Can Dems Put Woke to Bed?

25:41If you're just casually consuming this information, the point is like a lot of first trimester pregnancies end in miscarriage. That's why people don't tell their family until they're through the first trimester. What they found is when you looked at all the data, there wasn't a spike. It didn't go above, there wasn't a statistically significant increase in miscarriages. That's all that, and they look at it and they do the best they can. They weigh the data against the safety that the COVID vaccine provides. And these are scientists and doctors doing their best to try to protect pregnant women, to protect children, to protect people from all kinds of viruses.

26:18And because of the conspiracy addled minds of the people in that room, they can make - None of them doctors. None of them doctors. None of them with medical degrees. And forget even the recommendations. Like forget like the - So maybe that J guy, the seat one, whoever, J Buck or whatever his name is. But like, okay, these are recommendations that would harm people, 100%. Just the way they talk about that's a vaccine, injecting the little ones, the jabs, the 70, it's all meant to make people question, be afraid of these vaccines. Meanwhile, the vaccines we give today are so different than the ones that were given even 20 or 30 years ago.

26:57They have much less of the antigens in them. They're much more precise. We've learned a lot about vaccines because science is amazing. And so the dozen or so vaccines that kids will get in early childhood today actually have less, far less, like a tenth as much of the kind of antigens that was in one pertussis shot 30 years ago. We have figured out how to do this in a way because the people doing this research care so much, because they didn't become, you know, become, they're not researchers in vaccines because they're what, like power mad COVID mask people? No, they're doctors trying to provide us, do the best care, do the research for the reasons they got involved in medicine in the first place.

27:38And these people are like decided it's a fucking conspiracy to give kids autism. Meanwhile, I don't know, given the state of our fucking our education system, our health care system, our infrastructure, maybe we could use a little more autism, get people on these fucking spreadsheets, figuring this stuff out. Don't laugh at that. Don't laugh at that, staff. God forbid we have a we have more people in this country that don't like that that like staying inside and doing fucking math It seems like a little bit of a self-interested I got every vaccine and look at me. I know how to make eye contact.

28:13It's not that hard Look at a John right now right in the eyes. He can't look at me who has autism now Neither of us Well, uh One lighthearted moment in this whole thing was someone, one of the reporters asked Trump afterwards, you're a proud father. Would you have vaccinated your children differently? And this man with that like straight face just doesn't even skip a beat. Just as I did. I did. I took my children for five different vaccinations. I went with my wife and we took each of them for we separated out all the vaccines. Do you think that man has ever taken any of his children to a doctor's appointment ever?

28:59Do you think he knows that they do you think he ever knew who their pediatrician was? Can you imagine Donald Trump in the same room as one of those toys where you move the little things along the wires with imagine him sitting against the wall? And there's just like a kind of big red stripe behind him, you know, and he's walking into the suit and tie to he's got to take take work off. because he's got to take Don Jr. to get a vaccine. Come on, buddy. You'll get a lollipop at the end. It's me, Donald Trump, taking my son. He and Ivana were just going together to the doctor's office. Pediatricians.

29:32I would have loved someone to follow up on that question. Be like, oh, when did you do that? What pediatrician? Where did they go? Famous hypochondriac Donald Trump sitting in a waiting room with a bunch of coughing children. Inconceivable. Inconceivable. He just missed his son's wedding. What are we talking about? Anyway, right before the vaccine event, Todd Blanche was sworn in as the next attorney general in a private ceremony in the Oval Office. On Saturday, the Senate voted to confirm Blanche. And the only no's were Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins. But three yeses from the three members of the so-called YOLO caucus of Republicans, John Cornyn, Tom Tillis and Bill Cassidy, who had this to say.

30:16And on giving his family protection from IRS probes. That's totally wrong. Totally wrong. And so I will go back. This is not a black or white decision. That is wrong. And no American should be targeted by the law, but no American should be above the law. And that, frankly, almost weighed to vote no. Wow. Actually, it's a it's quite a black and white decision. There's there's a yes vote and there's a no vote. He's either he's either confirmed or he's not confirmed. I will say that in that Oval, the vaccination event, some reporter was like, so is the weaponization fund dead? And he said, well, that's up to the attorney general now.

30:56Just like we thought. Yeah. The fecklessness of Cassidy and Cornyn and Tillis, three people that Trump's personally ruined their careers. He got involved to get them out of office. He successfully did it. He has now put forward as his attorney general nomination someone who's oversaw the politicization of the Justice Department, unlike anything before in American history, which is a tough category. RFK was the attorney general who personally met with Ghislaine Maxwell, oversaw her transfer to a cushier prison, has overseen a Justice Department in which they've gone after Lisa Cook and James Comey and fucking the sandwich thrower all the way up and down in any like so beyond the pale, so obviously unfit, so clearly a moment to just stand up and say no, as you could ever imagine in the Senate.

31:51And then this guy has the audacity to then claim it was a hard decision. He talks about tearing up in this interview, given the incredible amount of responsibility on his shoulders to have stood in those hallowed halls and been responsible for such big decisions, much like he always imagined it could be to be in that storied Senate chamber. And he is saying it as someone who completely failed his moral responsibility, that he completely gave up that power to Donald Trump in a way that is pathetic. And that defines him. His whole life is defined by his decision to be a tool for Donald Trump, a stooge for Donald Trump.

32:30And he's giving interviews about how weepy he was having had the opportunity. I mean, look at it this way. Sometimes we say these people do this for Donald Trump because all they want is their job and their title and they're afraid. Honestly, it was none of those things. He lost his job, lost his title. He doesn't have anything to fear anymore. He just thought, OK, sure. It's Todd Blanche. It's a kind of laziness. He said something about like, well, it wasn't about like the perfect attorney general. It was like maybe another one would be worse. What are you talking about? I really think they've sorted Todd Blanchett into that serious guy who talks honestly behind closed doors.

33:07And that's what they've convinced themselves. But this is where - This is how they all like love Rubio still, right? In their mind, Rubio is like the adult in the room, even though he is like capitulated on just about everything that Donald Trump has asked him to do. Right. And says crazy things in public. Now, same way they can see Doug Burgum as a serious and reasonable person, even though he's out there saying that the reflecting pool was destroyed by vandals. The other part of this too is they're acting so powerless. They had so much power. Cassidy Collins, Murkowski, Tillis, Cornyn, they could have come together and said, we want to ban by law any kind of insurrectionist fund.

33:43We want a public assurance from Todd Blanche that he won't consult with Donald Trump about ongoing cases. They could have in law, they could have passed a law that said no settlement with the IRS could carry forward into the future, that it can only be provided. There's all kinds of things that they could have done with their actual power that was not impossible. It just required some work, like actually getting together and figuring it out and caring enough to do something without acting like every vote that happens to you is like there's no forward planning to it. It's like, well, that's the vote today.

34:15Nothing I could do. He's acting. So it doesn't fucking matter. It's really wild. I would love someone to really, I mean, this is, no, I wouldn't, because what's going to happen is Todd Blanche will continue to do horrible things. And then someone will ask them, you know, what did you think about Blanche doing that? And maybe they'll say, oh, I'm so disappointed that he did that. I never thought he would do that. I was reassured. You know, he gave me his assurance. And boy, am I. It's like, you know, it's like how Susan Collins talks about Brett Kavanaugh and Dobbs, you know. Yeah, that is the and like Susan Collins now gets to have this vote.

34:46No. No. And as everyone, the point people have made again and again is that she only votes against Trump when it doesn't have a consequence. This is what's happening here. But I do think there's like an alarm that's not going off. A dog that never barks with Susan Collins, which is what kind of fucking non-leader is she? She has all this power in the Senate. She's head of the appropriations committee. She could have gotten some out of this. There's so much she could have done with this group of people. She's still good. They could do it right fucking now. They never will. He is desperate. It is a close Senate.

35:13Mitch McConnell is quote unquote recuperating at home. You know, his doctor, Jonas Salk, says he's getting better. Clara Barton says he's doing quite well. So there's that. He's working from home. Some kind of home. All right, so that's it. Todd Blanche. Todd Blanche is our new attorney general. He was the old attorney general. We're not going to notice much of a difference. He's just going to continue doing whatever Donald Trump tells him to do. New personal lawyer, now the attorney general, but still the personal lawyer. All right, let's get to the midterms. On Monday, Speaker Mike Johnson launched an exciting new messaging effort called the Contrast for America, inspired by Newt Gingrich's famous Contract with America, which most of the people alive don't remember anymore, aiming to reframe the election as a fight against actual communism.

36:07That's not a joke. If you go to the website, which I don't encourage you to try, but if you go there, it shows the history of communism and different milestones and different communist takeovers. And then it compares Democrats wanting to raise taxes. It calls that communism now. That's communism, raising taxes. Republicans are betting that their only chance to win the midterms now is to capitalize on the Democratic infighting over a few DSA candidates and also more progressive Democrats like Abdul winning their primaries this cycle. Here's AOC giving her theory of the case to ABC's John Carl on Sunday in response to questions about Wisconsin frontrunner Francesca Hong and Abdul doing his best to pivot to a general election message.

36:52What do you make of those controversial statements I'm sure you've seen? I mean, she's, you know, the Thanksgiving dust-up. She says she doesn't, you know, still believe that. But, you know, abolish prisons, abolish police. My understanding is that Francesca Hong has made clear her present stances to her electorate. Yeah, she's moved away from a lot of that. Right, she's moved away from it. And I have a local city councilman that has this saying, woke one was crazy. And I think that we all share in the goals of having as low a crime rate as possible. I think that, you know, during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.

37:36When asked about Hassan Piker's comments on 9-11, Senator Bernie Sanders called it a dumb statement. Do you agree? Do you disavow those comments that America deserved 9-11? Of course. Of course it was a dumb statement. And of course, I think Hassan himself would say that was a dumb statement. He disavowed it. I want to be held accountable for what I say and what I do. Look, I'm less concerned now with who I'm campaigning with, a lot more concerned about who I'm campaigning to. So Republicans are hoping that democratic, quote unquote, extremism will be for this midterm cycle what the Dobbs decision was for 2022, sort of a way to change the subject away from a deeply unpopular incumbent.

38:17What do you think? You think it could work? I don't. because one is a fear-mongering message about Democrats trying to make every Democrat sound like the craziest thing people saw on the internet. The other is a real decision having real negative consequences on people's lives that the Republicans actually did. I also think it is part of, you know, they can't, there's no campaigning that they can do to diffuse the fact that they overturned Roe. They did that. They wanted it. And in fact, a lot of the people who were very happy to see Roe of Virgin also supported abortion bans at the six-week mark, or with no exceptions for rape or incest or the life of the mother.

39:02So they were saddled with their actual position. This is fear-mongering about Democrats to make people think that they can't have, I don't know, universal healthcare and a tax code that was as high as they were in the communist days of America in 1993? I don't think it could work. I mean, it could work. But I think that it'd be one thing if Republican candidates in an alternate universe were out there being like, you know, Donald Trump, we break from him sometimes because he can be extreme. And these Democrats are extreme, too. We're the only thing holding holding the line between crazy Donald Trump and crazy Democrats.

39:38Of course, that's not what they're going to do. They're all in for Donald Trump. So I think that, uh, I think it's be tough. And also it depends on like most people when you are, I mean, we saw this in the New York times Santa polls of the Senate battlegrounds from last month, which is you'll get a majority of voters in that poll in the Senate battlegrounds, at least said, uh, Democrats are too far to the left. They think the democratic party is too far to the left. But when you ask about the democratic Senate candidate running in their state, they don't think necessarily think that that democratic Senate candidate is too far of the left.

40:11And so in midterm, this goes race by race. And if, you know, if you're a Democrat running that race and they try to tag you as a DSA candidate or they try to say you want to abolish prisons, like you just say, no, that's not what I believe. Yeah, this is what I believe. I have I have this agenda that is not my agenda. And so, you know, they'll I mean, on the margins for, you know, voters who aren't paying attention until they go cast a ballot. Could this work? Maybe. I don't know. But I think in a midterm for most voters, it's probably going to be going to be tricky when you get down to the individual race level.

40:48Yeah, I guess. Will it work? Well, yeah, it's going to work on some people. This is they're trying to make Democrats their job fundamentally. What is American politics today? It is from the right is an effort to make extreme Republicans seem reasonable and reasonable Democrats seem extreme. And to pretend that politics is ultimately not about what the tax rates are and who gets health care and who doesn't. And that's what everything, that's why they got a fucking former NBA guy trying to get into the WNBA. It's like it's all part of one big thing. I was thinking about Francesca Hong because I joked about it, love it or leave it.

41:24And I went through the tweets and they are quite silly. And this is the moment where we're going to talk about these things because the primaries are wrapping up. We're having an intra-party debate right now. This is the moment where Abdul pivots to the general, where there's the most sore and hurt feelings, where we're trying to figure out what worked and what didn't. You're trying to reconcile all these things. In Wisconsin, whatever happens in the election, let's say Francesca Hong is the winner. Maybe she is, maybe she's not. Either way, Tom Tiffany, right? Like, oh my God, I can't believe she tweeted that about Thanksgiving.

41:53Tom Tiffany objected to Wisconsin's electors. He signed on to the Ken Paxton lawsuit to try to overturn the election. He continues to say that there were hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes in Wisconsin. And he said that the Trump should cut off funding to Madison, that Wisconsin, the state he's trying to lead, should get less money because it is not going along with Trump's immigration policies. He did not. He refused to say that Trump shouldn't invoke the Insurrection Act. He is he sponsored a resolution in Congress to support Trump for sending people to fucking Sakat in El Salvador. He's an extreme and radical person.

42:33And if you ask people, do you want a governor who was in a bad mood in Christmas in 2020 or somebody who believes in deporting people to a foreign gulag and supports sending more money to ICE and cutting taxes for billionaires. Like, where do you actually come down on this? I think people, if given the choice faithfully, would choose somebody who maybe said some kooky stuff in the past. And that's our job is to like, get back to that. I don't think there's voters who are going to be like, well, her Thanksgiving tweet was crazy. It's going to be they're going to think, oh she wants to abolish police or she wants to and I'm afraid about crime and so she's gonna have to do if she's the nominee reassurance of people that she cares about public safety and do it in a way that is convincing I also um this is my own maybe this is makes me a bit of a neolib shill but there was a time when Democrats really enjoyed hating communists and like really kind of got into it about how stupid and deadly and dumb and ideology is that like there was a kind of consensus that fascism and communism were programs for morons and losers that were deadly and stupid.

43:41And we should fight them with everything we've got because we believe in a democratic and liberal order in which we protect people from the worst kinds of destitution and have a safety net and give everybody opportunity, but also support the freedom to say what you want and pray how you want, but also start a business and create products and try to build things and innovate. Like that was sort of what we all used to believe. And one way to deal with the communism crap is to have Democrats out there who are willing to say, like, I believe in free markets as long as they're fair and give everybody a chance, which is something a lot of Democrats used to be a little bit more comfortable talking about because they were less afraid of being attacked by people on Twitter.

44:16Well, I mean, I think Abdul, even in the primary towards the end, was talking about like, because he would be asked, oh, aren't you DSA too? And he was like, no, I'm, I believe in free markets. I like free markets. Yeah. You know, and look, Francesca Hong, in fairness, she's like she's been saying like, well, I'm a I was a small business owner. You know, the challenge is like when you call yourself a socialist and it's like, well, what does socialism mean? And this is the whole thing with, you know, well, defund was actually just a slogan and abolish is just an aspirational abolish police and abolish prisons.

44:53That's just an aspirational thing. That's not real. Well, then don't use the fucking slogan. No, it's just an extremely unhelpful way of achieving my vision. Right. It's like it's like then you're then you're upset that people don't understand that you actually have a nuanced view of public safety because you embrace the slogan abolish police. Like, of course, they're not going to understand that you have a nuanced view if you use that slogan or you just say you're socialist. That's why you probably shouldn't call yourself a socialist. Right. Because because it's like I think there are plenty of people that are democratic socialist to are socialists.

45:23But a lot of people ascribe to it because they think being a Democrat is, correctly, cringe. The word liberal was actually maligned by Republicans for a long time. And they're really social Democrats, right? That's what they are. They are social Democrats. And I really do think there's a lot of people that have convinced themselves that Democrats are just sort of incremental socialists, right? In both directions. I think there are socialists that believe that about Democrats. And I think there's there are people that there is a kind of and there are lefty Democrats who believe that about that somehow we are that really to be a liberal is just to be afraid to say what you really want, as opposed to having a framework for viewing the world in which government helps to address inequities and solve problems.

46:06But fundamentally, you do believe in in all kinds of freedoms, including the freedom, the freedoms that go along with the free market. Yeah, it's just if you believe in Medicare for all and wealth tax on billionaires or abolishing ICE or whatever it is, just say you believe in those things and just talk about those policies. Like the labeling doesn't seem like it's helpful in any way, shape or form. But I don't know. That's just me.

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48:08most of the people of Britain. With all the changes in our government, including the fun revolving door of prime ministers we have here, there's always lots to talk about. And there's lots of fabulous guests to talk to. Journalists, politicians, experts, comedians and activists. Yeah, we've had great comedians on as well, like Rosie Jones, Stuart Lee, Aisling B. We've also had Tommy Vitor on, who may be our boss. We still don't know. We're not quite clear on who our boss is. I thought it might be Tommy Vitor. I thought it might be Jon Favreau. I don't know if it's John Lovett. It's hard to say.

48:39It's not clear to us who our bosses are. Some of our listeners call us irreverent, but not stupid. I object to that. I'm deeply stupid. It doesn't sound too bad. So look, come check us out. Come join us. Pod Save the UK every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

48:57How do you feel about Woke One Was Crazy as a way to explain the excesses of, I guess it's just 2020, maybe 21, whatever that time period was. First of all, I think it's it has the benefit of just being kind of true. And I saw a few people talking about this, which is, OK, we're now saying kind of more publicly what we were all saying to each other in private. Like, boy, we've lost our minds a little bit, haven't we? And to me, what's interesting about it is like I like whenever I care less about what people were saying on the Internet and more about what our candidates were doing. And I think about everyone raising their hand about decriminalizing the border or kind of taking kind of more lefty positions.

49:35It's what saddled Kamala with the sort of the that's, you know, that that that questionnaire is from the height of this moment of woke 1.0 and images like the, you know, probably the. you know, Pelosi kneeling with the Kenty cloth was maybe, maybe that was a little much. And, but what was happening then was, first of all, there was, we were dealing with a once in a century pandemic. We were having a genuine and important conversation nationally about systemic racism and policing. It did lead to a lot of important conversations about reform. But I do think that a lot of people felt like they were performing something they didn't totally understand or believed and they would leave the criticism to others because they just weren't going to take on that work.

50:23Right. And so everybody kind of went along with certain parts of it that they weren't totally sold on. Right. Or they maybe they didn't say it themselves. Right. But they didn't want to get in the muck. They certainly weren't going to go out there and saying, I actually don't believe in defunding the police. There wasn't a lot of equity. There was a lot of value in poking your head up above the trench line there. Yeah. Well, I mean, when you think back to like what was woke one? Right. Because now we're just saying, oh, it was all crazy. And And you're right. People like at least people on the left kind of instinctively know what that means.

50:52Yeah. But it's like worth talking about what it is, what it was. And I do think it's like three different things we're talking about here. There's there's policies. Right. And so there was defund the police was the big one. But there was also abolish the police, abolish prisons, which I don't even I didn't even remember from then. But now we're now we're seeing all the tweets from back then. Abolish borders or open borders or decriminalize all that. So there was that. Then there was language that was used. And there was like there were words that no one actually uses in real life that were chosen to replace words that had been deemed offensive but weren't always offensive.

51:30Well, even in your interview with Francesca Hong, she talked about justice impacted individuals. Right. Which is a funny thing, because I remember when I interviewed Andy Beshear and he and I was like, what did Democrats do wrong or whatever? I asked him some question about Democrats and what he would change. He's like, well, we use language that, you know, people that I don't know if he said faculty lounges, but it's that kind of idea. And he said, you know, like justice impacted individuals. I remember when he said that to me, I'm like, is he just saying that phrase to like pick out something to mock?

52:00Because I'd never heard that. I was like, what is he talking about? And then she said it to me and I was like, oh, oh, I guess that is something. Justice impacted individuals. So there's a whole bunch of language that made the left and Democrats seem like completely out of touch and that they don't speak the language that most people speak. Right. Then there was the public shaming. I won't say cancel culture, but public shaming. Right. Which is there was a tendency and this was mostly on the Internet, though it bled into the primary a little bit in 2020. responding to like someone's statement or position that you disagree with by trying to yell at the person label them bad shame them uh instead of persuading them that they're wrong or calling their idea bad or their statement but like they were bad yeah you know like that's and it's like also the difference between like that statement seems a little racist versus like you You are a racist for making that statement or sexist or whatever it may be.

52:59And so there was a little there was as we were discussing real problems to be solved, systemic racism, police violence, a brutal way of treating immigrants, whatever it may be. there was this belief that if you yelled loud enough or took a strong enough stance and called out the people who were taking the opposite stance loudly enough that like that would be the way that you fight it. And I think that since then people have learned that maybe the most effective way is to try to like bring people along to persuade them. And then, you know, if you can't vote against them or organize against them.

53:39Right. But it's just there was a there was like a substitution for real politics because the discussions were happening online and people were just doing a lot of yelling and name calling. Yeah. It also like it was it followed. So so Trump wins in 2016. The Me Too happens in 2017. You have a series of terrible killings by the police that follow and then into the end into the pandemic and then the death of George Floyd. and it was this moment of saying, look at what we've tolerated, right? Look at how much injustice was sort of baked into all of these systems. Look at how much we were ignoring that was in plain sight all around us.

54:21Now is the moment we're going to tear these things down. We're going to tear these systems down. And that was exciting. And it was exhilarating, I think, for people, especially for activists who suddenly found that there were millions of people in their homes or seeing their messages. They weren't out at bars. They weren't in an office. They weren't at a park. They were home watching their screen. And all of us collectively were taking in a lot more of this and more receptive to it. I remember we were doing pods from our homes and you just knew that everyone was seeing it all at once. There's a lot of people going out to do jobs that they had to do.

54:55But as a society, our culture was being made by people fully paying attention all the time from their couches. And all of that was it meant that everything was heightened and you lack the feedback loop of being in the world. Right. You lack the feedback loop of talking to someone face to face and trying things out. And also, by the way, stepping away for a little bit. Right. Well, there was also a thing, too, where so, you know, George Floyd's murder and a very important discussion afterwards about reform, reform policing, systemic racism. And then, you know, there would be some vandalism and, you know, you know, windows being broken and, you know, people spray painting a cab, all cops are bad.

55:43And then some people will be like, well, that's not great, you know, to do that kind of stuff. And then the response you get is, how can you care about that when there are these bigger issues? And the truth is, it's the reason you care about that is because the rest of the country is watching as well. And there's a most people, a majority of people who think police brutality and police police killing is a problem and very bad, but also they like police in general as a concept, you know what I'm saying? And so like for those people, if you tell them, no, no, no, it's also okay. Looting and vandalism and saying that all cops are bad.

56:25Like that's okay too. Like they're just not going to agree with you. Well, I also, I do think that there was an impulse and I, especially in like a kind of a political show like this or political debate more generally, there was a, I don't remember what the book was called, but the thesis was something like looting. A-okay. I work for a major news organization and my book is called Looting. Yes. It was terrific. You know, it was like sort of, but it's sort of written in some academic speak, like looting and the praxis of freedom or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember feeling this at the time because it was so heightened and the internet was such an intense place that you would say, well, hold on a second.

57:03These things are counterproductive, right? Like this leads to backlash. We're trying to avoid that backlash because the cause is so just, right? Like because the cause of accountability for violence against people by the police is so important because - So it's like, yes, but because the cause is so just and important, that's why you have to be careful. Well, that's why you have to be extra, extra, like think harder about persuading people. Well, and and so then you say that's and so therefore, because the looting or the damage will be taken out of context, even if the vast majority of people are peaceful, it will be it will cause a backlash.

57:39But even in that moment, there was a kind of social pressure against simply saying, because looting is wrong, because that business being destroyed hurts the people that work there, the people that own that business, even if it is a big company, by the way. But it hurts the people that work there that aren't for a big company, whose jobs depend on it. But a lot of them are going to be small businesses. And that is just simply morally wrong. Even if the ultimate cause for the anger, what led to the protest itself is just, it is just wrong, even if it weren't counterproductive. And there was very little space for that.

58:15But here we are years later. And actually the failure for more politicians and people in authority to remember those lines and assert those lines. In the same way, by the way, a Bill Cassidy or a John Cornyn are afraid to draw those lines. They are paying because they went along with a kind of style that the country has now looked back on with a lot of disdain. I will say on the other hand, after AOC made those comments, I saw a lot of center left folks who sort of always thought that the woke one was a little crazy, just not being very thrilled that she was just laughing it off. And they want a more serious explanation about what actually was crazy and what progressives have learned and sort of like more of a mea culpa on this.

59:00And I understand that, but also it's like political leaders on the left moving away from some of the fringier, unpopular positions that they took in the past is a good thing. And like one way to incentivize people changing their minds like that is to welcome it when it happens and not complain about it. Because I think changing your mind is good. Apologies are good. Recognizing that past positions weren't the best is good. Like you sort of want us – it's almost like in a different way. It's when a Trump voter is like, oh, gosh, I didn't think the deportations were coming to my town. And like instead of being like, well, you're an idiot.

59:42You know that the response should actually be like, great. Well, then welcome. Welcome to our movement. Well, look, the term woke was stolen and turned into a pejorative. But one of the ways it was used at the time was it doesn't matter when you got woke that you are, right? Like it's just like that, that, that you've woken up to what's happening in our society. And that's a good thing. Like the, to me, the other part of the woke one is crazy is part of the problem is okay, fine. Time is flattened on the internet and in political ads that the fact that now people are walking away from certain styles of rhetoric or positions that were more extreme than they want to take right now.

1:00:24Good. Those old clips are still coming out. Kamala paid in blood for what she said. in 2020. We all are. We are all paying in blood for what Kamala said in 2020. So part of this - And it wasn't just her, to be fair. Well, of course not. Of course not. Most of them that ran. Of course it wasn't just her. It was everybody. It was a cultural kind of like whatever, an acute cultural moment of people kind of in this sort of reverie. But regardless - And one way to get past it, it's not just disavowing it. Like, I appreciate Abdul now saying that was dumb, but people can smell when someone wants to say something.

1:01:00And like, there's a difference between saying, and Hong did this well, there's a difference between saying like, what I'm running on is what I'm saying right now. And these are my current views. And I've said things in the past and I don't stand by all of them and people evolve versus just being like, look, I said some stupid fucking shit in the past. And looking back on it, I don't really think that anymore. And you can trust that as a governor of this state, that I will support the police. I believe in policing the people. Some of the most vulnerable communities in our society depend on having good, responsible community policing that they can trust.

1:01:35That's what I want to build. I don't want to abolish the police. I think that that's dumb. And I regret embracing it as a slogan because it doesn't actually capture what I think. There is a way of talking about this that is going to honor your values. that doesn't just, you're not just going to get past it. No one's just going to get past it. You can't do the robot. Like, these are my positions now. I will never talk about what they were before. And by the way, like AOC knows that, of course. Like AOC is like that. Oh, I think she, I liked it. No, I agree. Yeah, I thought it was great. But no, but I think she's trying to signal showing like this, there is a way to talk about this in a kind of honest and authentic way that helps people see past something you may have said a few years ago.

1:02:09You know where people are going to be able to hear a lot more about the best path forward for Democrats. and maybe we'll even have a conversation about whether Woke One was crazy or not. Where, John? Crooked Con. Crooked Con. It's happening in D.C. the weekend following the midterms. And we've said this before. There's a special rate for Friends of the Pod subscribers, but those tickets, they're running out. Running out of those special Friend of the Pod tickets. So you've got to head on over to CrookedCon.com to grab your tickets. And if you haven't subscribed already, become a subscriber. Get ad-free episodes of all your favorite pods and support independent media.

1:02:42And a bunch of episodes you can only get on our subscription feed. All kinds of secret episodes you're missing out on. All your friends are talking about them. That's right. So before we move off this, it's election day as you're listening to this, both in Wisconsin, where Hong has been in a commanding position for a while now, and in Minnesota, where the Democratic primary for the open Senate seat that Tina Smith is vacating is happening between Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan. She's been on the show. And Congresswoman Angie Craig. We tried to get her on the show. And it's tightening more than more than people expected.

1:03:16Any final observations on either the Wisconsin gubernatorial race or before we move on to Minnesota? I did notice there is one last state navigate state navigate poll that has Hong at 44 Crowley at 22. He gained seven from their last poll undecided nine. Kelder Roy's at 11. Brennan five. And Barnes is still at six in that poll. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, I do think like the fact that the Republicans have gone behind Tom Tiffany has meant they haven't had any kind of fractious primary on their side. We've had one on ours. I do not think we have Shroud or Salt and Glory in this primary. I don't think it looked particularly.

1:03:56You have the lieutenant governor dropping out because of some sort of alleged campaign malfeasance by the campaign manager. It didn't reflect very well, especially in a state that's been dealing with a scandal around fraud and Medicaid. You have Crowley who got out and got back in at the behest of Tony Evers. The governor who could have run again, people thought he would, then he decided not to. And so the end result is people feel like, oh, no, we ended up with somebody that has these kind of crazy old posts and has sort of been mired in this sort of right wing scandal for a few days. And all of that, I do think, has obscured the stakes in this election.

1:04:32the next Wisconsin governor may oversee the presidential contest that could be close. That person will be responsible for certifying the election. Tom Tiffany is an election denier. And I, Democrats, we have these big emotional, anxious debates about our candidates. We worry about them saying the wrong thing. We worried about them having extreme positions that are out of step with the voters. The Republicans are not doing that. Tom Tiffany, the voters of Wisconsin do not want an election denier. They believe in free and fair elections, and they believe in a society in which when you lose an election, that's okay.

1:05:08You live to fight another day. You don't claim Donald Trump won and try to tell a bunch of your fellow citizens that their vote doesn't count. They don't believe in using the Insurrection Act. They don't believe in deporting people to foreign gulags. They don't believe in this mass deportation scheme in which our cities are overrun by ICE agents. And so we have to focus on painting the extremism of Tom Tiffany is the real threat to Wisconsin. And after Wisconsin, after this primary, we have to like get our heads in the fucking game. We haven't talked a lot about Minnesota. Angie Craig, I would say, is the more moderate candidate.

1:05:42She has been Peggy Flanagan has been sort of attacking her on her vote for the Lakin Riley Act, which Craig first defended and then backtracked on. And Craig is more pro-Israel. She's called off or she said she doesn't want AIPAC money, even though AIPAC was still doing some fundraising and some spending for her. She also won't commit to not voting for Schumer. Peggy Flanagan is committing to not vote for Schumer as leader. Peggy Flanagan said she would have supported that vote to cut off military and financial aid to Israel that they took. Angie Craig didn't vote for that. and Peggy Flanagan has wanted to, you know, reformize.

1:06:25She has not gone as far to say abolishize. So it's what we've seen in some of these primaries, but not, I would say the differences aren't as stark as they maybe were in Michigan or some of the other ones. What do you think about this race? The polling's sort of all over the place. We don't know. It reminds me a little of like the old saying about like, you know, why is the fight so contentious? Well, because the stakes are so low. I'm not saying the stakes are low. They're actually quite high. There are big differences between them. But I think in part because people think we can win in Minnesota and because I think Peggy Flanagan is not sort of a DSA city council person.

1:07:00She's a lieutenant governor that a lot of people really respect. Whereas Angie or Craig is maybe a little to her right or more, you'd say a lot to her right, whatever. It feels a little bit less. It's gotten a little less certainly national attention and honestly a little less attention for me. I've had Peggy Flanagan on the show. I really like her. I really like her. I have no knock on Angie Craig, but I just – Peggy Flanagan is just a really inspiring person to me. She has to be the first woman Native American to be elected to the Senate and just a really dynamic and interesting person. I think it is because, like you said, whoever wins, I don't know that it changes like the race rating.

1:07:33I don't think it makes it more of a toss-up if Flanagan wins versus Craig or vice versa. The other reason it might have gotten close is Angie Craig has been going after Flanagan for her connections to the state's fraud crisis that Walls has been dealing with, that the Republicans have been all over. Remember, it's what originally led Trump to send in ICE to Minnesota and all that. So she's been trying to tag her with that. So that might be and basically saying, making an electability argument, saying that if Flanagan wins, that Republicans will spend the whole race tying her to the fraud crisis as well.

1:08:09Now, you could argue that they'll probably do the same to Angie Craig, even though she's not the lieutenant governor, because they'll just say any politician in Minnesota is part of the fraud crisis. But, you know, that's that's one one argument they're having there. All right. Speaking of the Minnesota primary, I don't know if you saw the story about Royce. White over on the Republican side. He is a former NBA player who has run before for federal office and is now trying to get in on the discourse about the WNBA and trans rights by declaring that he's entering the WNBA draft. Ennis Cantor Freedom has also made this, another NBA player, a former NBA player, has also made this announcement as well.

1:08:55white even put on a wig in interviews with Alex Jones and Benny Johnson because that's what we're doing now most most folks on the right are eating this up it's also causing some conflict because it's forcing them to talk about women's sports here's our boy Jesse Waters struggling with this very problem yeah this is week three of the five covering the WNBA right and I have to say I am done. I hate the WNBA. I mean, I don't mind women's basketball. My girls play basketball, but I don't want to cover women's basketball. I don't want to be a WNBA analyst. We get paid to have an opinion about everything.

1:09:32And this is something I don't care about. Every time I open up the rundown and see the WNBA in it, I feel like Jessica must feel every day. we have to do this again really this again i don't know points for a father of daughters a father of daughters you know the uh as you know john that i'm a i'm a season ticket holder to angel city that's uh that's right that's uh the women's soccer team here in los angeles that is because i am married to someone who used to basically be a lesbian and they just kept the women's sports when they transitioned uh so we'd go to the games and we have a great time and there was a little dust up about this.

1:10:11A couple months ago, a player wrote an op-ed about this and believing that people that were born as biologically male shouldn't play in women's sports and that there should be a regime of testing. And this led to the debate we've had ad nauseum about, well, if you have a regime of testing that just punishes women who are forced to be examined when this ends up putting more power in the hands of the men. And it really kind of creates a situation in which women have to prove that they're women. And all of this debate is happening. And do you know how many trans athletes there were in the National Women's Soccer League at that time?

1:10:54Zero. Zero. Same as the WNBA right now. It's zero. Same as the WNBA. And so they really like talking about this. They really like talking about women's sports. And I suppose that they can keep doing it. And if these guys, and there are people who believe that if you've gone through a transition that doesn't give you any advantage, there are others who simply say, if you went through male puberty, you have an advantage, it doesn't matter what happens. And I'll leave that up to experts to decide. However, if they would like to play in the WNBA, they better fucking transition. Let's get them on some fucking hormones.

1:11:31Let's get them in the, let's get for a couple of years. Let's see it, boys. I mean, not to get into it, but they seem to think that all you, it's just based on self-identification that if you just say, I identify as a woman that you are eligible for the WNBA draft and nothing in the rules says that the league is going to have to figure out what the rules do say or like, or what the qualifications are. Cause it says you have to be a woman, but like, what does that mean? if someone ever wanted to, who has transitioned, if someone ever wanted to play in the WNBA, that they're not dealing with that.

1:12:02They're dealing with a couple of men who have not transitioned and are just saying that they're women and putting on wigs, which is a very different thing. But yeah, that's what we're doing right now. Just two men who really want to get attention is where we're at. And even Jesse Waters doesn't want to give it to them. Even Jesse Waters is bored by this. Yeah, I don't... That's what's happening. That's what's happening. Good luck, fellas. Well, they're getting some attention. All right. Last thing before we get to Levitt's interview with Sam Forstag. Tucker Carlson's new coalition includes Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massey, and maybe Hunter Biden?

1:12:39On Monday, Carlson released a highly anticipated, I guess, two-hour interview with Hunter Biden. He is just making the rounds, Hunter Biden. Here's a clip. Here's how it went. I'm supposed to hate Tucker Carlson because he's an anti-Semite and he's this. I know you're not. You're not an anti-Semite. I 100 % know you're not an anti-Semite. Anti-Semite? No. No, that's what my point being is that. I would just say so. My point being is that, like, if it's anti-Semitic to point out that Bibi Netanyahu is evil incarnate, then you know what? I don't know what to say to people anymore. What do you think?

1:13:19What do you think about all this? He started by talking about how much he loves Candace Owens because he did Candace's show too. You know, it's like he's got like all of Joe Biden's ego, but none of the civic mindedness is how it always feels to me. Well, it was very it's he's just doing like a pander thing. Right. Which is like it's a little Biden where he wants to be sort of nice and gracious to the person he's sitting down with. but he does it in a way by being like, oh yeah, everything you say is amazing and great. Oh, I have disagreements with you, disagreements with you, but like, I don't think you're an anti-Semite, blah, blah, blah.

1:13:57And it's like also going after Bibi Netanyahu like that too. And I'm like, where's your dad on this one? Well, it's also, it's so fun to only argue with the dumbest version of your opponents. That's true when you put a wig on and try to join the WNBA. It's also true when you say it's anti-Semitic to say that Bibi Netanyahu is evil. What are we doing? Well, actually, I'd say, why don't you have a maybe sort of interrogate a less stupid version of this and see how far you get there. Like Tucker Carlson has had Holocaust deniers on his show. He has embraced a whole host of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

1:14:31He has been flirting with all kinds of anti-Semitism. He has accused so many people of having dual loyalties. Like he has engaged in a ton of anti-Semitic tropes. He has used anti-Semitism in how he makes his arguments, whether you want to sit there and sort of be the arbiter of whether or not Tucker's an anti-Semite. For whatever reason, white people tend to be circumspect about saying to other white people, you're not a racist, right? But somehow when it comes to anti-Semitism, there's a lot of people that aren't Jewish that are allowed to be like, I've checked and you're not. And it's like, well, okay, buddy, great.

1:15:11Thanks for letting us know. We were waiting for the Hunter Biden imprimatur on Tucker Carlson to let us know whether Tucker Carlson is an anti-Semitic or not. And now there's one less thing to worry about. Here's my thing about the whole Hunter Biden media tour on all of the various right wing hosts and all the different places he's going. I'm not like this is not a debate for me about like the platforming and you can't go on someone's show that you think is awful or whatever. It's like if you're going to do that, have a discussion that is about the places where you disagree. Have a little debate about it.

1:15:47You don't have to be screaming at each other if you don't want. But like if you're just going to go there to be like, oh, you're actually awesome. And and then like wait for Tucker or Candace or whoever to be like, I'm sorry that I went after you so hard, Hunter, when, you know, your dad was president. Like, what is the point of that? Like, who gains from that other than you? is my question like what what kind of good are you doing are you introducing tucker's audience to hunter biden's views on the situation that are different than what tucker carlson believes in because if that's the case that's one thing but that's not what he did there that's not what he's doing with candace owens that's not what he fucking sat with nick fuentes like what are you doing man yeah so like to what end is all of this right exactly you know to what end to what end aside from like your own attention yes right that's the thing and i like again i don't want to assign motivations because maybe there is some other motivation, but I don't know.

1:16:37I don't know what the intention is other than sort of just because all he keeps doing is just going in these shows and pandering to the host. It also is like there's a certain kind of sort of broken brain person on social media that's been just really eating up the Hunter Biden tour. They love it. They love it. It's like he's some sort of world weary truth teller, you know, like he's traveling around kind of telling these sort of forbidden truths, like the forbidden truths being that like, I guess, Mike Johnson's gay and Tucker Carlson loves Jews. Like that's where we're at. I forgot about the Mike Johnson.

1:17:09Yeah, I forgot about all these Republicans are in the closet thing. And that the closetocracy, he called it, is actually the bigger threat than oligarchy, which is like, oh, okay, man. And just, it's this weird. But I guarantee if he sat down in one of those interviews with one of the Republicans that he had accused of being in the closet, he would be like, oh, not you. I think you're great. No, I think you love pussy.

1:17:33No, no. We definitely we disagree on a lot, but you're amazing. You're amazing. It's just it's just very predictable what's going to happen every time. And like, you know, I agree. Like, actually, like, boy, politics sure seems not like no fun when you talk about hard issues and get into the nuance of things and question Tucker Carlson about his views and actually sort of interrogate some of these difficult and thorny issues that we're facing or why the right has become so radical and conspiratorial and extreme or what actually drives politics to not work. for people when you're not saying it's because Josh Hawley is secretly gay and and and actually anti-Semitism isn't that isn't isn't isn't connected to what's happening on the right.

1:18:14Whatever you want to say, like, yeah, it gets it gets it's almost like becomes like work. You have to really focus on and spend a lot of time on it. And it sucks. I agree. Anyway, come on. Pod Save America anytime. All right. When we come back, Montana House candidate Sam Forstack.

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1:20:58Sam Forsag, welcome to The Pond. Thank you so much for having me, John. So first of all, let's just give people some background on who you are and what led you to run for Congress. You're a smokejumper, and this is your first time running for office. Just tell people about yourself. Yeah, it's my first time running for anything higher than vice president of my union local. Until seven months ago, I worked as a smokejumper for the U.S. Forest Service. So in a short version of that is we parachute into remote wildfires to put them out while they're still small. And I was a leader in my union's local when all the doge cuts began.

1:21:33And what that looked like in Montana is in large part, you know, they said it was all about government efficiency. But the people we lost were the lowest paid workers we've got in our agency. I mean, when they have fired 360 Montanans just in the Forest Service just on Valentine's Day two years ago, 85 % of them were GS6s or below, making$19.70 an hour or less. in my agency. It was people, the people who swing the tools and conduct the science to maintain our public lands. And when I reached out to Ryan Zinke, the Republican in the seat, who should be the person you can reach out to when your members lives are being turned upside down, I got crickets.

1:22:03So I decided if he's going to take my coworkers jobs, I'm going to come take his. Just so people understand like how just to get when Doge comes in and makes cuts to save money. Sure. What happens when you're trying to say put out a fire quickly before it gets bigger, Like walk people through what happens if, say, the equipment you used to rely on is no longer available. Like day to day, what did it mean for them to try to make government more efficient? Yeah. I mean, I think it's pretty clear none of this was about efficiency. It's about power and consolidating that power in the hands of a select few, including the richest man in the world who happened to be at the helm of this thing.

1:22:40But on the ground, what it looked like even last year, and I know it's worse right now, is public safety was hampered. I mean, I jumped a fire in early July last year, a time when usually you are not in a state of resource scarcity. Resources being the manpower and the people you need to help fight a fire if you don't catch it with those first eight jumpers on the ground. And I'm setting up a task force and I get told, hey, I know you're requesting three hotshot crews. There are none available in the region. So we're going to order six contract hand crews instead because they don't have the same capabilities.

1:23:09So we're going to need more people. And that's the only way we get any help to you in the next few days. what it means on the ground is we all pay so much more for so much less and it takes longer to fight those fires and i mean those stories are endless and so you're making i know you've been doing this for about seven years and you're making 19 1975 an hour seven years in and because of these cuts they have to bring in contractors and private companies that are going to make much more money yeah uh and cost a lot more than what the kind of uh uh the trained people would have done yeah Yeah. I mean, the real goal here was cuts and privatization to turn into another source of profit.

1:23:47You know, another story is last year I jumped a fire outside of Steamboat Springs in Colorado. And, you know, as jumpers, most fires we catch with the first, you know, four, eight, twelve smoke jumpers on the ground. But when you don't, you step back and you set up a large incident to make sure that you can save houses. We had hundreds of houses at risk in the immediate vicinity. This fire, we ended up catching at around 500 acres. and on the second day i put in an order for pumps and hoses which is a pretty basic firefighting implement just to get water to the line and they tell me well we used to have a gear cache here in steamboat last year but they cut that they shut that down with the cuts so you're not going to get those pumps and hoses until the end of next shift because we have to overnight air mail the pump and hose kit from denver to steamboat and we got to drive it up to the line then we got to get it up to you so you're not getting it till the end of the day tomorrow so not only is our firefighting hampered.

1:24:33I mean, I cannot imagine a more expensive way to deliver hundreds of pounds of water pumps than that. So you're a smoke jumper and just that basically you're going to the places where cars can't reach, vehicles can't get to, to try to solve problems before they get bigger. What does that look like if there's a smoke jumper in Congress? What do you see as the problem you're trying to surge to that you view as failing to get enough attention right now. Really smoke jumping like a lot of firefighting, right? We're not so different from hotshot crews or engine crews. You're training crisis management.

1:25:11And whether it is the housing crisis that we're dealing with in Western Montana, where we have the least affordable housing market in the country, that's a surprise to a lot of people. Yeah, I didn't realize that until learning about this. You're making say$19 an hour in an area that we think of as rural, so it must be cheaper. But the average house is what? Like$500 ,000. Nowadays in Missoula, It's just shy of 600 K. You go to Bozeman, it's around$900 ,000 in a place where a decade ago was probably closer to 200 ,000. The Flathead Valley in northwest Montana, not so different. So, I mean, the crises are, you know, it's in housing, it's in health care, it's in child care, where again, median wage is$60 ,000 in Montana.

1:25:50The average cost of child care is just shy of 19 K if you can make it through a waiting list. And these are all crises that so many people have felt like our elected leaders at the federal level aren't dealing with any sense of urgency with. I mean, we had leadership nationally not so long ago telling us the economy is better than you think it is. You know, meanwhile, yeah, me and a whole lot of my coworkers, well, at the end of four years of democratic control, I'm running as a Democrat. Well, yeah, we're making 19 bucks an hour and you're in a community where you'd be lucky to find a home for less than 500 ,000 bucks.

1:26:20And life did not get better if you're in a situation like that over the preceding four years. And people felt like the folks in power at the national level are not listening to us quite clearly. I mean, what better articulation of a disconnect than to tell people things are better than you think it is while homelessness just doubled or tripled in every major city in Montana over the preceding five years? What's interesting is when you say we've had leaders saying the economy is better than you think it is. I genuinely don't know if you're talking about Joe Biden or Donald Trump. One thing you said recently is that the national party did everything they could to make it hard for a Democrat to win in places like Western Montana.

1:26:56What do you mean by that? What I mean is we had people at the national level who quite literally were not listening to us. And we have people who are dealing with a housing crisis 20 miles away from what you and I were talking about earlier, places like the Yellowstone Club, where you got to be a multimillionaire just to be considered for membership. And you go 20 miles up the canyon, you're in Bozeman. Well, we have homelessness that's doubled or tripled. You have people living in the back of their cars or trailers and people who felt like rightfully their problems were not being solved to the national level.

1:27:26And when that's the case, when things are that bad, process is not an adequate excuse for not dealing with those things. And I want to note, I would offer the national party did all they could to make it hard for a Democrat to win. The Democrat did just win this seat I'm running for. It's Montana's first congressional district. John Tester won Western Montana while he lost the state last year by just shy of a point, even in a tough environment like that. So we know we can win this thing. And the project here is to win in a meaningful way and rebuild the coalition we used to have when we could win statewide and when Democrats could conceive of ever having a meaningful majority in the U.S.

1:27:59Senate. You know, you've seen people talking about like abolishing the Senate. It seems like for a lot of people, it's easier for them to wrap their minds around fundamentally changing the Constitution than winning in places like Montana statewide again, even though John Tester represented Montana in the Senate, Max Baucus. What do you think right now is like if I went to Montana and asked a bunch of people, when you think of a Democrat, you think of blank. Like, what do they think when they hear about a Democrat? I think right now people think about John Tester, who was our senator until a year a half ago.

1:28:39And not so long ago, Democrats had serious power in a place like Montana. I mean, 2009, we had a 50-50 split in our state Senate. We used to have, in 2016, we had a Democratic governor, Steve Bullock, who was reelected on the same ticket as Donald Trump. 2018, John Tester, reelected again in our state. Democrats have found a way in Montana to win even when Donald Trump is gaining power. I mean, 18 ,000 Montanans voted for Donald Trump and John contester in 2024, those are the people who deserve a candidate who's actually going to speak to our experience and talk about how government needs to be a thing that can make your life materially better when the market is not meeting that need.

1:29:16And government has also been failing on that job for a long time. And I think clearly you look at what's happening around the country or even in our race, right? Where I started this primary, nobody knew who the heck I was in December of last year. And we had a crowded competitive primary that included a candidate who was the Democratic nominee for governor last year, people who'd been running for a year. And what we saw is that people are really hungry for candidates or for just anybody who can actually reflect our experience and say, like, it's not just your problem. The fact that people can't afford a house, it's not just your problem that when your car makes a funny noise, well, that might mean you can't afford rent next month because I've lived it, too.

1:29:54It is our problem. And of course, people are going to address problems with more urgency if you've lived them. How much do you think the way like so the way Democrats we have obviously there's like a huge problem with like the Democratic brand. How much of that do you ascribe to say like right wing media sort of hammering people kind of pulling the most extreme versions of a Democrat? And then how much you actually laid at the feet of the Democrats themselves? John, I would say we hold these truths to be self-evident. The Democratic Party messed up pretty damn bad and they got us into this situation.

1:30:26We had four years of power. Yeah. People were facing massive issues. I mean, between fire seasons, I helped put together the Montana Coalition to solve homelessness. We pulled a dozen homeless shelters together from around the state. And we ended up getting some legislation passed in a Republican supermajority, the first one in state history. And the reason that was able to happen is because the problems were so damn bad. I mean, quite literally, I'm not exaggerating. We have tripled the number of unhoused people in a place like Montana. We're in the northern Rockies. It is not a hospitable place to be living on the streets.

1:30:56people die every year. And I mean, if you were working two or three jobs at a time, like I was the entire time I was going to college and still graduating with debt. And you look up and people are telling you the institutions, they just need tweaked a little bit. That does not inspire faith. Yeah. And that doesn't give anyone a reason to be hopeful or to engage with politics. And so what happened? A lot of young people did not engage with politics last year. They did not turn out and vote. And we are now quite literally not the party of working people. Most working people most folks making under 100K just voted for Republicans or unions, right?

1:31:29I come from a union background. We have the Gibraltar of unionism in Montana. It's Butte, most incredible town you can go to, Western Montana. Well, half of union members voted for Republicans last year, and a lot of young people didn't turn out. Those are all the people that are the base of the Democratic Party I want to be a part of. And if we can't give those people a reason to actually engage and we can't show them that there's a place in this party for them, not just for the people who are rich enough to make it through these processes that we create for federal candidates, well, then we don't deserve their support.

1:31:58So let's win it back. So Joe Biden, he's this, I think, longtime centrist figure. He wins in 2020, and he actually tries to bring in Bernie. He brings in Elizabeth Warren. He puts in a trust buster at the FTC. He governs much further to the left than anybody would have expected Joe Biden to govern, still not as far as some people would have wanted him to go, has some success. And Democrats are, largely punished in part because of all the obstacles, like the filibuster in the Senate, the Supreme Court, like Democrats are in some ways punished because he's unable to fully achieve his agenda. And then they and then who wins?

1:32:36The Republicans who are then immediately deregulate past massive tax cuts to the rich, overturn, put on judges to overturn Roe and environmental and union regulations. I got it all. And so, so look, when you're talking to people sort of in your union that, that voted for Zinke or voted for Trump, like how, how do you, how do you talk about this? Like what, what's your argument? My argument is that I understand why a lot of people like my coworkers and union members, some of them voted for the schlubs who are tearing all this down all around us. And man, does it piss me off as somebody who spent a year and a half working with members who, I mean, I had a member, Kara, who lost her job in one day with no cause, no notice, 15 years into her federal service because she just happened to have taken a lateral transfer that year to do more remote work during chemotherapy.

1:33:27You know, members are getting texts in line at the airport to go to their grandmother's funeral saying they lost their job. They were only making 16 bucks an hour in the first place. But you know what? I also work with a lot of people who, well, if you're making 16 bucks an hour and you're working for the federal government and housing costs have just doubled or tripled in your community and you can't conceive of ever owning a home, well, your life just got worse. And as far as I'm concerned, there are two primary roles for the federal government. First and foremost, it's to protect your constitutional freedoms, right?

1:33:54A lot of those in the Bill of Rights are freedoms from the government. Second, it's to make sure you can meet your basic material needs when the market is not meeting them. And the market was meeting them even worse after four years of democratic control. And you know what? If you are working two or three jobs at a time, or if you're working a thousand hours of overtime like I had to just to scrimp by through a winter on my mortgage for a 980 square foot home, you might not have the time to follow the intricacies of policymaking or politics. You shouldn't have to, to be able to judge the people in power on what sort of results they get, they delivered for you.

1:34:26And so I would just say like the people we need to win back are a lot of the people who got these folks elected. It's a lot of working people. It's a lot of union members and it's folks who you don't start a conversation with by telling them that they're wrong because it frustrates me so much to hear people's what i hear often say like well do they see like why are people voting outside of their own their own self-interest their own material self-interest it's not more in your interest to vote for somebody who's going to make your life worse a little slower than the other guy yeah also don't tell people what their interests are presumably uh so there's also been a part of this debate about sort of how did the democratic party lose the men what happened to the men and the working class and a lot of people tend to better better place to address than a podcast studio.

1:35:07Yeah, two guys in a podcast studio. This is where we're supposed to solve it all. But, you know, I think Tester has talked about wokeness as being part of this. You said something interesting the other day, which is just that basically, if you have a member of Congress who's worth millions of dollars trying to be a tribune for the working class, that person may feel a little bit more afraid to, say, push back on trans issues or have a position that might not have a majority, but actually they want to be supportive of trans people. How do you think about this? Like, do you think that the social issues are part of Democrats' problems?

1:35:44Like Bernie has, because he's such a kind of people understand what Bernie stands for, he's had, on the other hand, more room to say, you know what? I don't think we should defund the police or we do need to have a strong border. I think a lot of it comes back to credibility. And I had this fascinating split screen for the last eight years of my life where I'm doing wildland fire in the summers, six to nine months out of the year. And then I was doing organizing and advocacy in the winters between that. And I worked for the coalition of homeless shelters I mentioned for the state library association, even for the ACLU.

1:36:14And when I, well, when I would be in the middle of fire season, there's not a lot of other jumpers to go do policy work. And so you bet your tail. Everybody wants to ask me about whatever they might've seen on the news. Maybe it was on Fox news. And if we got time in between digging line or cut in line, you know, I'd tell them, you know, that story. Well, here are the people that I know in the winters who are just trying to live their life with dignity without government telling them how to do it. And I think that that's a piece that has been lost. And I'll tell them what else I saw when I'm at the state legislature is, well, we just saw in 2017 deep cuts and a dismantling of our mental health services in the state when we had a budget shortfall.

1:36:48And over the following eight years when we had surpluses, did they reinvest in all those basic public health care There's services that they cut. No, they invested in tax cuts to cut the top income tax bracket year after year after year. And that's the same thing we see at the federal level. And it's what it is, is it is big brother not watching you because they don't need to now, even though they can, they're singing and dancing while they pick all of our pockets as working people. And by the end of that conversation, a lot of my coworkers are pretty pissed and they weren't pissed about what they saw on the news.

1:37:13They were pissed about the fact that that is why I am poor. And that is why I am poor in a world where we just minted the first human trillionaire. That's something that should make us angry. And that's the sort of grievance of all the festering. misdirected grievances that kind of economic grievance is what government's supposed to be here to help address so let's talk about your opponent zinke won this race most recently by eight you said don't john tester won one uh more votes there uh even as he wasn't able to eke out a victory it's very very close right now uh what is the case you're trying to make in the closing days uh to try to get more people to understand why uh your opponent just um uh sort of a trump back talk radio host is not exactly what Montana needs.

1:37:54Yeah, the contrast here could not be any better, if you ask me. I mean, yeah, the fellow I'm running against, he was the handpicked successor for Ryan Zink. He dropped out of this race about four months ago in good riddance. And he dropped out because he saw that it wasn't going to be easy for him after a whole year spent gutting basic public services that people like me might have depended on as a kid, someone whose belly was full thanks to food stamps sometimes, gutting our public lands, where if there's a consensus issue in Montana. It's our public lands. And so what did he do? He dropped out with 48 hours until the filing deadline and immediately endorsed this fellow Aaron Flint, who was a far right talk radio host.

1:38:28He spent the last 10 years in an air conditioned recording studio spewing hate and hot air, nothing against air conditioning. What's wrong with it? I don't think I think you're sort of losing me a little bit. There's nothing wrong. You do a lot of good work in an air conditioned recording studio. Sorry, continue. Well, and we got the guy is a political pundit and we have plenty of pundits and political puppets in Washington right now. I would offer we there's no dearth of those. We got enough of them. What we do have a lack of is working people who know what it's like to be working three jobs at a time and still paying your rent on a credit card.

1:38:55I know what that's like. People who actually know what it's like to have your belly full because of food stamps or thanks to food stamps when your parent falls on a hard time. And like people who don't have that perspective are going to perhaps fight with a little bit less urgency when SNAP benefits get used as leverage during a government shutdown like they did this last time around when half of my members were furloughed at the end of those six weeks. And a lot of them are showing up at local food banks that are also having to curtail food benefits because some of that comes from SNAP. It just feels like across the board, there has truly been a lack of urgency when we had the political will to pass really big, important legislation, like you mentioned, like the IRA, right?

1:39:31Well, a whole lot of that money never actually got out the door and people are hurting right now. I mean, if you were on the edge of not having your home, like Kathy, whose house I was at. Kathy lives a mile from my house. She's in now one of 4 ,000 mobile home lots that are owned by out-of-state private equity firms in the state of Montana. And Kathy's lot rent has gone from 370 bucks a month to over$800. Kathy doesn't have 10 years to wait for all of these resources to propagate through the system and for half of them to go to large corporations so that maybe her life gets better. Like Kathy needs help right now.

1:40:03And it feels like we did not deliver that help to people who really desperately needed it. And what happens? the party out of power gets elected and it turns into something really scary and dangerous. There's also a big fight in Montana now over data centers. There's a lot of outside money. They see Montana, it's cool. It's a lot of land. You can build a lot of big facilities. Yeah. Where are you on building data centers in Montana? And how does that contrast with the Republicans? Yeah. Well, my opponent got the better part of a million dollars from American Mission, one of OpenAI's super PACs, just in the month of May, to get him through his primary, even though they tried to make sure no one could run against the guy.

1:40:44So what we're up against is a pretty terrifying amount of money that this industry is planning to leverage in this election. I think 150 million, they're planning to drop on elections just this year. For us, well, we have a proposed center that is in theory going to use more electricity than every residential home in the state of Montana. And our power rates have already gone up 30 or 40 percent in the last three years. So what I would offer is we need to pass a damn law at the federal level saying they can't build these things until and unless they show that they're going to provide all their own power.

1:41:13It doesn't have to be on-site. Off-site is even better. Put power on the grid. We need it. Ideally, carbon neutral power. Making sure that they're not going to dirty our air and water. I mean, you see these terrifying videos of dirtied water. Well, there are more water efficient cooling systems. They cost a little bit more, but this industry, they can afford it. They're planning to spend four trillion bucks on data center development in the next seven years. Right now, we have none of that. All we have is an executive order trying to preempt state regulations on AI. And where I am too, I'm coming at this.

1:41:40I'm also a relatively young candidate. I think that this technology is perhaps the biggest existential threat that we've got as a country. I mean, we've read the sci-fi novel before. We're all living in it right now. If their promises are true, well, this is a technology that could cure cancer or it could kill all of humanity. And we in the last - Big delta. It's a big difference. Yeah. And right now it seems like we're only using it for all the bad stuff. And what in the last two weeks, you're probably tracking. We had two instances of these models breaking out of the system and hacking into other outfits and they're under a full scale cyber attack from an AI system and nobody knows.

1:42:16There's no oversight or regulation of this right now, functionally speaking. And if we can't get our arms around it and have real federal oversight and make it so we're ready to pull the plug on this thing, if it poses a threat to the future of our children in our country, like we're going to be in a tough spot. One other issue that's been roiling in Montana is because in part, for what all the reasons you're saying, the Democratic brand is can be pretty toxic. You have an independent that has a lot of backing from this is the first I've heard about this first you've heard of it now. So for people that don't know about it, basically, there is an independent that's running with the backing of a lot of Democratic politicians is also a Democratic candidate on the ballot.

1:42:56today, as we're recording this, is the last day for that Democratic candidate to drop out so that everyone can coalesce around the independent candidate. Do you believe that Bankman should drop out? Right now. Yeah. Today's the deadline. I think they just had a press conference the last couple hours. I think it was the third or fourth in the last week between the two of them. Yeah. Each one announcing I'm still running. I'm still running. Yeah. They're both still running. They're both still here. Yeah. It's an interesting game theory problem because they're like, it's been a brinkmanship, but what do you want to have?

1:43:26It's what do you want to have happened before midnight today? What I want is to make sure Kurt Almy, who's the Republican running in that race is not our next Senator. And I will be entirely honest. I am so deeply frustrated with the entirety of how this thing is played out. Yeah. I mean, the probably North $8 million has been sent to spent to manufacture the situation we're in right now where neither candidate is going to have a chance of winning against the Republican as long as they're both in this race. That's obscene. Yeah. Like that is actually disgusting. We have all, whichever angle you're looking at this from, we've all swallowed a spider to kill a fly.

1:43:59And I mean,$8 million, again, that is pearls before swine in a state where people are being pushed out onto the streets because they can't afford the basics. At this point, a coin flip would be better than what they got going right now. And what I've been telling the both of them is that I really hope that they will both sit down in person in a room and sort this out because a lot of how we got here as a country is a lot of our national leaders were putting their own ego before the good of the country. And it feels like nothing changes. And well, the reality is nothing changes unless we go change it ourselves.

1:44:27Yeah. It seems like, God, a coin flip would work. Can we just do that? I mean, like basically that's where you, we want one candidate to go up against the Republican and one of them would have to drop out, but neither one of them wants to do it is basically where we're at. And so it sounds like you would, you would, you just want one of them to drop out. And by the end of the day. Yeah, that would be better than the situation we're in this standoff. But I will tell you, too, that Senate race, you know, I have faith in them to sort this out and to do the exercise, the basic skills that my dad is a kindergarten teacher is teaching his students.

1:44:58Right. Oh, I sit down, look at each other, have a conversation. But if they whether or not they do that, Western Montana, Montana's first is where we have a chance to win. Yeah. This is the place a Democrat just won by just by almost one percent. And I think there's a real temptation to just spend all your time talking about whatever. Yeah, if it bleeds, it reads, you know, wherever the controversy is. But this is a place where we just had turnout in the Democratic primary up 17 percent. It was down four on the Republican side. This is a place where we can have a foothold in a place like Western Montana or the Rocky Mountain West or rural America, something that Democrats don't really have right now.

1:45:35So, yeah, we're spending all our time talking about that. And whichever way that race goes, I think both of those are very different kinds of candidates. Yeah. And whatever happens by the end of the day, that's what will happen. And then we have to focus on doing whatever we can to win your seat and the Senate race. And people can go to Sam for Montana dot com if they want to help out. They can go to Sam for Montana if they want to help out. And and you're going to have a lot of money coming up against you. And in a state like Montana, like, you know, a million dollars dropped in that race can have a huge, huge impact.

1:46:01What do people that that what do Democrats not understand about Montana? like forget even just the politics just as a place what people care about uh i think there's a lot of kind of assumptions people make about like rural voters how they view the environment how they view public lands like what people miss i mean our public lands are a way of life truly i mean you're protecting your gun rights and protecting your public lands those are the two consensus issues in a place like montana because um well that's what people depend on to keep your freezer are full. If you go to your public lands and use them for hunting, that is how people find sustenance.

1:46:39That's what people depend on. If you can squeeze in a Sunday afternoon between your three shifts just to go hiking or skiing, that's what makes it worth living. And that is not a Democrat or Republican issue. I mean, part of what pushed me into this race in November when I was thinking about, is it worth leaving behind smoke jumping, which is the only retirement, the only healthcare I had, the only career I really had to run for this office, because whatever the administration tells you, the Hatch Act exists and you cannot run for public office, federal employee. I got a mailer from Ryan Zinke saying that he's the Teddy Roosevelt of public lands.

1:47:11A year into all of these cuts where my members' lives are being turned upside down, where we're down 20 percent. We've lost 2 ,000 red carded firefighters. We're all seeing what the consequences of those are right now. We got smoke choked skies in Montana and less people to fight all those fires. And he's sending out a mailer with his little Teddy Roosevelt hat on and his Boy Scout outfit. it. Everybody claims they're for public lands, but it's a lot like these other issues. Public lands aren't just lines on a map. There are a lot of people, most of them not making a lot of money, who work their tails off to make sure you can make it up a road to the trailhead or up a trail to access your forest.

1:47:42A lot of those people are core to the rural economies. If you go down to Hamilton, well, you got Rocky Mountain Labs, who's lost 30 or 40 employees so far. You have Forest Service outposts. These are a core part of our community and our economy, and we all just got gutted. And so people are pissed and they should be pissed, but being pissed is not enough. And when people say, well, are your friends who might've voted for these guys ready to see they were wrong? That's not what it is. I think right now people are just angry at both parties because you're paying 420 a gallon at the pump for unleaded.

1:48:14And we're in another war that this guy started this time that none of us wanted and we're spending billions overseas and all of our lives are worse. So we got to move past being pissed and being angry and talk about re-imagining a lot of the programs that Montanans helped pass. Like Mike Mansfield was the leader of the U.S. Senate from Montana who ushered through the great society and helped create Medicare and Medicaid and NPR and PBS. And these are all the things that are under attack. They're all the things we're called on to reimagine and expand so people can meet their basic needs and have time for the kind of empathy and compassion that your neighbor deserves.

1:48:46Sam, I am 43. I'm about to turn 44. Your skin looks great. Fantastic. Thank you for saying that. Could I be a smokejumper? Or how, how athleticism, how much is required? Am I past my prime? Is it possible? You know, I fell a rookie at 47. Looking at you, I mean, you look pretty darn fit just from across the microphone. But no, what's required is it's a six week rookie training program. Most people have got five or six years, five to 10 years of fire experience before you get picked up. And about 40 % of people make it through. So it's six weeks of getting the hell beat out of you and PT and learning how to pilot a parachute.

1:49:24I want to know what a parachute. No, I can't do it. I forgot about the jumping part. I want to know what the like physical, I would like to know what those, like, what is like the physical requirements that I would like to do a smoke jumper training. Yeah. And maybe I don't think I can jump out of a plane. I actually struggle from a high diving board to jump into a pool. So I think that's like probably not for me, but maybe I could do the training. Sam Forsack, thank you so much. I keep forgetting the website. What's the website again? The website is samformontana.com or you can find us on socials.

1:49:51It's just at Sam Forsyth across platforms and I need all the help I can get. It is a rare thing to see a working person in the halls of power. And if everyone pulls together and helps out, well, we can actually make this happen and we can start changing our country for the better. Thank you so much. Thank you, John. That's our show for today. Thanks to Sam Forsyth for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Farrah Safari, with Ree Cherlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill.

1:50:19Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kirill Pellaviv, David Tolles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

1:50:31Hey, so listen, whether you're in the States, across the pond, or somewhere on the other side of the world, we love that you tune in to Crooked for US News. But did you know we also have a UK news show? Yes, that's right. It's called Pod Save the UK. Pod Save the UK is a no bullshit, unabashedly progressive conversation about politics focused on the issues that matter most to the people of Britain. With all the changes in our government, including the fun revolving door of prime ministers we have here, there's always lots to talk about. And there's lots of fabulous guests to talk to. Journalists, politicians, experts, comedians and activists.

1:51:05Yeah, we've had great comedians on as well, like Rosie Jones, Stuart Lee, Aisling B. We've also had Tommy Vitor on, who may be our boss. We still don't know. We're not quite clear on who our boss is. I thought it might be Tommy Vitor. I thought it might be Jon Favreau. I don't know if it's Jon Lovett. It's hard to say. It's not clear to us who our bosses are. Some of our listeners call us irreverent, but not stupid. I object to that. I'm deeply stupid. It doesn't sound too bad. So look, come check us out. Come join us. Pod Save the UK every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.