Is Trump Trying to Lose the Midterms?

24:21So Trump did just come closer to achieving the one victory he cares about the most. On Monday, a five to four Supreme Court majority ruled that construction on his ballroom can continue. They did not decide the matter for good, but the majority wrote that the government was likely to prevail in its argument that the National Trust for Historic Preservation didn't have standing to sue. The trust's claim to have standing appeared to rest on a statement from one of the organization's trustees who lives in D.C. and often walks by the White House. She said she would, quote, suffer both professional and personal injuries, including to my aesthetic, cultural, and historical interests if a ballroom of the proposed form and scale were constructed, end quote.

25:01It's funny because it pits the anti-democratic building of this ridiculous ballroom up against my gut hatred for the Nimbys, being like, oh, your walk is spoiled by new construction. We got to build things in this fucking country. Yeah, it's a, yeah. John Roberts joined the liberals in agreeing and wrote that ballroom construction thus far, quote, is likely unlawful. What do you guys think? Game over here? Like, I know it does seem like there's got to be some more solid base somewhere for someone to challenge the ballroom construction, which John Roberts, at least, and others think it's probably unlawful.

25:44But, you know, these people just didn't have standing to sue. Right. Well, just be nice. Hey, no need to be so coy, Justice Roberts. Who does have standing? Tell us. Tell us who has the standing, who can sue to stop this thing from being built if it's not this historical society. Because if there's a loophole where you can knock down any building you want when you're president, so long as you claim to be doing it with private dollars, then grab the taxpayer money later. That's a pretty big loophole in the Constitution that has, till this point, never been contemplated. Well, apparently at the D.C.

26:16circuit argument, Trump's lawyer suggested that people affected by construction noise could have standing. Melania? Melania calls her lawyer. Even if someone offended by the ballroom's appearance did not, which is interesting. Because I was going to say, you know who needs some ballroom is Mike Lawler and that new campaign ad. You guys know what I'm talking about. Yeah, that's right. That's right. I covered this up. Oh, with you. I was like, who am I making jokes on my—oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. I got a text from a reporter over the weekend who was asking if Democrats should prioritize ripping down the ballroom.

26:52And my knee-jerk reaction is like, we have so many other fish to fry before we do take down this building. But then I assumed that as I thought about this 2028 primary, that we would probably have entire debates about demolition. On stage. Show of hands. I will firebomb it. No, no, no. I will, you know. Yeah. I think it's like, you know, when you move into a house and you're like, I could do a lot of renovation in this house or I could do just touch-ups here and there. Well, you don't want to make classic Basin. You do the easy ones. You got to live in it for a bit before you decide what you want to change.

27:26Well, I was going to say, the easy ones are like, you know, let's turn the courtyard back from Mar-a-Lago with umbrellas and DC back to grass. Let's take all the gold shit off, the stupid fucking colonnades. Like, there's a whole bunch of easy stuff you can do before you get to the ballroom. The auto pen that's up as a photo of Biden, that's coming down pretty quick. I like that we've instinctively landed on an unsatisfying center-left compromise on what to do with the various things. It's just a very... You can take the boys out of the Obama administration. But what would be an expensive like nightmare to do?

27:58Like ripping down a ballroom? Can you imagine? It would be so funny for someone. We're going to have Medicare for all. We're going to have humane immigration. We're going to treat people with respect in this country. And we're tearing that ballroom down. It's coming, man. Applause. Yeah. Applause. It's coming. They're all going to applause and then the person's going to win the presidency and it just won't happen. Right. And then everyone will be mad. And they'll be like, why did we lose? Because we didn't deliver the crazy promises that we made in the campaign trail. Worse, they try to tear the ballroom down.

28:25Heritage sues. Because of the noise. They have standing to keep the thing built. Supreme Court's like, well, we told you. Yeah. Actually, it turns out Heritage does have standing. That's sort of, they always do. Sort of that one on. Yeah. But it's interesting, like, during the, Trump's own lawyer, again, like, had previously conceded sort of the weird implication of the government standing theory in this case, which is, you know, he was asked what would happen if a president suddenly demolished the White House itself or even the Statue of Liberty and nobody could show like the requisite individualized harm of that.

29:06And then the judge in that case said, so nothing can be done. And the Trump lawyer said, I think that's right. But see, this is where though - This is so crazy. But I don't think it is that crazy. We talked about this a little bit before. I don't think it's that crazy, right? Because really what we're all, the issue here is that Congress should be intervening and by law, either stopping this or adjusting it or changing it. Or the president, if the president knocked down the Statue of Liberty because he found it offensive for some reason, that person should be impeached immediately and removed.

29:34Like, because - Well, that's, so they, and one of the legal theories is that like Congress could sue. Of course. Of course, Congress won't sue because it's run by Republicans. But then you're like, well, why would Congress sue? when a normal Congress would just pass a law. Of course. Or defund the ball or do whatever, right? You would sue saying, we don't need to pass a law. You don't need to, because it's unconstitutional, you don't need to proactively pass a law to stop something unlawful. You just sue and say you're violating the law. Like that was true, by the way. Remember when there was those reforms and Trump was, there's electoral reforms.

30:08And then Trump was saying, see, I told you, there was, there was, it wasn't illegal because you had to pass this law to fix it, right? But, but yeah. I hear you. All right, let's talk midterms. The first mail-in ballots are scheduled to be sent out in just a few days on September 4th. But will the newly Trumpified U.S. Postal Service actually deliver those ballots? That is the question we somehow have to ask ever since the president issued an executive order that threatens to withhold the delivery of mail-in ballots to states that don't comply with the federal government's demand for lists of eligible voters.

30:42When has that ever gone wrong? demanding lists of people in your federal government. The order has once again been blocked by a federal court, and the administration has again appealed. So this one could end up back at the Supreme Court, which initially let the order move forward, but made clear it wasn't yet ruling on the constitutionality of the executive order. So stay tuned. And that's not the only voting story out there that's kind of alarming. There's a disturbing report about election monitors from the Department of Justice attempting to interview voters and inspect voting machines in Wyoming during the primaries last week.

31:20The state's Republican governor, Mark Gordon, said the election monitor's behavior was, quote, very odd and called the move, quote, aggressive, unexpected, and disruptive. That is the Republican governor of Wyoming saying that. What'd you guys make of that story? It's really weird. It's hard to see it as anything other than some kind of a trial run. It is a bastardization, obviously, of what DOJ election monitoring is meant to be, which is to make sure that people are able to vote and that there aren't racist Southern election officials stopping black people from voting. That is the original function here that they're abusing.

32:03Even the Republican governor is saying this was unprofessional and strange. And by the way, they're not just interviewing voters. They were trying to gain access to the voting machines, right? Which is just has absolutely nothing to do with election monitoring because they're not talking about the access to vote or protecting the right to vote. They are talking about the tabulating of voting. This conspiracy theory just revolves around these people trying to get their hands on the voting machines. They're desperate to get their hands on the machines. The truth is in the machines. But it seemed like part of what made this so, like why even this Republican governor like spoke out against it, it was all just so boorish and silly and ham-fisted and incompetent that it was just a kind of sowing chaos in a primary in Wyoming.

32:46Yeah, I'm confused why they chose Wyoming and also, I guess, Miami-Dade. Well, some they had announced. Some they had like pointed to. This one they hadn't. I think, yeah, well, DOJ, so my reaction when I read the story was why? Like why Wyoming? Why a Wyoming primary? Why are you trying to interview voters? Why not give the Republican governor of the state a heads up? Like, was this overzealous people at DOJ or was this part of a broad-based effort? And especially because the Wyoming secretary of state is a Republican who ran on the big lie in like 2020 fraud. He ran in 2022, but he ran on the 2020 election.

33:20And so I was looking around at the DOJ website and they put out a press release on August 18th saying that they were monitoring, you know, polling places in Florida and Wyoming. So they were public about it. But I guess they didn't really effectively communicate it to the elected officials in the state. It's crazy. None of it makes sense. None of it adds up. I mean, they're going to, you know, Trump has talked before about a plan to send election monitors all over the country and polling places in the midterms. And so, and again, like the DOJ has done that before. So like they have that authority to do so.

33:54But, you know. So they announced it. This is so strange, right? Because in July, the same office run by a sort of Trumpy kind of online weirdo announced their list of states and it didn't include Wyoming. So they added Wyoming late, like in the last like week or it's very strange. It's very strange. I don't know. I found a press release. It was really weird. Hopefully the midterms are fine. I'm sure. I'm sure. I'm sure this is the last we'll hear this. Nothing to worry about. Yeah, nothing to worry about this. What do you think about the latest with the Postal Service? We're now, again, in legal limbo, though we are even closer to the day that ballots are supposed to be delivered.

34:29Yeah. So there was a ruling last week and people were freaking out about it. And then Norm Eisen was like, don't freak out yet because it's going to be another step. And then there was, and now it's on hold. Like, look, anything is possible. This order is so fucking crazy. It is so crazy to imagine that there is a secret power bestowed upon the Postal Service to decide which ballots are allowed and which ballots are not allowed. It doesn't apply to any other. You can't come up with any other comparison to any other kind of mail or rule. It doesn't even make sense, right? The only reason this is even possible is because we've never had ballots as anything other than open in terms of being able to tell it's a ballot, right?

35:10So what would happen if somebody just took their ballot and put it in a white envelope? That's now protected by the Fourth Amendment because you as a person, a citizen, are protected. Your mail is protected. They're not allowed to go in there without a warrant. So because ballots look like ballots, they've created a rule in which the Postal Service can, on behalf of the federal government, decide which state is upholding the rules they want or not. It's just so absurd on its face that you can't imagine even the Supreme Court allowing it to go through. Well, one of the DOJ's arguments to the Supreme Court, or in one of the cases, it might not have been the Supreme Court one, was, well, I mean, this isn't the federal government getting involved in state elections.

35:50Because obviously the states are, you know, and the Constitution says the states can run elections themselves. And if the states just wanted to deliver the ballots themselves to people, nothing is stopping them from doing that. We're just saying that if you use the postal service, this is what you have to do. which is funny because it's like they're even like Trump's out there being like, I hate mail-in ballots. We want to cancel them. But I use them all the time. But I use them all the time, right. But in court, they're like, no, no, no. This isn't about anything about mail-in ballots not being great.

36:19This is just about the Postal Service requiring a certain kind of envelope. And based on if you get a barcode and you get the barcode, if you've given us the list of voters. But this is where none of it really makes sense, right? Because I am just a person using the mail. I am a person mailing my ballot that I am legally allowed to mail that they're grabbing because of a dispute with the state. Right. But like if they have evidence that there is a specific person who they believe is a noncitizen using the mail, they can, you know, they get to go get a warrant and open the fucking, you know, prove that this guy or this person isn't is ineligible to vote.

36:54Right. But they can't just dismiss a whole group of people from voting because they're in some kind of other dispute. It's just, it's so, it's, it's, it's so hamphasted. To me, it seems now at this point, at least through this election, it is only meant to sow mistrust and uncertainty around mail-in voting. And like, you know, there, I think it's Katondja Brown Jackson, like a sort of warns about sort of this court's habit of deciding cases are either too early or too late, right? And the possibility that they will do that once again, they're doing with the ballroom. But to me, it's like, it's now getting to the point where it is inconceivable that any court could allow this to be in place for this election.

37:30And so to me, it's a, I hope, a future threat at best. Yeah, that's sort of where I landed too, because even the Supreme Court, the way they described the first ruling, it was like, well, they haven't issued the final rule yet, so no one has actually been harmed yet. Now that the rule has been issued, when it comes back to them and they have to actually decide the constitutionality of the rule itself, it feels like it could be a very different situation. Yeah. So assuming people get their ballots delivered and can vote without federal agents interfering, Republican candidates will have to contend with their most formidable midterm opponent, Donald Trump.

38:08Over the weekend, Jonathan Martin published a piece with the headline, the Republican Party's midterm nightmare is taking shape. The standout quote came from North Dakota Republican Senator Kevin Kramer. He's not usually a quote machine. You don't hear much from Kevin Kramer. But he cited the price of diesel, the price of fertilizer, and Trump's tariffs, telling J-Mart, quote, he's in serious trouble in farm country, he being Trump, and Trump is us. I'm not very optimistic. Rough. What did you guys think of J-Mart's piece? I think that could have been a cleaner sentence from Kramer. I see why he's not quoted very much.

38:44I think they were eating together or something. I don't know. I assume they were eating together because it's J-Mart. Yeah, Jonathan, all he does is he's constructed a show around going to lunches in various places. I read the piece, and my reaction was, you know, close my eyes, say a little prayer that it comes to be. I do suspect that the kind of economic sentiment and frustration is locked in. There's no fixing that between now and Election Day. In fact, there's reasons to believe it could get worse because of all the Iran stuff we talked about at the top. It does feel like Trump is doing everything in his power to lose the midterms.

39:16The farmer piece of it is real. I've talked to people in Iowa about how we screwed over Iowa farmers. The China trade war crushed soybean farmers. The Iran war jacked up the price of gasoline and diesel and fertilizer. The fight with Canada is just the latest piece of this. And Canada, by the way, is being very strategic in where it is targeting those tariffs. They're hitting Michigan. They're hitting Maine. But a lot of those farmers are still just red-pilled, Fox News-loving, Rush Limbaugh-listening Republicans. And I don't know where they're going to go. So the hope is they don't vote. The hope is that Rob Sand and Josh Turek can convince enough of them to stay home or maybe go crazy and vote for Democrats.

39:57So we'll see. I mean, it's like, it's challenging fundamentals in some of those states. Reading through the list of states, like I feel really good about North Carolina. The fundamentals in Maine should be leaning pretty hard towards Democrats, but we've had challenges in that state before. After there, it gets complicated. You know, when Ohio's at the top of your flip list, You know, you start crossing your fingers and saying some prayers. Speaking of Iowa, a paragraph on the piece that I really liked was, flipping pork burgers at the Iowa State Fair earlier this month, Ashley Hinson, who's running against Josh Turek, was glad to discuss her technique with the spatula, the importance of her race to the Senate map, and her opponent missing votes on the legislature.

40:35But she went silent at repeated questions about whether it was time to end the war. I mean, you just can't, you can't get away with that until November. I mean, like, maybe you still pull it out, but, like, that's not— There will be a debate. There will be editorial board meetings. There will be a bunch of opportunities where she is going to have to answer questions about this. Yeah. And John Husted, who's running against Sherrod, I think, at the outset, he said, like, he wanted the war to be, like, quick and efficient and successful. Or clean and successful. Quick and successful. How's that going?

41:07It's like, yeah, that's not going well either. Yeah. Wishes were kisses. You know? Wishes were kisses. That's what I'm always saying. Yeah. No, you're always saying that. I also think that, like, things with Canada could get worse in a meaningful way between now and then, too. I mean, I talked to them. A sentence that is crazy that you had to say. I know. I talked to the premier of British Columbia today for Pod Save the World coming out Wednesday. Subscribe, wherever you get your pods. He's not in Carney's political party. He's in the party to the left of Carney. He's putting pressure on Carney to do more to retaliate.

41:39Like, Carney has been, like, perfectly proportionate in his response. It's, like, dollar-for-dollar responses. He wants him to do more, consider like not buying F-35s, for example. And so Carney has support from his left. He also has support from his right, right? We've seen Doug Ford in Ontario literally telling Trump to kiss his ass. And 76 % of Canadian voters support walking away from the talk. So like that is not, they're not capitulating anytime soon. Certainly not before the midterms. It's interesting that Trump is successfully producing a nationalist fervor, but it's just in Canada. Yeah, in Iran.

42:11Did you hear that dipshit congressman Andy Harris was on Fox today and they were talking about the Canadian trade war? And he's like, yeah, you know, Alberta might want to, as talked about before, like seceding from Canada. They're like, we should annex that state. We should just go in there and take it because a lot of oil there, a lot of good oil reserves. We are now just, we have Republican congressmen. We're taking Venezuela's oil. Canada looks good. We'll take some oil there. What has happened? Pretty sure he's Hannah's parents' congressman. Oh, he's the one Republican from Maryland. He gerrymandered.

42:52Well, you see, John. Real idiot. Yeah. Well, so fascism is a permission. Well, this is like what you hear when you watch the clips from Russia, like Russian state TV, the way they talk about the rest of these pundits. These are now our Republican congressmen. Well, just like there, it's like, oh, you know, oh, you can't call Trump a fascist. Oh, it's too late. It's too soon, whatever. It's like, it's an instinct. It's an instinct. And for it's, there can be no ego wound. There can be no loss. There can be nothing that shows weakness. And inevitably, it does lead to one place, which it just requires to be, to be, to toward expansion because it is the only way to truly prove you're strong and tough and can't be defeated.

43:30So we're going to go after Greenland and get the Venezuelan oil and we're going to bomb Carg Island and then we're going to take Alberta. and it's, you know, quite cold up there. Also, Alberta's having a vote on whether to have a Brexit-style referendum. Most people think there's like 30 % support for that. So it's like, okay, we're just going to invade because they're having a vote? Yeah, I was going to say, it's beside the point since we're just going to invade anyway. So you guys alluded to this, but of all the vulnerable Republicans running in the midterms, Trump's trade war with Canada is making it especially difficult for Mike Rogers and Susan Collins, who are trailing their Democratic opponents into border states that are really going to get screwed by the tariffs.

44:13Rogers put out a very long statement over the weekend where he tried to blame Democrats for the trade war, specifically Alyssa Slotkin and Gary Peters, the other two senators from Michigan, and said Trump is, quote, right to put America first and tariffs are necessary but are not a one-size-fits-all solution. What does that mean? In Maine, Susan Collins showed that she's not afraid to stand up to Trump by writing a letter to Howard Lutnick, where she politely urged the administration to restart trade negotiations. Hey, Senator Collins, here's the thing. If you just ask for agent enough times, you can get that letter to Lutnick's manager.

44:51You can get that thing up the chain of command. You're not aware how to send letters to the president. You're sending a warmly worded letter to the Commerce Secretary, who you know is a powerless schlub. She also, like, she listed off some of the impacts on people in Maine from the trade war. And at the end was like, please feel free to reach out and follow up if there are any other impacts on Maine that you would like to know about. It's like, well, I mean, like, obviously, they're trying to have it both ways, right? They want to seem like they are against the tariffs and the trade war, these two, without, I guess, like, doing too much to piss off Trump.

45:32But, like, it doesn't seem like the best strategy. I don't know. Yeah. In normal times, you would, like, distance yourself from the dumb, unpopular thing that's harming your state and show that you care about your state and you're fighting for your state and also that you have some independence. But Trump doesn't think much of independent thinking, so they're all kind of stuck. I just—I don't think you really have it both ways. I mean, nationally, Nate Silver has Trump at like 58 % disapproval in terms of trade policy and tariff policy nationwide. I would like to see some data from states like Michigan or Maine that are affected by the tariffs.

46:08But I would imagine it would be more acutely felt there. I can't think of a better statement for Abdul than Mike Rogers putting out a statement on tariffs. And then the first line is, once again, Michiganders are forced to bear the consequences of the fair leadership from our Democratic officials in Washington. Because Abdul's point is this guy's going to be a sock puppet for Donald Trump. You were asked a question specifically about Donald Trump's policies, and you can't criticize him. You cannot offer a single word of criticism. It's unbelievable. No one's going to buy it. Once again, they're not in charge.

46:43No one, but no, everyone knows they're not in charge. So who is this statement for? You've got Democratic candidates out there, a lot of them saying they wouldn't vote for Schumer for leader, like unafraid to break with the national party on things. And on the most unpopular economic policy from Donald Trump, that is specifically hurting two states, Susan Collins estate and Mike Rogers state that are, or they're like running for election and reelection. They can't even say like, I disagree. Not only do I disagree with Donald Trump, but like, I'm going to try to do something send me back there and I'm going to keep fighting.

47:16Just do something to show that you're fighting besides a fucking... A letter is a joke. A caricature. The joke is a strongly worded letter and that's what she did. She just did the caricature. It's not even that strongly worded. It's not a caricature. It's a very mild letter. It's a tepid letter. It's a tepidly worded letter. That's what she said. And then Roger's like, but tariffs are not a one-size-fits-all solution. Are we supposed to read into what that possibly means? Hey, tell your boss that. So you support, he's, well, like it's interesting what's happened with the politics of tariffs specifically, because at this moment, free trade is just, it's, it's, it's, it's very in right now, very popular free trade.

47:54Right. But like even the lefties. Right. But if you would have said, right. If you would have said like the politics on tariffs before Donald Trump did this, did tariffs in the way that he's done, would have been like, and we're going to put tariffs on Canadian goods because we're going to stop them from taking our jobs. Like that could have been an applause line at a Democrat, kind of at a, at a Michigan rally, like a decade ago, even less. And so it is a strange thing of like, are people, is he sort of not wanting to give up the good politics of terrorists while criticizing these? I don't know.

48:21He's afraid of Trump. Yeah, of course, of course, he's afraid of Trump.

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52:00Speaking of the Michigan race, Abdul is working to repair his image among some in the state's Jewish community, specifically about comments he made back in March after the attack on a synagogue in the Detroit suburbs. At the time, Abdul firmly condemned the attack, but then tried to offer some context by saying that, quote, hurt people hurt people, meaning that violence in the Middle East can lead to violence here. Here's part of what he said at an event with Jewish Democrats on Saturday in Lansing. I did not appreciate that in the attempt to offer broader context, I was trampling the dignity that that fear and that pain should have been affording.

52:41And I could imagine that for a lot of folks, that would have read like, he does not see our pain or weigh it equally. Correct. And that was not my intention with the statement. And if my statement caused pain, I'm sorry. That was not what I intended to do. And sometimes you can offer context for something, but not in the moment when people are feeling it acuity. And, you know, I made a mistake. And in the fullness of time, I hope that we can have conversations that are about context. But sometimes you can't really see context in the moment of acuity or pain. And I want folks to know that, you know, when the Jewish community is attacked, I'm going to be right there to defend.

53:20What do you guys make of the apology and the way he framed it? I watched the original message back. It was like a four and a half minute statement. I think he just tried to do too much in it. If you think back to that moment, it was like the guy who attacked the synagogue, he was born in Lebanon. He had just lost family, I think including kids in Israeli airstrikes. So then he decided to attack the synagogue in retaliation, which obviously is like unjustifiable evil and just an act of terrorism. And Abdul condemned what he did. He called it unacceptable. And then he just tried to explain the context, which was like what I just talked about and then why it's wrong to blame Jewish people for actions to the Israeli government.

54:02And then get into like the hurt people, hurt people thing. And then do this broader point of like imagine if there was no war and like no one was incentivized to do this kind of stuff. And it just, it was too much. And I think listeners just felt like it was close to maybe a justification or blaming the war for what this individual did rather than just saying, like, this is evil and unjustifiable, full stop. So it sounds like the message was well-received in the room. I think there's value in politics, actually, to saying I was wrong. I screwed up. I'm sorry. If I hurt you, I'm really sorry. I think that's meaningful to people.

54:37So hopefully it helps, you know, staunch the bleeding here and I think restore some trust and open a dialogue between Abdul and the Jewish community, which is a lot of people are trying to exacerbate that split with, you know, conversations about Hassan Piker or whatever else. So I think it's, I'm glad he did this. I think it is good. I do, and I'm like hesitant to even sort of, I don't know, like nitpick, because he is apologizing for this statement. It is clear what he means and what he meant and what he is trying to do. And he is under a nonstop barrage of false Islamophobic bigoted attacks, fast and furious constantly, or attacks that assume some Islamophobia on the part of the listener by making all kinds of assumptions about him, about him being evil.

55:27That was just today with Vance. Or how he believes evil things, whatever it would be. But at the same time, you see this, right? Like, oh, it's about the context. Okay. And he does say in both the original statement and he says here, right, that there's no justification, right? Because whatever pain this person may have experienced, however real and terrible it may be, collective punishment is always wrong. It is wrong when someone commits a terrorist attack against Jews in Michigan. It is wrong when Israel kills civilians in Gaza. And to me, it can stop there. The cause of the hurt is immaterial.

56:04And part of, I think, why this statement brought people the wrong way is not because there was something fundamentally untrue about what he was saying. It was about the source of the pain matters, right? We care about certain kinds of pain more than we care about other kinds of pain. And so I'm glad he is saying this in the statement. But the idea that there was like, oh, the time for context was later, maybe so. But I think at any point in which you're discussing this, it has to begin and end with the fact that any form of collective and our own feelings are never a justification for any kind of violence against people who simply are part of a group that you are antagonistic towards.

56:42I thought it was a really genuine apology. There's a range of politician apologies, and some are more half-assed than others. And, you know, he was just sort of doing that off the cuff. He was asked a question. He didn't hold back. And he didn't try to say like, well, I didn't intend this and that. It was like, no, I made a mistake. And there's the time for context. This wasn't it. Like, I just thought it was great. And, you know, Jessica Alexander is the chair of the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus. She said, you know, she obviously the campaign knows there's work to do with the Jewish community, but she doesn't have concerns about Abdul and Jeremy Moss, who's the Democratic nominee for a House seat in Michigan and Jewish and has declined to endorse Abdul since the primary.

57:34He said he's still concerned about Abdul's position on Israel, but that the apology was genuine, credible, appreciated by the caucus. And then said, we've had a lot of meaningful and thoughtful conversations since the primary. And this was something that got brought up. So, like, I think it's sort of also, I mean, you can look at the, you can dissect the national implications and the Hassan Piker of it all. But I think it was like Abdul reaching out and talking to the Jewish community in Michigan. And this was the thing that really bothered people. and so he said, okay, I'm going to address it.

58:05I was like just the use of such a kind of cliched phrase as hurt people, hurt people probably was like a big part of it even if it makes sense inside the context. I also, by the way, like this is not, I don't even, not even saying that what I, like my, the feeling I have is less directed specifically at this comment by Abdul than like there is this, you see it all the time and it's just part of, I think it's like a social media thing that like the, so like Brad Lander is yelled at on the streets of New York, right? Right. And Brad Lander has is against AIPAC. He won his race in part because he came out against military for aid for Israel.

58:41He's called what Israel did in Gaza, a genocide. Right. He called Israel apartheid. But he has yet while still defending the idea of a two state solution in which Israel and Palestine live side by side in peace. Fine. And he gets harassed on the street. And I saw people coming to his defense by saying something about how like, oh, this is unhelpful. right? To attack someone like that, it makes it look as though this movement is anti-Semitic. It makes it look as though the argument by the Zionist is true that there's people who don't accept any Jew that is part of this movement, right? It's like, hold on a second.

59:14It's not really just about how it looks, right? There is anti-Semitism in this movement. That is a problem. It is a problem on your terms because it makes your movement less successful. It is also a problem for a society to have antisemitism infused inside of a growing and increasingly popular movement. That needs to be addressed on the merits, not simply because it's bad strategy, right? But part of it is there's this effort to the generosity for people on our own side versus the assumption of bad faith on the part of the other. It's like, let's just apply the same standard across the board, right?

59:46We would call a right-winger doing this an antisemite, not someone who is giving in to the Zionists by seeming like an antisemite. And we have to do that even when it's on our own side. That's the point I'm making. J.D. Vance was scheduled to speak to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Vegas on Monday evening. But before that, he was in Michigan where he hit Abdul on the synagogue comments, lots of other things. He stood up for his wife in like a sort of fake-seeming way that did not really come off as a human, which is typical of J.D. Vance. Abdul tried to counter with some Ohio State trash talk, a J.D.

1:00:26Vance couch joke. What do you guys think? Who do you think got the better of that exchange in Michigan? And any thoughts on how this campaign's going? It's hard to say. I mean, J.D. is as cynical as they come, right? This is the guy who famously said that the country was being run by a bunch of childless cat ladies and was such a prick about it. So I rolled my eyes at the whole wounded, like, how dare you talk about my family thing because he was the one who invoked his peepaw in the first place when he attacked Abdul and was like, imagine telling my peepaw that the Democrats support Sharia law, wherever it was.

1:01:00I did a joke about that. I'd love to relieve it, which is like, oh, papa, he's going to bring Sharia law. He's like, I don't know what that is yet. I haven't been made to be afraid of that yet. Yeah, so like all that said, like I do think you're on firm political ground politically. If you just focus on the person running for office, the elected official and not their family and not constantly make this point about J.D. Vance's family and kids. I also think that the couch fucker thing has been dead for a while and no one really knows what you're talking about and probably is worth steering away from.

1:01:30I mean, if I'm talking about J.D. Vance, I'm just talking about how this is a guy who's willing to say or do anything for power. He is willing to flip-flop on any policy issue, support any war, like do what it takes to make sure Donald Trump is president and go with that. What are they doing to hurt people? That is what I would keep that in mind for every candidate in every race. And when you're going after the Republicans, whether the ones you're running against or Donald Trump, it is what have they done to hurt people and piss people off? And I'm going to talk about that and fight for people.

1:02:03And you're not running against J.D. Vance. And you have a limited amount of time to define Mike Rogers, right? This is the Republican that ultimately has embraced the 2020 conspiracy theories. But I think there's a memory of him as being an old-school, reasonable Republican. You have a limited amount of time to define Mike Rogers. J.D. Vance is a representation of a failed, destructive administration that is damaging Michigan's economy that will be backed up 100 % by Mike Rogers. And so any tit for tat you're in that's about J.D. Vance as a person, about his family, about couch fucker, whatever it is, is not about the core.

1:02:43It's not it's not that it's the soundbite people are pulling and it has nothing to do with Mike Rogers whatsoever. That's that to me is the problem. So Trump apparently isn't satisfied with just making Republicans defend his stupid trade war. He's also going to make them defend his stupid support for data centers. Out of nowhere, he took to Truth Social on Monday morning to write the following. The only reason that communities throughout the USA should not want data centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor. If they want to be successful and rich with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let data reign.

1:03:19The good news is that there are plenty of other places that want them. If we kill the golden goose, you will only have yourselves to blame. The Post got flooded with replies from Truth Social users saying things like, I regret ever supporting you. You have lost your mind. And this statement is insane. Like, why do you guys think Trump is intent on dying on this hill? This is just another example of him doing everything possible to lose the midterms, it feels like. I mean, just so folks know, elected officials on both sides of the aisle are furiously backpedaling from data centers. Like Josh Shapiro was all in on all these big investments coming to Pennsylvania.

1:04:00He's now pumping the brakes and putting executive orders out. The NRSC just put out a memo where they described data centers as the anchor around the neck of the Republican Senate candidate in Ohio. And Trump was like, you guys are a bunch of idiots. Quit your bitching. Quit your bitching about wanting water and power. it's just so like jd vance like tries to clean up after trump when he's on the tarmac in michigan and is asked about this and he's like well i don't think data centers are controversial as long as you know you make sure that the companies the hyperscalers that are building them are not are you know creating or building their own power plants you know uh i don't know if that's going to help either um building their own power plants and that the electricity uh rates aren't going up and that people like, so he's trying to add all these caveats.

1:04:48And then Trump's out there just like, no, they're awesome. And if you don't like them, you're backwards and poor. Or you will be soon enough. It's like the mishandling of the data centers, like Trump's comments to me are like, oh, you don't want to kill the golden goose. And it's like, okay, these companies are on television on a daily basis saying, basically, we're building it whether you like, we're inventing this technology. It'll help you cheat on your, kids cheat at school. It may destroy the planet. It may cure cancer. It will eliminate all the jobs. In order to get to that desired outcome, we are going to have to have massive construction that requires a great deal of water and power.

1:05:29And after that is done, it will be monitored by basically one security guard in perpetuity. And also, just don't forget, over the course of three Republican administrations, we've slowly but surely reduced any public good in terms of taxes that could come from this. We have showed you that we are going to have a tax code in which all that wealth accrues, the jobs are eliminated, and there's no public benefit, right? Or there's much less of a public benefit. And then they're shocked that there's some kind of a backlash, right? These people are all so greedy. And I think the tax part of it is not part of this debate.

1:06:04It's not really, it's tangential, I guess. But they have spent years training people to expect that corporations are going to build a tax code in which the public will not benefit from their profits. And people, I think now instinctively do not believe, like there was a time when I think, you know, look, it was a famous sentence, right? What's good for GM is good for the country. It was using the pejorative, but like there was a sense in which we kind of believed that the success of an American, of American company was a kind of shared kind of success for the country. And I just don't think people buy that anymore.

1:06:33And so then you're just going to build this thing in my house and take all the money. And what do I get out of it? Maybe you're claiming lower electricity rates, which may be actually technically true, but actually doesn't intuitively make sense. So I'm not going to believe you. You get AI photos of Donald Trump, Canada geese with machine guns is what you get. I think to answer your question, I think the reason Trump puts out stuff like that is because the only people around him are rich guys who probably have a vested financial interest in these companies who bought access to Trump. So he's probably reflecting their views in the cynical ways they talk about the stuff behind closed stores.

1:07:05I mean, you see this stuff from like the all in podcast guys, like Shamath, what's his name, was attacking someone who simply wrote up a Substack piece about the very scary open AI hugging face cyber attack incident. He was like attacking him as some sort of, you know, Luddite shill for, I don't know, big humanity or something. It's funny. Those are the people who actually are like probably speaking to Trump directly. Yeah. Trump needs these data centers so he can fight the war with Iran and Canada online with all of his AI slot. I think that's why he needs them. I mean, there's like a—the problem with this is there is a— Okay, the first—one big problem people have with data centers is the technology they are for is scaring the shit out of everyone, mainly because the people who have invented this technology and are developing it have told us so.

1:07:56But let's pretend that the data centers were for technology that was going to be universally beneficial and didn't have a lot of problems. There's like a way to build them where as opposed to giving tax breaks to these big data centers, you make them pay a tax to the community, which they do in Loudoun County, where it has most of the data centers. And like, sure enough, they're like building new schools and have all kinds of fancy public projects and all the roads are repaved and everything and people's property taxes are going down. So you can do that. If they are going to add to the power grid, you can make these companies then modernize the power grid, make it bigger, make it work better, right?

1:08:34Which we've needed to do for a while. Like there's ways to put all the responsibility and burden on the companies building the data centers so that it works well. And then make sure that the public has input and each community, all this kind of shit. But all of that's going to go out the window because we have fucking Donald Trump who's like, just build them or fucking shut up or you're backwards and poor. Like, there's going to be no getting past sort of like the populist antipathy towards these data centers with the way things are going. And that's going to be blamed. People responsible for that will be Donald Trump and the AI companies themselves.

1:09:09Oh, like this backlash, like the fact that there's now a poll that people would rather have a nuclear power plant close to them than a data center. They may get both because the data centers might need to build their own nuclear power plant just to run the data center. Sure. I personally would choose data center in that bargain, right? Like, there is a lot of, like, I think, in part because, like, the first round of this was done without a lot of input from people are scared about the implications of this. And like, there's such hubris on the part of these people. Like, oh, you're just stupid for not wanting this.

1:09:39Or you're just like, you don't want, I guess you don't want to defeat China. That's the dumbest shit. Look, just to be honest here, stopping the construction of these data centers is going to have very little impact on the deployment of AI or the ability of these companies to build the next big model. Almost none. It's completely negligible. I think what this is, is a proxy for the anger people feel at having absolutely no control over the deployment of this technology. Congress isn't doing anything. States aren't doing anything. Congress, the Trump administration was trying to block states from doing anything on their own.

1:10:09So this data center issue and the construction of them has become the focus of the fight. And so Trump is both getting paid off by the executives, but also knows that the entire stock market is propped up by a couple AI stocks in this circular investment they have with a handful of other companies. And once that balloon is popped, the whole thing is crashing down in his singular accomplishment, which is a high stock market, which he doesn't really have anything to do with, is coming down with it. I just, again, all of the candidates in these marquee Senate races who've tried to backpedal along with everyone else who was pro data center, can't wait for them to be asked about this Trump comment.

1:10:48Mike Rogers, do you think that Michigan communities that don't want data centers are going to end up backwards and poor? What about you, Susan Collins, John Hustib, All the red Ken Paxton. So one other storyline from the Senate field. Laura Loomer is back in the news going after Florida Democratic nominee Angie Nixon and other prominent women of color in terms that are so disgusting. I'm not even going to try to characterize them. I'm just going to play the clip. Call out the entitlement of these, as I like to call them, ghetto black bitches. Angie Nixon, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush.

1:11:26Ketanji Brown Jackson. It goes both ways. You don't get to go demonize white people and demonize white politicians and white men and say that there's a white male problem or a white domestic terror problem in America when you behave like an absolute animal. So we contemplated not playing that clip, but thought it was important to do so because that is someone who has regularly flown with Donald Trump on Air Force One, has walk-in access to the Oval and gets people hired and fired. She got the head of the NSA fired. She got like a bunch of top national security officials fired. And I have not heard one Republican candidate, politician, been asked to answer for this.

1:12:09No. I mean, it's shockingly racist. She's said stuff like this before. She's also said things about Islam and Muslims that are just as bad. She called herself a proud Islamophobe. She said that Islam is a cancer, that Muslims are savages. I think these comments, like Laura Loomer's existence is one of the best examples of where Democrats are hurt by not having a massive right-wing media apparatus like Fox News because we have Fox on in our office a lot. There's been a story about Hassan Piker every hour on the hour on Fox News for probably a couple weeks now. This is no exaggeration. No, literally.

1:12:41You have it on mute. You just look up and it's just like, Hassan Abdul, Hassan Abdul, occasionally the parent of a volleyball player. Mom Donnie. Mom Donnie will pop up, yeah. The other challenge, though, is that, you know, Trump has said stuff that's like just as bad, if not worse. And so it's hard to know where the shame comes from. It's like it's been normalized on the right and on the left. There are things that are still surprising to people, to members of Congress, to elected. So it's terrible. Loomer also took credit over the weekend for ICE arresting deporting Milo Yiannopoulos, the British-born former Breitbart editor, former Kanye West aide, and just a generally vile troll.

1:13:26He's been out of sight for a few years, but he's seen a minor resurgence of late as an ally of Tucker Carlson, who plans to publish Yiannopoulos' book called Ex-Gay. Yiannopoulos appears to be a player in the larger Laura Loomer, Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor Greene war. Anyone want to attempt to untangle this one? Or thoughts on Milo's deportation? It's, there's a, you know, you are what you pretend to be, so you should be careful what you pretend to be. And that picture that, Who's pretending to be what in this? I think like, kind of taking on, taking on this idea. Like, I don't know if, what his true beliefs are is they moved around.

1:14:07Milo, Milo. He's been gay, he's not gay, he's been, he's gone, Now he's a national, whatever his position is to be a publicity-seeking troll and heterodox in some way that is interesting. And also, at times, clearly making it seem as though his beliefs are not real and that he doesn't have real beliefs. He's all a big show. It ends with the department, you become a fascistic right-wing troll online. And then the Homeland Security is putting an unflattering picture of you on the internet while they deport you. And I feel like it's like the, whatever it looks, every edgelord train kind of ends in their version of that.

1:14:47You know, there's no, in the same way there's no like 40-year-old ballerinas. It's like, this is the end. There's some terrible end to the edgelord path. Yeah, I've not dug into this one. He sucks. This guy is just, go away. Have fun in the UK. Go back to Brightwater. Yeah, there's some of his tweets about immigration, just a few, like, zero immigration for the next 20 years. No ifs, no buts. That's what he said last year on X. He also had a horrible post about a couple years before that. What's the etiquette when you see an ICE raid? Can you masturbate right there, or do you have to take cover?

1:15:23I mean, it was just like he's gone so far in the direction of, like, I can't wait to see people deported and all that kind of stuff. Now, all that said, the idea that if Milo was still in Trump's good graces, said nice things about the Trump administration. Do we think he would have been deported? Probably not. First, they came for Milo Yiannopoulos. I mean, it is because of the personalities involved. You don't think about this, but it is fucking crazy that a random citizen or advisor, political advisor, you know, a right-wing media star can like not like someone, think that that person's been critical of the Trump administration, call up ICE and be like, go find them and deport them.

1:16:06And then it works. Well, it's also, look, it's what draws the evil eye. And sometimes what draws the evil eye is Jimmy Kimmel because he's on the left or some figure that annoys Trump because they're not on side. But it's just like it's a classic story. You draw, if you're inside the movement and become critical of it, that's just, of course, sometimes the people that have been closest to the leader are the ones that end up in the gulag or deported or, you know, in other regimes killed. Yeah. All right. When we come back, Nevada gubernatorial candidate Aaron Ford. My guest today is the attorney general for Nevada and is running as the Democratic nominee in Nevada's gubernatorial race.

1:16:48Aaron Ford, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you so much for having me. Great to see you. Thank you for being in studio. I want to start by asking you about your opponent, Governor Lombardo. At a recent event, he said that he can't control affordability issues. He can't control inflation rates. He said claims otherwise were, quote, bullshit. He also said, quote, when you talk about kitchen table issues such as affordability, groceries and all that, that is a driver of the federal government. Do you agree with that? And if not, what can the governor of a state like Nevada do to drive down prices or just make the life more affordable for people?

1:17:23Yeah, well, absolutely. I disagree with him on this, and I've made that point known. Again, thanks for having me on. Sure. This is an important part of the conversation we had with Nevadans and people across the nation who have people who don't think they can do anything about affordability. He called it bullshit, to use your phrase, geology. And what I have said is that what I think is BS is that he vetoed a bill that would have put$1 ,000 back in parents' pockets per child per year when he vetoed a bill for guaranteed school lunch for our children. What's BS is when he vetoed a bill that would have limited the amount you could pay for prescription drugs to the Medicare-negotiated price for everybody, putting money back in people's pockets.

1:18:00You see, these are the types of things that he could have done that we could be experiencing relief from right now. This affordability crisis wouldn't be as dire as it is right now if he had aligned himself with the people of the state as opposed to the corporations that are bankrolling his campaign. I was talking to a young lady in Menden, Nevada. It's a rural part of town and a part of our state. And she was telling me she was grocery shopping. And she had a basket full of groceries, went over to the pharmacy to pick up her prescription, looked at the price on that prescription and left her groceries in the aisle because she couldn't afford both.

1:18:31You see, that bill he vetoed that would have limited prescription drug costs could have helped her. And that's an affordability crisis that he is causing himself. And so anyone who throws their hands up in the air like that doesn't deserve to be the governor of our state. It's a crazy thing to say when you're running for office. Yeah. Bullshit? I mean, what's the point of you being in office then? That's exactly right. I saw some data over the last week that immigration arrests surged over the summer and that ICE had a record number of arrests in June and July. If you're elected governor, how would you direct the state to work with ICE or not work with ICE?

1:19:03Well, look, to be clear, our governor is already helping ICE. Most Republican governors are doing that. Down in Texas, you see the governor offering land so they can build warehouses to house folks. And our governor has committed our human resource of our National Guard members to help ICE do their job. And what I have heard and what I have said is that people want our state resources, whether they are human, financial or otherwise, to be spent on state stuff, period. They want us spending our money and our time and our resources on education, on mental health issues, on infrastructure, on things that are helping Nevadans and not doing the job of someone else.

1:19:41And so that's my position as well. And I support that. I stand for that and unequivocally say that when I'm governor, we're going to spend our state resources on state stuff, not doing someone else's job. Not doing the federal government's job. Last week, I saw that Meta settled a lawsuit with 48 states over claims that its products, its apps, Instagram, other things, harmed kids by offering addictive social media platforms. You joined this suit. I'm wondering why. And what do you think the impact is going to be for kids and parents who are trying to figure out the appropriate use of social media for kids?

1:20:12Yeah, I'm smiling right now because I was asked a question, I think it was last Thursday. I was interviewing with one of our local reporters, and he asked me what the proudest moment was of my career as attorney general. There are a lot of proud moments. This was one of them, if not the most prideful I've been in a while. And the night before we announced the settlement, I told my wife how excited I was because, you know, to be sure, we're getting 255, up to$255 million into our state from this settlement to help kids in the mental health issues that arose out of these addictive algorithms that are harming our kids.

1:20:45But what I'm most proud of is the fact that we are now instituting safety features that are going to help our kids in our mental health. You don't know this story, but last session, let's say that session, I actually ran a bill called the Youth Online Safety Act that would have done exactly what I'm trying to do here. Limited screen time. It would have put parental controls in. It would have put in age verification technologies. And I couldn't get the bill passed. And I got a lot of pushback from the community. But sitting next to me during one of those pieces of testimony, Tommy was a young lady.

1:21:17Her name was Bethany. She sat next to me with a picture of her daughter. Her daughter had committed suicide. She hung herself. And she used TikTok to do it. And when they found, she looked up ways to tie a knot on TikTok. And when they found her, TikTok was still scrolling examples of how to tie knots. Oh, my God. Right? And so what I'm most proud of right now is that this settlement, by the way, I had already sued these entities myself. I wasn't part of the multi-state lawsuit. I had sued Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook directly January or so of 2024. And we have beat them back from trying to escape our jurisdiction.

1:21:55But we've settled those cases. Now we're going to get opportunities for children to have better mental health outcomes, parents more control. For example, they won't be able to get notifications during school hours anymore. They're going to limit their ability to be on these apps from midnight to six, right? They got rid of the filters that was causing so much self-image issues. The likes and features of that, the default is going to have them turn it off, right? And so parents have a lot more control. We get to protect our children, and I'm very proud of that. It's just infuriating that we've been dealing with these social media apps for well over a decade.

1:22:30All of us feel the harms as adults or feel the impact that social media can have on you personally, emotionally, and whatnot. And yet it took a bunch of states getting together to sue to get changes, and Congress did nothing for all that time. It just feels impossible that Congress just sat on its hand for the last decade and watched all this happen. Yeah, and look, I'm not one to sit back and wait for somebody else to do something. If I have to protect my family and not consider the state of Nevada my family, then I'm going to do it. I'm not waiting for others. But also that's the import of attorneys general working together across state lines on issues that affect residents in all of our states.

1:23:09Crime doesn't stop at the border, nor do social harms that arise out of these apps that you just talked about. And so this was an opportunity for, I think it ended up being 48 attorneys general and a few from our states and from our territories as well, working together over the course of years. Our investigation started back in 2021, maybe 2022. I could be off a little bit in that regard. But we've been working together, talking together, figuring out strategy, figuring out what the right algorithm or algorithmic approach is to addressing children and mental health issues. And it's facilitated this settlement.

1:23:43We wait on nobody to protect our children in Nevada, and I'm proud of this work. Yeah. I want to ask you about data centers as well. So in the state legislature back in 2015, I know you sponsored legislation to create tax incentives to bring some of these data centers to Nevada. Now you're pledging that if elected, Nevada will have the strictest rules in the country governing them. What changed? And what's your response to Democrats who are calling for a full moratorium on building AI data centers? Well, a few things. First off, the data center of 2015, 11 years ago, was not the data center of 2026.

1:24:17I think it was seven years before the advent of chat GPT, when we were in the middle of a recession trying to bring jobs to Nevada and looking for ways to diversify our economy beyond relying on gaming. Because when the country gets the cold, we get the flu. And so we did incent data centers to operate there and did not contemplate what we are experiencing now. Again, the advent of Chad GPT and the advent of AI and the usage and the draws on power, the electricity that is being consumed by these entities, the water that it has taken up. We live in a desert in Nevada. And what I have found, having spoken to Nevadans across two statewide tours in the last, I'd say, 10 months or so, is that it doesn't matter who I'm talking to, Democrats, Republicans, or independents.

1:25:01everybody has a problem with these data centers coming in, taking up our energy, driving up our energy prices, and draining our water. And they want us to do something. And so what I am doing is responsible and responsive. Responsive to the constituents who sent me to office this time and who I'm asking to send me to office for the governor's race by developing a plan now that's going to address these data centers. I am going to halt every single future abatement on data centers until we can actually go back and do something that this current governor has not done. And that's audit the compliance with the terms and agreements in the first place that the folks that he's given incentives to 220 million dollars, I think, maybe 240 million dollars over the course of the current governor's tenure.

1:25:44He hasn't audited them to ensure, for example, that they have hired local like they were supposed to or they've otherwise complied with the terms of the abatement agreements. And so I'm going to stop those abatements going forward. Those tax breaks are inappropriate until we can audit those. But we're also going to require them to bring their own water. I've said they're not going to be able to raise consumer rates by one penny. They're going to have to use clean energy, their own clean energy, to power their facilities and build out the grid to accommodate that. And these are some of the, and not only that, listen to the local input before things are done.

1:26:18If a local community doesn't want these data centers, it shouldn't be forced on them. And it seems to me that we currently have a governor who doesn't really care about local input, but in fact has described this data center issue as a gold rush for Nevada. And what I noticed, Tommy, the only gold rushing right now is from the big data center folks and their gold to his pockets. Yeah, to the Trump ballroom. I did notice one Las Vegas resident, or maybe not resident, but property owner who seems to support the data centers. President Trump said, if you oppose data centers, you want to be backwards and poor.

1:26:54He said that earlier today. Any thoughts on that? Well, I'm beyond being surprised with commentary from our president, right? And he's certainly not on the ground here in Nevada, but his acolyte in Joe Lombardo is. And Joe Lombardo has capitulated, kowtowed, kissed up to Donald Trump at every single turn, every single turn. And it doesn't surprise me then that we haven't heard a single word from Joe Lombardo, at least not to my knowledge, refuting that form of characterization. We've seen, again, Lombardo align himself with Trump and advocating for data centers, calling them, saying that he's wholeheartedly in support of them.

1:27:31See, I'm wholeheartedly in support of Nevadans, and that's why I'm being responsive to what I've heard across every demographic, that we need to address these. You know, Joe Lombardo has written an op-ed saying we need to embrace these. You know, and again, the gold rush. Again, he's only talking about the gold rush into his pockets. But at the end of the day, you know, Trump is wrong for ignoring the will of the people. Lombardo is wrong for doing the same. And I'm going to be a governor who actually listens and is responsive. I want to ask you about the Las Vegas economy. I know it's been struggling with a dip in tourism.

1:28:00I saw the number of visitors was down, but almost 8 % in 2025 as compared to 2024. I think 2026 started kind of soft. One of the reasons I've seen cited for that tourism dip is the trade war with Canada. A ton of Canadian tourists normally go to Las Vegas. But Business Insider reported that 18 % fewer Canadians visited Vegas in 2025 than 2024. They're kind of voting with their feet about, you know, Trump's comments about annex in Canada or the 51st state and now this big trade tariff fight. How much of this tourism decrease do you blame on the Trump administration's policies scaring off foreign tourists from Canada or anywhere else?

1:28:41Look, if I had to quantify it, I'd say that it's upwards of 100%. Really? The fact of the matter is we are living in the Lombardo-Trump economy. Joe Lombardo has advocated for these tariffs, essentially saying that we need to feel a little pain from them. And I say we don't need to feel pain. We need some leadership, someone who's willing to stand up, push back against Donald Trump and say that these tariffs will harm our state. We do rely upon tourism, Canadian, Mexican, Chinese. Those tourists have stopped coming. And at the end of the day, it has negatively impacted businesses and employment all across our state.

1:29:19So I sued. I sued over those tariffs. And I won. Our governor said that my lawsuit was unfortunate. And all my lawsuits against the Trump administration, the ones that I keep winning by upwards of 85 % or 90%, by the way, he calls unfortunate. Again, it's because he's kowtow, kissed up, and capitulated to Donald Trump at every turn. He lies down. Lying Lombardo is what they call him. I mean, he lies down, but he also lies, just to be clear. Got it. Both. Yeah, exactly. But look, I think about this from a personal perspective, though, Tommy. You don't know my story, but I grew up eating stale candy bars for dinner.

1:29:50My daddy used to work at a grocery store, and he found some stale candy bars at the dumpster behind the grocery store. Safeway was throwing these candies away because they were stale and they couldn't sell them. But the forwards got to eat. So my daddy bought only stale candy bars. And I keep a candy bar from that era on my desk at home, on my nightstand, on my desk at work as a visual reminder every single day of what struggle looks like. I can empathize with people who are saying that they're having a tough time surviving, let alone trying to thrive right now. I went from eating stale candy bars time into becoming a single dad when I was in college, living on Section 8 housing, living on food stamps.

1:30:29They call it SNAP now. They got a fancy card. I had the fake money. You had to tear out the little book. I was on food stamps. I was on Medicaid. That's what kept my son and me healthy. And so I have a very real understanding of what poverty and struggle looks like. And that's why I fight every single day to ensure that everyone has the ability to survive in our state. Another lawsuit I saw you put forward is, you know, well, the New York Times reported that Donald Trump Jr. basically at an event warned state AGs not to police or regulate these prediction market sites like CalShe or Polymarket.

1:31:03And then I think 20 states, including yours, are part of lawsuits over whether states should govern sports gambling or whether that's a federal issue. I know you also signed a letter from 44 states criticizing the platforms. I realize that your state, and Las Vegas in particular, has a different relationship with gambling and gaming and sports betting than most states. But how do you think we should be regulating these sites? I mean, do you think that the federal government or state governments should do more to regulate these kind of prediction market sites? Yeah, well, first off, Donald Trump generally doesn't scare me.

1:31:37No one scares me when it comes to protecting Nevadans, which is the reason why I've actually led the fight against these prediction markets. Because we are the gold standard in Nevada when it comes to sports betting. And indeed, these prediction markets are nothing but, you know, a new fancy way of betting on sports. And they need to be regulated pursuant to our laws or any other law of the state, in my estimation, in which they are operating. That's how you protect consumers. That's how you ensure that they're planned by fair rules. These are things that we are the gold standard of, and we deserve to be able to continue fighting that.

1:32:12And at the end of the day, we sued Cauchy, we've sued Polymarkets, we've sued Robinhood, and maybe a few others to ensure that they have to comply with our rules. And just last week, I think it was on Friday, the Ninth Circuit affirmed a ruling we got at the district court level saying that we indeed have the right to regulate these markets because they are nothing more than sports markets. They're not these commodities that they allege are controlled by swap regulations on the commodities. COTC. Exactly, right? It was a crafty way of trying to find a hole through which they could walk and operate.

1:32:48But they're not that savvy. And they don't frighten us. we want and we'll continue to advocate for these types of protections. I mean, look, I imagine you've been in a casino once or twice in your life, like have enjoyed betting on sports or gambling. What do you think the impact is, in particular on young men, of like having a casino on your phone in your pocket with all the addictive qualities of social media and all the ways they keep you hooked with notifications and real-time monitoring and graphs and stuff, but with like the real financial consequences of being able to lay down a real bet.

1:33:22Look, man, you've hit the nail on the head on one of the most important points there. And I know personally of young boys who are under the age of 21 who have engaged in essentially gambling and sports betting using these apps. And they have spent up their college loans. You understand? Yeah. And so they, in fact, are some of the victims that we're trying to protect. And they, in fact, would be protected if they were operating in our state in a brick and mortar or under a regulated type of activity. Because they would be cut off in some way before they could get to that point? Well, I mean, whatever restrictions they have in place, they could be cut off.

1:33:59They're being at least monitored. People can see what's going on. If they see someone's getting out of control, there are interventions, so to speak. At least there's some friction, too. You have to get up, get in the car, go to a casino, sit in a sports book. You know what I mean? Like, can someone your money. But the fact that you just lay in bed, it just seems like a real problem. Switching gears. So back in May, your opponent was pulled over for a suspected traffic violation. A cop tried to explain to him why he had been pulled over. Governor Lombardo dropped his name. The cop was like, I know who you are and proceeded to tell him about the violation.

1:34:36And Lombardo said, come on, man. And then the cop let him go. The president of the Las Vegas police union said Lombardo did not demand special treatment per se, but just identified himself. Do you buy that? And did you see that there was a theater, a movie theater that had a special where you could get out of paying for a movie ticket by saying, I'm Joe Lombardo? That was a solid special there. Yes, yes, yes. A couple of questions there. The first of which is, no, I don't buy the president of the union's statement there. Joe Lombardo was absolute. And people can watch this for themselves, right?

1:35:11They can make their own judgment. And I think most folks I speak to, 99.9 % of these folks recognize that Joe Lombardo dropped his name in order to try to avoid a consequence. All right. The guy couldn't finish his sentence. The cop couldn't finish his sentence telling him why he was being pulled over before he said, I'm Joe Lombardo. And then was told, you ran a red light. People are getting, we have, you know, very bad accidents in Nevada right now. Our insurance rates continue to rise because of these types of things. He ran a red light. That's why he was being stopped. And he says, come on, man.

1:35:40All right. And the cop let him go. It was in the cop's discretion. I'm not suggesting the cop did something bad. But what I do know is that Lombardo intimidated that young man. Of course. And utilized his name to do that. And look, that's what we saw on camera. Imagine how this man acts when no one's actually being able to gauge how he's interacting with other folks, right? We can't trust him. He already thinks that he's above everybody, as you can tell by the way he interacts with him. We also know how he feels about Nevadans, generally speaking. We have one of the highest—you didn't ask me about this.

1:36:10I'm sorry. I got to segue right quick, though, because we have one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation. Under his entire three-year, eight-month tenure, we've had the highest or one of the highest unemployment rates his entire tenure. It's higher now than it was when he took office. But he has a theory for that. He says it's because people are lazy. Oh. And they don't want to work. Okay. And they'd rather depend upon the government instead of taking a job that's available to them. That's what he says. That's how he thinks about the people who he supposedly represents, right? And, you know, he also says that if you have a problem with the government and you decide to protest, you must be getting paid.

1:36:45Right? Because really, truly, you can't have an objection. Sounds familiar, Mr. Trump. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. And, you know, the last thing I said, and I'm going to give you the mic back, because, you know, and by the way, if you are protesting because you disagree with something, I say it. I got two words for you. F you. Those are his words out of his mouth about the people he represents. Right? And so him abusing his authority is yet another example of him just thinking he's better, different, set apart, and not representing the working class members of our state. And instead of aligning himself with his billionaire friends with corporations and looking out for himself.

1:37:19That's got a lot of bad quotes out there. Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, we're not going to let folks forget. So look, I mean, you've talked about a lot of the ways that he's doing the bidding for corporate America. No surprise then that he is sitting on a ton of cash, his campaign. His campaign account, his super PAC, they've got tens of millions of dollars on hand. How do you combat that? Yeah, look, this race was always going to be about the money versus the many. 100%. There's no way we can compete with his billionaire friends who give him literally a million dollars a pop into a PAC. Last quarter, my PAC raised a little over a million dollars.

1:37:54His PAC raised$13 million. In a quarter? From like six different donors. Oh, okay. You understand? Yeah, rich people. Rich people dropping in people who own data centers, right? People who donated flock cameras. Now, these are people who are supporting him as he unhurls$17 million of negative ads against me, which, by the way, haven't really moved the needle. We are in a tie ballgame right now within a margin of error from every objective polling out there. You take away the Democratic polls and the Republican polls and look at the objective polling. It's either a margin of error race or a tie ballgame.

1:38:28And that's notwithstanding him spending$17 million of negative money against me. So we're going to win because we have many on our side. We have to continue to get the word out to be sure we need money. And I would encourage your people to go to FordForNevada.com and check us out because that is going to be important. We're on TV. But we need people to be able to spread the word, get folks out to register, and to actually show up to vote. These flock cameras, man. These things are disconcerting. I'm glad there's getting a lot of attention these days. Yeah, it's a problem. It feels like we're building our own little Chinese-style police state.

1:39:00It's scary. It's scary. And again, being responsive means having your ear to the ground. And I have learned now that folks have concerns with these things. And I suggest in my state that we stop using them until the legislature can chime in on some privacy issues. Yeah, that would be good. Final question for you. You got an undergraduate degree at Texas A &M and then some postgraduate degrees at Ohio State. Aggies play the Buckeyes. Who are you rooting for? It's a win-win for me, man. It's a win-win. Come on. It's a win-win. Come on. Here's what happened. Here's—I didn't know. So one time they did play each other.

1:39:33It was in a—I want to say it was a Sugar Bowl, 1999 or so. Okay. I was at Ohio State. My brother-in-law played football for Texas A &M. And so they kind of had the edge because it was my brother-in-law. Yeah. But I didn't know. But I sat there and I watched the game. And I just wanted to see how—which way my body went as good things happened. And I found myself saying, yes. And it was an Aggie play. Okay. So I'm going to support my Aggies over my Buckeyes. Also, the Buckeyes win all the time. It's kind of annoying. Ain't nothing wrong with winning. All I do is win, win, win. No matter. Come on, baby.

1:40:01How are you feeling about college football in, like, the NIL era? Have we gotten it right so far? You know, I don't know if we've gotten it right, but I think, honestly, I've always had the opinion that we should be paying our student athletes. Absolutely. I actually represented a basketball player who, in my estimation, got the short end of the stick back in the day. This was early 2000s. I just have a hard time, you know, accepting that we have these old, grown men who are, you know, utilizing their influence on these young, impressionable teenagers, getting their careers ruined early on because they're giving them extra benefits while they get to go in and coach and make, you know, million-dollar contracts, go to another institution.

1:40:36Best played, half the time, the coach is like the highest-paid state employee. Yeah, exactly. They make tens of millions of dollars a year and they couldn't pay players. Yeah, look, I'm totally in favor of players getting paid. I do wonder if there's going to be a course correction. I mean, I know Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell are trying to work on something in the U.S. Senate right now to try to reform the whole process. I don't know if it seems like it's stuck at the moment. Maybe that would just reduce the number of times you could hit the transfer portal, maybe find some way to kind of even out some of the funding.

1:41:08But who knows? Yeah, yeah. To your point, I don't think we have it right yet. But I think, you know, we should be paying our players. Let's figure out a way to get it done right. Okay. Well, Attorney General Ford, thank you so much for doing the show. Thanks for being here. I give you an offer, though. What? I have to offer you something. Please. You see, I saw you had my friend Rob San on recently. And he offered you to be, you know, to look at the Constitution and see if you could be governor for a day. Yeah, I want to do like a Dave thing. Well, here's the deal. So he offered you governor for the day for a day if you could pass as his body double, right?

1:41:37Okay, yeah. If you can pass as my body double, you can have it, man. Listen, I really appreciate that offer. I would love like one, you know, get out of jail free card for a trip to Vegas coming up. So if we can make that happen. I always tell my friends, come to Vegas, but don't make me your first call. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you must have a lot of people being like, hey, I'm making a trip. Can I get to sell? I was like, no, no, you cannot. Well, look, thank you again for doing the show. Good luck in the selection. We need you to win this thing. Thanks, man. Appreciate you. That's our show for today.

1:42:07Thanks to Aaron Ford for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Pods of America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Farrah Safari, with Reed Cherlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, David Tolles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Sengel. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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