1076: Trump's Secret Plan for a 3rd Term

24:24They have to now pretend that any sense in which this might have been a broader conspiracy that involved them is offensive to even to suggest. You guys see any of the excerpts from John Carl's new book? I have a copy of it in my house, but I've not read it yet. So I just saw one excerpt I think he tweeted out. Do you know that Jack Smith and his team wanted to move to disqualify Eileen Cannon as judge because of all the shit she was pulling and at least tried to, you know, wanted to at least file a motion to see if they could do that? And you know who stopped them? Merrick Garland's Justice Department.

25:04Norms. So, yeah, that's the guy that was spying on Republican members of Congress and trying to get Donald Trump. He was the same. He was a double agent. It's a lot of Trump's biggest benefactors are getting prosecuted. Jim Comey, Merrick Garland. It's true. Fucking put him in the Norm's wing at the federal prison. They're all going to fucking end up in unbelievable. It's called the Garland wing. He is the Garland wing. It's a monument to the embodiment of Norm's. We really did bend over backwards to say, like, maybe it does just take this long. Maybe it is this hard. Maybe it was this slow. Absolutely fucking unbelievable.

25:43And we're bent over the other way, you know. I guess I should. Nice to be bent over one way or the other. Can we bend over forwards? That would hurt. Stretch those hips. Hey, John, a lesson in politics. You can only bend over one way, my friend. That's right. And Pilates. I think we're on the same page.

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27:51Trump and MAGA are also quite focused on elections that have little to do with him, like the New York mayoral race. The president is openly predicting that Zoran Mamdani will win next Tuesday, telling reporters, quote, we're going to have a communist as the mayor of New York, but adding, here's the good news. He's got to go through the White House. Everything goes through the White House. At least this White House, it does. Talk about a fucking mob boss, right? Seriously. Trump has threatened to illegally cut all federal funding for New York if Mamdani wins. And some Republicans in Congress are making even darker threats.

28:22At least two House members are pushing to look into whether the federal government can strip Mamdani of his citizenship. And Speaker Mike Johnson took time out of his shutdown press conference to attack Hakeem Jeffries for his endorsement of Mamdani on Friday. He called it, quote, shocking. And along with the rest of the party is arguing that at the very least, Mamdani is now the face of the National Democratic Party. Meanwhile, 13 ,000 people turned out at Forest Hill Stadium in Queens on Sunday night to hear AOC, Bernie Sanders and Governor Kathy Hochul rally with Mamdani. At least a handful of people showed up for Hochul.

28:56Poor Hochul. Here's a taste of what they heard. It is a time such as today when demanding affordable housing is considered a radical and outlandish act. That we can afford our lives, our groceries, our transit is considered an outlandish and radical act. We are not the outlandish ones, New York City. They want us to think we are crazy. We are sane. And what the oligarchs fear, what they fear is that people will start understanding that this country belongs to us, not them. Together, New York, we're going to freeze the... Freedom! Together, New York, we're going to make buses fast and... Freedom!

29:47Together, New York, we're going to deliver universal... Freedom! We will make our city one where every person who calls it home can live a dignified life.

30:04No New Yorker should ever be priced out of anything they need to survive.

30:13Sounds so radical and dangerous and hateful, huh? Did you guys have a chance to watch the full Zoran speech? I did. God, he's really good. Really good. He is just like effortlessly charming. The speech started and he goes, you know, a candidate is only as good as the team around him. And right now I'd like to ask that team, can you please turn on the teleprompter? Because this is all going off the dome. It was so funny. And like, God. And it was like brutal on Cuomo. Absolutely brutal. Like let our cheers ring out so that he can hear us in his$8 ,000 a month apartment in Westchester if he's there for the night.

30:47And his puppet master in the White House can hear us. I know. They are. They are running through the tape. Yes. Hammering Bill Ackman in the billionaire class. And just like, it was fantastic. It was a great speech. Good for him. Yeah, he's an extraordinary politician. He just is. And like, there's a small thing. So there's these housing measures on the ballot in New York. And Republican and Brewer, Curtis Lee Watt has come out against them. Cuomo is in favor. A lot of people in the city council are against them. It's like a classic sort of like Yimby debate. debate, there's some opposition from unions and from left groups.

31:25And he actually hasn't said, like, Mamdani hasn't said how he's going to vote on it, right? And it just sort of speaks to the fact that, like, there's one thing that he's doing that I think is, like, makes him a really amazing politician is the ways in which he is a politician, while remaining, like, authentic and charismatic, enthusiastic, and, like, smart about how he's running this campaign. If you watch his interviews, he's so disciplined. He's so disciplined yet because you know where he's coming from. You know it's coming from a place of authenticity. He has the space to do that. But here he's trying to kind of be careful because he's for freezing the rent.

31:57He knows that there's some opposition to that from people that think they want market-raised housing, and that's going to sort of hurt the situation. He's come out more in favor of some market-rate building and development, right, recognizing he's evolved on that issue. And so you see that he is this kind of defiant figure, like represents the left in this bold way, exciting way, while at the same time being kind of like thoughtful about politics on a number of issues, kind of meeting with like leaders in business who may not like him, but like he's sort of charming them, right? Like there's something about the way he's doing this that like belies, but beneath the enthusiasm is just an incredibly sophisticated political operation.

32:33So you're on the fence. Yeah. I mean, between him and Cuomo, it's a tough fucking call. The ghoul who thinks it's a waste of his time to even be participating in this election. It is unbelievable. Not running through the tape. Zorn is a great speaker. It was a great speech. I mean, he obviously can get punched in the face by like the reality of governing that city and City Hall and the state and whatever the hell Trump's going to do them. I would just like to quickly point out that Hakeem Jeffries, like you're still getting the worst attacks from Speaker Johnson and Republicans by waiting to endorse.

33:01But in the process, you got the entire left mad at you. I cannot. What was the thinking here? I'd still like to know. Also, we are going to be doing like Tupac at Coachella, Bernie hologram speeches at rallies in 2050 and they're still going to play. Don't you think? It's so fun. The same speech. It's still like he's so consistent. But it works. Still hits. What do you guys make of the intense focus on Mamdani by Trump and Republicans, the threats they're making and their attempts to make him, which will certainly heat up should he win the election, the new face of the Democratic Party nationally?

33:33I mean, I do think initially it was an attempt to scare voters away from voting for him. But I think they've probably given up on that by now. I mean, my God, the Islamophobia that this man has dealt with in the last few months is just disgusting. It is so rampant. It's been rampant in Republican politics for a very long time. But the overt nature of it in the Trump era is just hideous. Like this woman, I think she was what, like the anti-Semitism czar under the Trump administration posted a photo of the planes hitting the Twin Towers and a man jumping out of one of the upper floors of the building and was like, vote accordingly.

34:09I mean, it's just like sickening shit. But also, obviously, we know like that's a big piece of the puzzle for Trump. And he just wants to paint every liberal run city is a hellhole filled with crime and corruption. And so he's getting started early. He's laying the groundwork early starting now because he's just going to hammer it going forward. Will he be successful against Mamdani? We don't know. Like Mamdani is a pretty nimble politician, but Trump will be able to punish him in weird ways that we probably haven't thought of. Yeah, I think, I mean, I put these into a couple categories like the attempt by now two House members and several MAGA influencers online to continue to push that they're going to hopefully denaturalize Zoran Mamdani and deport him.

34:54and um i take i mean talk about taking things seriously i take that very seriously very much because steven miller has wanted to expand denaturalizations which are very rare and complicated and hard to do but he wants to like supercharge it he said this publicly for this term they're they're looking into it and if if donald trump and and the ruling party um decide that they're going to try to deport a leader of the opposition who runs america's biggest city by stripping him of his citizenship, then I think every single American should like take to the streets and every single politician, Democrat or Republican, whether you like Zoran or not, especially if you don't, I would say, should stand up and fight that and protest that.

35:37Because that is like, because that is some dark shit to be like. It really is. It is Islam, it's Islamophobia for sure. And then there's specific Islamophobia that he has faced. It also intersects with the xenophobia, the larger xenophobia and the anti-immigrant push. and it's also just like the most authoritarian shit you can imagine that this guy this is the guy who runs now the biggest city in america and he's at a different party and i don't like him and so i'm going to try to deport him yeah which is why i don't think it would ever succeed he is a citizen of this country and like that just on the principle of it a naturalized citizen is just as much a citizen as someone born here that is that is the way it works and if that is fragile then citizenship itself is fragile it's incredibly dangerous dangerous regardless how you feel about politics.

36:20It seems like, like, I remember when I talked to Waleed Shahid about Mamdani a few weeks ago. Part of this was about what happens when someone, like, from the left has a chance to govern, right? Like, he's going to put it on its feet, right? And there's going to be compromises. That's probably going to anger people on one side of his coalition. He's going to pursue policies that people more on the center left predict aren't going to work. Maybe they'll be more successful than they think. Maybe they won't be. He has to govern and put his governing on his feet. Right. He's bringing in people that like he's going to keep the police commissioner in place like Brad.

36:55Like he's bringing Brad Lander. He's thinking about the people that are going to be part of the group that are going to help him govern. Now, Trump is going to try to use the powers of the federal government to make him fail, not for the ways in which his policies work or don't work, but to try to make him a failure before he's even walked in the door. And so that to me is what makes that so dangerous. They want to claim that he's a communist, danger, anti-American, whatever, racism, Islamophobia, all that, throw it all at him and then try to make sure he fails before he's even had a chance. And, you know, he also doesn't have the right to do that, to deny funds to the city of New York because or the state of New York because he doesn't like the mayor, but he'll try and not to fight it.

37:34And that'll become something that occupies his mayorship, even though it shouldn't make his job harder. And but, you know, that's that's the job. I would say Republicans have been trying to make AOC the face of the National Democratic Party for several years now. Before that, it was Pelosi. Like they always try to take the furthest left politician and make that person the face of the party. Or the oldest face. Or the oldest face, right. I think if you're a – I'm trying to model good behavior here because I think the Hakeem Jeffrey strategy, as we acknowledge, probably didn't work that well. Like if someone says, oh, you're the party of Mamdani now and you don't agree with Mamdani, it's like Big Ten Party.

38:16There's like, you know, the people of New York nominated him in a Democratic primary and then the broader electorate voted for him as mayor if he ends up winning. And so I respect that process and I'll work with him. And like you don't it's not that hard. Right. If you really don't agree with him and you're worried about it. Right. Like, if you like him, you should just say, I like him and I like his policies and great. But like, if you don't, I don't think it's a real hard thing to just be like, yeah, he's he's got different beliefs than me. We're a big tent party. And that's that. That's what made it all.

38:47That's what makes the Hakeem Jeffries things waiting so long, so strange. First of all, you're right. Didn't get him anything. But it kind of is an insult to both the people that like Mamdani, people that like Hakeem Jeffries, people that don't like Mamdani. It's like it's, you know, is Mamdani the face? Like this question is, who's the future of the Democratic Party? Is it Abigail Spanberger or is it Zoran Mamdani? And we have to be confident enough to say, yes, like it's both of them. It's going to be a big enough party for everybody from Fetterman to Mamdani. And that like part of our job is we're not a cult like them.

39:15Part of our job is being part of this like big coalition is like kind of resisting the effort to divide ourselves based on whether you like Mamdani's politics more than say you like like the politics of whether of like of Mallory McMorrow or whoever it might be, because like they want to make us one thing. We can't let that work in either direction. We have to just say, like, this is for all of us and anybody's welcome. All right, let's talk about the shutdown because the government has now been closed for almost a month. We're a little over a week away from this becoming the longest shutdown in history.

39:48And on November 1st, the pain starts to get even worse. For one thing, that's when people can start buying health insurance for next year through the Affordable Care Act, where the average premium is set to rise by 30 percent if Republicans keep refusing to pass an extension of the subsidies. That is the biggest increase in years. 17 million people it will hit. November 1st is also when the federal government will run out of money for the food assistance that 40 million low-income Americans count on, known as SNAP benefits, partly because the Trump administration is refusing to spend contingency funds to keep it going.

40:21Other impacted programs include Head Start, which funds education, health, and nutrition services for almost a million kids, nutrition assistance for low-income mothers and babies, and federal paychecks. Meanwhile, flight delays are starting to pile up. There was a ground stop here at LAX over the weekend, apparently because of air traffic controller shortages. On Sunday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was asked whether it's even safe to fly now. And he did not respond with an unqualified yes, which, you know, gave me a little extra anxiety. I love it. And yet, despite all of this, Mike Johnson still has the house in recess, which he said on Monday is actually a great thing for all involved.

41:00Let's listen. I don't know what the Democrats are doing other than publicity stunts, but I can tell you the House Republicans are doing some of the most meaningful work of their careers. They are in their districts working around the clock with their constituents, helping them not only to negotiate the crisis that's been created by this Democrat shutdown, but all the other matters that they need to attend to. The most meaningful work of their careers. He's just so bad. That's just not compelling. What are you talking about, dude? When I'm legislating I can't really be present for what I need to do to make Donald Trump happy now I can really work it you know now I can really put my head into what I am trying to do really get at all the parts of what it takes to make Donald Trump feel satisfied yeah well what's that what's the app called anyway you guys write laws for a living right could do that could do that could do some can do some a lot of work there.

41:56Also on Monday, the country's largest union representing federal workers urged both parties to reopen the government as soon as possible. Do you guys think any of this should change the calculus for Democrats who have so far stood strong and have been reading encouraging polls? I don't think the AFGE comments, the big government union comments should change the calculus. I think - Or any of it, just more broadly too. Well, yeah, but just on the AFGE point, I mean, I do think they were saying the same thing before the shutdown started. Like Democrats have said, we're closing down the government to prevent people from taking their healthcare costs maybe double.

42:30I just saw an article that New Jerseyans who purchase health insurance through the state's exchange will see an average increase of nearly 175 % in their premiums next year. Like that's what Democrats are fighting for. That's what we're fighting to fix. The problem has not been addressed, not even close. So I think we need to stick to our guns here. I know it's going to get really tough, but I'm just not seeing anything that would change my calculus. as even Sean Duffy not being good at the job. Also he wants to run NASA too, by the way. Great. Makes sense. Guys in outer fucking space. So the Snap example that you mentioned, I think it's worth talking about for a second.

43:09So there's this contingency fund for funding apps for Snap. It's about like five or$6 billion. It's sitting there, they got it. the USDA had a memo that said, in the event of a shutdown, that's one of the contingencies, we'll have this money and we can use it to help people. It doesn't cover everything, but it'll work for a time through a funding gap. That was posted on their website. That was something they all seem to believe was true. They took that down. And now they're saying, oh no, legally we can't use the money during a shutdown. Now Trump was willing to kind of, extra legally move money around to pay troops at the Pentagon, both moving money inside of that budget and also getting money from the outside.

43:51Paying ICE agents too. But when it comes to supplemental nutrition assistance, they're gonna draw the line. Why are they doing it? They wanna make the shutdown worse for people. They wanna make people feel the pain of not, like of kids to feel the pain of not having the food assistance that their parents rely on. And then they wanna visit that pain. But it's for a good cause. But for a good cause, cutting healthcare. The sacrifice you're making is so that others, many others can make the sacrifice of paying more in health care premiums. And keep in mind so that they can keep the filibuster, because, again, Republicans could end the shutdown tomorrow.

44:29And so they keep in place the several trillion dollars in tax cuts that they want for the richest human beings on Earth. So to me, like that should be galvanizing for what this fight is about. Like, that's what they're willing to do. They're willing to to they have the power to send out checks to people to provide food assistance. And they're choosing not to to make the shutdown worse so that they can visit political pain on Democrats. But that's a small example of the larger way in which they're governing, which is what the shutdown is about. Yeah. Yeah. I would just keep saying, like, look, either sit down with us to talk about ways to prevent premiums from increasing or end the shutdown yourself by changing the Senate rules.

45:09If you think it's so painful. And the point of Speaker Johnson's bizarre spin there is that Republicans are not even in Washington. Right. They're not even in session to come together and meet and figure out a way through this. Also, come November 1st, a lot of people think, you know, once the – so the open enrollment in ACA and the Affordable Care Act, the window's open now so people can go shopping this week and look online and see what the prices are. So people are starting to realize that the prices are going up. And November 1st, you can start enrolling. and most of the experts think that you know once you get past november 1st even if they make a deal they're not going to stop be able to stop premium increases from hitting in 2026 at best if they extend the subsidies they'll be able to save 2027 but we're getting to the point now where it's just going to be too late to even fix the premium increases so then it's like then what are they doing i didn't realize that yeah it's getting it's getting very very late because they, you know, they think if a deal was made like by the end of this week, they could go back in and the states could recalculate and the insurance companies could recalculate, but it's like, it's getting much, much tougher.

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47:33Ohne Halt. Karriere. Wie wär's mal? Mit Gefühl. Ab März Karriere neu entdecken. Das Handwerk.

48:00private donations to, that's why we have a tax system, actually, and a government. Right. Might be illegal. Ostensibly. But what do you guys think? Sure seems illegal. There's a law called the Anti-Deficiency Act that prohibits federal agencies from spending money beyond what Congress has appropriated. Also, just as a practical matter,$130 million, that's a lot of money, but there's 1.3 million U.S. service members, so it's like 100 bucks a pop. So it's not really going to cover the shortfall. I'm not sure what they're going to do with it. It covers one third of one day's pay for the force. That's right.

48:30I came out with one missile. It's just it's just weird. Like this whole thing is weird. I don't know that I want to focus only on the donation to pay for the troops because that feels like historically good messaging. But like, you know, I'd love to see Democrats total up all the special interest money going towards doing favors for Donald Trump, like all the corporations that are swooping in to bribe him by paying for the new Trump ballroom. That's part of it. Like there's all the money that's the crypto cash, the real estate deals, the plane from the Qataris. Like just we've got to find a way to drive more attention to this stuff and put more scrutiny on it and just ask why.

49:10What is Timothy Mellon getting in exchange? Why would anyone do this? It's very weird. I'll tell you what I don't like. A privately funded army. No. Under the control of the president. And maybe that guy. Funded by one of his biggest donors. Yeah. I don't think that's a good. I don't think that's good. That's bad messaging. Constitution's pretty clear. It's pretty clear. The power of the purse belongs to that guy. Timothy Millen. So yeah. He can raise an army and Donald Trump gets to control it. Cool. There are a lot like, you know, this is one of those classic things. Like, you know, we've been trained by years in kind of old politics.

49:41It's like money for troops. Good. Good. Right. And you get attacked if you don't want money for troops. Yep. So this guy's going to make one hundred and thirty million dollar donation. It's hard to total up the fortune of the Mellon family. It's it's vast. It's vast fortunes. But it's, you know, somewhere around, let's say, 14 billion dollars by some estimates benefit benefiting vastly from Trump's tax cuts. billionaires added a trillion dollars in net worth during trump's first term one year of the tax log is 117 billion dollars to the top one percent of tax payers like i'm glad this guy wants to feel like a patriot because he paid the troops for 45 minutes or the better part of the donation like and you know what like i'd rather the money go there reporter dug it up i'd rather the money go there i i also think air traffic controllers deserve to be paid i think nurses at the veterans affairs deserve to be paid talk about who's making an anonymous donation to the air traffic controllers.

50:34Yeah, maybe we should have a system where we get to the airport. We can pay them ourselves. Everybody, the pilots can go around with a little fucking bag. We go, put money in to pay the air traffic controllers. We have a way to do this. And like, you know, Donald Trump understands as well as anybody that there's no such thing as a free lunch. Like maybe this guy was moved. His heartstrings were tugged. He also apparently donated money to find Amelia Earhart's planes. He seems to have an emotional relationship to his money and he does things with it as he can because we live in a society with an elite class of people that inherited vast wealth like this person.

51:03But there's a reason we don't want the ballroom to be paid for by corporations. And we don't want to go to the crypto.com arena state for fucking dinner. Because like we live in a democracy and we collectively decide where the money goes. We have a great way for billionaires to pay for the military. It is through the tax system. And they have made that more difficult while allowing this man to feel like a hero of the week for covering the first shift. And that's bullshit. Well, one more clear cut example of Trump unilaterally inflicting economic pain on the whole country is his punishing tariff regime, which is why inflation is now higher than it's been since the Biden years.

51:42The current president doesn't seem to know or care. Late last week, Trump halted trade talks with Canada and raised tariffs by 10 % on all the goods we get from our neighbor to the north because of an ad run by the province of Ontario that dared to feature excerpts from a 1987 Ronald Reagan speech where Reagan cautioned against imposing tariffs. And the Katy Perry Trudeau thing. Every once in a while you feel fucking stupider just saying the sentence. Yeah. Like what? American farmers are also suffering from the tariffs, especially soybean farmers, thanks to retaliation from China. Not to worry though, because if you are a soybean farmer, hedge fund manager turned treasury secretary Scott Besant, he wants you to know that he is you.

52:27He is you. I am him. In case you don't know it, I'm actually a soybean farmer, so I have felt this pain too. I could watch that clip like 10 times. That hits so hard. Can we play that clip again? Yeah, one more time. Run it back. In case you don't know it, I'm actually a soybean farmer, so I have felt this pain too.

52:51He's stiff in the weirdest way. Was that a joke? He's a yield farmer. He's a rye. He owns soybean farmers. He's a soybean slumlord. Yeah, he's a soybean slumlord. He owns$25 million worth of soybean and corn farmland in North Dakota. So he owns most of North Dakota. He's a soy boy. When he said he's a soybean farmer, he actually, he just owns North Dakota. Right. Is what really was going on there. He apparently receives as much as$1 million a year in rental income from his soybean farmland. He is worth half a billion dollars, the Treasury Secretary, who is a soybean farmer. King Louis XVI could barely sleep with all the racket outside the castle, all these people saying how hungry they are.

53:38We're all feeling the pain of pre-revolution France. I like it's a tired observation, but imagine if a Democrat said that. But like Fox News, what they would do to the Yale-educated protege of George Soros, who is now Treasury Secretary and calling himself a farmer. They still call Tim Geithner some Wall Street banker, and the guy never worked on Wall Street. Very good point. He was never even a Wall Street banker. It's also like, okay, so historically, China's been the top buyer of U.S. soybeans. It was like$12 billion annually. China stopped buying U.S. soybeans to punish us in the trade war.

54:15They've been buying soybeans from the Brazilians. and Argentina, et cetera. So what Besant is actually doing there is bragging about the gigantic conflict of interest that he personally has in being the one to negotiate this deal with China, trying to get them to come back and purchase more of the U.S. soybeans. And so he recently on Sunday announced that he negotiated the Chinese to do a quote of substantial purchase of U.S. soybeans. It's not clear what that means because the Chinese have already bought all the soybeans they need to make whatever the fuck you make out of it. And so it's not clear how much more they will buy but like trump keeps stepping on this same rake like in 2018 and 2019 china stopped buying soybeans to hurt u.s farmers we had to bail them out it seems like we're coasting towards that outcome again do you think um tofu is one thing you can make yeah soy sauce here we go edamame and soy boys do you you guys think american consumers understand that the higher prices uh will all be paying are a necessary sacrifice to punish ontario for running a tv ad that made Donald Trump mad.

55:15It's like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, folks. They ran a nasty TV ad up in Ontario. So now you're all paying more money. I'm raising the cost of goods at Walmart. Because I was mad about an ad in Ontario that featured that was that was honest that featured Ronald Reagan just saying something. We're so fucking down far down the rabbit hole here. It's really good. I'm telling you, it's not going to help the the legal case. I was about to say. The reason he's not consulting Congress on the tariffs is because it's a national security emergency. Yeah. I do think back to that ruling by Immergood about how you can be deferential to the president while recognizing that words have meaning.

55:57Did Congress really intend to make the president kind of a fucking petulant tariff god who can punish speech in other countries he doesn't like? or actually in this case, speech in our own country from another country that he doesn't like with a 10 % tariff on all these fucking businesses, domestic businesses, domestic buyers, domestic consumers because he's kind of fucking annoyed that Ronald Reagan's words are being thrown in his face to send a signal what to other countries not to dare speak ill of him in our public arena. They also already stopped the ad. Yeah. It wasn't like Mark Carney did this.

56:33But the tariffs remain. So, such a petulant baby. did you guys um here's some tough news after all this did you guys see that the argument at a national poll uh what would happen if trump and kamala ran against each other in 2028 no you want to know you want to know the results yeah tell me kind of i do 51 49 kamala so she's on she is on top 51 49 so there's some progress yeah moe baby which i just hate living in a country where it's like Trump could bomb New York and it's like, 48. He did lose some of those young people that he won in 2024, but the base remains. I think it was funny. The approval rating, you made this point, the approval rating has basically been static since about 2015.

57:23It just kills me. It really is, it's innervating, that's for sure. Also, we're still trapped in this world where like you regularly hear someone cite baskets of deplorables as this horrible thing that happened, right? We're still slapping Hillary Clinton around for that. And Trump posted an AI video of himself dumping shit on Harry Sisson, I believe, and a bunch of Democratic votes. And everyone, everyone who protests it. And the New York Times article I was reading about it that mentioned it today said he dumped brown liquid. I was like, I think we know what the liquid was. Couldn't tell what it was.

57:54Couldn't tell what it was. I mean, honestly, I think that's fair reporting. You say they go find out what he, it's artorial. It's the artist's intent. AI liquid. Yeah, like this is where I kind of, like stepping back to, like there's so many confident people about like the direction the democratic party should go. And like, this should be our message. This shouldn't be our message. Like these are the people that understand what the future of the party is or how this is where Biden went wrong, whatever. And like, I just, like, it is so hard to move people now. It is so hard. There's so many kind of like counter indicators all the time.

58:29And like, I just, that's where I kind of like, I find myself struggling to even like know what we do in a situation where the president has launched an all out of assault on the economy through tariffs is applying them to our biggest allies because he didn't like a television commercial. The wealthy landlord is doing interviews on CNBC referring to himself as a fucking soybean farmer. Yeah. And right. And to your point on votes not moving, right? Like Obama won Iowa twice. There's a great piece in the Times over the weekend about how Trump's policies are absolutely crushing Iowa. It's like a depression.

59:04It's like a local depression. Yeah, it's a local depression. It's soybean farmers. It's Trump canceling all these wind energy projects. It's the immigration actions, getting rid of all the workers that work on these farms. Like these Iowa farmers are getting killed, but it's not leading some like populist revolt against him. They're kind of like, well, we don't know. I mean, I guess, look, we had a big governor's race next year. Rob Sands running. Maybe he can pull us off. There's a big center race there as well. We'll see. But I'm also just, you know, polls are polls, but I'm interested in the results in the 2025 elections.

59:36Yes, me too. See where we are. We'll get at least some read on where everyone is or at least people in New Jersey, Virginia, New York City and a few other states and California after a week from Tuesday. All right. When we get back from the break, You'll hear Lovett's conversation with Mark Elias about our elections and the 22nd Amendment. Two quick things before we do that. A reminder, it's time to start holiday shopping, and we are ready for you at the Crooked store. We got merch from all your favorite Crooked pods, plus holiday exclusives. You can now shop at crooked.com slash store, or if you're more of an in-person shopper, do they come here?

1:00:09Oh, a selection of our merch will be available at Crooked Con. Do we open up a brick and mortar here in the office? Speaking of Crooked Con, another reminder, we're just 10 days away. As I mentioned on the Friday show, I'm hosting a panel about Democratic messaging with Jen Psaki, Faz Shakir, and Democratic strategist Liz Smith, Rebecca Katz, and Adam Jentleson. Tommy and Ben are going to be doing a panel about what a forward-looking Democratic foreign policy should look like in 2025. I'm looking backwards. I'm also doing a panel about, we're going to talk to some of the lead consultants on the 2025 races, whether they won or lost, what the lessons were, what we did right, what we got wrong, what they observed.

1:00:47So that'll be cool. I love that. And you did cut off the panelists and you and Ben's. Ro Khanna and Yasemin Ansari are going to be on that panel, which is great. Excellent. Love it. It's going to be hosting a panel called Are We Having Fun Yet? with Hassan Piker, Simone Sanders Townsend, Tim Miller, and Jessica Tarloff. That's a fun, what a panel. It's going to be fun. We're talking about why Democrats seem like such downers and what it will take to get it. I don't know. Did you just listen to our show? I had a good ass time last hour. Yeah, well, I'm present company excluded. Of course. Tommy Lovett and Dan will also be doing one-on-one interviews with Lena Kahn, Ruben Gallego, and Chris Murphy.

1:01:28And Alex Wagner is going to be talking with Andy Beshear. And on top of all of that, there's the Vote Save America Action Hub. To see the full schedule and get tickets, head to crookedkahn.com. That's where you get some action. That's right. That's been discussed. It's a whole hub for it. Yeah, it's like the Olympic Village. Fewer condoms. crookedcondoms.com no you got it that's the point you got it you got where I was going we're good because love doesn't I was gonna say more yeah because we don't need them why would he yeah oh we got some that's right that's right that's right abundance fans there was just an abundance joke yeah we promised there'll be some abundance bros in the house if you know what I'm saying that is the first condom related abundance joke that has been told I don't know we can chug with Ezra and Derek on that but I believe it's the first.

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1:04:10Mark Elias leads the Elias Law Group and is the founder of Democracy Docket, a digital news organization dedicated to protecting democracy and voting rights. Mark, welcome back to the pod. Thanks for having me back. Lots to talk about. All of it great. Right. Steve Bannon said. Is it really all great? It's all great. Steve Bannon said that Trump will get a third term and quote, people just ought to get accommodated with that. Trump didn't rule out a third term when asked about Bannon's comments. How seriously should we take this? So one of the things I've always said is that we got terrible advice to take Donald Trump seriously, but not literally.

1:04:49I think we have to take him both literally and seriously. And so Donald Trump wants a third term. I fully expect he is going to try to get a third term. There is no constitutional loophole here. There's no legal way for him to seek a third term. There's no special provision that Steve Bannon has found that none of us, but that won't stop Donald Trump from trying to do so anyway. Remember, he incited a violent insurrection in the nation's capital the last time he tried to take a term that wasn't his. Yeah, so that's why I'm of two minds of it. On the one hand, I think we need to say unequivocally, he will not have a third term.

1:05:22But we need to say that in a way that doesn't act as if it won't be something that is pursued, that Donald Trump doesn't see as a possibility. To your point, there's no secret king mode inside of the Constitution, that when Bannon says, oh, we have a plan, they have no access to any secret information that would make that possible. So then it's incumbent on us to understand what that plan could look like. and tell me if I'm wrong, one would be they just defy the Constitution. He just doesn't leave office. That's a possibility. And then the other is a whole collection of end runs around the Constitution, like, you know, the Speaker of the House, no rule says can't be a dog kind of stuff.

1:06:01Which one are you more worried about? And how do you take it literally and seriously? Like, how do you prepare for something like this? Yes, I take the first more, more, more seriously than the second, because there is no end run around the constitution. There's no secret way, like I said, for him to be the vice president or that. I mean, the closest thing there would be to a secret way would be, frankly, that he does what Vladimir Putin did after his first term, which is that someone else is technically the president, like, for example, Don Jr., and he is just like the power behind the throne.

1:06:37But that's not an end run around the constitution. I mean, that's just, you know, that just is what it is. I think what Steve Bannon and others have in mind, I suspect, is something that looks much more like January 6th. I mean, let's be clear. He already has military in a number of major cities in the United States. That number will grow. He is already building what would be, I don't remember if it's the sixth or the eighth largest military in the world in ICE, you know, like when you look at the, by budget size, a force that will be very loyal to him. And, you know, we've recently learned that he's planning on deploying Department of Justice monitors in seven counties in California around a ballot, a state ballot initiative, and in New Jersey and Passaic County, which is 43 percent Hispanic, for a gubernatorial election.

1:07:23Now, I don't think he's going to affect the outcome of those, but do I think he's doing that because he's looking forward to 2026 and then ultimately 2028? Sure. So I want to get to 2025 and 2026. But before we move on from this, you know, Steve Bannon makes this comment and now we're having a conversation about how powerful and dangerous Donald Trump is when whatever their plans are, Donald Trump doesn't want to be perceived as a lame duck. And is there any way in which you worry that we're even in sort of following this lead, uh, imbuing Trump with more power and political, uh, uh, will than he actually has.

1:08:00No, and here's why. Look, I represented President Biden in the aftermath of the 2020 election, and we won 64 of 65 cases. Those cases got more and more desperate over time. They got less and less meritorious over time, but they actually gained more and more political support among Republicans. People don't remember this, but one of the last cases that went forward was the state of Texas suing four Democratic states directly in the Supreme Court to throw at the election results. Now, that case was never going to succeed. But what happened was that wound up getting the support of a majority, almost all of the Republican state attorneys general signed on to a amicus brief there, as did 126 House members.

1:08:42Those 126 House members were led by and organized by a backbench Republican at the time from Louisiana named Mike Johnson. And 126 Republicans signed on to this effort. And then on the night of January 6, after the violent insurrection, 139 Republicans supported that. So it actually gained support through January 6th. So I don't think this is going to succeed. I don't think Donald Trump, like I said, there's no secret plan. There's no way that the military, I think, could be deployed to overturn the results of a free and fair election. But all of these things have to be treated seriously, because January 6th had to be treated seriously.

1:09:20Those lawsuits had to be treated seriously. It didn't mean they were going to succeed. It just meant that you couldn't dismiss them. So people shouldn't be despairing about this. People shouldn't give Donald Trump powers he doesn't have because he doesn't have these powers. But we also should recognize that he's not above using violence. He's not above going outside the constitution. He's not above bulldozing part of the White House. And so we need to be prepared and we need to be serious-minded about it. But if we are, we will be able to prevent him from serving past his sell-by date on January 20th, 2029.

1:09:55Okay, so let's talk about how we do that. We have 2026. But before that, we're here in 2025. DOJ has said they will monitor elections in California and New Jersey, as you mentioned. What does that mean in practice? And then how does it set them up for something more dangerous in 2026? So look, one of the most dangerous things I think that is happening on the center and center-left is that people are finding excuses for the abnormality of the Trump administration. So you will hear people say, well, hasn't the Department of Justice always sent monitors, federal monitors, to elections? I mean, after all, it was after the passage of the Civil Rights Act that this federal monitor program got going and really took off.

1:10:39And the idea was you'd have DOJ monitors go to places with histories of discrimination against minority voters, and you'd have them observe to make sure that those minority voters were not being discriminated against. This is not that DOJ. This is not the Merrick Garland DOJ. This is not the Bill Barr DOJ. This is not the, you know, I could, you could go back in time. This is Donald Trump's Department of Justice. This is a Department of Justice run by Pam Bondi for the, and they're not sending out these monitors in order to protect minority voting rights. They're sending them out because they are trying to test the fence.

1:11:12Now they're not going to overturn the results of the ballot initiative. They're only in seven counties. They're in one county in New Jersey. But it is notable they are not, for example, in Virginia, which is also having gubernatorial elections, but where Republicans run the state. And so what I think is happening here is two things. Number one, they're sending these monitors out so that Donald Trump can lie about what happens when he loses the ballot initiative in California. When Gavin Newsom and the voters of California pass this ballot initiative, Donald Trump wants to be able to lie about California elections.

1:11:41Why? Because he's always lying about California elections, and he wants to create a permission structure to do so. Same in New Jersey when Mikey Sherrill wins that election. As he moves forward, though, to 2026, that lie both helps start to delegitimize those elections in 2026, create a permission structure for these federal monitors to be much more widely deployed in 2026, because they'll say, look, we deployed them in 2025 and nothing bad happened. In fact, they uncovered fraud, right? So you can see the building of a big line narrative that these monitors are part of. And then in 2026, you have more monitors, more places.

1:12:17You have the military, more places. You have Donald Trump claiming that there should be no vote by mail. There should be no states that have absentee voting except for people in the military. And in his latest social media post, he says there should be no early voting. That's right. No early voting. And so you can start to see all of these things coalesce as we head towards 2026, in which he lies about what happened in 2025. He uses that as an excuse to do more egregious things in 2026. And then he claims that there's fraudulent voting that requires greater federal action. And do you worry about that being in place in 2026 in such a way that election results will be questioned, that there's a possibility that even in 2026, we won't be able to count on the outcomes of those elections?

1:13:06Or is that more for 2028? No, I think you put your finger right on it. And I think you use the right verb, questioned, right? I'm not saying that we will not have elections in 2026. Of course, we'll have elections in 2026. Actually, dictators quite like elections. The question is how fair and free they are. And I suspect in 2026, they will look less fair and free than they were in 2024, and perhaps more fair and free than they will in 2028, right? So it's someplace in between. And so what I suspect that he is laddering up to in 2026 is to be able to make it marginally harder for people to vote, right?

1:13:44Maybe some Republican states, for example, repeal their mail-in voting laws or cut back on how easy it is to vote early, right? Remember, Republican legislatures and Republican governors have proven themselves quite willing to scale back on democracy when Donald Trump asks them to. So maybe you see that. Maybe you also see an increase in election vigilantism in some Democratic states. I'm sorry, before we get on to what's next, I want to stop on that for a second because you put together two things and I think they're both important. One can be overcome with information and turnout, which we have also seen, right, as Republicans have tried to come after legitimate and done through legal means, come out, come after maybe with rhetoric that's not true, whatever, but they've come after some kinds of access to voting.

1:14:26And we've seen Democratic campaigns and those in favor of more voting overcome them. That is a separate matter than vigilantism and intimidating people out of voting, which can't be ultimately is very difficult to even measure. So can you like, let's put aside for a moment, Republicans hearing his call to get rid of early voting or mail-in voting, which by the way, it's not even clear hurts Democrat. Like that's it. That is that's, I think it's stupid, but it's overcomable. It's something we can deal with. What does intimidation look like to you? Yeah. So look, I've been warning about a particular type of intimidation for several election cycles.

1:15:03Now, we've seen a rise in it, and it is this idea of right-wing election vigilantism. And it has basically taken two forms. The first is mass voter challenges. Now, there's always been some number of people who get challenged in their right to vote. But what we have seen over the course of the last two election cycles is the building of right-wing organizations and right-wing organizations with voter files that essentially create one-stop shopping for right-wing activists to download lists of thousands and tens of thousands of voters that they then take to their local election office or mail into their local county.

1:15:42and say these 10 ,000 people or 20 ,000 people should not be allowed to vote at all. They are ineligible. They're not properly registered. We've seen this in the hundreds of thousands in states like Georgia. We've seen it in the thousands, so not in the tens or hundreds of thousands, in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan and even in New Hampshire and New York. And we're seeing that grow every election cycle in scale and in scope because it's becoming easier to use big data from these right-wing groups. And so we're seeing more and more of that. That's probably the primary way. And my legal team and I, we fight against it.

1:16:18As you say, it's hard to organize around. Sometimes it's even hard to know what's going on. The other is more traditional types of intimidation in which you see people, for example, in Arizona, we saw outside of Maricopa County, we saw people in body armor and video cameras staking out drop boxes, right? Intimidating people returning their mail-in ballot. Right now, the Republican Party is in court in Minnesota to try to strike down a law that prohibits voter intimidation around the polls, right? We've seen this movement by Republicans and conservative organizations try to strike down state laws that prohibit this under the guise of free speech.

1:16:55So those are sort of the two twins that we see, and that's before you get to things that are done by the federal government itself. So now let's turn to what those are. I want to break it down. And it's all very daunting. OK, so now we've got efforts to get people's names off the polls. We've got people intimidating people out of voting. Now the votes are cast. What are you worried about from that point forward? Because I think that is where people feel the most disempowered, right? They feel the most scared. Like, what am I meant to do? I did my part. I got everybody to vote. We voted. Now what happens?

1:17:27Yeah. So now we get to the thing that is probably the most concerning of all. And that is, as you say, after people have voted, you have the vote counting and the certification process. And just to be clear, Donald Trump posted on social media, on True Social, several months ago. It was the social media post that garnered a lot of attention because he targeted vote by mail and some voting equipment. But if you read down in that social media post, what he said was that the states are the agents, his word, the agents of the federal government for tabulating and counting results. And then he said that the federal government is him because he is the embodiment of the federal government.

1:18:11Now, everything about that is untrue. A, states are not the agents of the federal government. B, he is not the federal government. And C, he doesn't get to control vote counting. But that is clearly what he has in mind, is that the tabulation of votes and the certification of votes will be the friction point that he can put the most pressure on. We know that he is interested in this because in an Oval Office meeting in 2020 on December 16th, there was actually a proposal for him to send the FBI into the state of Georgia to seize the ballots and the voting equipment after the 2020 election. And that didn't happen because the White House Counsel's Office, others in the White House, and people at the Department of Justice threatened to resign.

1:18:52Well, we know no one's going to threaten to resign this time if he does that after 2026. We also know that in the run-up of the 2024 election, there were movements in a number of states, including in Georgia, to allow election deniers on county election boards to refuse to certify election results. If they didn't like the numbers, they could refuse to certify. You may remember this led to litigation and other pressure in Georgia, but it wasn't just Georgia. And again, we've seen a history of this. I sued, my law firm and I, we sued Cochise County after the 2022 election because they were refusing to certify the outcome of election.

1:19:28We sued after 2022 in Pennsylvania, several counties for refusing to do so. The only reason why you didn't see this litigation in 2024 is because Donald Trump won. So you're going to see election deniers at the county level and at the state level encouraged by the White House to refuse to certify Democrats if they won elections. And that's, of course, before you get to the House of Representatives of seating and the Senate seating, which is like the whole, the whole, you know, the whole, whole ball of wax in some sense. So you've just laid out what their potential levers are to, uh, subvert the will of voters, uh, in individual races across, uh, the elections in the midterms.

1:20:08Uh, what are our levers? And, you know, for people listening to this, uh, who want to feel galvanized and empowered as citizens to do everything they can to make sure we win the midterms, what are their kind of places where they have some way to influence this part of it so they know with confidence that not only are they going to get people to do everything they can to make sure we win the House and ideally the Senate in the fall, but that we have the power to make sure that it actually carries through? Yeah, so we have a lot of levers, and ours are stronger than theirs, okay, which is the reason why this is not a hopeless conversation.

1:20:43I'm laying out what their game plan is, just like before the 2020 election, I laid out, frankly, for people what Donald Trump's game plan would be, which is that he wouldn't want to leave the White House. And you sounded fucking crazy. And I said, and people did say I was crazy, right? And like, it turned out it was true. So here's the deal. Number one, one of the realities of almost all of Donald Trump's anti-democratic actions is that he winds up getting sued and loses. And so the truth is, it would be, again, a painful process to have to sue county by county to force certification, but we would sue county by county to force certification, and we would win.

1:21:20And we will win. And we did in 2020. We did in 2022. And if we have to do so again in 2026 or 2028, we'll do so. So the courts are actually pretty good on these issues. The courts tend not to favor the loser of an election being able to withhold a certificate of election or seating from the winner. That's number one. Number two is that this whole process is very fragile, but its fragility favors activism. And so one of the reasons why Republicans have been successful in some quarters here is because they've been willing to be very loud. Remember Rudy Giuliani and all the people claiming that they were kept out of the counting and then banging on the windows in Michigan.

1:22:04And activism matters. And so one of the things that we have seen this year is that Democrats and progressives are very, very excited and very, very engaged. And these voter suppression techniques tend not to survive first contact with peaceful activism. They tend not to survive. You know, someone can stand outside a Dropbox and try to intimidate people. But if there are five other people standing outside Dropbox saying, get out of our community, get away from this Dropbox, honestly, it works. It saves the Dropbox. If people think that they're going to subvert the will of the election after the election by refusing to certify, one of the ways that doesn't happen is that people notice and they protest and they go to the county board meetings requiring certification.

1:22:51Let me tell you a really quick story. You know, this whole idea of refusing to certify elections has its origin in Wayne County, Michigan, following the 2020 election. When the two Republican members of the Wayne County board were told by the White House not to certify the election, Donald Trump called these local officials. It's a two Republican, two Democratic board. And at first they weren't going to certify. And then if you remember, people like you sounded the alarm. And the result was that Democrats in Wayne County flooded that county board. It was actually an online canvas. It was in the middle of the pandemic.

1:23:25And as a result, the Republicans, they relented, right? They didn't want it. They were willing to do this in quiet. They were not willing to do it if it was a public spectacle. And the same thing happened at the statewide canvassing board when people thought the Republican canvassing board members at the statewide level would refuse to certify. But there was a public outcry and public attention, and they did certify. And so the truth is that if people are paying attention to these things and people are engaged and they are standing up against voter challenges, they're standing up against refuse to certify, typically or very oftentimes these state boards and county boards, they can only steal elections in quiet.

1:24:05You know, they can refuse to certify in quiet in the back rooms. But if there's people paying attention, by and large, they wind up doing the thing that is right. So right now, as we're recording this, Mike Johnson is keeping the House out in part because he does not want to seat a Democrat who won a special election because that would give them the votes to do the resolution on the Epstein files. How much does this look like a harbinger to you of the ways in which Republicans in Congress could try to stand in the way of Democrats taking back the House? What does that look like? How does that work?

1:24:41Look, there are a lot of doomsday scenarios around Mike Johnson and the House and seating. I mean, I'll say this. The Senate is a continuing body, as you know. The House is not. So whether Mike Johnson likes it or not, in the first days of January, the House is going to reconvene and the clerk is going to call the roll. And Mike Johnson actually doesn't have any more power on that day than anyone else, right? So in some sense, I'm not minimizing the trouble that Mike Johnson can create. I mean, he can try to do things in the lame duck. He can try to, you know, appoint a new clerk. Like, there's all these, like, technical ways that people worry about this.

1:25:18And believe me, I've done more House and Senate contested elections probably than any other lawyer, certainly than virtually any other lawyer if there's some Republican out there. And I think that what Democrats need to focus on is winning the elections. We need to worry about passing the registering initiative in California. We need to make sure that – because the easiest way for Republicans to essentially rig this process is by gerrymandering so many seats that Democrats can't win or creating voter confusion or apathy, division within the Democratic coalition so that they don't vote. You know, I think if we get to the place where we have won the seats on election night, leave it to the lawyers and the political operatives and Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer.

1:25:59They will get it across the finish line. It may not be pretty. It may look a lot like what we saw in 2020. But the main thing everyone can do right now is if you have not already volunteered for a campaign, you know, you don't have to love every Democrat. Pick the Democrat who you love and go give to them and volunteer for them. I love every single one of them. You and me both. I am, you know, this is the thing. This is the thing about me is I don't do inter-party squabbling. Like I don't do like – like when people say to me, oh, I – you know, what about, you know, Sinema and Manchin? And what I say is that the only reason why you focus on Sinema and Manchin is because every Republican voted against voting rights, every single one of them.

1:26:39And the same is true on the left. Like for every complaint people have about a progressive Democrat, I'm like the only reason why you have to complain about them is because not a single Republican ever does the right thing. Well, this is what makes you good. This is why you're our lawyer. You know, you're not you're not sort of you're not doing this part of it. You're you're just doing the law. So last question, are there ways people can get involved in the like, what is the most effective thing our listeners can do who are really worried about this, who are doom scrolling a lot, who feel hopeless or powerless because this is an assault on their ability to use the power that they believe is is is theirs by right.

1:27:17What is the most effective things people could do to be part of protecting the vote 2025, 2026, beyond? Yeah. So look, the single most important thing that anyone can do and that everyone can do, probably is a better way to put it, that everyone can do is they can speak up. You know, right now we have a crisis of cowardice in this country. And it is not just the largest institutions that are cowardice, although they are pretty cowardice. But honestly, we need more people willing to speak up. And that means for everyone listening, you all have social media. You all have a bridge club, a lunch club, a bowling league.

1:27:50You all get together with other knitters. You are in a Facebook group. You have dinner with your friends and your family. And now is the time to not stay silent. Now is the time to speak up and say that what Donald Trump is doing to this country is wrong. What Republicans are trying to do to our democracy is wrong. And that everyone should have the opportunity to be registered to vote, to cast their ballot and have their ballot counted. And that there should be zero tolerance for anything else. And I know that sounds like a really simple thing, but honestly, there's not enough of that. There are too many people who are just holding back because they don't want to be in the fray.

1:28:22They don't want to be in that line of fire. They'd rather have a polite conversation than a hard conversation. And we need more people willing to have hard conversations. So that's number one. Number two, you know, if you are able to, if you have the time and if you or if you could spare a few dollars, find a Democratic candidate or a progressive organization and volunteer for them or give money to them. You know, like I said, you know, your thing in California may be the ballot initiative. You may not like the candidates, but you may like the ballot initiative. So go knock doors and volunteer for the ballot initiative.

1:28:50On the local level, you may say, look, I don't really care for partisan politics at all, but there is a civic organization like the League of Women Voters who is registering voters. Or you can go become a poll worker by getting trained, right? Because we need good election officials doing honest work in every place in this country, right? So there's a way for you to engage locally in the community everywhere you go. And then the final thing is, I always say this, you know, people think that judges live in these like separate communities. One of the reasons why we tend to win so many cases is because judges live in the communities and they go to their kids' soccer games, just like you do.

1:29:27They go to the local mall, just like you do, or a local diner. And the more we create a sense in communities that we expect that our elections will be fair and free and that they will be representative, the more likely we will wind up with good outcomes. Watching not just the No Kings rallies, which have been inspiring, but watching what's going on in Portland and what's going on in Chicago and to some extent in LA, is actually quite, it's both terrifying and terrible, but it is also at a civic engagement level, quite admirable. You're watching people put themselves out there and saying, you're not going to do this in my community.

1:30:08You're not going to drag people out away in the middle of the night on my watch. You're not going to disappear them to gulags while they're my neighbors. And we can all do that in all aspects of our life. And when we get closer to voting, that can be part of us too. If you see someone who's afraid to go to the polls, go with them. You know, if you hear that there are vigilantes staking out a drop box, you know, peacefully, safely, but make your presence known because cowards are the ones who are trying to suppress the vote and they do not withstand a little sunshine. Thank you so much, Mark, for being with us.

1:30:42And Mark will be at Crooked Con. He'll be on a panel, I believe, with Jon Favreau talking about the ways we can fight back. Is that right? Did I get that right? So thanks for being part to Crooked Con, but I'll see you in person then. I am really looking forward to it. And anyone, I don't know how many tickets they have left, but if you are in the Washington DC area and you've not already gotten your tickets to Crooked Con, please do so. It is going to be great. I looked at the program and there are so many exciting panels that are coming up. So I look forward to seeing you guys there and I hope I see everybody else.

1:31:13We'll be wild, one might say. Mark Elias, thanks so much. Thanks.

1:31:23That's our show for today. Thanks to Mark Elias for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Talk to everybody then. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review. That helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illick-Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer.

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