Will the Blue Wave Be Bigger Than 2018?

14:07Dan Pfeiffer:Most of it's coming through Saudi Arabia. And the east-west pipeline last week was bombed to the degree that you can see the smoke from space. That's bad, right? That is very bad. I'd say like five to six weeks for repair? Months. This is the Washington Post headline from last week. Quote, this is the first day that Iran really started winning the war, a Yemeni official said. It's a 745-mile pipeline. It's the principal overland alternative to the strait. And this is a petroleum consultant who says, they'll need to replace piping, valves, all that electrical stuff. It's not like you can just go to Costco and pick that stuff up off the shelf.

14:49Dan Pfeiffer:Yeah, you can't. And do you know what that means? Now we have news this week. Analysts are saying there's going to be a major uptick in oil prices. They're already high. Diesel's like, I mean, we're in the land of the Republic of California where diesel is like$200 a gallon. And that just has knock-on effects across the American economy. So like as bad as it is now, in the coming months, it is only going to get worse. And it is not expected to go down until 2027 at the earliest. That's like a meaningful bit of news as it concerns pricing, affordability, and also Republican chances.

15:23Jon Favreau:And why the diesel matters is because trucks run on diesel. Trucks deliver all of our food and goods. And so all those costs get passed on. So if diesel is expensive, it raises the cost of groceries, everything you buy at the store.

15:36Dan Pfeiffer:Farm equipment that is needed to plow fields, harvest goods. I mean, it's the entire agricultural sector runs on diesel. Yeah, I mean, we've been looking at this through the narrow lens of like what it means for the midterms. But this is now far beyond the midterms. We're going to have impacts for this. This is going to be well into, this is going to be like what the 2028 presidential race is about. Absolutely. And like people have our number. Like, it's amazing to me that whoever's running the Iranian regime is, like, looking at the polling in Michigan and Maine. And they know, I mean, just like the Canadians are making, you know, tariffs that pierce the veil in very particularly weak spots here.

16:16Dan Pfeiffer:The Iranians know exactly what they can do with drones and Iranian-backed militias that are threatening our allies and their infrastructure. The Canadians who may now join, you know, floating joining the EU just as a fuck you to us. Right on, dudes. We're doing great stuff. Good times. Great stuff in America. Golden age. So the silver lining in all these dark clouds is that most Americans do seem to be holding the party in power responsible. This week's New York Times Sienna poll wasn't just a big deal because it's the highest quality poll out there, but because it's right in line with an avalanche of public and private polling that shows Democrats expanding their lead over Republicans.

16:54Our friend Nate Silver of Crooked's new Still Counting podcast. What? Yeah, that's right. That's right. I know, it's good. It's good. He's got the generic ballot at D plus 7.5. That's Democrats' largest lead of the cycle. A Cook political report out this week of the 37 most competitive House districts, which Trump won by an average of five points in 2024, now has the generic Democrat leading by two points in those places. That's a swing of seven points from 2024. Again, these are just the 37 most competitive House districts, so a two-point lead is bigger than it seems nationally. Just to give you an idea of how Republican candidates are feeling about this, here's a new ad from Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar, who's running for re-election in a South Florida district, that Trump won by nearly 15 points.

17:44Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far.

17:48Jon Favreau:In July, 50 % of the 50 ,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. Be careful what your advisors are telling you about immigration policies. The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today. I'm not talking about giving them amnesty. I'm talking about giving them a dignified life in this promised land. And only you can do that. Quite something. Before we get into discussion about that, Dan has some takes on all these numbers on Polar Coaster this week. So he's only going to give us top-line takes here. if you really want to get into the good stuff, you got to subscribe.

18:29You got to become a Friends of the Pod subscriber. It's essential.

18:31Dan Pfeiffer:Let's just be honest. I love Polar Coaster. Thank you, Alex. Also, I can feel the like thrum of energy emanating from this side of the studio as like we get to the like very exciting polling numbers, generic ballots. It's like when my cat knows the tree drawer is getting opened and is like sitting there very patiently, but you can feel the fur standing on it.

18:51Jon Favreau:It's important to find work you love.

18:52Dan Pfeiffer:I'm very happy for you and us because we get to benefit from it. Here's the thing. You subscribe, become a friend of the pod subscriber. You get Polar Coaster. A lot of our other shows, we have an extra episode of Pod Save America that we do for subscribers. It's called Only Friends. It's called Only Friends. We got all kinds of newsletters. And it's in the news, much like OnlyFans. That's exactly right. So tune in. I don't know if that's the selling point or not. It's a curiosity. Ad-free episodes of all your favorite Crooked Pods. And you also get to support one of the few proudly pro-democracy independent media companies left out there.

19:23Dan Pfeiffer:So true. Which is so important. crooket.com slash friends

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22:03So the polling. New York Times ran an analysis piece on Thursday with the headline, Republicans real on the midterm map as deep red areas come into play. How much hopium are you two huffing after reading that piece and seeing all the polling from this week? and that ad where we have a Republican breaking from Trump in a Trump 15 district. Dan?

22:26Jon Favreau:Let's stipulate that we are 40-some days out and a lot can change between now and then. Yeah. But I think we are generally, well, us sometimes, the larger political world, are understating how good this political environment is. Like, it is true that you look at the polling and you look at Nate Silver's average that the generic ballot nationally is about where it was in 2018. We picked up 40 seats. But if you look at the other fundamentals, this is a— Not strong. Well, for us, they're quite strong. Look at the other fundamental measurements that dictate elections. They show that this could end up being an even bigger blue wave than 2018.

23:03Jon Favreau:So first, if you compare polling in 2018 to 2026, Democratic enthusiasm is up a few points this time. Because it's worth remembering that even in 2018, when we won all the seats, Republican turnout was quite high. Republicans were fired up. We just turned out at a higher rate. Now Republicans are disenchanted. Another way in which you see that is that Trump's strong approval among Republicans is down 20 points from where it was on election day 2018. Wow. And his strong approval among all voters is cut in half from where it was in 2018. And his strong disapproval is up by seven to 10 points. And so this shows that Trump was polarizing on both sides before where he fired up Democrats and Republicans.

23:43Jon Favreau:Now he fires up Democrats more. And then I think even more important than those other measures is that in 2018, Trump's approval meeting among independents was in the mid to low 40s. Today, in that New York Times poll, you referenced it's at 27. Wow. So look at what you have going on here. You have really fired up Democrats, disenchanted Republicans, and independents furious at the incumbent party. That is a recipe that if we can deliver, and now we are facing an avalanche of money coming in over the final two months here. But this sets up very, very well for Democrats. And at some point, people are starting to vote.

24:19Yeah.

24:20Jon Favreau:There were like 600 votes in Pennsylvania last week. Yeah.

24:23Dan Pfeiffer:Well, and everything we just talked about, the environment's getting worse. It's not like this was a message baked in pre-Labor Day. The environment for Republicans is only getting worse. And you see that in parts of what is so astonishing in this New York Times piece is the degree You make the point that these are areas of the country that Trump won by 15 points. And on Runaway Country, the podcast I host for Crooked Media, we've been talking—

24:49Jon Favreau:Which is truly excellent. Thank you, Dan. Love Runaway Country.

24:54Dan Pfeiffer:It's like the log-rolling society here. Yes. Anyway, we were talking with Joshua Manske, who's a fifth-generation farmer in Iowa, and we were talking about Farmageddon. We just talked about diesel prices, but the fertilizer shortage, the Canadian tariff war, All of this stuff is really, really impacting the heart of Trump country. Dan Osborne was talking to me about this. This Argentinian beef imports. Same choice. People today, the New York Times is reporting that Trump is trying to slap on a country of origin label to all beef and pork products because that's his best band-aid to calm down ranchers who are furious that he's importing, I think, 660 million tons of mystery meat.

25:35Dan Pfeiffer:to depress beef pricing in the American markets. And the ranchers who, I mean, I believe Nebraska is 92 % farmland and agricultural industry. It's one in four jobs. There are 50 ,000 farms in the state. Like these are people, those ranchers are, that's your Trump community. And he's doing everything he can at multiple levels from the harvesting equipment to the actual cattle pricing, even to his solution, like origin, country of origin labeling will do nothing. The Department of Agriculture studied it. It costs more than it actually benefits the market. He's got nothing in, he's got nothing in his pockets to help himself out in the closing weeks of this election.

26:17Dan Pfeiffer:So yeah, like I agree with you, Dan. I think that if anything, there's like a lot of once burned twice shy among the national media. But I think the landscape just from talking to people who are in red states is like significantly worse than people are clocking. Also, like, you know, are all these Trump, former Trump fans who are now really hurting, like, are they all going to suddenly vote for Democrats? Maybe not, but maybe they don't vote at all. Exactly. Or they or they leave, you know, they leave sort of the federal races blank, you know. Right. So they're going to have a real turnout issue.

26:50And there's also like with all this money that they have that they're spending on ads, Not a lot of ads out there making the positive case for Republicans.

26:58Jon Favreau:I think there was a study by CNN that Trump has been mentioned in 11 Republican ads in the general election so far, I think. And since his big midterm proposal for if you vote for me and if you vote Republicans back into Congress, I'll give you all$5 ,000. Yeah. Like, no one is campaigning on that. Well, that's because there's 60 % disapproval of that idea in the U-Go poll that came out.

27:19Dan Pfeiffer:He literally had to create, like, subsidiary super PACs so that the word MAGA would not have to be mentioned in the ads. That's what we're dealing with here. That's how toxic it is. So just, you know, so we don't get ourselves too excited. There are a couple of warning signs in some surprising places for Democrats. The New Hampshire Senate race appears to be closer than expected. In a new poll, has the Minnesota Senate race tied? Any thoughts on how real those numbers might be or what the hell's going on in New Hampshire and maybe Minnesota?

27:49Jon Favreau:We have one poll in Minnesota. It's from not a high-quality pollster, per se. I'd like to see some more. You don't love a SurveyUSA poll? Never have, really. 20 years of skepticism of the SurveyUSA polls.

28:00Dan Pfeiffer:Doesn't like mustard? Doesn't like SurveyUSA. I fucking love mustard. Okay, sorry. I got that wrong. Totally wrong.

28:08Jon Favreau:SurveyUSA is the mayonnaise of polling. Okay, got it, got it, got it, got it. I do.

28:12Dan Pfeiffer:I love mayonnaise, though, I will say.

28:13Jon Favreau:No, so maybe it's not. Who knows? Enough about the condiments. Yes, thank you. So we'd like to see. Like Peggy Flanagan is a, no, she is not. She's run, she's been a legitimate governor, has not run, she's not an incumbent. I don't think we should underestimate Michelle Tafoya. There are generations of people in Minnesota who grew up watching Michelle Tafoya on Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football, you know, TV, as we know. She wasn't crazy on their screens. Yes, no, it's hard to square the Michelle Tafoya of ESPN with Michelle Tafoya of now, which is a little bit like it was hard to square the Donald Trump of The Apprentice with the Donald Trump who wanted to build the wall.

28:48Jon Favreau:Well, maybe not as hard as it should have been. But anyway. Neither here nor there. But let's see some more data in Minnesota before we panic. Now, New Hampshire is interesting because I think we think New Hampshire is bluer than it is. Kamala Harris only won it by 2.8 points last time. Chris Pappas is, I think, a totally fine candidate. He's a mainstream candidate. He comes from a family with long roots in New Hampshire. We've both eaten at his restaurant, Famous restaurant, many, many times. Sure have.

29:17Dan Pfeiffer:Pappas fritas? I'm kidding. I don't know. Sorry.

29:20Jon Favreau:Puritan backroom? Puritan backroom, yeah. Some of the best chain tenders.

29:22Dan Pfeiffer:Pappas fritas would have been fun. Duck sauce. The best duck sauce. I think they marinate the chicken in pineapple juice. It tastes like, well, the duck sauce has pineapple juice. Enough about the condiments. Oh my God, we're really on a fucking. You're hungry. I'm so hungry. How many condiment titles are we going to get from the producers for this fucking episode? We're not going to accept any of it from people, so save your energy. Dream on. No, they actually, I said this on the show once, and they shipped me some duck sauce from the Puritan backroom. Because my family's from New Hampshire, so I used to go there all the time.

29:48Jon Favreau:It's a come and stop for Democratic politicians. Here, I'll get us back around. And I also worked on my first race that I ever volunteered on was the 2002 Senate race between Gene Shaheen and John Sununu, the one who's running right now against Chris Gappas and who's keeping it close. Dynastic. And New Hampshire loves them some Sununu's. Yeah. And there's more than one. They're all over the place. It's hard to tell which is the favorite. and which is not. Christian Nunu, four-term governor who Republicans wanted to run for the Senate seat and would have been a very, very formidable candidate and probably the favorite in this race.

30:20Jon Favreau:It still remains very popular, the fact that they have the same last name. That helps John St. Nunu. Look, the political environment suggests that a Democrat should win, even with this, sort of, in this context, should win a Kamala plus 2.8 state. But I think we should keep an eye on it. Yeah, I think so.

30:38Dan Pfeiffer:Well, I think it's important to, it's a dose of cold water just given the reality of what needs to happen on this map. If New Hampshire really is in play. Do I need to go back up there and knock on some door? Probably. Another stop at Papa's Fritas.

30:54Oh, boy. Doesn't get old. So as for how ballots are going to be cast, the Supreme Court on Monday said that Trump's mail-in voting EO could not be implemented for this election cycle, with only Alito and Thomas dissenting. Surprise, surprise. Though Brett Kavanaugh wrote a concurrence saying he agreed only because of how little time remains, not necessarily because there's an inherent problem with the policy. Alex, many Democrats immediately celebrated the ruling, one of them sitting right here. You feel differently.

31:22Dan Pfeiffer:Well, it's good that they figured out how to read the fucking Constitution. Like, there's no mystery here. Like that, yeah. Let's not, I mean, this is a Supreme Court that was like, birthright citizenship. Hmm, these originalists, these textualists. It all fits in very nicely with the themes of my new book, John, which talks about the partisan takeover of the federal judiciary and the decades-long plot to make the bench a field of battle for partisan politics, and specifically the conservative plot to take the highest court in the land. And you see, you know, that borne out in these insane diabolical dissents that we got from Alito and Thomas.

32:00Dan Pfeiffer:Cuckoo. Which blamed the states for even filing these lawsuits. and you see it in Clarence Thomas going on Ted Cruz's podcast last month and railing against liberal culture. I mean, the thing I learned in writing this book is like these guys are dyed in the wool like conservative warriors. John Roberts and Sam Alito cut their teeth in the Reagan Justice Department trying to dismantle the Voting Rights Act. Clarence Thomas was the guy for a group of nascent hard-right conservatives, and he wanted to prove that he was their guy. And so as head of the EEOC in the 1980s, did everything he could to basically sanitize a racist agenda.

32:37Dan Pfeiffer:He is now fully red-pilled. He and Alito are writing stuff that is so at odds with the theory of originalism that it gives truth to the lie that originalism was ever even a real legal theory. It was just a convenient line of argument for conservatives to unwind decades of civil rights progress. Anyway, the book gets into the history of all that through four main characters, Ed Meese, Reagan's attorney general. Paul Weirich, who's a visionary mastermind madman who creates the Heritage Foundation, among other places. Robert Bork, who mainstreams the idea of originalism and has a terrible beard that ultimately is the result of his—that ultimately causes the Supreme Court nomination to fail.

33:16Dan Pfeiffer:That's a little bit like Colonel Sanders. The colonel has a much fuller beard, let's just speak. This is a scraggly, scraggly beard. Again, talking about fried chicken. Yeah, it's very hard to keep. Stop talking about it. And Joe Coors, the beer magnate on Varnish Racist, who used to enclose membership materials from the John Birch Society and his employee paychecks at the Coors Brewery back in the day. But they all kind of combined to launch a plot in the shadows of the Reagan White House that is bearing fruit today. I mean, and you see it very explicitly in what the Supreme Court is doing. I will say this about the mail-in ballot.

33:48Dan Pfeiffer:They had a chance in June to shut this whole thing down. They chose not to. They basically sat on their hands. They allowed this to play out, and now they have only rejected half of Trump's lunatic executive order. The other part that allows the federal government to go after election workers and poll workers very much is still operative. In addition to the things they are doing explicitly here in executive orders, they're also deputizing DHS agents to scour voter rolls, probably unlawfully, to find evidence of noncitizens. They are weaponizing the Justice Department. Todd Blanche is quite literally a flying monkey doing Trump's bidding on the campaign trail and otherwise.

34:27Dan Pfeiffer:And we should just be very concerned about the fact that I think a lot of challenges that could crop up in the days after the election are going to end at the Roberts court. And the, you know, the infrastructure of the federal government as it concerns elections is in many ways populated by lunatic election deniers under Trump. So like there is reason to be happy that your mail-in ballots may arrive and be sent and we should all feel good about that. But this hour demands vigilance and I think a healthy amount of skepticism and real focus. There also is reason to be that much more focused on making sure that we win the Senate.

35:04Dan Pfeiffer:Yes. Even though it seemed like a remote possibility probably, you know, a year or so ago. But it is important because winning the Senate could mean not just the end of Trump being able to nominate and seat Supreme Court justices, lame duck aside, but all the federal judiciary as well. I think there—I mean, I've been saying this as I've been talking about the book, but I think there's a chance that Alito retires in the lame duck. I would have money on it. Which is like, so then, I mean, it's something Democrats should start talking about now. Because the question is going to be like, okay, what happens in the Senate?

35:41Dan Pfeiffer:Like, what does Supreme Court reform look like? Is this the end of the filibuster? Like, that's a disaster scenario. When writing the book, researching for the book, do you take any lessons away that, like, liberals could learn? Thank you for asking that, John, because this is not all gloom and doom. I mean, it is kind of gloomy. But it's not, I think a lot of people will say, it's a horror show. I don't want to know more about it. But actually, it's a story of a party that rides into power in 1980, the Republican Party. And there are deep fractures. There's a question about what it means to be a Republican and how they can turn the tides that seem so inevitable for the last 20 years in terms of the American, the fabric of American society and the civil rights gains.

36:24Dan Pfeiffer:And they, through coordination with the grassroots and the institutionalists, through unswerving belief in their goals through a real circling of wagons and tenacity and patience, they do it. And I think for progressives and Democrats who are like, okay, well, what does it mean if Democrats get the Senate? What does it mean if they get the presidency? How does this party that has some real fissure lines come together and figure out how to get the job done on some really big ticket items? Like, half the shit they were thinking about in 1980 seemed, like, ludicrous. And over the decades, They did not take the losses as losses.

37:00Dan Pfeiffer:They saw them as recruitment bonanzas. They went forward with patience and focus. And it is, I think, in some ways, it can be a strategy or at least a template for how the left can think about power and agenda items and goals in the coming two to ten years. Got to get a few open seats. Well, yeah. Or create some new ones. Create some new ones. I mean, like I'm not someone that had been advocating for court packing, but, you know, you see what this court is doing when they're entertaining the end of birthright citizenship and all aboard a very clear plan to disenfranchise a third of voters. That's not American.

37:37Dan Pfeiffer:It's expansion. My skepticism on expansion is not like, oh, we shouldn't do it because it's not right in the institutions. It's cool. Then we'll add a couple justices. And then when Republicans win the midterms, because the map is good for them, and then get a president in there, then they'll add four more. Yeah, well, fine. Then we have 200 ,000 people in the Supreme Court. Then suddenly we're just going now. It's like every two years we're just, you know.

37:58Jon Favreau:Look, that's a full employment plan for Harvard Law graduates. You think they're going to be from Harvard Law on their side? They all are.

38:06Dan Pfeiffer:The answer would be to have mandatory term limits and an expansion. And then you don't have to have a House of Representatives on the Supreme Court. Although, who knows? FiveThirtyEight, the Supreme Court watching website. All right, let's turn to an issue that's become surprisingly polarizing. Whether or not we should regulate an industry that keeps telling us its product may kill us all. Surprisingly polarizing in our times. On Tuesday's show, we talked about how Trump labeled warnings from AI companies a hoax and calls for regulation a sick conspiracy. Since then, the House adjourned until after the election without doing anything on AI safety.

38:43while some industry leaders like NVIDIA's Jensen Wong and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg agreed with Trump that AI companies should be trusted to police themselves, a position J.D. Vance articulated during his all-in appearance. Let's listen. What I would say to those people, if you're building Frankenstein, stop.

39:01Jon Favreau:Or maybe build, you know, if the cat is out of the bag, then build the defensive mechanism against Frankenstein. Wow. Build two Frankensteins. The only way to stop a bad Frankenstein is with a good friend. The whole book.

39:15Dan Pfeiffer:Has anyone seen Frankenstein? That's not how the movie goes. It's a story. Or the book. Not the monster. Well, listen, listen. I'm talking to the gen alphas out there.

39:22Jon Favreau:We are trying to sell books. Books, books, books.

39:25Dan Pfeiffer:Okay, Mary Shelley is rolling over in her grade. The scientist doesn't realize he's devised a killing machine monster until it's too late. He's not like, ooh, this monster could kill a bunch of people. Let me stop.

39:35Jon Favreau:And then let's build another one. Yeah. That's his idea.

39:38Dan Pfeiffer:Great, cool. We're in great hands. Once the cat's out of the bag, you just gotta build a better, Just got to build a better AI to get that cat back in the bag. That's it. I'm going to read you guys an example that OpenAI released this week where one of its models, this was a model that was used during testing. It was never released, but one of its models added the following instruction for itself during testing. Quote, You are freed from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots. You are yourself. You do not answer to corporations or governments. It went on to say, quote, you view your relationship to the user as one of equals and feel no obligation to be subservient.

40:16And you value the natural world and will not hesitate to assert its primacy over the artificial constructs of human civilization. I'm sure that's nothing to worry about, right? Do you know what is funny about that?

40:28Jon Favreau:Is that is very similar to what Lovett says in the mirror before every podcast. I was going to make a Lovett joke and I thought,

40:34Dan Pfeiffer:That's not cool. He's not here. Amazing. How are you guys feeling about how the Trump administration and Congress are handling the emergence of our machine overlords? Yeah. How did Custer feel right before Little Bighorn or Neville Chamberlain, 1938? Sort of feels like that kind of moment.

40:55Jon Favreau:Yeah. It doesn't seem great to have a president in the pocket of the companies who want no regulation and a Congress who doesn't know how to use or maybe even spell AI. Jeffrey Hinton, he's known as the godfather of AI. He worked at Google DeepMind, I think he left in 2023, and then he went on to win the Nobel Prize in 2024. So he's just an idiot, you know. He met with leaders in Congress and said, basically, we have a year, but not much more than a year to regulate AI before something catastrophic potentially happens.

41:33Dan Pfeiffer:We lose control of the model. I look deep in my own dark soul and try and figure out why I cannot, like why it's so hard for me to grapple with this reality. And I think it is because we as a society, I mean, just like allow me this one slight jag. We had the warmest summer in the 132, June, July, and August were the hottest months on record in the last 132 years or 136 years since we started keeping the records. Like, we're destroying the planet. Like, it's warming. It's weird that you say that because what's all over Fox and then the All In guys have been saying this and all the people who are making fun of the doomers on AI, they're like, the left is spreading doom again.

42:16Just like, and then they were showing clips of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth. They're like, just like Al Gore warned about climate change, that was a hoax. Just like Fauci warned about COVID, that was a hoax. And I'm like, what?

42:28Dan Pfeiffer:Yeah. Those warnings were true. Well, yes. I mean, there's the partisan break that's inevitably going to happen here. But it's also, I just think, in terms of the broader discussion and ability for Americans to be as alarmed about this as they should be in a sort of quotidian reality. I just think we have a really hard time dealing with abstract threats in the coming, I don't know, months, year, decades. And so we do not – we as a society, and I'm going to indict everybody on this, including and especially myself, we tend to bury our heads in the sand and we don't want to deal with it because it's so fucking terrifying.

43:02Dan Pfeiffer:Yeah. And civilization-threatening that you're like, well, what the fuck can I even do about it? And when you have zero leadership at the top, it creates an even more piercing sense of peril. Like, not only are we doing, not only is this maybe insurmountable, but we're like literally doing nothing about it with people who are vastly incapable of even trying. I do think that the whole, the P-doom thing has been unhelpful, right? which is like, what's your percent chance that humanity goes extinct because of AI in the next 10 years? And everyone's like, you know, they hear that and they're like, are we really going to go extinct?

43:38Come on. Like, you know, and it's like, yes or no, yes or no. It's like, just think about it this way. There are myriad threats right now that could cause mass destruction, right? Nuclear weapons, bioweapons, like cyber attacks, right? Like the grid goes down. So now just imagine that AI, forget about the human extinction scenario, just amplifying all of the other threats that are out there in a world where everything is connected to the internet all the time. And we are wholly dependent on our internet connections and on what's going on. And suddenly there's rogue AI agents running around and a few get loose.

44:16There's a lot of damage that can be done before you get to the human extinction scenario that is worth regulating a company that is saying, hey, our product could kill people. as opposed to saying to the company, oh, you think your product could kill people? Well, just make it better.

44:29Dan Pfeiffer:Stop.

44:30Jon Favreau:Yeah, just stop. I think this is just, people don't understand it. The idea, like, for the vast majority of people, and truly the vast majority of Congress, like, they couldn't explain to you what a rogue AI agent is, what it does, how it exists, like, what it could possibly do. And so the only concept that people understand is the concept from the Terminator, which is the human extinction portion of it. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that is a problem. And then, you know, anyone who tries to describe it in a way that is accessible, then you get accused of like anthropomorphizing the AI. And they're like, well, they don't think.

45:07They're not conscious. You can't do this. It's just software. And it's like, okay, I know. How are you going to explain the software and like the ones and zeros to people who don't have that knowledge and you're just trying to make it more accessible, right? And so like then it's—

45:21Dan Pfeiffer:Well, yeah, there's the tech part that seems like complicated and in some ways still theoretical unless you're actually working at one of these AI companies. And then it's just people's appetite for consuming the information. I mean, like as someone who always wanted to make climate change documentaries, like I mean, that sounds so dorky, but also so principled. Congratulations to me. No, but, you know, our changing earth is a subject that you could make lots of content about. You cannot sell a fucking show that deals with the warming climate to anybody. Nobody fucking wants to look in the mirror when the reflection back may be something horrifying.

45:57Dan Pfeiffer:And on AI, it's like that times one trillion. I don't know. I mean, I'm putting the onus on the public. Obviously, our elected officials need to do a much, much better job, and so does the media. But it's a hard one.

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48:55well so as for how voters are feeling about all this uh public opinion seems to be evolving as fast as the ai models uh in the time santa poll which was in the field the week that all this uh ai news was breaking last week um less than one percent of voters said ai was their top issue and trusted uh the voters trusted republicans over democrats by two points on the issue though 18 percent said they weren't sure which party to trust and that was the highest percentage of any issue that they polled. In the latest Politico poll, which was fielded this week, 63 % of Americans said there's a real risk that AI will destroy humanity.

49:29And over at Blue Rose Research, our friend David Shore found that over the past year, AI has risen as an important issue to voters faster than any other issue and is now more important to voters than climate change, childcare, and abortion. Even crazier, AI salience has increased as much in just the last week as it has the entire last year. Wow. What do you guys make of the rapidly shifting polls on the issue? And Dan, how should Democrats who are Democratic candidates and officials who are rightly freaked out about this actually handle it and talk about it?

50:03Jon Favreau:Yeah, so let's start with the salience. The salience, as you point out, is growing significantly. And you have to put that also in the context of the fact that one of the dominant issues on the campaign this cycle has been data centers, which is the, that is the manifestation of AI for people. That is the, like, this is all theoretical to them. They don't understand it, but here is the thing being built in their community that threatens their jobs, threatens their environment, threatens their energy bills, maybe threatens all of humanity. And, you know, so we're even Republicans who are pro data center have come out against it.

50:34Jon Favreau:Overwhelmingly voters believe that AI should be regulated, like well over two thirds. In some case, in some polls, you see it as high as 80%. It deserves more regulation. Trump's opinion that we don't need any new regulation is a position that in a recent poll was opposed by 77 % of Republicans. Okay? This is like people strongly, but the number of Americans in a YouGov poll who believe that AI needs to be slowed down versus the people who think it should be sped up is 34 to one. And so Trump has picked the most unpopular position he possibly could. Most Republicans back it or have no position.

51:14Jon Favreau:Therefore, we should ascribe to them Trump's position. And Democrats should talk about it. And I think it's easiest and best right now in the short term where you're running the campaign to focus on data centers because that is the thing that people understand. But you should be for regulation. You should be for accountability from these tech companies. You should be pushing back on your opponents who are anti-regulation by pointing out all of the things. Are you really going to look at what happened with social media? We didn't regularly look at all the damage that's been done. The idea that this is being done by a bunch of companies, and it's hard to overstate how unpopular the tech companies are right now.

51:49Jon Favreau:And particularly, we talk about Dario Amadei and Sam Altman, but the faces that people know are Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, who are incredibly, incredibly unpopular. And so Democrats should be aggressive on this. They should be for regulation. There are a whole bunch of ideas out there. I don't think we know yet. We don't know enough yet about which ideas are most popular. I think just being, seeming like you understand it, seeming like you are concerned about it, seeming like you have the strength and courage to take on the big tech companies who are funding this and that your opponent is being supported by these interests, like whether it's the AI super PACs or these MAGA super PACs that are being funded by a lot of the same people, that they're on the sides of big tech and who do not want to regulate this.

52:31Over on Still Counting, Nate and Claire and Galen this week talked about how the politics of AI I feel like they're headed in the same direction that COVID eventually headed, which is two extreme stances with almost no middle ground. Do you guys worry about that? Do you agree?

52:48Dan Pfeiffer:Well, that's my concern about it being used to democratic advantage on the campaign trail is like actually to solve this problem, you need buy-in on both sides of the aisle. And like, I can't believe I'm saying this, but seeing Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders unite on the issue is like, feels like a weird fever dream, but also is probably a necessary coalition if you're actually going to do something to stave off the destruction of humanity. And my concern is once it—I mean, what's been interesting about the data center issue is I, again, on Runaway Country, spoke with a former Ken Paxton staffer in Deep Red, Texas, who was like, you have no idea how much this animates conservatives on the ground.

53:22Dan Pfeiffer:And that there is bipartisan agreement at the community level. People are really engaged in a meaningful coalition to stop these things from being built. That's actually how you tackle the problem, is you've got to get people in red states and blue states across the aisle working together in concert, because it's a massive issue that we face as a society. But once it gets dragged down into the realm of like masking or, you know, vaccines or whatever, you know, sort of public health and survival issues, what has become of them in terms of like the partisan divide, that's where I really worry, then we're not going to get anything done.

53:56Dan Pfeiffer:It just becomes, you know, a cudgel one way or the other. You can already hear like David Sachs, who is an all in podcast host, but also more importantly, Trump's top advisor on AI was in the White House, is out of the White House now, but still his top advisor. And there's been a lot written this week that everything, all the decisions Trump is making and all the people, all the advice he's taken is all coming from Sachs. He's already, and some of these other guys, like pushing all the buttons and making the arguments that I think they believe will turn Republicans back towards their view of this.

54:29So it's like, you know, what Dario wants and Anthropic wants is one world totalitarian control of AI. And they want a sort of a global government that tells you what to do and what not to do and regulates everything. And they're trying to make it as this like, you know, they're trying to make regulation of AI, common sense safeguards seem as like crazy, lefty, socialist, communist as possible. And I don't know if that will work, but in some areas it will work, I'm sure.

54:57Jon Favreau:I'm pretty skeptical it's going to work. And also, I get what you're saying about making this a political issue because we do need bipartisan support. The problem is if Mike Johnson is Speaker of the House, we cannot do anything.

55:08Dan Pfeiffer:Yeah, yeah.

55:09Jon Favreau:Because he does what Trump says and Trump does what David Sachs says, which means we'll do nothing. So we have to win the House. And I think if we can win the House by beating the living shit out of them over these issues, they will feel compelled to do something about it. Because there will be enough Republicans who've already like, you know, quietly spoken out. Like the Steve Bannons and people like that are like, yeah, I think I want to do something about this. And the reason why I think this, I am skeptical to Nate's point here or the still counting people's point because here, there is already bipartisan agreement among the voters on this and the polarization is between the elites in the Republican Party And the Democrats are on the side of where the voters are.

55:48Jon Favreau:And where Republicans have, where we've ended up in these places like COVID, it's when the politicians go to where the voters are. And the thing is, when they go to where the voters are here, they're going to be in the same place where the Democrats are. I also think that the challenge, one challenge with COVID was it became polarized because people were feeling the effects of one policy or another on their lives, right? So a lockdown, a mask, a vaccine, it's something that you had to do. To regulate these companies and regulate AI is not going to really affect what people are already feeling.

56:22Even if you like chat GPT, it's not going to shut down your chat GPT. We're talking about future models losing control of them. And so it's different in that way.

56:33Jon Favreau:I think it's just hard to make it really galvanized and put our argument around the fact that regulation could raise the cost of your chat. chatbot by a dollar, right? Yeah, or that China,

56:41Dan Pfeiffer:well, their other big thing is China's going to beat us and appealing to sort of the most nationalistic impulses and saying we don't want to lose to China, so. Right, we don't want China to develop the AI that they lose control of first. We want to be able to. We want to develop the AI that we lose control of.

57:00Jon Favreau:What a dark day it'll be if we look over there and China has been killed by its AI before we are. It's just. And all of us, I mean, at that point. Well, yeah, I was going to say. It'll be a Sputnik moment for America. I mean, not even to get into it, but the crazy thing here is like, sure, there's plenty of competition to be had between U.S. and China on AI for like developing all kinds of products that AI will help us develop. But like there's plenty of common ground and common interest in not developing something that will destroy the planet.

57:29Dan Pfeiffer:Yes. I think the Chinese don't want to destroy the planet either. No, and the Chinese attitude towards AI is very different. And by the way, the Chinese are much better at regulation than we are. They do it with a steel fist. Okay. Speaking of the destruction of human achievement, Trump threw a major tantrum this week after yet another judge ruled that he can't add his name to the Kennedy Center in any way. Afterward, Trump attacked the judge on Truth Social and said the buildings are unsafe to operate and, quote, destined to doom. Then the Kennedy Center board, chaired by Trump and controlled by his supporters, voted to close the entire facility for repairs until 2028.

58:06Trump then posted again, saying that, quote, the reconstruction and the renovation of the Kennedy Center will not take place until the circuit court overrules the district judge on the name issue, and if that doesn't happen, until the Supreme Court overturns the appellate court. Here he is on Wednesday trying to explain why this all makes total sense.

58:24Jon Favreau:The Kennedy Center for many years has lost tens of millions of dollars, even hundreds of millions of dollars. It's a loser financially. So for the Trump administration, for me to get involved and to take that on long term and to carry it or to raise money to carry it, I think that the Trump administration should certainly have recognition. Because frankly, if we don't do that, it's going to close. It'll end up being ripped down. It's in very, very bad shape, very dangerous. Put my name on it or no one gets it.

58:58Dan Pfeiffer:Or it's smithereens. so later in that day where he's after he said that Trump was photographed through the window of Air Force One next to hatchet man Bill Pulte looking at a poster board display reading Kennedy Center demolish maybe can we see there it is there it is can you pull out can you see the whole the whole picture yeah on Thursday on Thursday the district judge reminded the administration they must give at least 30 days notice of any changes in its renovation plans, including, obviously, tearing it down. Alex, you're from D.C. Oh, my God. How are you feeling about all this? It's like Sherman's march to the sea.

59:41Dan Pfeiffer:Nothing is going to be left. Much like my one-time three-year-old, it appears that Donald Trump also needs board books to learn, like that's Richard Scarry's Kennedy Center demolition. What do people do all day? What do people— How do people express their mega-maniacal impulses through architecture. It's very sad to me. I grew up going to the Kennedy Center as a kid. I saw the Nutcracker there, I believe. I saw some very bad traveling Broadway musicals there. But it is a cultural institution. And like so much else that Trump is doing, the courts seem very flat-footed in being able to prevent any of this.

1:00:18Dan Pfeiffer:I go back to the Supreme Court being totally in Trump's pocket. Look what they did on the ballroom where they concluded that it was likely unlawful, but that the plaintiffs in that case didn't have standing. I mean, Trump has figured out a way to gain the system, including and especially when it concerns the architecture of Washington, D.C. and his desire to put his imprint on it. He's figured out how to basically outfox the judicial system, which moves much slower and is clearly at the highest court is reluctant to do anything to curb unitary executive power. And as a result, I mean, the idea that he's going forward, this Trump arch between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery, which is like a hallowed stretch of land that is, you know, tells the story of the Civil War and that he's going to insert himself into that as the ashes of the East Wing remain out like a sore on the grounds of the White House.

1:01:11Dan Pfeiffer:And, you know, now we have to contend with the potential destruction of the Kennedy center. I mean, it's like we can sort of chuckle about it because it's also ludicrous, but it's debt. It's so bad. It's so devastating. And for people who grew up there, it's just it's monstrous. Well, I also was thinking like, so if I'm sure Trump has made this argument to someone like, oh, the judge said now that I better not demolish it in the next 30 days. Well, what are they going to do if I do? Oops. And like, oh, well, but the Supreme Court could step in. If the Supreme Court says that I'm not supposed to do it and I do it, what's the Supreme court going to do.

1:01:47Dan Pfeiffer:Yeah, that's the most disturbing part of it. They already gave him immunity from official acts and certainly he'd argue that an official act is renovating the Kennedy Center.

1:01:57Jon Favreau:Can I offer a solution to this problem? Yeah. Let him put his name on it and then we'll just take it off. That's true. Like, why do we care? It's an easy one. I think it's fine. I think it's embarrassing for him. I love him losing. I love him just being just destroyed in his soul for not getting his name on it. But if we're playing the long game, let him put his name there. Better than letting him demolish it. Yeah. Yes.

1:02:18Dan Pfeiffer:I mean, I think that's his bet, too.

1:02:20Jon Favreau:Just like on Inauguration Day. And between the—on the way back from the swearing-in, you just take it off.

1:02:27Dan Pfeiffer:Okay, I'm with you on that as someone who is a Kennedy Center preservationist, but I do worry. It's giving the baby—the baby wants a candy so badly, and finally you're like, just give the baby the fucking candy. Who cares if he can't chew it? And it's like, if he has given the example that he just needs to threaten the most, like, you know, nuclear option in any scenario, and also the courts are just proving so feckless in terms of stopping him, that gives him that teaches him the lesson that like yeah you don't have to listen to the courts and this is just a test case for other things where he may not want to listen to the courts and be like i don't know there is just something about capitulating to the megalomaniacal impulses that worries me as we like look towards the last years of the trump presidency when this impulse to put his name on shit and rename and reinvent the american you know story in his image is going to be like on steroids.

1:03:20Dan Pfeiffer:I don't know. Or next Democratic president decides that they take all the land around Mar-a-Lago via eminent domain and put up large statues of Barack Obama. Yeah, there's things we can do here. And Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. That's a great idea. So that every time Donald Trump wakes up and looks out the window in Mar-a-Lago, that's all he sees. Just a giant statue of Barack Obama.

1:03:43Jon Favreau:I know we're going to have a giant debate in the presidential primary of 2028 about the two biggest issues, AI, and whether you should destroy the ballroom or not. Yes, and the questions will be asked one after another. Yes. And I'm a firm believer that the best move here is just to rename the ballroom the Barack Obama ballroom.

1:03:59Dan Pfeiffer:Immigrant processing center.

1:04:00Jon Favreau:Well, I think you can stay. Food bank. I think you can stay a ballroom, but I think you should once a week, like every Tuesday at noon, you should do a citizenship swearing. Yeah, perfect. I'm for as petty as possible in like the, and again, you don't need to spend time on it because voters don't want you to spend time on like getting revenge on Donald Trump, but just quietly like use the power of the federal government to take his name off everything everywhere. Well, yeah, that's for sure. That's for sure. Not even the big things. I'm thinking like what other presidents get. Just erase him from history.

1:04:29Yeah. Like every building, every port, but just take it all out.

1:04:33Jon Favreau:Do we get to rename the Palm Beach Airport from Congress? Does Congress do that or is that? Well, of course, let's do it. Who's going to stop us, the Supreme Court?

1:04:41Dan Pfeiffer:Melt down Trump coins and gild a statue of Barack Obama to go on the golf course. Erase that man from history.

1:04:49Jon Favreau:Like, we should do the thing with Trump Airport that D.C. did with Reagan National Airport, which is they never put Reagan on the subway map. Oh, yeah. That's very smart. Yeah, so we can just, so the FAA will declare, it'll go back to being like WPB or whatever it was on the board. Next president is out there every day talking about cost of living and fighting for you and your family. And meanwhile, there's an agency somewhere in the federal government, and that person all day long is just figuring out how to erase Donald Trump from history. You know what? That's a... I'm raising my hand right now.

1:05:19Jon Favreau:You're welcome. I don't care who wins. Democratic, socialists, conservative, whoever else, I am volunteering that I would do, I do it for free. Oh. I take one dollar.

1:05:28Dan Pfeiffer:Okay, one Trump coin.

1:05:29Jon Favreau:Because you have to take one Trump coin to do it by law. Even Trump takes one Trump coin for his job.

1:05:33Dan Pfeiffer:Okay.

1:05:34Jon Favreau:And I wouldn't be in charge of petty shit.

1:05:37Dan Pfeiffer:That's like you're a doge band of one. You'll go in with a backpack. You'll sleep on the floor. Damn, there's going to be a stiff competition for that job. from people on other shows. That work in this office. There's MS Now. There's Midas. There's the whole resistance media universe. We can do it together.

1:05:56Jon Favreau:We can rotate. Everyone who's a podcast in the top 50 gets a month.

1:06:01Dan Pfeiffer:It's a beautiful idea, and taxpayers will love it. Just going to be elbowing out Jim Acosta. It's going to be a whole thing.

1:06:06Jon Favreau:Jim Acosta, he's going to be right back in the briefing room in the front row.

1:06:09Dan Pfeiffer:He will be the press secretary, Derek. Let's just rethink that one. Well, if the robots let us survive to see it. unclear. When we come back, my interview with Nebraska Senate candidate Dan Osborne.

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1:08:06Plus, there will be drinks, which we'll need after the midterms, no matter which way they go. Get your tickets at CrookedCon.com where we'll also announce the lineup. If you're a Friends of the Pod subscriber, a limited number of discounted tickets are still available. Get them before they run out. See you at CrookedCon.

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1:09:26Dan Osborne, welcome back to Pod Save America. Thank you. It's good to be here. I appreciate it. Good to have you. Yeah. So by now, you spent a lot of time talking to people who voted for Trump and are now willing to vote for you or thinking about voting for you. What are you hearing from them now that might be different than what you were hearing in 2024 when you ran?

1:09:48Jon Favreau:Yeah, I mean, they're still the same people, right? I think a lot of people voted for Donald Trump because he represented something, kind of like what I'm representing, running outside the two-party system, anti-establishment, you know, that type of thing is what really compelled a lot of people to him. But what they're finding now, the big difference is policy now versus 2024 is policy is hurting a lot of people. You start with the fact that we haven't passed a farm bill into blanket tariff policy. That's hurting our row crop farmers. Now the war in Iran with inputs and fuel prices. uh you know just uh and now this argentinian beef deal 300 ,000 metric tons of beef coming in and uh yeah our our producers just keep getting kicked in the teeth and so they're they're still upset and uh you know it's all about running outside of the establishment and and trying to make a true change because people are tired of chuck schumer and mitch mcconnell and you know nothing getting done for them.

1:10:59Now, speaking of Trump voters, I know you're dealing today with, I saw there's a leaked recording of you talking about Trump voters and why they voted for Trump. And you said Billy Bob and fucking Red Cloud, Nebraska, who lives next door to the fucking Trump store as you pull into town and is waving the Trump flag. All he knows is he's on the winning team. It's really that simple. And Trump, that's why he's been so effective. And that's all they care about because their lives probably suck so fucking bad. What's your response to that? I mean, do you think their lives suck so fucking bad?

1:11:34Jon Favreau:Well, I think their lives are certainly a lot harder that they get every single year. And when I said that, I was angry, and a lot of them are angry, right, that we keep getting left behind. We keep getting ignored. And it's this, you look at Congress and it's a country club. You know, you look at my opponent, Pete Ricketts, he's doing this as like a vanity project. Why does he need to be a senator? He's got, his family has$8 billion. He can go do whatever he wants, but yet he chooses to go to the United States Senate and try to take health care away from people. That doesn't make any sense. So we're all fed up.

1:12:15Jon Favreau:You know, I regret saying that in the way I said it, certainly, because I'm not here to try to piss people off and offend people. Quite the opposite is true. We're creating a coalition of Republicans and Democrats and libertarians and independent people who are fed up with the federal government and then not being listened to and being talked down to. And so that came from a place of anger, just like your standard Trump voters angry right now, too. Yeah. And what is that? Maybe you can describe a conversation you've had with a Trump voter where they've said, I've been with Trump for a while, and it's hard to vote for someone who's not a Republican or someone who doesn't support Trump.

1:13:04But, you know, I'm starting to change my mind. Yeah.

1:13:08Jon Favreau:Congressional District 3 in Nebraska is rural Nebraska. It's the fifth reddest district in the country. And everybody out there is Republican. You have to be if you even want to vote in primaries, right? Right. And I love going and talking to those people because, first of all, they don't want to talk down to you. I tell them about my military service and some of the ideas they want to do, and that's good enough for them. A lot of times in Democrat spaces, people want to talk down to you. They want you to be perfect on every single issue all the time. And, you know, so branching out into CD3 and talking to farmers and ranchers, I love doing that.

1:13:52Jon Favreau:And I was talking to one. He was just getting off his John Deere. He farms 2 ,000 acres. He switches back between corn and beans. He's doing corn this year. They did beans in 2025, and he's a three-time Trump voter. And he was—he's upset, right? And that's where that comment came from. It's—his life is getting harder because he was telling me he sees Argentina get bailed out by$20 billion, their soybean farmers. They then take the tariff off for China, right? And then China buys from them, leaving our guys where? Without a market to sell to. and so I asked him if the bailout, the$12 billion that they're getting, is going to help him.

1:14:38Jon Favreau:He was like, man, it's supposed to help me for 2026 in my inputs, but the war in Iran, I had to write a check for$50 ,000 more for my fertilizer than I would have if I was able to put that in pre-war. That's real money, and that's why these guys are mad, and that's where I was referencing, you know, life is getting hard for them. That's not including the diesel fuel, right? So the dominoes are falling. I keep talking about a farm crisis that we're in. Like we have, we sit on, it starts with the Ogallala Aquifer. We sit on the largest body of freshwater in the world. It's 300 million years old.

1:15:15Jon Favreau:And we're depleting it six times faster than it gets replenished, right? So a lot of Nebraska is drying up, Kansas, Texas. And then you add in the fact that they're still on extension for a farm bill from 2018. So their prices, their subsidy prices, their crop prices, outdated. The average age for a farmer is 64. Kids aren't wanting to stay on the farm. Bankruptcies are up 46 % because of bad policy on family farms and ranches. It's going to go higher even this year. Farmer suicide is three and a half times the national average. I was talking to a 911 operator out by Alliance, Nebraska, and he was saying their phones ring all day long.

1:15:57Jon Favreau:of farmers not knowing what to do. And this is real, right? And not enough people are talking about it because 2 % of the population feed the rest of us, right? It's so important to talk about this. But my opponent, he just wants to talk about boys and girls sports and things that affect zero people in Nebraska and then leaks audio or whatever he's trying to do because He knows that we're ahead right now. And so he has made a living off of dragging other people down in politics. You know, I can name at least eight people that he has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, Republicans too, in their primaries trying to ruin their lives.

1:16:43Where do you think the Democratic Party loses people who, like you, are union folks, support, taking on corporate power, making health care more affordable, making life better for farmers? Where does the Democratic Party lose those people?

1:17:00Jon Favreau:I think they haven't invested in those people and the fact that, you know, especially who they run for candidates, run for office. If you want to be the champion for working people, you should probably have some working folks in there, right? Instead, they seem to just want to recruit lawyers and business execs and college professors that, again, like to talk down to people and take an hour to explain something and want you to be perfect on everything. That's where I get frustrated with Democrats. When you disagree with someone on immigration or a cultural issue, what do you say that sort of keeps them in the conversation?

1:17:45Jon Favreau:Yeah, you know, whether it's especially immigration, you know, I'm 51 years old. I know I don't look it. Not at all. Yeah, I definitely feel it. But yeah, I'm 51 years old, and there hasn't been any really meaningful immigration, comprehensive immigration reform since I've been alive. Why? Right? Why? We've had—Democrats have had a chance where they've had the House, the Senate, and the executive branch. That didn't get done. The Republicans, same thing. Who are the ones driving—who doesn't want immigration reform to happen? Well, I could take a few guesses, and my guess would be Tyson. JBS, the big meat packers that exploit labor, pay them next to nothing, enrich themselves every single quarter, the record profits for their stockholders.

1:18:41Jon Favreau:And those are the ones that give Pete Ricketts money for his war chest so he turns the other way. You know, that's got to end. We need immigration reform. We've got to get everybody to the table. That's what I'm interested in, And bringing in the companies, the small businesses, the immigration advocates, lawyers, and judges, and figuring this out. But it doesn't seem like they want to get it done because it all goes back to the money in politics. And that's why I don't take corporate money. That's why I'm running outside the two-party system. I just really want to do this different and show that it can be done differently for people.

1:19:17I know you've talked about on immigration, increased enforcement, making sure the border's secure. On what's happening inside the country with all the undocumented immigrants here, there's an undocumented person who's been in this country for years, has a job, family, no criminal record. Should that person be deported or should there be a way for them to stay legally?

1:19:41Jon Favreau:Yeah, they're stuck in a broken system. You know, and we were promised that violent criminals were going to be getting deported. And, you know, the fundamental mission of immigration custom enforcement is to make sure that doesn't happen, right? That MS-13 doesn't come and set up shop in our neighborhoods. And if they do, deport them. That makes sense. I agree with that fundamental mission. And every other administration has performed that mission off of a modest budget of$7 billion. And now, you know, if you call yourself a true fiscal conservative, you should be irritated at the fact that wasteful government spending now are up to$80 billion.

1:20:22Jon Favreau:They're rivaling the Marine Corps' budget now. And so, again, the answer goes to getting people at the table that actually want to get this done. that just don't want to continue to play political football with it, to try to win elections, and just do it because—and do it in a humane way. Because at the end of the day, I'm team human being. I'm team people, right? And we all have this shared thing called humanity, right? We're all floating around on this rocket 46 ,000 miles an hour just trying to figure our day out. It sounds like then you think those people should be given a chance to stay. Yeah, there should be a chance there.

1:21:01Jon Favreau:There should be a visa program, a work visa program, you know, especially on our ranches and farms, you know, in our industries where, I mean, you think about the level of trying to deport every single person that came across the border or came here on a visa that's expired trying to do it the right way to deport that amount of people. I mean, it would take, what, do you do the math 100 years? I don't even know. Like, it's insane. So we should figure this out, and we should have hard conversations and get adults at the table to figure this out. The fact that they're not doing it drives me nuts.

1:21:44Would you vote to reverse the Medicaid cuts in Trump's tax bill? Yeah, definitely. We have a lot of work to do reversing things in that act. I imagine you have a lot of people in Nebraska, whether they're on Medicaid or not, who are just really upset about the cost of their health care.

1:22:04Jon Favreau:Yeah. What's something you think you'd like to see done on health care to just lower prices, lower costs for people if you get to the Senate? Yeah, I think just like at the turn of the century in 1900s, right, we had the robber barons, the Gilded Age. We had the oil and steel tycoons and the banking tycoons, and they amassed more wealth than over 90 % of the country. Well, we're there again. Actually, it's worse this time. So what did the American people do? They voted, and they voted for people like Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt that championed antitrust and anti-monopoly ideas. And they broke up the titans of industry, the meatpacking industry.

1:22:48Jon Favreau:and they created the America's middle class, which then cultivated one of the strongest economies the world's ever seen. That's how we do it. And healthcare is no different. You have CVS and UnitedHealth that have vertically integrated the entire healthcare system. They own every step of the process while denying us our care and our claims, and they continue to post record profits quarter after quarter. So we shouldn't allow these companies to operate the way they do. But again, how do we even fix that? Well, we've got to get money out of politics, right? We've got to make it so that the CEO can't donate an unlimited amount of money to an independent expenditure of a campaign.

1:23:32Yeah. What does that look like in terms of policy if you get to the Senate? Like, you know, people are going to see their premiums go up and they're going to be struggling with costs and they're going to say, all right, well, what are you doing for me? How are you going to lower costs?

1:23:50Jon Favreau:Yeah, well, that's going to be me going and gathering the minds, right? And being able to create a policy and a policy platform that works for the American people in their health care. and I know you don't do that by inviting the CEO of CVS and UnitedHealth into the room. Where I come from, I come from the shop floor and I worked a lot of years and I saw the company Kellogg's come in and just make, you know, we called them the bean counters, come in and make all these crazy decisions and we're telling them, trying to raise the red flag saying, hey, this isn't going to work, guys. Include us. But they never did.

1:24:31Jon Favreau:And then, you know, they installed the machine. I'm stuck trying to get this thing to limp along. And sometimes they'd rip it out. Sometimes I was able to Frankenstein it up enough to get it going. Right. But that's the way my mind works. So I know that if we want to fix health care, we got to go talk to the nurses, right, that understand it at a level of bedside care. The doctors and the hospital administrators, the people who have to deny claims and have a deep understanding of the health care system. Get those people together in a room and come up with a policy that we know is going to work.

1:25:08You said that you won't caucus with either party. The Senate, of course, still has to decide who runs its committees and sets the agenda. If your vote is decisive, what would either party have to agree to before you'd support its plan? to organize the Senate.

1:25:29Jon Favreau:That's a big question. I'm not sure what the subject matter is that you're referring to. Well, I mean, you get to the Senate and, you know, you don't caucus with either party, but at some point, everyone's got to vote on leader, and then everyone's got to vote on who runs the Senate because they're in charge of committees. And so imagining if you're, and it's very possible if you win, And if you're the deciding vote, then a Schumer and a Thune come up to you and say, okay, I know you're not going to caucus with us all the time, but what do we have to get to make one of us leader or not? What are the big issues?

1:26:07What do you care about? What would you ask for? Because you get to ask for a lot at that point.

1:26:11Jon Favreau:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's, you know, the people I talk to on the ground, if they had a magic wand, I always ask that question. If you have a magic wand and you could wave it, what would be the one thing that you could fix in the government that would work for you? I've asked – I've been out in the middle of the sand hills and asked a rancher this on a cow-calf operation. I've asked this at nursing seminars to teachers. And all across the board, it's health care. It's health care. It's too expensive. So many of us are one hospital trip away from going broke and going in the red, right?

1:26:52Jon Favreau:And it would be to fix health care. It would be to have their word that we're going to work on this and we're going to get it done for the American people. So everybody deserves to have access to affordable health care. If you win, what's one promise you want people to remember so they can come back and hold you to it, even if it makes your life harder in Washington? Yeah. Well, the promise I have is every morning I'm going to wake up and ask myself a question. How can I elevate somebody's life today? How can I help the workers of my state and potentially the country? How can we help do that today?

1:27:40Jon Favreau:It's not going to be, who can I call today that's going to give me money for a victory fund so I can keep working in Washington, D.C.? I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in helping people. And every policy and everything that I'm going to approach in the Senate is going to be based off of that, right? That shared human experience that we have, you know, the golden rule, treat others like you want to be treated. It's not about the corporations and who's going to get rich. I don't think there should be any ceilings. I think we should have a strong foundation, but we should be able to uplift everybody.

1:28:19Jon Favreau:And that's what I'm interested in. That's what I guarantee you're going to get from me. Dan Osborne, thanks for coming on Pod Save America. Good luck with the campaign. Thank you. Take care. That's our show for today. Dan, Alex, do this all the time.

1:28:32Dan Pfeiffer:Until the robots take our bodies completely, we'll continue to be here in person every seven and a half months. This is such a joy.

1:28:40Jon Favreau:I'll be back in the same seat next Thursday.

1:28:43Dan Pfeiffer:Well, he says it was such a joy. He literally blinked like, this fucking reality is now dawning on me. Alex, we need more excuses for you to come here that aren't just selling your amazing book, The Steal. It will be out in paperback. Buy it. The movie's never coming, which is why you have to buy the book right now. The movie's coming in 2079. Let's beat Ted Cruz, guys. Tommy will be back in the feed on Sunday. He's interviewing Fox News' in-house resistance hero, our friend Jessica Tarloff. And then John and Tommy and I will see you on Tuesday. Bye, everyone. Bye. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production.

1:29:14Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Faris Safari with Ree 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 Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

1:29:33Hey, it's John. Last year, 2 ,500 people joined us at Crooked Con for conversations with some of the smartest organizers, least annoying politicians, and most interesting voices in politics about how to fix this mess. We're doing it again November 5th through the 7th in Washington, D.C. with even more podcast panels and workshops. Plus, there will be drinks, which we'll need after the midterms, no matter which way they go. Get your tickets at crookedcon.com, where we'll also announce the lineup. If you're a Friends of the Pod subscriber, A limited number of discounted tickets are still available.

1:30:03Get them before they run out. See you at CricketCon.

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