Is It Gay to Flip Texas?

27:19I love Z-Biotics. I went to Vegas recently. I had one before I had a bunch of drinks and lost a lot of money. That's not Z-Biotics' fault. That's my fault. That's my fault because I love the action. I love the action. I'm going to have a bunch of Z-Biotics when I get married before because I'm going to turn one on, I think. From the crack of the bat at the stadium to the start of wedding season. Hey, May is packed with back-to-back reasons to be out. Don't let a rough morning after keep you on the sidelines. Drink free alcohol to stay ahead of it and make the most of every Saturday this month.

27:52Go to zbiotics.com slash crooked to learn more and get 15 % off your first order when you use crooked at checkout. Zbiotics is backed with a 100 % money back guarantee. So if you're not satisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money. No questions asked. Remember to head to ZBiotics.com slash crooked and use the code crooked at checkout for 15 % off. There's just a bit more corruption to discuss before we move on. This is sort of your standard issue corruption. According to ProPublica, Trump advisor and family friend Peter Navarro, remember Peter Navarro? He did all the tariffs that everyone's enjoying so much.

28:26And jail time. He did jail time. Jail time and tariffs. Yeah. So it turns out he pulled some strings last year to funnel a$620 million Pentagon loan to a North Carolina startup owned in part by Donald Trump Jr. What do you think? Is it an early wedding present? Like we talk all the time about the crypto schemes and the Qatari jets and all the other like very extravagant and extraordinary corruption. But there really is just a staggering amount of, as you said, mundane corruption. Just like funneling contracts to your friends so that they can make money off the taxpayers. And Trump is probably, although not definitely going to pardon his sons before he leaves.

29:09Maybe Peter Navarro will cross the threshold of people who will get pardoned, because he did serve time for Trump for a while. And he already has a pardon, I believe, or at least a commutation. But the people who actually facilitated this, people who work in the Pentagon, people who work for Peter Navarro, they're not getting pardons. And they're probably going to see the inside of the jail cell because of it. And that is happening across the board. And like there are a lot of people who think who are serving their MAGA lords. They're doing what they're told. And they are going Trump's going to pardon his close friends and his closest aides.

29:39And the rest of those people are going to be in under tremendous legal jeopardy because of what they're doing. I realize it's easy to become numb to all the stories about corruption and all the numbers. But what happened here is this is a pretty clear cut one. They set up this office in the Pentagon called the Office of Strategic Capital. And this was set up in the Biden administration. And the idea was the government wants to give out some loans to companies, startup companies that are involved in developing rare earth minerals, because we don't want to depend on China for that. We want to depend on U.S.

30:13And so this is good. It's good for the government to sort of help these startups that are doing this. It was a they had one billion dollar lending authority under Biden. Donald Trump comes in and they they they increase it from one billion to two hundred billion dollars. So now it's$200 billion that the government is handing out to these companies. And in the Biden administration, there's a process. You bid for this if you're one of these companies. You apply. There's a rigorous process. They decide to take you or not. They reject some companies. They just obviously we want to give loans to the best possible companies because it's taxpayer dollars that we are giving to these companies.

30:49So we want to make sure they're the best ones. Except one company, Vulcan, skirted that entire process. and in fact, didn't even apply. The White House, Peter Navarro calls the Defense Department and it was like, you gotta give the money to Vulcan. You just gotta give the money to Vulcan. And that is the company, the small company in North Carolina that Don Jr. had just invested in just a couple months before this. And once it got the money, once it got the huge contract, the valuation of the company went from 200 million to$2 billion, dollars a 900 increase that is how much money don fucking jr made because his really good friend peter navarro the two of them are very tight called up the fucking pentagon and said make this happen for don jr's company there's so much like this there is you know just for the other day that they about you know trump had a big investment and made investment in dell right before a big announcement where dell was going to get a government contract same thing with robin hood But just it's across the board.

31:51Just everyone is robbing the Treasury with two hands at all times. I was going to say, it's not just like they're using their office or they're abusing their office. And just the fact that they have the office to make money. No, no, no. They're like stealing from you. They are putting their hands in the taxpayer pockets and stealing. Because this is just taxpayer money that's been handing out. And with no accountability or oversight whatsoever, is this company going to succeed? Is it a good company? We don't know. don jr owned some of it that's all we need to know money out the door taxpayer dollars only it was only a year ago that the government told us that we cannot afford to keep rural hospitals open right yeah we can we can give a favorable contract with a huge profit margin people who put the weird rubbery paint on the on the pool we can give contracts to don jr's company we can encase washington dc based horse statues in gold where's elon where are the doge bros where's the all-in pod bros with all the fucking uh come on guys probably investors in the donald trump and the Trump Jr.

32:49company. Lots of waste and fraud right here. You guys were saying it's all kinds of waste in the government. You've been pretty quiet about this. Fucking losers. All right. The moment from Trump's cabinet meeting that actually got the most airtime wasn't the Iran stuff or the thick rubbery coating. It was this. I don't care about the midterms. Look what happened last night. That was the prelude to the midterms. Yeah, man, we noticed. We noticed you don't care about the midterms. It's coming through, coming through loud and clear. He was referring, of course, to the Texas Senate runoff where Ken Paxton, the deeply corrupt beneficiary of a last minute Trump endorsement, absolutely crushed incumbent Senator John Cornyn by almost 30 points.

33:33When Trump said, look what happened last night, what do you think he thinks Tuesday night demonstrated about the midterms? He's a simple minded fellow, John. And I think he very simple mindedly looked and saw that a candidate he supported won a race. And then he then presumes that candidates that he support will win similar races in the fall. Now, what Trump is too simple minded to understand is that among the people who voted in that primary in Texas, I imagine Trump had a 85 to 95 percent approval rating. These are Texas primary voters. When people go to the polls in the fall, Trump will have somewhere between a, I don't know, 42 and 32 % approval rating, depending on the district and the state, which seems like a slightly different environment for his candidates.

34:18Also, I just want to stipulate this. Ken Paxton was winning this primary, whether Donald Trump endorsed him or not. He may have won by more, but there were reports in private that private polling had Paxton up 10 points before Trump's endorsement. We knew from the runoff that even though Cornyn got the plurality of votes, there was a strong majority when you added up Wesley Hunt and Ken Paxton votes, there was a strong majority of Texans who did not want John Cornyn. And when incumbents go to runoffs, they almost always lose because the reason they're in a runoff is there's 50 % of people who looked at that incumbent they knew and said, give me someone else.

34:54Yeah, I was going to say also the turnout was so much lower. Did you see some of the estimates on turnout. Like it looks like between the first race and the runoff, Paxton got about 7000 more votes in the runoff and Cornyn lost about 400000 votes between the first race and the runoff. So it seems like a ton of Cornyn's voters just stayed home and decided not to vote. And then the most engaged, craziest MAGA voters turned out for Ken Paxton. Yeah, which was always sort of the fear. And it's not like this was the only race on the ballot. You had congressional runoffs and you had a very important attorney general runoff as well.

35:35So I guess we could talk. Let's talk about how they're going after James Tallarico, who's now the Democratic nominee in that race. And then we can sort of talk about the race ahead from now until November. It does seem like MAGA World is a bit more nervous about Tallarico than they're letting on, as evidenced by their subtle new strategy of questioning James Tallarico's masculinity. It's very subtle. I don't know if you can figure it out. Paxson used his victory speech to call Tallarico low-T Tallarico, tofu Tallarico, and six-gender Jimmy. Stephen Miller tweeted that Tallarico will make history as the first transgender Senate candidate.

36:13And here's the gang from Fox's The Five on Wednesday. This baby lotion soft child. He does. He looks prepubescent. The major factor in this race, Greg, is whether Tallarico's vegan. You say you have a girlfriend. Why don't you name her? Are they going to have a coming out party or is she still going to stay the secret girlfriend? And is this totally not fake girlfriend also a vegan? He looks like such a beta male. He was he was. Beta O 'Rourke was his big brother in the after school program. They'll say they'll say, but he's a seminarian. How dare you not? He put the semen in seminarian. What do you think they're trying to tell us?

36:55They dislike his policy agenda. I get it. I get the line of attack. And there is a universe where you can execute that line of attack, maybe in a way that's somewhat effective. Feels like if you're already calling him a gay pedophile in May, not a lot of runway left. Where are you going in? Where are you going to be in October? I am curious about what is driving this attack. Like, is it in the data or are they just echoing the thing that Trump said on Air Force One two weeks ago? I think some of it is like instinct, right? Like they have. OK, the clips of James Tallarico that have been, you know, all over the Internet and right wing media are something, something vegan.

37:46He's not a vegan, which clearly these people just actually don't know that he's not a vegan. And they think now he says he eats meat because he's like got caught or something. but he was never saying he was a vegan. That was not a clip. The clip of him saying that, you know, technically there's six sexes because of chromosome abnormalities with a small fraction of people, which like, great. And like a couple other clips like that. And he looks young, right? And so they're like, yeah, he looks like their go-to is he's a beta male, but they can't just say that because there is an element of - that's exactly what they say well they can't just say that yeah and like leave it at that because there's an element of oh shit we just nominated ken paxton and we could lose so we've got to take everything to a hundred um yeah so i think a couple things here one obviously their strategy their only way to win is to nuke talariko this is their same strategy with grand platner is gonna be the same strategy with whoever wins in michigan particularly with abdul el saeed um Like this is this is their approach.

38:53It's really it's only it's only thing they have. Right. They basically this is the weak, woke and too liberal attack that we talked about a few weeks ago. There are actually two separate things embedded in what they're doing here. There is James Tallarico is a low T possibly gay beta male. He's not man enough for the Senate, which is really quite a thing to say. And then there is James Tallarico is a liberal elitist extremist who's out of touch with Texas values. That is the God is non-binary. That is the false attack. He's a vegan. Those are two separate things. Obviously, the second one pulls well.

39:31We know that that is an average act. I'm not sure the he's a beta male is a particularly effective attack. I don't I don't know that they're I guess I would say I don't know that they're entirely separate because the the out of touch, the typical out of touch liberal who is a male is obviously a low T beta male. Like we are we are also low T beta males because we are libs on the coast and we're probably vegan and we probably have pronouns in our bio. You know, that's a pretty deep. It's a very online take. It's a very online take. The other one is a it's a deeply dishonest because it takes a lot of his quotes out of context and edits them, some of them quite unfairly.

40:18But I think that there is – I'm just not – in presidential politics, strength and toughness matters a lot, right? How you define strength and toughness is very important. You can define it in ways that are much better than sort of like brute force strength that Trump sort of has tried to swagger his way into the Oval Office. It matters much less in congressional and Senate races, right? No one sees you as being tasked with staring down the Iranians or taking out Al Qaeda or stopping crime in the streets or whatever else people associate probably incorrectly with toughness. and so I, I think that like Trump has sort of sent them on this path and it is red meat for the Fox base.

40:54And so it's one thing of like Jesse waters and the Yahoo's on the five do it. It was interesting to me that it was such a big part of, uh, Paxton's victory speech. I just, I just like took note of that. Well, I mean, he is a, he is a politician who, if not successful, will end up being a pundit on Fox pretty easily. So the line, his speech was interesting because he did like he very Trump asking that he, was very excited and enjoying doing the tallarico attacks and responding to the crowd and then he was reading with no emotion lines about lowering people's costs um not what he's not where his passion lies his passion lies of course in theft he likes stealing from people um sometimes quite literally he stole someone's pen so like a thousand dollar pen someone someone left lying around there's like video of him just stealing it which is very friends and neighbors that

41:47so tallaree goes out there responding to the beta male line of attack here he is at a rally on wednesday in houston uh this is his first stop on a statewide tour uh and his first appearance since um paxton won the uh the runoff in a time when there's so much debate about what it means to be a man my dad showed me every saturday morning he would mow our lawn. And then without telling anyone, without anyone asking him, he would go next door and mow our neighbor's lawn. She was elderly. She was a widow. He never talked about it. He just did it because that's what a man does. He serves those around him.

42:32He takes responsibility and he does what's right even when no one is watching. So in addition to that, he also did a sit down with CBS with Ed O 'Keefe. And, you know, he said that some of his past remarks were cringy and that he would say them differently as well. He's been, you know, there's been plenty of photos that the campaign's been pushing around of him eating barbecue because he's said he's eaten barbecue you forever um so you know it's all of a piece but if you were consulting on the campaign how would you advise him to push back on this and i think um more importantly like how much time and energy um would you be spending on it if you were on the campaign before we do that i just do want to stipulate uh that team south rico has a very very real chance of winning this race yeah well we should talk about that for sure and because i get why everyone is skeptical of texas we have been burned so many times.

43:33But this is our best chance in a generation to win statewide office in Texas. We have not won a Senate race in Texas since 1988. We have not won statewide office of consequence in this century. And obviously, the closest that a Democrat has come was Beto O 'Rourke losing by 2.6 % to Ted Cruz in 2018. But this is a different world. 2018 was a good environment for Democrats. 2026 is a great environment for Democrats, as we sit here today, at least. This is a hard thing for me to say, but Ted Cruz is much more likable and has much more likable and more popular than Ken Paxton. This blew me away. In September of 2018, Ted Cruz had a favorability rating that was nine points above water.

44:21Yes. Ken Paxton, depending on your poll, is five, seven, ten points below water and will never be above water. That is just he will never see the surface. The most important thing here is that there is a demographic pincer movement happening in Texas in this moment. So in 2016, Hillary Clinton did better in Texas than almost any other state. It's a state where she actually had the largest improvement over Barack Obama in 2012. It's one of the very few states and maybe the only state where she did better than Obama did in 2012. And the reason that happened is she blew the doors off Latino voters.

44:52And Trump won by a decent margin because white voters of all stripes, college educated, and working class voted for him in mass. What has changed since 2016 is those college-educated white voters, of which there are a ton in Texas, particularly in the cities and suburbs around those big cities, have moved dramatically in the Democratic direction. And then starting in 2020, Latino voters moved towards Trump. And Trump won Latino voters by 10 points in Texas, according to the exit polls. What has changed since then is that those college-educated white voters have stayed exactly where they were before and maybe even more fired up now than they were back in 2024.

45:31And Latino voters have moved dramatically away from Trump. Trump's approval rating among Latinos nationally is minus 50. In the generic, that's in the New York Times poll, in the Unitas US poll of battleground districts around the country, they looked at the battleground districts. There's a poll of Latinos, battleground districts in the Southwest, which is mostly but not entirely Texas. Democrats are winning the generic ballot by 38 points. And so if James Tallarico, if he can get Kamala Harris, Joe Biden style numbers with college educated white voters and something like Hillary Clinton's 2016 Latino numbers, he wins that race and he wins it by a couple of points.

46:17Yeah. I saw that. I saw Nate Cohn said something similar and then also said that even if you take the latest Times poll, the national poll, and you match the shifts with the different demographic groups in Texas, if you make it, then it would tilt blue, Texas. Even before you knew the candidates. Right. He has to navigate what we all talked about to get there. But this is not the previous discussion of Texas. It's not like a lot of other red states where we talk about, we're like, we got this popular candidate. Maybe they can just persuade a bunch of these voters and maybe we'll get there. whether there's no path you can the math tells you that this state is in play if tallarico can achieve what what it should be achievable democratic numbers so that's that okay now i was gonna say yeah now that's a good setup for what i think the challenge the tallarico faces is um i i've been thinking about sort of grand platter in maine and this you know i think there's been no bigger gap between what voters on the ground think of a candidate and what the internet conversation about that candidate is than than platner and i the reason i feel um more confident about platner is pretty much because the size of maine and i think that like graham platner may meet most of the voters he needs to meet in maine um and obviously james ellarico is not going to do that in texas because no one can do that in texas because big fucking state and so he does need to make some decisions on like how to puncture the internet caricature of him that a lot of voters are going to come in contact with and also through television ads and other ads from the paxton campaign from the republicans and figure out you know like where to spend his time what to say what his ad strategy is and your thoughts on all that so my thoughts are i guess the way to think about this is the strategy they're running as tellarico is the strategy they ran against kamala harris in 2024 the goal is to define him before he can divide himself.

48:16Tallarico, very well known among Democrats and very politically engaged people. To the extent that other people even know who he is, they kind of vaguely have this sense that he is like a Democrat who talks about his faith a lot, maybe as much as they know. And the general vibes that he's not a typical Democrat. And so that's a vacuum that the right is trying to fill before Tallarico can fill himself. So what are the mistakes that Kamala Harris made that led her to be defined. The first is when the attacks came, like the infamous they, them ad, she never took them head on. And we can debate the ad strategy around it.

48:49We know all the discussions from all the people who work there about which ads tested good and which ads tested bad. But siloing that conversation in ads is stupid. She wasn't like she was out talking to voters to try to disabuse them of that notion. She never took that attack on. So you got to take these attack ons. I find And even though I'm less concerned about the masculinity attack than perhaps you or others may be, the fact that he took it on the first day shows the right instincts. The fact that he sat down for the interview with Ed O 'Keefe to take tough questions about the things he said shows the right instincts.

49:18You have to take them on. Because if you don't, then voters are just going to assume that they're true because people are naturally cynical. And the second thing is you cannot allow there to be a vacuum. You have to be everywhere, all the time, all at once. You have to be omnipresent in the media, on social media. You have to be like, you know, it's always the worst comparison. You have to be like Mom Donnie. Like there should be no interview turned down, no podcast you should turn down. You should visit every county in Texas or whatever is logistically feasible. I remember it took better like two years to do that.

49:47So maybe that's impossible. But do be everywhere so that people see you because when people see James Tallarico, they like him. He is like he has real appeal with this segment of people who would have voted for John Cornyn over a Democrat, but might vote for a Democrat over Ken Paxton. And so you got to be in front of them and you got to do. There is no you cannot waste one minute. Every single minute of every single day has to be out there communicating. And I think he ran his primary campaign like that. He's run his sort of career like that. So I think that that's what they're going to do. But like if you think you're being aggressive, you're probably not being.

50:23you should be more aggressive than that and keep going. I have seen a lot of right wing folks who are quite religious online make the argument that, you know, James, the idea that James Tallarico's faith and penchant to talk openly about his faith and, you know, being, you know, being a seminarian is, is, is the idea that that's going to help him is like liberals idea of what a person of faith is. And liberals have no idea because the fact that he is using passages from the Bible to sort of talk about his progressive values is like blasphemy to some on the right. And I think that they have that wrong because I don't think that James Tallarico's view of his faith and the way he talks about his faith is going to win over evangelical Christians that are going to vote for Ken Paxton and voted for Donald Trump three times anyway.

51:23I don't think that's the point. In fact, I don't even think it's, oh, this guy preaches and his Christian faith is what's going to do it for me. I think the fact that he speaks from, he speaks in the language of morality is refreshing to people who don't necessarily vote all the time or sometimes switch between the parties. It's all like the people in the middle that when you hear someone and especially a Democrat talking about how their faith has moved them and how it sort of sort of animates their values and their decisions about politics. Like, I don't think at the very least, I don't think it hurts.

51:57I think it pushes people away. But I think for some people, they're like, okay, well, this guy has a moral grounding. And even people who aren't religious necessarily, or don't share his Christian faith may be like, okay, this guy believes in what he's saying. it's like it gives him an authenticity that again when you meet him you realize that it's that's that's what it is he really genuinely believes this and it animates him and it drives him and i think that that is worth a lot in politics today these things these right-wing people are saying are so fucking stupid because if the a literal meaning of the scripture was why these people voted the way they vote these evangelical christians voted the way they voted, they wouldn't have voted for Donald Trump.

52:40I'm going to take an even hackier view than you. I agree with you, obviously, the way he talks about things from a moral framework is refreshing. The fact that he talks about his faith is authentic to him, which is incredibly important, but it's also a massive signifier that he is different than your typical Democrat. If he wants to win in Texas, he has to be different than a typical Democrat. That's why it's important. It is not because he's going to get into a theological debate with a three-time Trump voting evangelical minister and persuade them to his side. It's that he can communicate with people.

53:11He can relate to people whose faith is important to them or their faith community is important to them because that is a touchstone to begin a larger conversation about where Texas goes, where the country goes. It is a way in with a group of voters. It is not the fact of his faith is not delivering votes among other people of faith. It's just one way in which he can connect to people. I also think there's a way in which Tallarico has already started framing the race. And he did this in a video right after Ken Paxton won, where he is trying to make this about him and everyone else as outsiders trying to upend a corrupt establishment.

53:49And it's about the system, right? And so he attacks Ken Paxton as corrupt, and he calls him the most corrupt politician in America. But he said he's part of a corrupt system that James Tallarico wants to change because it is the, and you know, this is, Ossoff said the same, says the same thing. This is the reason that you can't afford anything because these people are stealing your money. And making it about voters and about why Ken Paxson would be bad for voters because they are feeling like they can't afford anything and he's going to make it worse because he's a thief, just like Donald Trump, I think is a very potent message.

54:24I have a greater worry that if it's about, you know, beta male, low T Tallarico versus, you know, criminal adulterer Ken Paxton, and it's like a character versus character race, that's not one that he's going to have as much of a chance to win as if he makes it about, you know, outside versus, you know, outsiders versus the system, change versus the status quo. He's just got to make it bigger than about him and Paxton. And I do think that, and it's not just for Tallarico, but it's for all Democrats, because Paxton gives you so many is a target rich environment because he gives you so much to talk about because he has such a bad record and he's corrupt stuff like that.

55:02It is very easy to turn this into a race about what a bad person Ken Paxton is. And I think it would be a mistake to just just talk about Ken Paxton as a bad person. You've got to talk about how Ken Paxton has fucked over the people of Texas when he was attorney general and how he would continue to do so in the Senate. Like that is where the that is where you win it, I think. Thank you.

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58:04Thursday was Marco Rubio's birthday, and his best present came from Emerson, which has a new 2028 poll out showing he's effectively erased J.D. Vance's lead as a top contender for the 2028 Republican nomination. In August, he was at 9%, and Vance was at 52%. in this latest poll. Rubio's at 35 and Vance is at 36. One poll, Emerson poll, obviously grain of salt. Does seem like there's some Marko Mentum here. Our friend Sarah Longwell sees it in the focus groups too, a couple different places. What's going on here? I think Marco Rubio's greatest asset right now is that he's not J.D. Vance. I mean, I think that's it.

58:43I don't think he has done anything in particular that people love. It's not like he's just been crushing the job at the State Department. It's not like his stewardship of the Iran war is making people happy. It's not like people are deeply dialed into his role as the overseer of the Viceroy of Venezuela. I just think he is a Republican who might seem slightly more competent and normal than your average Trump cabinet member and is not as awkward and off-putting as J.D. Vance. You see that fun Daily Mail story that has sources say that Vance is considering abandoning his 2028 bid um and uh he feels more isolated than ever now that tulsi gabbard's leaving um and it even got his team to respond saying that it was all made up and everything of course but i'm sure he and tulsi were just plotting in the back on how to fail fail to stop trump to do bad things i choose to believe that story might be real i think that would be fun he has been very if he didn't run he has been very subdued lately yeah he's all he's he's offline remember he quit twitter for lent yes and then he just and then after line he just says he's kept it off his phone he says he gets more done now good for him good for him honestly offline listener jd vance i was gonna say if he wants to come on offline we can talk about it uh you see that uh gretchen whitmer ruled out running for president in 2028 she may have like partially walked it back just weird but see she sounded in the actual clip she was pretty clear yeah she was not running i this does not surprise me.

1:00:07She has really done none of the things that the people who are obviously running for president are doing. She's not out trying to get a lot of national attention. She's not making herself a foil against Trump. She's not going to all these cattle call events like Al Sharpton's National Action Network and some of these other big events. I've not heard of her meeting with donors, hiring staff, talking to people. The people who are running, they're calling other people and they're making sure they know they might be running and you know and trying to persuade those people we hear from some of them um but so it's not surprising one thing that i think is i did occur to me when i read this is with gret it was presuming gretchen whitmer does not run there are really only two other women who were thinking of running and that's kamala harris and aoc oh yeah i was gonna say and neither of them i think are i think most people would say the odds are against both of them running oh so you could the point being you could end up with an all-male feel but should be kind of gross in 2028 yeah i think though for gretchen whitmer it's like good for you like that is the if you no one should ever feel pushed into running for president because you are mentioned as someone who could be president like like she is someone on paper who seems like absolutely she could run for president.

1:01:29She clearly like doesn't feel the fire in the belly, like doesn't want to go through it. Like, and it's like, good. That's, that's the better decision to make than to be like, all right, I'm going to do it. I'm going to put everyone through it. We're going to go through the whole paces. Like it's a very big decision. It's a life-changing decision. And I mean, also you got to think about the party and the makeup of the field. And like, if she doesn't want to do it, then like good for her for bowing out early. All right. Finally, speaking of deciding not to run for president, I want to just quickly take you back to June 27th, 2024.

1:02:04The night of Joe Biden's debate with Donald Trump. We were there. Not at the debate, but you remember. You remember the night. We were together. We were together. You might remember that right afterward, Joe and Jill Biden dropped by a watch party to thank supporters. And here's what Jill Biden said then. Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question. You knew all the facts. Never gets old. Now, Dr. Biden's out with a memoir, which she promoted in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning this weekend. And here's how she recounted actually feeling watching the debate. I don't know what happened.

1:02:44I mean, when I as I watched it, I thought, oh, my God, he's having a stroke. And it scared me to death. It's the time of my life I don't really want to go back to. I mean, I will say I maintain a deep well of anger at the Biden's people around Joe Biden, who helped keep him in the race, the people around Joe Biden, who attacked everyone as basically traitors to the cause, who thought Joe Biden should run for president either before or after that debate. Like that still makes me very mad. I have come to the point this many years later that I just have to decide that I can no longer give a shit about the who knew what when.

1:03:25Like, obviously, she was lying then. She's probably lying now. In fact, quite a few Biden advisors told Alex Thompson that they do believe she's lying because they pointed out if she thought he was having a stroke, why did she take him to an after party and then go to the Waffle House? Which they did after that. I mean, yeah, there are obviously lots of questions here. Here's my thing, right? I just I have made a personal decision that I'm just going to try not to get. That was basically a summer of pure. Unadulterated rage the whole time what was happening. I can remember my pressure at the time.

1:04:03Yes, I'm trying not to revisit that period in my life. I so as I sit here today, I care less about what Jill Biden has to say about what happened that moment. I care less about what Mike Donilon or all the other people who covered up for Biden have to say about what happened at that moment. What I care about is what what happens going forward. And what bothers me the most is not the time of the timeline of events of 2024, but whether democratic leaders now will ever reckon with the massive breach of trust that came because of how all of that was handled. The telling voters that what they saw with their eyes before the debate was that they shouldn't believe that, and then telling voters what they saw at the debate they shouldn't believe.

1:04:54And that lack of trust hurts us with our own voters, hurts us with the other voters. And we have to be thinking about way at all times about how to rebuild that trust. We should optimize strategic decision making at the highest levels of this party for how do we rebuild trust, not just with our voters, but with all voters. And that is, I think, as I try to find a way not just to throw my phone against the wall every time I see stuff like that, that's where I'm trying to direct my positive energy. That was just remarkably disciplined and adult of you. And now I'm going to... Austin just booed. Didn't you already do a YouTube about this?

1:05:30I was going to say, and I'm going to, yeah, I'm going to take that path as well, because if you want to hear me flip out about it and Tommy, we have it on YouTube from this morning when it was fresh. But I really completely agree. Was that today? You did that today? It was today, yeah. Wow, man, what a fucking day. I know. But I agree with you. And that's the only reason I care about it now, too, because I, and I read that, I think I said it to you, too, that that tweet from Zaid Jelani, who said, like, you like, I think people are underestimating how much the lack of trust people have in the Democratic Party is due to what happened around them.

1:06:05And I do think that like, you know, you can ask, do you think Biden and what happened with Biden is going to be an issue in 2028? And narrowly, no. But I think that the people are going to remember that the Democratic Party, when I say Democratic Party, I mean, the people in the White House, the campaign, plenty of Democratic pundits, plenty of people online who are still fighting that fight, lied to people and didn't even lie to people in a way that was like, like lied to people in a pretty obvious, obviously false, transparent way. And so that's like, it's worse than a lie. It's treating people like they're fucking idiots, which is basically what they did.

1:06:44They told the whole country. That's the bigger thing. They told the whole country, like, you know what? You know who the problem is. It's these these these fucking D.C. establishment bedwetters who think that joe biden did bad in the debate those they're the problem all i'm we're with all you people and and you know we we believe that everything was great we know we think you believe that too and they like they think people are going to believe that like come on yeah there was a level of delusion and deception that was bigger than it or like dismissive i think dismissive is the right way to put it yes it was bigger than just the biden's age stuff, it was inflation.

1:07:17Yep. It was Gaza. Gaza. And the combination of all of those things have put the Democratic Party in a bad place with its own voters, not to mention everyone else. And we have to be thinking about how we fix it. And that's one of the reasons why I got so mad about the DSCC and Chuck Schumer coming in and putting their hand in these races. And in some cases, now putting their thumb on the scale, but not saying they're putting their thumb on the scale by funneling money through APEC super PACs or these other super packs in these other states like that and i thought you were gonna say this is why i got so mad at the ken martin thing too because that was the same idea yes that's exactly right that's that's too and that's allowed me to experience the same many of the same people because i wrote that message box and two and a half seconds after the autopsy came out calling for ken martin to resign i really put myself at the front of the line for the people on online to come out to say like where's the autopsy of your work in 2024 pushing more good men out of jobs but this is what and this is in in the context of going forward i just want the people running in 2028 the people who are going to be talking about the 2028 race like when the biden stuff comes up when the dnc stuff comes up whatever like if people were willing to say totally fucked up i was wrong bad move oh you You know, wish I was more honest, wish I was more transparent.

1:08:36Like, great. That's fine. But you got to say that. You know, people like, yeah, where's the autopsy of your work? We're fine to say when we fucked up. This whole company was started because of a fuck up. Because we were so confident that Hillary Clinton was going to win. We were fucking wrong. I wish that we had gone harder Joe Biden earlier than the debate. Said that before, too. You know, like, it's okay. You can say that you were wrong. It's fine. You don't have to issue a you don't have to issue carefully worded statements that evade the question because you know what? People aren't going to trust you.

1:09:08So anyway, good luck on the book tour, Jill. All right. When we come back from the break, you'll hear my conversation with Mississippi Senate candidate Scott Colon.

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1:10:24Scott Colon, welcome to Pod Save America. Thank you so much for having me. You are a district attorney in Mississippi. You're seventh generation Mississippian. Your mom is the first black woman elected to her region's chancery court. Your dad worked for Ronald Reagan before becoming a Democrat. When a Mississippi voter asks why a guy with your resume is running for Senate as a Democrat in 2026, what do you tell them? I tell them that we've got to have a senator that fights for Mississippi. But somebody understands that the tariffs have been terrible for the farmers, for the small businesses, that it's been terrible for the people going to the grocery store and that are struggling.

1:11:02And I'm not going to D.C. to be the Democratic senator. I'm not. We're not a state that can afford that. Right. You know, Mississippi's got three million people. California's got close to 50 million. You guys got two senators. We got two senators. We have to use that to bring resources and jobs and opportunities to Mississippi. and our current junior senator she's betrayed that she's totally betrayed that the people of mississippi know it and that's why they're going to go in a new direction this november you are running in a state that trump just won in 2024 by 23 points yeah yeah a lot of people will hear mississippi senate race and and maybe laugh yeah um make the case to the skeptic what what do you see on the ground yeah that suggests you could become the first democrat really the first senate candidate to win a state the incumbent president just won by 23 points so you know i get this question asked to me a lot as you can imagine and i used to answer it like i was david axelrod i would say well hold on guys you know in non-presidential years you know we get much closer right like our last democratic candidate for governor got within three points of winning uh you know last year we broke the super majority in the state senate but what i realized i needed to explain to people why I can win.

1:12:13And the reality is, when I ran for district attorney in 2015, I ran against a 30-year incumbent. I was in a district that people thought I had no chance of winning. But what I realized is that under the right circumstances, with the right opponent, and the right candidate, you can win a tough race in Mississippi. And those three things are totally at play now. I mean, I was with some, I got invited on the Gulf Coast, some Mississippians who, previously voted Republicans. Notice I didn't call them Republicans. Mississippians who previously voted Republican. They reached out to my campaign and said, listen, we love what you're doing on social media.

1:12:51I was on a podcast and they were like, we love what you said on the podcast. You're talking about Mississippi values. We want you to come meet with us. They said, maybe two or three people. We'll see how it goes. When I got there, it was 20 people. Former Republican voters. And they talked to me about how in this particular moment, they feel like they're getting betrayed. by the Trump administration with$1.7 billion for people that assaulted cops that the president's cronies get to control. And then you look at our junior senator, right? I call her Cindy High Prices because all we got is high prices from her.

1:13:24So, you know, you look at her and she's a part of the corruption. I mean, she's gotten campaign contributions from fertilizer companies that are under investigation for price fixing. Wow, those same fertilizer companies are really hurting our farmers. The tariffs hurt them. Now we got fertilizer costs because of the war in our rent up. Price fixing. She's taking money from she is, you know, I mean, one of the Republican, former Mississippi Republicans told me, he said, listen, when I heard about her going to Las Vegas,$10 ,000 campaign contributions to stay at luxury hotel, to eat at luxury restaurants.

1:14:02That reminds me of the corruption we're seeing in D.C. And, you know, we got it. We got to go in a new direction and just tell us what you're running on. And I'm running on making everybody's life in Mississippi better. You know, it's... How do you do that? I mean, you got to talk about the issues. The other thing that I think is important, and this is for everybody listening, it's a mistake I think people are making. We're making it too much about the candidates. We're looking for celebrities to do the profile. Oh, my God, they're great speakers. Me, you know, I think I got a lot of charisma.

1:14:30I think I'm charming. I think I can give a good speech. I think you're charming so far. But I'll tell you this, going out there campaigning, listening to voters, I ask voters all the time. What matters to you? The number one answer, someone who does what they say they're going to do. It's not about us. It's about them. We have to make sure voters can trust us again. And that has to be not just running 30-second commercials. We can't advertise our way out this problem. We got to go back and touch voters. We got to gain their trust. And when we get power again, we have to deliver. We have to make sure people understand that their vote matters, that we make their life better.

1:15:04And so that's a big part of my strategy is I really get out there. I can't pay. Anybody following me, John? I don't know any Senate campaign that campaign is more than me. I mean, it's three events on Saturday, and I love voters. I love voters. And I listen to them. You know, I don't just do town halls. I do town halls. But at some point, you're just talking to people that, you know, are motivated to vote, right? I go to the festivals. I go to the housing projects. I'm going to do a food truck where I pull up at the union halls, go to the plants. We got to go to the voters, and we got to gain their trust.

1:15:37So the former comm staffer in me believes you are totally right that you should not give the answer like David Aksarov would give the answer. That's what we would tell. Yeah. Don't be a pundit. But now I am a pundit. So Mike Espy loses by 7.8 in 2018. And I remember on that race, consultants on the Espy campaign being like, Mississippi, it's going to happen. Talk to Espy. And then Hood lost the governor's race by 5.5 in 2019. And then Brandon Presley lost by only 3.2 in 2023. So it's a narrowing margin. Absolutely. Still a margin. Yeah. Like, what's the theory of the case that you're the one who can actually close it as opposed to being like the next data point where and then Scott got even closer?

1:16:24Yeah. I mean, some of it is the environment, right? I mean, you look at 2018, the economy was pretty good in Mississippi. You look at the economy now, the tariffs have been terrible. Nobody talks about how the tariffs have hurt Mississippi. You know, I was talking to a woman, Dollar General Manager, right? And I was shooting a little commercial in there, and I didn't ask her permission first. So, you know, you try to, you know. What are you doing with those cameras? Let me do it 15 seconds real quick. Get out of here. Direct the camera real quick. And she noticed me. And she said, what are you doing?

1:16:55I said, well, listen, I'm a Senate candidate. I'm running against Cindy Highsmith. She had no idea who that was. And I was like, well, listen, don't worry about her. I'm the guy. And so I started talking to her. I said, listen, how are the customers doing? And she said, you know, they're struggling. I'm seeing them every month trying to figure out, can they pay for diapers? Can they pay for groceries? And prices keep going up. And she was like, I don't know what it is. I don't know what I can do. I feel helpless. So I asked her, I said, what do you think about the tariffs? It was almost like a bull went off.

1:17:26She was like, yeah, you know what? It is the tariffs. It is the tariffs. You're right. They're bad. Do people that you talk to connect that to the guy they voted for by 23 points? Do they say tariff bad, Trump tariff? Do they put it all together? I think tariff is a bad word. I don't know that they always do. I mean, there's a lot of voters that say they know it's bad because it became a popular term here recently. But we need to change the name of it. It really is a working class tax. It's not a tariff. It's a working class tax. It's a sales tax. It's a sales tax. I mean, and it's unfair to working people.

1:18:00It's a it's a terrible way to to collect revenue, because if you make, you know, 15 ,000 a month or you make 2000 a month, you're paying the same tax. Yeah. And so, you know, we're connecting the dots for them. But I'll tell you who's really feeling it and they understand it are the farmers. You know, I mean, I could tell you story after story about how farmers are struggling in Mississippi and now the fertilizer costs. and the problem is you talk about the corruption and how she's allowing the corruption how she's partaking in it but then you have to add that she's totally absent in the state I mean she hasn't done a town hall in six years she does not campaign I mean her only strategy is scare tactics 30 second commercial to scare the voters She yeah a recent Democratic internal poll had her I think at 55 % unfavorable it's like 12 points underwater from Trump in her own state Why do you think she's so much weaker than the brand?

1:18:55Yeah. You've got a senior senator in that state, I'm sure, Roger Wicker, that's more popular than her. What is the specific Hyde-Smith problem as opposed to generic Republican? You have to think about it this way. This is a great way to really bring the story home. When I was a child, my dad was Republican before he supported Obama in 08. He actually was a Republican for Obama. Obama switched him. But anyways, when I would go to Jackson State football games, at halftime, you would see Thad Cochran at halftime with a$50 ,000 check going to Jackson State. That's a hard guy to beat. You know what I'm saying?

1:19:30It's hard to get motivated if a guy's bringing$50 ,000. And we actually have a tradition in Mississippi of having senators that understand this position has to bring resources back to Mississippi. You know, Trent Lott, I don't agree with him on a lot of things, but he did a lot to bring jobs back. I mean, he was a majority leader at one point. The majority leader was from Mississippi. So with her, a big problem is the people, even Republicans are like, excuse me, voters who used to vote Republican. They are like, she is totally MIA. We can't find anywhere. She doesn't do anything. You know, I don't think we've ever had a senator that's this absent.

1:20:06And she thinks that all she has to do is be 100 percent MAGA and she can win. But the reality is I've been out there talking to voters and they want somebody that's 100 percent Mississippi because they understand the stakes. It's not like things are going well. If you ask, I mean, you can ask the most loyal Trump supporter right now. Are things going well? They ain't saying yes. Right. You know, they ain't saying yes. So if you become senator, you you'd be the junior senator for Mississippi seniority in the Senate. you'd rank towards the bottom like all new senators do. So like what do you – you're making the case that she's not bringing home resources to Mississippi.

1:20:43How do you make the case to voters that like if you go to the Senate, you'll be able, even though you're one of 100 and sort of a junior senator, help bring home resources to Mississippi? Yeah, I mean, one, I'm going to use my vote and my voice to really represent Mississippi. I'm not going there – I keep saying this. I'm not going there to be a celebrity. I'm going there to deliver for Mississippi. And so that gives me leverage because I'm not, you know, if a Republican offers something that makes sense for Mississippi, I'll support it. If a Democrat offers something that makes sense for Mississippi, I'll support it.

1:21:15Now, of course, you're right. You know, as a junior senator, you got to be smart. And what I want to do is I'm going to find issues that Republicans already support. Right. Like economic development is a big thing in Mississippi. How do we bring in industries to develop capital to get our state moving in the right direction? I mean, we're not like L.A. where you got billions. I mean, you know, every you know, it's really that we spend it wisely. You know, I'm going to control that. But, you know, but for Mississippi, we need capital. We need economic development. We've got to be even Republicans, you know, leaders know that.

1:21:52And so that's an area where, you know, I can be impactful. That's really bipartisan. And the other areas we got to find like for me, I got to find smaller problems that I can help solve. Like I had a good friend of mine who mentioned to me that dental care is really bad in Mississippi. It's at the bottom. And so like that's a problem that I can help solve as a senator from Mississippi. That's not a partisan thing. So trying to find solutions to practical problems that makes people's life better. And the other thing that I'm going to do, and I've learned this from campaigning so much, is, you know, we can't stop campaigning.

1:22:25I mean, I know once you win, you got to govern, but you also better still campaign. because a place like Mississippi, if they feel like you go to D.C. and you're just making money or just a celebrity, it's not going to work. So for me, we got to have strong anti-corruption legislation that makes clear that we're not in there making money. That's why I support a ban on stock trading. That's why we can't have people become lobbyists right after they become senators. We got to get the corruption and the perception of it because that helps the people that are openly corrupt. Because they can say, the people are like, well, they're corrupt, but so is everybody's corrupt.

1:23:00We got to show them we're not corrupt. We're public service. We're not there to make money. And it's beneficial to me that, like you said, my mom was a Chancellor Court judge. And I learned my ethics and values from my parents. And so I was, you know, I'm really trying to honor their legacy. That's why, you know, it's important to me to be transparent and be somebody that people can trust because I want to honor my parents. I also want to honor the ancestors that sacrificed so much for me to even have this opportunity to talk to you. You I was just thinking like the last Democratic senator from the state that voted by double digits this many doubled like in the 20s for Trump.

1:23:38Yeah. It was Joe Manchin. Yeah. And his model was like cut deals, piss off your party constantly and then, you know, vote with the president when it suited the state. Is that your model, too? Well, I think Senator Manchin tried to get a little bit more attention than I'll try to get. You know, I mean, he does love attention. You know what I mean? So for me, I'm more going to be trying to use my leverage and voice to cut deals that make sense and benefit Mississippi, but not try to be just somebody making constantly complaining about things. If I'm sure you'll hear this from voters if they're like, OK, you say you're not going to be a typical Democratic senator.

1:24:15You're going to be a Mississippi senator. Yeah. I don't like the Democrats. I don't like what they've done. Where do you think the Democrats have gone wrong? Where do you break from the party? Where would you be different than a typical Democrat? Yeah, but we got to talk about economic issues. That's the first thing. I mean, because the people like I knew this because I had a friend of mine that was a barber. He unfortunately passed away. Shout out to Jasper Pittman. He was a great political head. And so in 2020, when President Biden won, there was a lot of enthusiasm. There was high turnout. And 2021, 2022, he was a Democrat.

1:24:47He started getting sour on the party because of inflation. And then what he felt like was, man, we're talking about sending all this money to Ukraine. We're talking about foreign stuff. Like, man, my life's not gotten better. Prices are up. Like, we got to start talking about me. We got to start talking about the voters. And, you know, I was able to convince him that it made sense that we made sure Russia and the Soviet Union and Putin didn't take over Ukraine. But I was a trusted messenger. and there's too many people that didn't have trusted messengers to help them understand that democratic party did care about the fact that inflation was out of control that we did care about the fact that the border seemed like it was out of control and you know that a lot of people feel like that hurts workers yeah that hurts workers and so we got to talk about economic issues the other thing is that we have to like i feel like the last couple years we've been trying to figure out you know the answer to trump is no president trump wants to make everything about himself.

1:25:44He loves that all the attention is on him. And we've been either making every campaign about him or trying to find somebody that can be as much of a celebrity, right, as him. Somebody who can convince these voters. I think we got to go back and we got to make our campaigns about the voters again. We have to have candidates that not can only go on a podcast and make a case, but they ask them how they should be able to be comfortable taking 75 selfies. Right? Going to a festival where nobody knows them. You got to like people. You got to like people. And that's great for me because I love people.

1:26:16And my opponent, she can't stay in Mississippi. I mean, she does not campaign at all. So the challenge for Democrats, as always, is like, OK, we want to talk about economic issues. We want to talk about making people's lives better. And the Republicans don't let you because they make all the attacks about their favorite white issues. Hyde Smith's campaign manager called you the transgender defender, said you were handpicked by Schumer, bankrolled by Soros, soft on crime. All the radical sex changes for children. I just unloaded the clip. All the favorites. Walk me through how you answer that. Not for our audience who knows it's garbage, but for a voter in Mississippi that will hear those ads 15 times between now and November.

1:26:56So I knew that she was going to do that. I knew exactly all those attacks were coming. Like one play. Yeah. And so if you look at my campaign announcement ad, I tried to preempt it. Right. So, for example, I know in Mississippi, the way to counter a lot of that stuff is to show people that your life, your life is like theirs. Right. So my announcement ad centered around my family. I've got two daughters. I coach their soccer team. Listen, I mean, come on. I mean, people are going to fall for that. Like my dream. This is what I tell my daughters. I say, listen, you know, there's not many ways you can disappoint me.

1:27:27But if neither one of you become a basketball player, I am going to be disappointed. Does that work? I mean, the junior one, my youngest one, is starting to work. Because I say, you know, when you get older, if you ever complain, I'm going to always remind you, I wanted one thing. And you didn't deliver for me. So, I mean, and the other thing is we got to lead with our values. You know, for me, you know, I do Soulful Sundays where I talk to church faith leaders. and I center them and talk about, you know, there's a lot of, for whatever reason, we've allowed people like Sidney High Smith to trick voters into thinking that we, Democrats don't believe in faith.

1:28:06Democrats don't believe in family. Like, I have much more in common than to the average Mississippi family than she does. You know, my wife, she makes me drop the kids off at school sometimes. Sidney High Smith is never doing that, right? I go to the soccer game, watching my kids play. She's not doing that. my wife makes me do it. As a good partner, as a good partner, my wife is training me well. As a good partner, sometimes I have to go to the grocery shop too. And so I'm at the grocery store talking to people, listening. You know, my life is like theirs. So I'm going to cut through that mess by showing them how my life is like theirs, showing them my family, and centering the voters.

1:28:46Because we know every Monday I drop a video called Mississippi Matters Monday. And I'm having voters kind of man on the street style asking people say what matters to them. All the stuff she's attacked me on, no voters ever said that's what matters to them. It's not on their mind. It's not. So her, you know, for me, if I can raise enough money to counter her lies with the truth and tell the truth about her, we're going to win. I'm telling you, we're going to win. The win is at my back. So what's the message to a donor in California or New York deciding between writing a check to your race and to, say, North Carolina, Maine, Ohio, even Texas?

1:29:23Yeah, yeah. That's probably higher on the DSCC list. Yeah, but whoever's making those lists, I mean, what's the results, right? So maybe we need to redo the list a little bit because Mississippi is a cheaper state to compete in. We're a cheaper state to compete in. But, you know, we have Christianists. You and I agree. We have Christian this, Pied Save Mississippi Day. Yeah, this is it, May 28th from now on. From now on, we're going to talk about Mississippi. And the reality is you can't save America unless you save Mississippi. I mean, we have to matter. When the country has done well, everybody's paid attention to what's going on in Mississippi.

1:29:56We focus on the voters in Mississippi, making sure that they have quality education, quality health care. We don't let these people that want to take our country back control everything. And when we got, you know, what we've done poorly is we ignore Mississippi. and there's there's plenty of examples of mississippi being ignored and we've seen the results of that and to get ourselves out of this mess what we have to remember is rural america matters we have to have candidates that understand rural america that are not afraid to talk to former republican voters and uh people are not scared to talk to folks that don't even know who their senator is yeah you know there's man i'm telling i'm gonna win people are gonna be other people outside mississippi gonna be surprised i'm not gonna be surprised it's been trending that way As you pointed out, it's been trending that way.

1:30:38But also, we're running a different type of campaign. We're centering the voters, not me. You know, if you look at my videos, I have other people talking. I mean, can I tell you a quick story? Yeah. I had a waitress at a restaurant. You know, it was kind of like he was starstruck at a moment, right? He's like, oh, is that Scott Cologne? Like, oh, my God. I said, listen, I'm not a celebrity, guys. What's going on? Tell me what's on your mind. Tell me what matters to you. He said, first, I love that you do that. And I've been waiting to give you my answer if I ever saw you. He said, what matters to me is like the drug prices are up because I'm on Medicaid and I had to get worse insurance.

1:31:12Now I'm paying more to get less. I'm struggling. But he told me, listen, I never voted before. I never voted before. I'm going to vote for you because you center voters. He didn't say center voters. Right. He said, I love that you have regular people on your videos. You have the barber. You know, you have two kids just, you know, looking at the camera saying, you know, this is why voting matters. I mean, you know, for me, I can feel the momentum and the movement because I am out there listening. And you can do this in Mississippi. You can't do this in every state, but you can do this in Mississippi.

1:31:43And I'm excited. And, you know, Mississippi matters. We're going to show the country Mississippi matters. Well, it is not an easy thing to do to run for office. Certainly not an easy thing to do in a state like Mississippi when you're a Democrat. And you are I really appreciate that you're that you're doing it and doing it so joyfully. Yeah. So good luck out there. I appreciate it. Thanks for coming on Pod Save America on Pod Save Mississippi Day. Absolutely. Hey, you know, if you want to be a part of the movement, go to scottcolomb.com. We're building something special in Mississippi. I'll come back May 28th next year.

1:32:16We'll be talking about, you know, how I keep my promises. You and the senator. Yeah, how I keep my commitments, how we're delivering. Because the good thing about you is you understand this is not a – I mean, running for office is hard, but running for office and being a leader is also hard. Yes, it is. So we can't stop. That's right. That's right. We've got to be constantly keeping it going. So thank you so much for having me. Thanks, Scott. I appreciate it.

1:32:42That's our show for today. Thanks to Scott Colom for coming by. I'll be back on Sunday with a conversation with our pal Ben Rhodes. He's got a new book about speeches, American speeches and American identity. And so we'll be geeking out about speech writing and talking about America's 250th. So check it out. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Faris Safari with Reed Cherlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hefcoat, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kirill Pellaviv, David Tolles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single.

1:33:12Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.