1093: Department of War (Crimes)

25:13The head of Southcom resigned over this policy. The good thing here is that the announcement of the investigation in Congress was not just a thing. Like Roger Wicker, who's the Republican, the Senate Republican on this from Mississippi. He just did an interview right before we recorded. And he said, we're certainly going to have available to us all of the video and all of the audio. So they will get that. And he was asked if it could be a war crime. And he said, we're going to find out what the true facts are. So they are clearly going to run this down. Pete Hegseth, his response, one of his responses was posting a parody book cover from the Franklin the Turtle Kids series.

25:51and this book cover was called Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists that Shows the Turtle Blowing Up a Boat. So that's what Pete Hegseth's doing about this. And Sean Parnell, the spokesman over at the Pentagon, tweeted a couple days ago, we told the Washington Post that this entire narrative was false yesterday. These people just fabricate anonymously sourced stories out of whole cloth. Fake news is the enemy of the people. A couple days later, they're confirming it. Also, in the original denial, they said denied the narrative, right? They were like, very strange choice of words. And now they're copying to it, but then trying to suggest that Hegseth gave a broad order.

26:27And then in the execution of the order, there was the second strike. So they're pushing it on to the admiral. But then this idea of like, what is the order to kill everybody? Like the order is like, go kill everybody. I mean, I hope it's not. Who knows what's actually said or what was written down? We don't have enough information yet. But all of this is just like, he's just so not a serious person who should be in a role like this. Like the idea that you want the secretary of defense posting like trolling posts about extrajudicial killing, showing that he takes absolutely no responsibility, does not treat it seriously.

27:03Forget like, I'm sorry, but like not just before what the law or Congress, but what about the fucking almighty God? Like it's disgusting. And you think like somebody with that many fucking tattoos about Jesus on his chest might think about it a little bit. I mean, I realize the polling has been depressingly supportive of these boat strikes. I do wonder if the details of this incident as they get out there and more people hear this story might change some minds. I mean, there was that CBS poll where people were like, OK, but I do want evidence that the boats are carrying drugs before there's any kind of strikes on them.

27:37I think people are supportive of the stated goal, which is stopping drug trafficking. But that is obviously not what's happening in practice. Like, again, fentanyl is not coming to the U.S. from Venezuela. Fentanyl is produced in Mexico with chemicals from China. Some relatively small, like 10 % of cocaine, goes through Venezuela. But blowing up 20 boats, like, off the coast of Trinidad or in the Pacific, like, that's not going to put a dent in the cocaine consumption in the United States. A lot of that cocaine could have been going to Europe. So, like, I do think that people are going to hear this and be like, we're just, like, murking fishermen.

28:10There's also the stories of like these Colombian fishermen who there's a guy who went out and his five kids are now looking for him. Those stories are starting to be reported. So I do think like the reality of it is starting to come through. Hopefully people are paying attention. And again, even if you're someone who's like, well, you know, it's a bunch of people in boats in the Caribbean and they're drug traffickers. And I don't know if I care about this. like just think about what it means for the U.S. government to say hey you know what we can murder people in the water and uh who are just on boats and when you call us on it and ask us if it's legal our explanation is going to be it's legal because we say it is and then uh the secretary of offense is just going to post memes uh joking about it and saying uh there's more killings to come and that's it i mean and by the way do that if they can do that to boats in uh off the coast of venezuela imagine what they could do to uh americans uh other other international travelers people anywhere around the world i mean like what the fuck it is the the claim of self-defense just you're blowing up people from above who are floating in the water like i don't like who finds that belief?

29:23Who is that for? Who is who is finding that believable? Yeah. I wonder if if even Trump, like with some daylight between him and Hegseth. Now, I could imagine him changing his tune probably by the time you listen to this and getting back on board here. But you can tell that even Trump's like, I don't know if not that he has some kind of like moral revelation, but I do think maybe he you know, he knows that's bad to to have everyone know that you committed a war Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One would hope. One thing that may get Americans upset is Trump launching a full scale war against Venezuela, which he seems to be inching closer towards.

29:57On Saturday, Trump posted, quote, to all airlines, pilots, drug dealers and human traffickers, please consider the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela to be closed in its entirety. When a reporter asked Trump whether that meant a strike was imminent, he said, quote, don't read anything into it. But DOD has now moved an aircraft carrier to the region, bringing the total number of Marines and Navy personnel to 12 ,000. Trump and Marco Rubio also reportedly spoke with Maduro by phone last week, which Trump acknowledged after saying he couldn't talk about it. And some outlets are reporting that it was an ultimatum call, though Trump is refusing to say what was discussed.

30:34Tommy, is this happening? We going to war with Venezuela? What's the latest? I don't know. I mean, they're hemming it on a little bit. I think Trump's dream situation is to use the threat of military pressure to force Maduro to leave power voluntarily in some sort of negotiated deal. He is smart enough to know that regime change wards are bad politics. But Trump also wants the oil. He hates Maduro. He wants the political benefit of pleasing a bunch of like hardline Latin America activists in Miami. So they're running this big pressure play. I think Marco Rubio would be thrilled by an invasion.

31:10like would love nothing more than the U.S. Marines to go into Venezuela and topple Maduro. He also comes from like these very right-wing Miami political circles, and he thinks that toppling Maduro is the way you get to the Cuban government and then topple them. So it's a little domino theory coming back, like Kissinger. They're also all hearing from these like the Venezuelan activists and right-wingers who, you know, there was this thing in Politico a couple days ago about how if this happens, Republicans will win Florida in perpetuity. It was like the most gross, bloodless reporting. Unapable.

31:39So God only— Guys, just sit still. You're cool. You're already doing that. It's like, yeah, there could be no other secondary or tertiary consequences from a regime change war politico. I'm sure it'll just be as simple as right-wing Venezuelans in Miami. Any of you people alive in 2003? Yeah, it's crazy. So God knows what Maduro is thinking. He does not strike me as a guy who's going to give up power willingly and move to Tehran or Moscow or something. He probably thinks he can wait Trump out. He probably thinks I can bribe this guy with oil contracts or maybe buy some Melania coin or whatever.

32:18But it hasn't happened yet. So we're still in this wait and see mode. And then, of course, if Trump does cut a deal with them, then Trump will say, that's another war that I ended. Another war I ended. Another victory parade for all the troops coming home from the Caribbean. Exactly. Without firing a shot. No, he's not going to have peace. He'll have won the war. Yeah, right. He'll have won the war. So Trump's justification that he's murdering people on boats and threatening war in Venezuela because of drug trafficking became even harder to believe when he announced on Friday that he plans to pardon Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former right wing leader of Honduras, who was investigated by Trump's own first-term Department of Justice before they passed the baton to the Biden DOJ, which prosecuted him.

33:05Hernandez was recently sentenced to 45 years in federal prison for conspiring with South American cartels to facilitate the trafficking of 500 kilos of cocaine into the U.S. Witnesses at his trial testified that Hernandez took millions in bribes, including from El Chapo, and protected traffickers who admitted to dozens of murders. But despite the fact that Trump's own DOJ conducted most of the investigation, the president said on Sunday, quote, they said it was a Biden. They said it. We don't know who they are. Yeah. They are his friends. He said. So they said it was a Biden administration set up.

33:38And I looked at the facts and I agreed with them before going on to say that just because there's drug trafficking in a given country, it doesn't mean you should take action against that country's president. You think Maduro was surprised to hear that comment? it? I mean, just before we get to the specifics, it drives me crazy when he gets asked about the pardons. He's like, I don't know. He always like pleads ignorance. So I'm sorry. Shouldn't you know a little something about the individual you just pardoned her? They were telling me anyway, the juxtaposition of this in Venezuela is it's like head spinning.

34:07Trump doesn't like Maduro. So he labels him a cartel leader, puts a bounty on his head, threatens to evade his country and kills low level fishermen off the coast. Juan Orlando Hernandez gets a pardon because he's a right winger he's friends with roger stone or he can afford to pay roger stone which i think is far more likely uh and he is friends with all these crypto creeps who like hernandez because he was behind this very bizarre libertarian project called uh what the hell thank you that all these guys loved and it just all of it confirms this widely held belief in latin america that the united states is full of shit we do not care about the rule of law we don't care about justice we don't care about stopping drug smuggling it's all politics and money and defending your friends and killing your enemies.

34:49And that is an especially big deal and bad precedent to set in Latin America right now, because a lot of folks there feel like the ultimate way they can stop corruption and organized crime is through the extradition of these individuals to the U.S. for prosecution through the U.S. justice system. And Trump just unraveled all of that. And this comes not that long after Trump made this dirty deal with Nayib Bukele down in El Salvador to send back to El Salvador, like real deal MS-13 leaders who allegedly had cut deals with Bukele in his administration. And so what is so shocking about this is it would be so easy to just do nothing.

35:28All you had to do was not pardon the guy. You know, it feels very simple, but this is just so lawless. Like this almost feels like this could be this in the boat bombings could be presidency defining in some way because Trump will say they're all corrupt. Everybody does it. But like this is stunning stuff, 500 kilos of cocaine. Yeah, Trump said to the Times that his many friends asked him to pardon Hernandez. They gave him 45 years because he was the president of the country. You could do this to any president. I know, there's a little bit of like - There's a little bit of like, well, but to Tommy's point, right-wing leaders can do no wrong and left-wing leaders will never be safe.

36:08And that to me is what you take away from this. If you're on Trump's side, You can really get away with anything. You're a phone call away. Your friends can call. There was all these people with ties to Trump had invested in this lawless town where they were going to. Because this is a wild story, Prospera. So this is from a New York Times piece in 2024 about this. They describe it as Prospera is a private for-profit city with its own government that courts foreign investors through low taxes and light regulations. Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen are investors. And it says, critics have described it as a neocolonial state within a state or an example of a corporate monarchy where yacht owning CEOs exploit land and labor in a poor country.

36:51And so people got really upset about this. There was a whole protest movement against these zones. Prosper is one of the zones that they basically were selling off the land in Honduras to these companies. Castro, who was the president that just that is just leaving office. Right. Or is the president now was against it. Hernandez was for it. and now Trump has endorsed the guy in the Honduran elections from Hernandez's party because, and so when Trump says like, my friends, you can tell that they were like, well, we had this good thing going in Honduras and now there's all this trouble there and we want to make sure that this city is prosperous again.

37:27They're like, oh, the lefties here, they're nuts. You know, they're nuts. It's just like their whole foreign policy, it's like, it's not fucking isolationism, it's imperialism. It's like, and especially with South America and Central America, like he just wants these client states where he installed these like fucking tin pot right wing dictators who are going to cut deals with trump make them rich help us friends out and it's mercantilism it's just it's a for-profit it's for-profit foreign policy and the the the idea of a of a uh an independent corporate for-profit lawless state within a state it's like design your own crypto regulations it's it's a it's like the opening crawl for like a dystopian it's like at the beginning of elysian or elysian like one of future, you will live in one of a dozen corporal anarchist crypto states.

38:13I can't overstate how much this doesn't make sense, too, because Trump announced this pardon in an endorsement of the current right wing candidate in the race. Hernandez is fucking detested in Honduras. If I were as for it and you were I was suddenly linked to this man serving like 45 years in prison in my endorsement announcement, I like, what are you doing? Why are you interfering in the election, which happened on Sunday? and also like Hernandez is accused of killing a witness in prison this is like a very bad guy it wasn't just drugs he also stole the 2017 election Trump basically told the OAS to bury their investigation into it at the time but like all of this is just crazy politics and like the only explanation is that Roger Stone got a bunch of money and whispered in his ear and facilitated this I would love I can't wait for more reporting to come out about like why this actually happened the way in which it feels like he's just rolling calls about various, that he really does.

39:12I think when he says, like, I don't know anything about it, the truth of the crypto pardon from a couple of weeks ago, I don't think that's true. But there is a way in which he seems like a passenger on these like pardons that like he knows that his sons and others are kind of doing out there doing deals and getting things done and kind of sign. He's like, seems like he's like putting the like final mob boss approval on some of this stuff. But I think it's performative. Like the CZ pardon, like he He knows what Binance is. He knows how much money that Binance just put in his pocket through facilitating this purchase of the USDC, the stable coin.

39:42I think that's right. I think it takes a five minute meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval where you're like, got a couple of pardons for you. This guy, friend of ours, made us a ton of money. Good. You know, like just really quick. I don't know how in the weeds he's getting. I'm sure he is aware of who these people are. He knows that they're good for him. I'm saying that the details, the way these things are getting to his desk is a process he is not completely a part of.

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41:22Speaking of pardons, we got a whole corrupt date today. Trump also granted clemency last week to David Gentile, private equity executive who was convicted for a billion dollar investment scheme that victimized more than 10 ,000 people, many of whom made statements to the court, like the person who wrote, quote, I lost my whole life savings. I am living check to check. Gentile walked out of prison last week, just days into his seven year sentence. Giving us Gentiles a bad name, you know? Honestly, I think he speaks for the group. Unbelievable. The story on this one too, they're like, we don't, there's no connections yet to Trump.

41:59It's baffling. We'll find out. There'll be another week. For sure. For sure. I mean, this is like the, the fact that Trump just has a crypto wallet, you can throw money. We just have no idea what's going on behind the scenes of some of these, some of these parties. We just really don't know. This wasn't even crypto. This was guys was like traditional securities fraud. OG Ponzi scheme. No, no. I understand that. What I'm saying is, you know, you put a call in, like, how do I make, how do I make this? How do I, how do I solve my problem here? 10 ,000 investors were defrauded. that must have taken a lot of time that's a lot of that's a lot of fraud he was he was asked about it or some of the administration they were just like oh it's another it was another biden doj weaponization move tish james has a civil case against this guy maybe that's how it got to trump because he's like oh the enemy of my enemy friend who knows someone probably paid him the the like Like the dark part of all of this is like prosecuting a Honduran corrupt drug trafficking president going after a massive billion dollar fraud scheme.

43:00It is years of people's lives that they did not making a lot of money that they did for the right reasons. They did sometimes at like personal risk and. And the victims. And the victims. But like these are just investigations that are wiped away. And if you're inside of the Department of Justice and you're involved in one of these, you're deciding, right? Like you can only have so much time in your day. You can devote your time in the public sector to one of these cases. And then it is blown up by a corrupt president for no reason other than somebody got in his ear at the right time. Well, and I just I can't help but think of all of the people who've been swept up in the ICE raids, including American citizens, including people who are illegally taken from their families, never know if they're going to come home, have not done a thing.

43:43We're seeing all this, you know, the judge in Chicago was just released a ruling on on all the the raids that went on there. and you have all these examples of Department of Homeland Security saying, well, this protester was coming at me. And then they have the body cam footage and you can see that the protester was doing nothing. And it's just like lie after lie after lie. And these people were tear gassed, pepper balls, taken, and they're just lying about it. And so that's the kind of justice that comes for most people in the country. And these fucking people who are connected to Mark Andreessen or Peter Thiel or God knows whoever else in the Trump orbit who are rich enough or connected enough.

44:29They just fucking get pardons. There's just there's a lot of people like in the Southern District of New York prosecutor's office who's like, you know what? I don't like Trump. Like head down. I'm doing my job. This doesn't touch me. All of a sudden, Hernandez gets pardoned. They must be apoplectic. Hopefully those people start speaking out like you're seeing Republicans speak. There was like a former head of the DEA I saw on Twitter commenting on this. Like there's a lot of people that are like not Democrats that are really upset about the Hernandez pardon. Yeah. And I do think that is like a little bit of a like there is a sort of a natural break not to what they can do.

44:59They can do it. It's it's sort of like the like the Trump project can be unraveling as they're doing more and more damage. But like, you know, leaks out of the Cash Patel FBI like that. Like these are serious people who are not Trump loyalists. They're not Democrats, but they're not Trumpists. and the idea that they're just going to sit, like they're going to, first of all, follow these guys into the breach on behalf of Donald Trump. I mean, look at what's going to happen if you don't follow, if you refuse to follow an illegal order, you quit, you walk away. Like you may face political consequences, you may be attacked, that fuck people call bomb threats into your house at this point.

45:33But if you do what they say and it is illegal, suddenly you are beholden to Trump. Like you are the mobster that took the bribe. And I do hope in moments like this, you see that side by side, these pardons, The throwing somebody under the bus after giving an order that seems illegal. The people wake up to the fact that they have to decide what is best for themselves in a world that is with Trump and then without. We got another one. Wall Street Journal had quite a story on Friday about Jared Kushner and Steve Wyckoff and pals who were basing their negotiations with Russia on maximizing profits for American businesses.

46:11trying to bring the Russian economy back into the fold. And so that U.S. companies and Russian companies can sort of go after deals together. Yeah, that'll work. Let's just be clear what's happening here. Trump's golf buddy turned diplomat, Steve Wyckoff, and his corrupt fail son, son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are sitting in Miami with this guy named Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Sovereign Wealth Fund. And they are sketching out how to carve up Ukraine. That's what's happening. And it doesn't matter if you like support funding for Ukraine or oppose it. Like that is a terrible process that is destined to be corrupted.

46:45And it didn't happen by accident. Vladimir Putin is very smart. He knows Trump. He knows he's a mark. He knows he's a quote unquote business guy. So he sent his business buddies to make contacts with Wyckoff and Kushner and to say, oh, yeah, let's explore the Arctic. Let's let's let's do a joint manned mission to Mars. Let's build oil and gas pipelines. lines uh and then you pull jared aside and you say you know and uh well tell me more about this investment fund you started jared it sounds really interesting we'd love to park a couple billion from our sovereign wealth fund with a sharp young man like you and like meanwhile like even before the full-scale russian invasion of ukraine the u.s russia relationship was not big it wasn't like u.s china wasn't the u.s eu it was like tens of billions of dollars it was like comparable to the US and South Africa's trade relationship.

47:32It's like they gave us oil and gas and petroleum products and metal and fertilizer and shit. We send them like machinery, you know, like caterpillar stuff. Like this idea that there is some deep economic relationship to be had with one of the most corrupt countries on the fucking planet is crazy. Yeah, and they're also talking about how to kind of carve up the$300 billion in frozen assets that are in Europe. All of this does seem to in some way flow from the fact that Trump still has an 80s brain and thinks of it as the USSR and not as like a failing petro state with an economy that's roughly the size of Italy's, right?

48:09Like this is about, you know, it's a lot of land. It looks big on the map, but you're talking about - He still thinks there's a Leningrad? Yeah, for sure. For sure. I can't be, they move Leningrad on my map.

48:22But yeah, and the, like, there was a camera where, I saw this, but like how many times has Steve Wyckoff been to Russia? Like eight times? Many times. And he goes in for like three hour meetings with Putin with a Russian translator, takes his own notes, just gets worked. Yeah. I was going to say, you're not getting one over on Steve Wyckoff. By the way, you know, you can't con an honest man. Like get one over on Steve Wyckoff. He walks away rich. What is he? He doesn't, you know, it's like get one over on him. He can be bought. And Steve Wyckoff's son is like co-running the Trump family crypto business.

48:59Well, there was a story that like, you know, we saw the story about them putting the UAA, putting whatever it was,$2 billion. UA, yeah. UA and$2 billion into the World Liberty Financial. But then there was new reporting like a month or so after that about how that was tied to Wyckoff. That's Zach Wyckoff and Trump Jr. And then Steve Wyckoff is then part of getting the NVIDIA chips over to the UAE a few weeks after that. It's a trade. Steve Whitcoff and David Sachs. Right, yes. With the NVIDIA chips, who was also the subject of a big piece in the New York Times on Sunday. The headline was, Silicon Valley's man in the White House is benefiting himself and his friends.

49:39So look, I thought this story did not have too much detail that was explosive, but boy, did it set off all the tech bros rushing to Saks defense. Saks himself posted this like long letter that his lawyer wrote of defamation. And then everyone in the, your Sam Altman's, your Mark Benioff's, they're all being like, David Saks is the most wonderful person we've ever worked with and is going to save the world with his, you know, for how much he knows about artificial intelligence. It was just a lot to me. I'm like, it's just a fucking story. I can sack up. Yeah, well, sad sack somewhere. Sad sack.

50:17Yeah, there's something about the like overreaction to a story like this. It's like the idea of just being questioned at all seems anathema to them. Like the idea that you could just face any kind of feedback, even feedback you might disagree with, right? They may just have a different take on it. Like doesn't make it defamation. You just, you see it a different way. They're more critical of you. And the whole, like whatever the, like I actually felt the same way in reading the piece. Like I don't know what exactly has been exposed by this. I feel like there's a kind of like whatever, there's like a kind of a - Like a swirling controversy, but you don't really land anything.

50:46It's a lot of like fuels, claims of type stuff. and I didn't really feel like I landed on anything specific. But that gets at the problem, right? Where you're so sensitive to this kind of criticism, which means you can't step back and be objective about it. And whatever your specific business ties, you're in a role where you're not supposed to be advocating for your own personal financial interest or the interest of your friends or an industry you care about and believe in. You're supposed to be advocating for the country. And I'm sure the reason he went around asking people or hoping people would come to his defenses because he thinks he's doing that, right?

51:19I'm sure he feels like he's doing that. But like people are complicated and incentives are hard to fully understand. And that's why conflicts of interest matter. And like, if you can't handle even like a flick at exposing some of those questions, like that is really damning. Yeah, I mean, I think the central, the conflict in the story is that this is a guy who is not fully divested and he is benefiting from policies he is making and the people around him, all of his closest friends are benefiting financially too. And the response to that very obvious fact was all the people who are financially benefiting from the policies David Sachs is putting in place, tweeting about how great he was like, oh, Sam Altman, you like that David Sachs is like steering hundreds of billions of dollars to open AI.

52:03What a surprise. I'm glad you think he's nice. Everyone thinks he's famously a fucking asshole, actually, but I'm glad you're happy well they're also there the challenges conflicts aside their theory of artificial intelligence is just fucking go hard and we don't care what the consequences are no lessons learned from social media and what happened in the 2000s and 2010s and that there are going to be no regulations and anytime someone has a complaint or concern about artificial intelligence and where it's headed all we have to say is well we're in a race against china and if china gets there first then, you know, everything's fucked.

52:39But we're going to sell China all the most advanced NVIDIA chips because Jensen Wang argues that that's the way you defeat China in the AI wars. It's not about him getting really rich. Jensen Wang's the CEO of NVIDIA. It's not about NVIDIA being worth$5 trillion and keeping that stock price up. It's about beating the Chinese by giving them our best chips. Or having our chips everywhere around the world, right? Yeah, and otherwise that that would just drive more sales to Huawei if China doesn't have the chips themselves, which is also an argument I don't quite understand. Well, like in fairness to David Sachs, on the list of like ways in which the private and public have been merged, right?

53:17And interests are hard to like disentangle. He's not like top 10 on the list of corrupt officials. No, that's why he was last in our roundup here. Right, but the, like, you know, there's the whole line, like you can't convince somebody of something, their livelihood depends on not believing. And these are all people that have a financial, deep financial interest in the success of this technology and the fact that this technology is not a world historic evil, right? And so you can't convince them otherwise. They're going to pursue their interest, even if they genuinely believe it's in the interest of the country.

53:47One paragraph that stuck out to me in the story at the All In Podcast's annual conference in Los Angeles, it generated this year roughly$21 million in ticket sales. That's up from$15 million dollars last year based on its 7 500 ticket price in june the podcast introduced a 1200 all-in branded tequila what the fuck are we doing what the fuck are we doing go get our merch guy what the hell selling selling fucking god damn you have any sweatshirts we have to move to meet to meet one bottle of fucking white label tequila mug 7 500 tickets next year what are we doing i'm just kidding our merch team is fantastic it's it the whole story is so ridiculous and they basically their their response to a lot of um the specific allegations of companies that that david tax owns a piece of and could profit is like 20 mil it's nothing for us i know billionaires i know i know and then there was also it's also not clear right about like what he owns versus what the company he continues to own owns right that seems to be a gray area i'm not sure yeah i got plenty of problems with those guys and this is the least of it this is the least of it i do think they're absolutely like in 10 years 20 years we could look back at the failure to regulate artificial intelligence as like the biggest trump failing and i do think david sacks is doing that and i just want to say and that is again that is like all conflicts aside like whether he had him or not it's the it's the policy that really fucking worries me and i just want to be clear that if we do live in that future where people like john and tommy say we made a mistake and not regulating any eye because of how powerful it's gone i want you to know that i did everything i could to bring about your rise and i was one of the good ones i was on your side what's the thing called roco's basilisk something about which we cannot speak oh boy i know i know the reaction to this is going to be tucker carlson interviewed sam altman and basically just tried to ask him like basic moral questions about how he thinks about running the company and he couldn't answer any of them and then he spent 10 minutes accusing him of a murder but you know what you've talked about that interview so many times and so I listened to the whole thing and I was like, Tommy was not exaggerating at all.

55:52It's a remarkable interview and it's terrifying and the Sam Altman part is terrifying. Sam Altman always feels like, it's like, he's like, I can't believe, I can't believe they're making me do this. Yeah. Because there's so many, it always feels like there's somebody, there's some monkey in his back making me do this. He's learned a little bit from the Zuckerberg era too where instead of just denying everything, he's like, and I can see why that would be a problem. I can see why that could be a concern but you know what? We need to do it anyway. Yeah, it is. It's like, I have no choice. We have no choice but to go towards the future.

56:21Mark Zuckerberg got years and years of PR advice that was like, show contrition, grovel a little bit. And then five years ago, he's like, you know what? Just grapple with dudes. Do some kickboxing. And never talk to Kara Swisher again. Hey, we have an idea, Mark. Never talk to Kara Swisher again. Yeah, take over a city, build a compound deep underground. It'll be fine. Hey, you know, aloha means hello and goodbye. That's what his press person said the last time he left.

56:52One last thing before we get to Tommy's conversation with Rob Sand. Today, as you're listening to this, is Election Day in Tennessee 7, the special election where Afton Bain is running to flip a key congressional seat. This is a Trump 22 district. Trump won this by 22 points. But Afton is only a few points behind the Republican. and Republicans are spending a lot of money on this. They're a little nervous. Trump did one of his patented teller rallies on Monday. Patented. And of course the closer, Mike Johnson, was stumping around the district as well. How are you guys feeling about this one? I think it's a great sign they're sending Mike Johnson.

57:32Beloved figure Mike Johnson among the low propensity voters of Tennessee. Should we do an A and a B version? We always knew she was going to win. be it was really tough it was always really gonna be hard yeah for sure like the margin really matters dan's conversation with amy walter about this was really smart and thoughtful everyone should listen to that sunday conversation good there's very well i'll just say there's very limited polling here there was some polling in mid-october from uh afton bain's campaign that had her down eight i think and then emerson released a poll like a week or so ago that just had it at 49 47 surprise yeah right yeah so she's only down two so who knows it's parts in nashville but then it's a lot of the suburbs outside nashville that are wealthier and i don't know i mean again low turnout special elections that are just in a random tuesday you never fucking know what's going to happen so who knows how do you pull a nashville special on december 2nd and figure out the likely voter universe for that it feels very hard we can barely pull a presidential election at this point yeah i do want to tell listeners one listen to that dance conversation with amy walter because it was really smart and thoughtful and two check out the rob stand interview because I do think Iowa has been a tough state for Democrats in recent years.

58:42It was a huge swing from 2012 Obama to Trump, I think 16 points. But we've got some big statewide races this year. We've got a great governor's race. Rob's going to be the Democratic candidate. There's an open Democratic primary for an open Senate seat. And then the House races there are always really tightly contested. Three out of the four districts, I think, very competitive. Yeah. And we've really overperformed in some recent special elections in Iowa. So it's the kind of place where like if you invest a limited amount of money early uh it could make a big difference in terms of our ability to i don't know have any power in this country yeah and rob's a fantastic candidate great candidate great guy and if you know anyone in tennessee 7 uh which includes the parts of nashville reach out make sure they have a plan to vote today or if you're in tennessee 7 who knows hopefully we have some listeners there uh polls open between 7 a.m and 9 a.m central in different parts of the districts and they close at 7 p.m central uh so get out there and vote.

59:35Quick reminder, before we go to break, this holiday season, consider giving the gift of content. That's right. Hey, hey, now again with feeling. I like when housekeeping copy kills your soul, John. Friend of the Pod's subscriptions make a great easy present. Your loved one will get access to all the good stuff. Exclusive content like Polar Coaster with Dan Pfeiffer and Terminally Online ad-free episodes of all their favorite crooked shows. Oh, I guess your loved one. And the warm Yuletide glow that comes with supporting independent progressive media. Damn right. Gift a friend of the pod subscription, grab one for yourself, or learn more at crooked.com slash friends.

1:00:11When we come back, Rob Sand.

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1:02:43Joining me in studio today is the only Democrat currently holding statewide office in Iowa and a 2026 gubernatorial candidate, Iowa State Auditor Rob Zand. Rob, great to see you. Yeah, you too, Tommy. We're in the same room physically. We can put to rest. We are not the same person. That we are the same person. I do. Like I talked to you a few months back. I demanded that I get to be governor for a day. I know you've been thinking about it. Yeah. You're going to get back to being on the constitutional elements. I think what we need is if we can get a commitment out of you to be my body double on the trail for a few days so I can be in two places at once, we can probably make that work.

1:03:19I'm there. I will be on the next flight to Des Moines. Perfect. All right. So there's some really big races in Iowa this year. There's a bunch of contested House races. There's a big Senate race. Democrats are holding a primary to see who's going to take on Joni Ernst. You're running for governor. I am biased towards being more hopeful about Iowa because of my experience there. But you are, again, the only statewide elected Democrat. Listeners might know that at the presidential level, Iowa swung about 16 points to the right from 2012 to 2016. Right. So to everyone listening, all the doubters, all the haters, why should Democrats bet on Iowa this cycle?

1:03:59I think there's a pretty simple piece of this. But honestly, the bottom line is there are many data points. There's all kinds of reasons to support the fact that this is a state that is ready for change. Here's a question for you because I think the bottom line for this for a lot of people is we think oftentimes we're forced and pushed. to think in terms of Democrats versus Republicans. There are many people in the state of Iowa and nationally, but I think particular in the state of Iowa that actually look at politics and they're like Democrats, Republicans, whatever. And instead they're asking, yeah, they're all the same.

1:04:37They're asking like, who's real? Who is willing to go against their party's orthodoxy? Who is willing to challenge the status quo? And those are people who supported Barack Obama twice, and then also supported Donald Trump three times. The Democratic nominee for president in all three of those election cycles against Donald Trump was someone who was not an outsider. The consummate insiders. The consummate insider. The consummate insider. Right, all three times. Clinton, Biden, Harris. This is a state that has an idea for something bigger and they want someone that they feel is a genuine leader on things.

1:05:14And when you look around, yes we've seen those swings at the uh presidential level but look deeper we have had for three cycles in a row one of the closest congressional races the closest congressional race in a country yeah last cycle for a pickup the cycle before that for a defense for an incumbent democrat the cycle before that closest congressional race in american history six votes wow i'm the only statewide elected democrat but that's because there were two other people that lost by one point. One in 2022. If they had won, our state level offices would be three Democrats and three Republicans.

1:05:50And the national media could be saying like, oh, wow, Iowa is still so purple. Liberal Iowa, right. Yeah, right. Right down the middle. They vote for both parties. And because it's a one point difference, nobody talks about that. Right. That's a good point. I want to talk about Howard County. Yes. Small, white, rural county. It's right on the Minnesota border. Next door from my home county. Swung 41 points from Obama to Donald Trump. You grew up just east of Howard County and Decorah. I'm sure you've been to Howard County many, many times for like basketball games. What was it about Trump's message in these small rural towns that made him so successful?

1:06:28I mean, 41 points. That's crazy. Yeah. I think one of the reasons that, you know, But that 41-point swing wouldn't be possible unless also Barack Obama did really well. That's a good point. Right. And so the success of both of their messages was the idea that politics isn't serving ordinary people. And that's true. It's true. And a lot of voters are looking at that and they're saying, I want someone who's going to tell me the truth. I'm more focused on hearing that and be authentically who they are. Right. And both those guys, Obama and Trump, they are who they are. Right. There's no confusion about who they are.

1:07:05And so I think when you look at Howard County, and this is a great example of this. So I did 100 public town halls this year. Why'd you do 100 town halls with 99 counties? That's going to confuse the shit out of everybody. Lee County down in Southeast Iowa has two county seats. Okay. And so I do 100. What happened there? Is it like a Vichy County seat? What are they doing? There was this dispute right after Iowa became a state. Okay. And two years afterward, the state law was like, you will have two county seats. Quit fighting. You can both be a county seat. You know, just like the mom and dad being like, look, you each get half.

1:07:39You each get a toy. Right. Yes. There you go. So I do 100 because a lot of elected officials in Iowa do 99 and I'm competitive. Sure. So that way I'm the hardest working elected official in the state of Iowa. Right. But I also like I think this is the heart of democracy. Like you shouldn't want to be in politics unless you are literally willing to go talk to anyone. Yeah. So every year a state auditor, I've done 100. We did 100 this year. And to go back to your point about Howard County, spent the night in, in Cresco, the county seat, woke up that morning, went on a run and was getting breakfast at a diner with my mom because she's over right next door from home.

1:08:16and there's a guy in there who's an older gentleman and as we're on the way out i say hey you know rob sand doing a town hall come on over like you're welcome there i want you to be there we announced all 100 the same day by the way like in june and so no matter where you were in iowa like we were like a rock band going out on tour like we are coming get ready like it or not we want you to show up there right it's not like poof he was here when right how we want people to show So I invite this guy and he comes. And the reporter for the Des Moines Register, Brianne Fantastiel, is on the road with us.

1:08:55And it turns out that she talked to him afterwards. and to this point of like sort of not really a democrat or republican this guy didn't want to share what his political views was uh were but he said something to the effect of i'm glad i had a chance to actually hear from sand and who i vote for might come down to who's actually here for me to see which will not sound strange to someone who worked on brockwood right right and so we're literally, and Tommy, when we do these, so we did this 100 times across the state. We start out by acknowledging the obvious. Our political system is broken. It works better to reelect the people who are in power than to solve the problems of the people it's supposed to serve.

1:09:38And I don't think that either party fundamentally is doing a good enough job of solving our problems to have special legal privileges over our choices on the ballot. But if we're going to change our political system. We have to change our political culture. We have to work together. And so if you're a Republican here today, I want to applaud you. Raise your hand. We clap for all the Republicans who are present. If you're an independent here today, I want to applaud you. We applaud the independents. We clap for the Democrats. And then I say, I want to take one minute to prove to all the people who want us to hate each other that we can work together.

1:10:10Let's sing the first verse of America the Beautiful. Okay. And we do it. How's your voice? I do not lead. Okay. On purpose. This is not a comment on my singing. You don't have a tuning fork. This is not a comment on my singing. Okay. The point is to have everyone do it. Yeah. Right. So my microphone is at my waist. I'm just another person. And I say, someone else kick us off. And we're in small town Iowa. Usually everybody turns around and is like, Maude? You know, like they all know who sings. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But we have this moment where we've already acknowledged that we are, that we disagree.

1:10:46We have already acknowledged that we are on opposite sides of this chasm. And yet we are taking a moment to acknowledge those differences and say, let's do something together. By the time you get past that, usually there's someone in the room, you can tell just like felt a thing, right? And people are just ready to have a different conversation than you can have before. And to me, that is what we need right now. and I think a lot to a lot of people that are coming out for these events 100 of them we had over 10 ,000 people attend averaged 30 percent not democrats the year before the election and 30 percent of the people in the room are independents and republicans interesting and again like the you know here's the message right not bluer or redder but truer and better like our our political system is broken two choices is not realistic it functions better to control us than it does to get our problems resolved.

1:11:40And people, I think they are ready for that message. They recognize it as being true. And I think they see it as a route forward from where we are. Yeah, no, look, I've been hearing that I would recommend to anyone running to run against the system right now. I was talking about the head of swing left the other day. So the number one thing they are hearing on the doors is not cost of living. It's anger at the establishment, the system and all the ways it's broken. But I do think that you're talking to you is so interesting to me because, you know, we talked to a lot of Democrats here who are taking a more aggressive approach in the Trump era, right?

1:12:12Like there was this big New York Times story the other day about a group of senators who call themselves Fight Club. They are frustrated with Chuck Schumer and how he's running things. Now, look, I know like fight versus don't fight Trump is like kind of stupid and reductive. But if you were governor, you might have to figure out how to deal with, say, a National Guard deployment or really aggressive ice raids in your communities or God knows what else by then. How are you thinking about, you know, like those confrontations potentially? I think the same way I've kind of thought about everything.

1:12:45I mean, my background is not partisan warrior, state auditor for two terms. Like this is where the money went. Is there a Republican calculator? Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's it. That's better. You know, the, the, the line that we like is a money isn't blue or red, it's green. Right. Um, and, and we like to talk a lot about the old, uh, uh, in, in God, we trust all others we audit. Right. Um, but it's not a, it's not a partisan thing. You're just, you're really thinking about like, what's the truth. Yeah. Prior to that, I spent seven years as the chief public corruption prosecutor. Right. Uh, everybody quick buy my book.

1:13:22I uncovered the largest lottery rigging scheme in American history. Okay. All right. All right. We won't get too far into it. I should say though, also my, I want my finance people to be happy. Rob sand.com. Everybody please chip in. Donate volunteer. Yeah. But, but here's the answer, right? Like my, what I have spent my career doing has been on focusing on figuring out what the truth is and then doing the right thing. It hasn't been about like, Oh, this person is good or bad because they're wearing this or that color hat. Whether it's a democratic or Republican president, I am going to do what I think is the right thing to do to protect public safety in Iowa.

1:13:56and also to follow the constitution. That's the bottom line to me. An interesting story about this. We got a public records request in the auditor's office and asked for all allegations of wrongdoing by Republican Governor Kim Reynolds. Right? It's pretty sweeping. Pretty sweeping. Came from the DNC. Under Iowa law, it seemed pretty clear to us that we can't just go hand out allegations. We think they're confidential under Iowa law. Don't think it's a complicated question. So we sent them, no, we can't give that to you. they sent the same records request a second time just unedited just the same thing yeah like i think like to me it's like they're wondering did you miss the letterhead we're the dnc right right i gave them the same answer like i'm not here to do what you want i'm here to do the right thing i'm not going to go along with anything that any president says just because they are the president they are people.

1:14:50They are fallible. And I don't think that, you know, look, I think that right now we should be focused on making sure that our economy is working. We should be focused on making sure that people who are in this country are not a threat to public safety. But if they're not a threat to public safety, if they're doing a job and they're paying their taxes and they don't have a criminal record, yes, I think it makes sense that if they came here illegal, there would be some level of consequence for that. But if they're a part of our communities, you can have a consequence without being evicted from our community.

1:15:23Right. Yeah. Another area where I would imagine you just diverge from some in the Democratic Party is on the question of redistricting. Gavin Newsom is leading this, just led this major fight to redistrict California. It was in response to Trump demanding that Texas basically rig their maps halfway through the decade to get five more seats. Like my, my views on this are like, I, I hate gerrymandering because I think it kind of gets us to where we are today, where you have a vast majority of districts where the elected members on both sides are more worried about a primary than a general election.

1:15:58So they just, there's less incentive to be reasonable. But I also think we can't kind of sit idly when Republicans are trying to rig the 2026 midterms. But I get the sense that you You are not the biggest fan of partisan redistricting. Is that fair? You know, Iowa was the first state to prevent this problem. We put the country's first independent redistricting commission into place. And so in Iowa, like you don't have gerrymandering. You can't do it. The Iowa standard is still the best standard. In fact, when this came up in Wisconsin a few years ago, some folks up there that knew me said like, hey, you know, the speaker up here, the Republican is trying to say, oh, we're going to do this.

1:16:39the Iowa model. Is this really the Iowa model? I was like, no. And I got a former Republican Iowa GOP chair to write a letter with me to basically like the state of Wisconsin being like, we see what you're trying to do here. This is what we do in Iowa. This is why it's different. And this is why you can't say that's the Iowa model to try to protect truly the idea of independence and that brand of Iowa being like nonpartisan. To me, this whole redistricting, gerrymandering battle is again is exactly what i'm talking about when i go to the idea that these two private clubs shouldn't have special legal privileges over our access and our choices on the ballot right this is what we get to we have people who are being paid with tax dollars putting hours and hours and hours into efforts to solidify one private club's control over the lawmaking capacity of different states.

1:17:35Now, I appreciate the responsiveness to it, but the answer to me isn't just like, oh, an eye for an eye. The answer is we need to break down this entire system so that we have a system based on serving people rather than a system based on serving politicians. Yeah. Look, I'm there. If we could do a national sort of independent redistricting process, I'm all for it. It's just a long way from here to there. So I interviewed you around your announcement. We talked about the sort of budding Trump trade war. It kicked off in earnest. Trump slapped tariffs on most of the world, including the Chinese.

1:18:14A lot of the world kind of ducked and covered. The Chinese punched back really hard, including by basically boycotting the purchase of U.S. soybeans. Last month, Trump claimed that he'd cut a deal with the Chinese and that they would resume soybean purchases from the U.S. Iowa is, you know, top two biggest soybean producing states in the country. I think it's you and Illinois, right? Number one. You beat Illinois? Come on. You got to talk to Chad GPT. She told me. She told me. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure I'm right. How has the kind of like last few months of this trade war impacted Iowa farmers, the economy?

1:18:49And is China living up to the terms of the deal Trump announced? Well, I mean, that's exactly – your phrasing of that was precise, right? That's the terms of the deal that the Trump administration announced. China has never affirmed. Yes, we're going – they have never said we are going to buy 12 million metric tons. They have bought 300 ,000. Allegedly, they're going to buy 12 million by the end of the calendar year. It feels tough to do in a month. Those numbers are very different. Those numbers are very, very different, right? And I think there's a reason that China hasn't said, you know, oh, we're going to do this.

1:19:23And this is just, to me, this is, you know, this is exactly one of those things that I think is the line that you can see between people who are trying to serve a party master and people who are trying to serve the public, right? You got four members of Congress, two US senators in the state of Iowa. Every, all four members of Congress are just whatever the president says, I'm with him, ushering in a new golden age. Okay, you got it. Meanwhile, farmers in the state of Iowa, right, have no markets to sell their crops to internationally. We're bailing out Argentinian farmers and Argentinian cattlemen, beef growers, while people in Iowa are sitting there with no market.

1:20:05And all of these Republican elected officials who know how this system works, who are well-informed on this, who see how bad this is for Iowa, won't say it. the only one that's even coming close is Chuck Grassley. I think his attitude on this is YOLO and he's mostly lived. So he's going for it, right? He's getting to the end of that four letter word. Yeah, right, right. And so, you know, he's at least saying, yeah, he's at least saying, you know, I don't think tariffs are going to work. If they do, I'll be the first one to say hallelujah. I'm with him on that, but this is bad for the state of Iowa.

1:20:40And I think most people in the state of Iowa, They want someone who will work with any president to do good and work with no president to do something bad. They will try to avoid bad things happening. These folks are just saying, yes, boss, whatever you want. What do these farmers do? What do you do with a metric ton of, a million metric tons of soybeans? It's a great question because right now you're also having to make decisions about what you're going to plant next year. Where are you going from here? If this Chinese market has gone away for good. And this chaos makes their life incredibly difficult because I think most farmers and most people, right?

1:21:14Most people want to know what the rules of the road are and make their own decisions and sink or swim according to their own merit and according to their own decision making. You know, I thought we were going to zig, we zagged. But at least you knew, you know, there was that fork in the road and you were going to do one or the other. This kind of chaos just makes decision-making for anyone in agriculture right now incredibly complicated and difficult, particularly because a lot of these people, they don't get to know if the tariffs are about to change in two days. I'm sure somebody knows when the tariffs are about to change in two days because they can place their bets.

1:21:48Exactly. It's less of a bet. Somebody named Donald Trump Jr. knows and they can go on Polymarket or the Stock Exchange or whatever. Another Iowa-specific question for you. So Iowa has the second highest cancer rate in the nation, and it's got one of the only rising cancer rates in the country. That includes a lot of people, young people, who are getting cancer in their 30s. I know that some experts point to alcohol consumption, high levels of radon, potentially as being the cause of radon. For those who don't know, it's just a naturally occurring radioactive gas. Others suspect chemicals used in agriculture could be the culprit.

1:22:23And this is not just an Iowa problem. There's sort of like a Midwestern belt of states that are dealing with this. What do you think is happening? And what is like the governor of Iowa's responsibility or options to address the challenge? So the bottom line answer is it's certainly all of the above are a part of this. And I think the responsibility of the governor is to figure out what are our biggest causes and what can we do, what are the best and fastest and easiest ways to lower those incidents of cancer. And you're right. We are number two overall and the only one with an increasing rate.

1:23:00And this is something that, again, 100 public town halls. And I would get to this point in my stump where I would say we are 49th for economic growth. We are 48th for personal income growth. But what are we number one in for growing? And people would shout back at me, cancer. It has really hit people's imagination. And it hits people's lives close to home. And I always think about my friend Abby, who she's from Forest City. We met through my cousin a long time ago. And she was a childhood cancer survivor. And then her cancer came back when we were maybe around 30 or something. And her attitude about it was so classically Iowan and also miraculous.

1:23:46She had to have her entire leg amputated at one point. And so for Halloween, she went as a shark attack victim. Oh my gosh. Yeah. The next year she was a carrot. And she was also a pediatric nurse and just, you know, like taking care of kids and doing her best to balance everything that she was going through with trying to be employed and help kids at the same time. And then she passed away. but people who know her and people who whose lives are touched by stories like that across the state of Iowa when you hear that we are number one for that it's alarming and I met a couple in Al McKee County so we talked about Howard next over to the east is Winnesheek my county and then next over to the east is Al McKee and I met a couple in Lansing at my town hall a young couple I think probably younger than us whose kid has cancer now and they said we're working with people in the legislature to try to get some funding for research for pediatric cancers in the state of iowa i do think that's an obligation for the state government in iowa we should be funding research into why is this happening in iowa we absolutely should last year the legislature and governor agreed to put a million dollars into it that doesn't seem like much that's not going to get you much no um what this couple taught me is that in nebraska they have done 23 million dollars of research into pediatric cancer over the last few years and as a proud iowan i demand that we beat nebraska i i know you do yeah like we should be it's gotten easier recently yes yes it has yes it has scott frost era was not good for anybody over there well it's good for hawkeyes yeah it was good for any hawkeyes but the table stake should be 25 million because we want to beat nebraska we're also sitting on a five or six depending on how you want to count it billion dollar surplus so like we have money there what are we doing yeah it seems like there's no better way to spend it than this kind of research you have a great hospital the university of iowa i mean we do want to make you name i don't want you to rank your hospitals but you got a bunch of good ones i know that's hard the other thing of this that i think is is we so often miss is this is good for everybody right because you can be the person you know my faith drives so much of what i believe in so much of what I choose.

1:26:10And to me, you can look at kids and you could say, we should heal the sick. We should want to help these people not be sick. You can also be the single most cold-hearted person in the state of Iowa and reach the same conclusion on a different route. Well, I guess if we prevent cancer, that costs fewer tax dollars than treating it later on. So fine. We should all be able to agree to this. It's a simple thing that we can be doing. And right now, the folks that are there aren't doing enough. What are they busy doing? Right? Like I said, 48th in economic growth, number one for cancer growth. But let's figure out how to gut the state auditor's office ability to find the tax dollars that we misspent.

1:26:51That's their priority. I always go back to the story in the New Testament of Jesus flipping tables because he saw people in a position of trust and power at the temple who were abusing that trust and power. That to me is exactly where we are in the state of Iowa right now. And we did, as we're going around and we're doing 100 town halls, you're hearing people left, right, and center who are just fed up. They've had enough. They understand that at this point, it's just insiders serving insiders and special interest groups. They're not focused on Iowans and they're ready for change. When you say Jesus flipping tables, I think of like a Buffalo Bills tailgate.

1:27:26That's more, I guess, more like splitting tables, jumping off. I want to see I really want to see Josh Allen get a Super Bowl. I like Josh Allen. I'm glad the Patriots are good. All right. So your work, you prosecuted this hot lotto fraud case. It's one of like the craziest public corruption stories in Iowa. For listeners who don't know, can you just tell us what happened and why you have beef with hot lottery winners? How I understand it. I won't dive in on the bait on that one. Um, there's a, there's a, so yeah, great, amazing book that I wrote. Everyone should buy it. It's so good. It did, it did actually win an award from the Washington independent review of books, which because it has the word independent in it makes it, makes an auditor be like, okay, you legit.

1:28:17That's nice. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. They said, they called it a favorite read of the year when it came out. Okay. It's called the winning, the winning ticket. I had nothing to do with a documentary called jackpot, which you can stream for free at lottodoc.com. Okay. But that tells you the same story in 45 minutes if you're not the book reading time. Okay. Less detail. Bottom line, for 10 years, there was this guy working for the multi-state lottery association in Urbandale, Iowa, that serves like 38 state and provincial lotteries in the United States and Canada. And he was, I don't want to spoil it.

1:28:55He was making it a little bit more predictable than it's supposed to be. Fast forward this part if you want to buy the book. Yeah. You can tell us what happened. It's okay. All right. All right. Inside job. Like it was his job to literally write the computer program that was supposed to pick random numbers. And he made him enough less than random that he could buy a bunch of tickets and kind of know what was going to win. Dude, the craziest part about this is, so he's a Texas, small town Texas boy. And no one noticed he was like driving a Ferrari all of a sudden. He had a really big house. People were like, did you have an uncle?

1:29:24Did he pass away? Was he rich? Right. how are you doing this? People sort of had questions, but you know, like, the craziest part about this beyond the fact that he's rigging lottery jackpots around America, he's a small town Texas boy. His brother is a justice of the peace down there. His brother is a Bigfoot hunter. Like the Sasquatch? Sasquatch. Okay. Yeah. That seems like a tough gig. It was a side gig. You're not getting a lot of targets, right? No. You're not putting a lot of arrows on beef. No. No, he, he, that's why he was a justice of the peace for his day job. Right. But he would help, he would help the guy in Des Moines in, in Urbandale buy these rigged jackpots.

1:30:07And then he would use his friends occasionally from the Bigfoot hunting community to help claim the jackpot tickets. Okay. Yeah. Where the dude, I'm now imagining dudes in like Bigfoot outfits. Like you've seen Harry and the Hendersons. Yeah, of course I have. Or that movie from Weird Kids. Yeah, yeah. Like him going to cash the ticket. Yes. that's not not how did you guys suss this out long long story um we actually went to trial only knowing about the one iowa ticket and i remember this very clearly we did jury selection day one when we were starting to have evidence bring in evidence there was a national news stories being like ah the defense has got a pretty pretty powerful argument for reasonable doubt here I don't know how you can convict this guy because you don't have the file.

1:30:55The computer that had been used for the Iowa jackpot draw had been wiped to Department of Defense standards. There was no direct evidence at the time of like, oh, here's the file that he wrote. This is how he rigged it. So it was a circumstantial case. We won. As we're waiting for sentencing, after the guilty verdict, I get this phone call at my desk. And I recognize the area code is like the area that he's from in Texas. So I answer the phone. And this guy's like, can I talk to Rob Sand? I'm like, yeah, that's me. Did you all know that Eddie's brother won the lottery? Maybe about 10 years ago or so, somewhere out west, maybe Colorado.

1:31:32I was like, no, thank you. That is very helpful. Yeah, that is very helpful. We had been sort of waiting for a tip like that. Like we knew it was there, but one of the interesting tactical decisions for the mastermind's legal defense was they chose to demand speedy trial. So we didn't have time to do this huge nationwide investigation. Right, right. We had to like indict and get ready for trial. And we didn't, we were like, we bet there's something else out there, but right now we got to shoot the alligator closest to the boat. Yeah. Right. Let's get this guy convicted of this case here in Iowa.

1:32:05See what happens after that. I'm imagining you and Wadier being like, I've got to strike that hairy guy. He's got some Bigfoot DNA. He's not going to like these people. He's not going to like this. All right. Yeah. Last question. I mean, even if you win, the Republicans will probably have pretty strong majority of the legislature. Right. How do you think you can work with them to get stuff done? You know, has our like zero sum blood sport D.C. politics infected Iowa fully yet? Are you guys still able to talk? So I'll say this. Number one, we are strong believers that we can win this race, right?

1:32:41The only poll that we have seen has us up by two. We keep having people come out of the Republican Party power structure, elected officials and recent party chairs, like county party chairs, publicly endorsing me even if they've never spoken to me in their life. That's nice. Yeah. When I tell you that Iowans are ready for change, I think we were talking about this earlier, four of the top nine special election over performances in America this year are the only four that we have had for special elections in Iowa. So we're right up at the top there. We can win this race. What's going to happen when we win?

1:33:19I think there's a lot of people in the legislature that want to do good. And I think they belong to both parties. and I will be happy to work with anybody. And this to me is, again, like this sort of is, I think, rooted in my faith. I love finding places of agreement and a sense of community where you expect to find none. One of the legislators that voted against the bill that got the auditor's office, that made it so they could hide misspent money from us, is a legislator who literally was at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2020 to stop this deal. Oh, yeah. But she was someone that I called to tell her, hey, there's this bill coming.

1:34:01It's bad. It corrupts our government. It is an example of the swamp. And she read the bill. She asked me some very intelligent questions about it. And she said, okay, I'm going to vote against it. That's great. People surprise you, right? Marjorie Taylor Greene, look what she's doing. There you go. There you go. And so I just like, we can judge people's actions. We don't have to judge people. The best part of this story was when that legislator, Luana Stoltenberg, came back to me maybe the day or two before the vote. And she goes, hey, I just want to let you know, a lot of other people have approached me about this bill.

1:34:39And they've told me some things about it, made some arguments that I think make sense. And I'm really struggling and praying a lot about what the right thing to do is for how I vote on this bill. and i'm telling you this now because i want you to know that i'm struggling so that if i vote for it you don't think that it was because i lied to you don't you want to be represented by people with that level of integrity yeah yeah it's a very decent response and so like you can be someone who literally is there to stop the steal and yet also is calling me to put yourself out there and say like i'm not sure what the right thing to do is i'm just working really hard at this and we are reading i reengaged with her i said thank you tell me what their questions are i I don't care who it was that you got it from.

1:35:17Just tell me the question. I'll give you my answer. And we did that and she did end up voting against it. I'm telling this story to illustrate the point, right, that you made. People will surprise you if you let them. The more we are focused on putting each other into a box and saying, no, you're over there and I'm over here and we're going to have to fight, the worse we are doing for all the people that are struggling around this state with higher prices, right, with cancer. we're not solving problems if we're not willing to work together but when we engage in good faith when i look at someone like her and i assume hey they might be willing to do all kinds of things if we at least have a conversation and focus on getting to something good a whole new world opens up in terms of what's possible to accomplish from january 6th to uh to voting with you i like it maybe take them hunting you're you big are you bow hunting guy dude i gotta show you the buck that I shot this year.

1:36:11I can't kill a deer. They're too big. I'm a fishing guy. I like fishing. I've shot birds before. Clay pigeons, that's a good time. I agree. I agree. Maybe we do a little, that's our common ground. You now have made me think of the buck that I shot this fall. I have to talk to you about this. A lot of points. Big looking guy. 209 inch whitetail. If I like, can I like. Yeah, we can, you know. Can you zoom in? We can put it in post and make our audience vomit. this thing um you know we'll do a we'll do a clean picture um a 209 inch buck is like a once in a lifetime if you're having a lucky lifetime okay i've i've been a bow hunter my entire life um this was in in the city limits in des moines what yes like downtown i've been doing the urban bow hunting program whoa that's a big deer yeah that's a lot how many points on that thing 14 i knew that but two but 209 inches so again like that's just like that's off the charts What's a normal sized buck?

1:37:12So a Pope and Young buck, which is big enough for the Pope and Young record books, typically would be 125 inches and up. Okay. I have taken like eight of those, I want to say, as a hunter. A Boone and Crockett buck, which is like a Booner is a big deal. What? 170 inches. All right. We're like speaking a new language here. Yes. Hey, you never know what you're going to learn. I'm learning a lot. Actually, my wife's father bow hunts and does all this stuff too. Oh, all right. So they have these measurements, Pope and Young and Boone and Crockett, for pretty much every kind of animal. But, you know, whitetail is what we got in Iowa.

1:37:45So 125 inches and then 170 inches for that higher line. And shooting a Booner at like 170 or up is a pretty big deal. Like 209 is just like. That's a gooner. That's monster. It's a gooner. Yeah. Forget Booner. Yes. I don't know, man. I'm just like, I really like fishing. You ever get out there? Let's go fishing. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Little streams, little fly rod. Northeast Iowa, Decorah, some of the best trout fishing in the Midwest. Northeast Iowa is absolutely beautiful. Everyone should go visit. Also, you should visit robsand.com. Robbsand.com. Figure out how to get involved with the campaign.

1:38:19Absolutely. Maybe donate, maybe volunteer, maybe knock some doors. Yes. It's great to see you. Thank you for talking about all this. And welcome to LA. Thanks, man. Hope the weather is nice, but not too nice. Because I know you're more of a, you want that Iowa gloom. Cool, cool weather. Yeah, yeah. It'll be a fun trip.

1:38:39that's our show for today thanks to rob sand for coming by 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 sub stack 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 Illich Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer.

1:39:12Reid Cherlin is our executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, Carol Pellaviv, David Tolles, and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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