dart. And that sucks. Can't believe you're a quarterback from Ole Miss is a Republican. Well, look, even the other Ole Miss quarterbacks at least have, Eli Manning has enough sense not to align himself with the Republican Party in New York of all places. Yeah, and it was weird. It turned into that weird fight on Twitter about it and whatnot. I don't know. My view on this is I feel like everyone just gets to like who they want to like and we can live and let live and move on.

33:20And like scolding players to liking people or not has proven to be ineffective from our side of the aisle. You know what I mean? Well, you're not down with the intolerant left? No, I don't think that worked well for us. Yeah. No, you're right, but I still hate it. I do too. It sucks. I still hate that Jackson. My owner is Bob Kraft. Yeah, it's fair. He's like best friends with Trump. He was courtside too. The Knicks owner is, I saw him. The Knicks owner is the same deal. James Stone sucks. He has been sparring publicly with Mayor Mamdani, who tried to have this watch party outside Madison Square Garden and like Dolan canceled it.

33:57James Dolan famously has like security officials in the arena spy on people and will like kick them out if they say stuff making fun of him.

34:05Brian Tyler Cohen:Yeah, I saw that. I saw that reporting the other day. Yeah, Pabla Torres stuff, I think. Yeah, pretty wild stuff. Okay, well, with that said, for those who are watching right now, first of all, go Knicks. Boston sports teams suck. And second of all, if you're not yet subscribed to Podsafe America's YouTube channel, I'm going to put a link right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video. Completely free to subscribe, but a great way to elevate voices like Tommy's and the other guys at PodSafe America so that we can help build up this progressive media ecosystem. Tommy, anything to add?

34:34I love you.

34:35Brian Tyler Cohen:Thanks. All right, we'll leave it there.

34:39I'm joined now by the head of data science at VoteHub, Zach Danini. Zach, thanks so much for joining me. I wanted to talk to you because, A, I'm a huge fan of the work that you and VoteHub do. And it's especially important right now because we're seeing a new round of election denialism happening. But it's happening starting in California, which seems to me to show that Trump doesn't have a lot of, isn't very discerning about how he deploys his election denial claims. But from the perspective of somebody who works in data science, can you speak about these claims of election denialism that are happening in L.A.

35:13and California more broadly? Yeah. So I think something that I want to start by saying is counting is truly very, very slow in California, right? Even compared to other West Coast states that count their mail in ballots late, we're talking about only about half the vote being counted on election night. And those votes are counted in roughly chronological order, and different people hold their ballots and return them earlier and later. It's different populations. And I think, you know, from my position, I try to, you know, understand that that is like not exactly intuitive to people who don't obsessively follow elections like me.

35:50But it also, you know, is we try to communicate that because we know what those shifts are roughly going to look like to people. On that point, you know, there have been a lot of Republicans who've come forward and said, well, that kind of a system breeds distrust. My pushback to that is that the system doesn't breed distrust. The system is what it is. We allow a lot of different avenues for people to vote and for those votes to be counted. What breeds distrust is the people who breed distrust, is the people who come forward and say that, you know, when there is election day votes that are counted first and then ballots which skew overwhelmingly Democratic when those come in after and the vote total shifts from a redder electorate to a bluer electorate, we're inevitably going to see you know, we're going to see Democrats do better and better as more votes are counted.

36:40I think that's what undermines trust in the elections. But from from your vantage, having looked at both the California system and the rest of the country, can you give a sense of what you think when people say that a system like the one we have in California breeds distrust? Yeah, so so I do think in general it is, you know, it is just tough for people, you know, in a lot of states they wake up and they see someone's losing by one percent or something on Wednesday morning. And maybe they think, oh, this is close, they could come back. You know, in California, that can be 10 or 12 percent and someone come back.

37:11So the system in California is, you know, it is a bigger number than what we're seeing everywhere else. But a falsehood that is just really frustrating, I think, that we've had to deal with in the last week is this idea that these late mail ballots always favor Democrats. I, you know, recently this week, you know, posted about, you know, an election that I was in charge of covering in 2022 when it was a Republican candidate. David Schweikert in Arizona was losing by double digits with 70 % of the vote counted in Arizona House District 1 in 2022. And he came back and won, right? You know, it goes both ways.

37:45And I think it's important, you know, for people to try to bring those facts to light so people aren't getting a warped picture of what happens.

37:53Brian Tyler Cohen:In terms of the broader election coming up now, as we look toward midterms, can you give me your sense of where we stand as far as the Senate is concerned? Yeah. So the Senate is an interesting situation because there are kind of two different sets of states. We have Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, and Georgia. These are states that were close. Maybe Trump won them by a little. In the case of Maine, Harris won them. Democrats kind of need to sweep these four. And then there are other states, Iowa, Texas, Ohio, and Alaska. All of these four keys, all these four states, Trump won by double digits, but Democrats need to win about two of those as well to win control of the Senate.

38:37So, you know, what this means is, you know, you have to hold serve in these races that Democrats should be winning in a blue environment, and you have to win a couple races in states that will be difficult to win, even in a blue environment with good candidates. What does Vote Hub's analysis suggest would happen, you know, if the race were today? If the race were today, honestly, we think Republicans would probably hold control of the Senate. Right now, in our polling average, we have Democrats ahead of Republicans in generic ballot polls by 5.4 points. We actually expect this to shift towards Democrats considerably the next six months.

39:14Our projected November average is D plus 7.2. And why? There's just a historic pattern we're in midterm elections, you know, the public sentiment usually shifts towards the out party in the months leading up to the election. After even, you know, considering that shift right now, we give Republicans a 55 % chance to win the Senate. So, I mean, roughly a toss up, but a very, very narrow, you know, you know, we have Republicans very narrowly favored. Are there any unforced errors that are causing a chance for Republicans to be more successful than they should be as far as the Senate map is concerned?

39:54So I think one issue for Democrats is Maine and Michigan. The candidate quality in these states is unclear. I don't want to say that, oh, the Democrats are going to throw away these races because of poor candidate quality. There's no evidence to make you think that will definitely happen. But it is important to consider Georgia and North Carolina. you have these battle-tested candidates, John Ossoff and Roy Cooper, who we know are very, very good at winning elections and strongly believe they can do so in such a blue year in their purple states. Michigan and Maine, I'm sure Democrats wish they had a Roy Cooper, wish they had a John Ossoff to run in these states, but they don't, right?

40:36So it's just more of a question mark. I think six years ago, people would have said John Ossoff was an you know, inexperienced candidate without a track record of winning elections. Now we view him as really strong. You know, we could be saying the same thing about Graham Plattner in six years, or we could be saying in six years, wow, you know, Graham Plattner lost Maine in a blue mid-turn. What about the House now? If we go over to the House as it stands in the aftermath of redistricting, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, Republicans were able to net another 12 seats this cycle as the result of redrawing maps, does that put the Democrats' ability or likelihood to retake the House at risk?

41:16I think it's very important to know that Democrats are clearly favored to win the House. If the election was held today, they'd be clearly favored to win the House. And again, we expect things just to shift more towards Democrats in the next six months. You know, I think I always tell people, you know, American elections are, you know, surprising things happen a lot, right? You know, an 80 % chance of winning the House, you know it means that if you you know flip a coin a couple times and get heads right now we think republicans you know could feasibly win the house but that something would really have to change and it would be surprising and very historical precedent what about in subsequent cycles um what do you foresee as as the prospect of democrats redrawing maps and some of these weapons that haven't yet been deployed.

42:02I'm talking about the ongoing redraw in New York, which of course took a, will take a constitutional amendment. I presume that we'll see another effort in Virginia. That one will likely be successful because the technicalities that precluded it from working in 2026 likely won't present themselves in 2028. There is of course, the ability for California to redraw again. You know, there are, I believe, seven seats that Republicans will still hold in this state. So the map may very well look different, especially in the aftermath of Democrats seeing the extent to which Republicans were willing to engage in this process in Texas, Florida, Ohio, Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi.

42:50be like North Carolina, possibly South Carolina, the next election cycle. So what can that look like? And I guess the broader question is like, is there a world where Democrats can actually come out on top if they're willing to fight fire with fire and be aggressive here as aggressive as Republicans have been? Yeah. So first of all, I think we have seen that Democrats are willing to fight fire with fire in the 2022 redistricting cycle. I like to remind people in 2022 and 2024, the House had a pro-Democratic bias, right? The House had a pro-Republican bias throughout the 2010s. The Democrats in Illinois, Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico basically said, we're done with this.

43:34And they actually kind of out-redistricted Republicans in 2022 and 2024. 2026 cycle, as I'm sure everyone listening to this knows, was a big win for Republicans, probably about seven to eight seats in a neutral environment. Yeah. Yeah. But now Republicans are now kind of tapped out in a lot of their states. Another one I'll throw out there you didn't mention is Colorado. That's a four four map right now. It's very easy to draw an 80 map for Democrats in Colorado. So so Republicans are now like kind of, you know, maximally gerrymandered in a lot of their states. They, of course, always have a few more districts they can knock off.

44:13And, you know, South Carolina, even go back to Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska. But Democrats now have a lot more outstanding in Illinois, New York, Washington, Colorado. So we'll see how that develops. It's made it so that Democrats do need quite a blue environment to win the U.S. House in 2026. But the data right now points to that blue environment happening. I mean, I know this isn't really within your jurisdiction as a data scientist, but do you presume based on what you know about these Democrats that they there's a difference between being able to do it, having the opportunity to do it and then actually doing it.

44:54And the latter part of that is is I think what Democrats as as institutionalists have had more trouble bringing themselves to do. I mean, we even heard from J.B. Pritzker, who says, you know, he's told me in our interviews about this very topic. He goes, I'm on team fight, but then decided to hinge any action in Illinois on whatever Indiana did. So not really as aggressive as I think he had suggested previously. So just judging from what you know about the Democrats who are in charge here, do you think that they'd actually be willing to deploy these tools even though they have the opportunity to use them?

45:32Yeah, I will note that Illinois already has, you know, what I would consider a pretty heinous gerrymander, right? Both eye tests when you look at the map. My home district is a noodle that stretches from Champaign to St. Louis. And it would be, you know, basically turning it into a completely maximal, super ugly bacon mander. It would probably actually be the lowest compactness gerrymander if Illinois went there, worse even than anything Republicans have drawn yet. That being said, you, of course, have states like New York and Colorado that are blue states that, if anything, maybe even have slightly Republican leaning maps right now.

46:09I think odds are definitely in the favor of Democrats redrawing in 2028. I think the Democratic outrage surrounding the Voting Rights Act being gutted by SCOTUS this spring was pretty big. And, you know, when we're talking about ugly maps, right, I think like what happened in Tennessee really went past a line, honestly, that had been held for the most part by both sides with the Memphis draw out is really, really, really, you know, extreme. So. Last question here. This is a little bit farther out into the future, but the prospect of a reallocation of electoral votes and the impact that that's going to have post 2030, as it stands right now, even Democrats winning like the blue wall states in the Midwest wouldn't be enough to get them over the finish line.

47:04So how do you foresee that shaking out, given the fact that California will likely lose electoral votes? A lot of these blue states in the Northeast, for example, and on the West Coast, and those are going to be reallocated towards states in the Southeast and the Sun Belt. So yeah, something I really try to communicate with people is there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding reallocation. So what this means is, you know, midway through the decade, we have these estimates about how we think people are moving across the country from something called the American Community Survey, the ACS. But the U.S.

47:42census, the full U.S. census is only once every 10 years. Based on these mid-decade estimates, it looks like reallocation is going to be quite bad for Democrats. But there's uncertainty around that, right? If this is quite bad, it could be anywhere from like neutral for Democrats to like a total disaster. We're winning all three blue wall states, maybe. And Arizona isn't even enough. So we don't quite know where it will end up. But directionally, you know, a best case scenario for Democrats at this point is basically no change. A worst case scenario is having to win, you know, two or two or maybe even three more states if you think about you know nevada being pretty small uh in 2032 yeah i mean although there is a world where i mean like this is this is like me doing the thing that i think democrats have been doing for the last 20 years where it's like maybe texas is is poised to flip but we've been saying maybe texas is poised to flip forever but but we'll see i mean i i you know uh we have a strong candidate in James Tallarico and perhaps if he's able to win.

48:48And there's such disgust over what the MAGA agenda has turned into in Texas and voters there get a sense of like, OK, we stuck our necks out and voted for this Democrat for the first time and he's performing well in the Senate. Maybe that'll allow them to be more open to other Democrats in the future. So look, time will time will tell on that stuff. Zachary, for those who are watching and listening right now, where can they see and hear more from you? You can follow VoteHub or my name, Zachary Danini on X. You can go to our website at votehub.com. We do a lot of coverage on election nights. We have a midterms forecast we worked very hard on.

49:25We do a lot of scraping of precinct data so you can see the most detailed maps as they update in real time on election night. Awesome. Well, I appreciate the work that you do and you taking the time today. Thank you very much for having me on.

49:38Brian Tyler Cohen:Thanks again to Robert Garcia, Tommy Vitor, and Zachary Danini. That's it for this episode. Talk to you on Wednesday. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesley, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five-star rating and a review. And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels, or you can go to briantylercohen.com to learn more. We'll see you next time.