Will Trump's Postal Service Seize This Mail Bag?

22:26Jon Favreau:All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can even bring your current phone and your number. Choose from three 6 - or 12-month plans and say goodbye to a monthly bill. Ditch overpriced wireless with Mint Mobile. It's so easy. Sign up online and get three months of premium wireless service for$15 a month. To get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mintmobile.com slash crooked. That's mintmobile.com slash crooked. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com slash crooked. That's it. There's no catch.

22:57Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12 months. Plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. includes up to 20 gigabyte hotspot capable device required availability. Speeding coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. Pod Save America is brought to you by Z-Biotics Pre-Alcohol. I have to tell you about this game-changing product. I drink before a night out with drinks. It's called Pre-Alcohol by Z-Biotics. Z-Biotics Pre-Alcohol Probiotic Drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic.

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23:58No questions asked. Head to zbiotics.com slash crooked, code crooked for 15 % off your first order. That's Z-B-I-O-T-I-C-S.com slash crooked, code crooked. All right, the next question is a voicemail message from one of our Crooked subscribers. Hey guys, this is Ethan from lovely Lawrence, Kansas here. I'm calling for the mailbag episode. I've been seeing an online trend of people posting their favorite campaign ads, and the time has come for transparency, for truth. We need to know who is responsible for the Big Bird ad from the 2012 campaign. On the same topic, are there any Obama-era ads or maybe not Obama-era ads that you are particularly fond of or not so fond of?

24:46What are your favorite political ads of all time? Thanks, and I approve this message. I didn't remember this ad. Dan, you must remember. I do. This was after the debate where – the terrible debate that Obama flubbed against Romney. And in that debate, one of the things that came up was Romney's position that we should defund PBS. And so we did an ad with Big Bird attacking him for defunding Sesame Street. And it was basically like the idea of the ad was like Big Bird is a criminal mastermind. And you don't want to like, he's like menacing. And so we've got to cut PBS. And the things that we made big deals out of back then, huh?

25:28Yeah. Yeah. It was just, you know, we didn't. Dog on a car. Right. favorite ads least favorite ads from everyone you know i was remembering today was uh the mike

25:37Jon Favreau:gravel the rock ad for those who don't remember this mike gravel yeah so don't don't steal my punchline the mike gravel stares into the camera silently for like 45 seconds and then he walks away he throws a rock into a lake and then he walks out of frame it's like a minute and a half long and this was mike gravel he ran into in 2008 and then later he ran again then like later these two teenage kids took over his Twitter feed. They were posting all this kind of like anti-establishment, anti-corporatist, anti-money in politics kind of stuff. And earlier this week, we learned that they took jobs at OpenAI.

26:14Oh, wow. The Gravel kids took jobs.

26:17Jon Favreau:No. That's awesome. They live long enough. Gravel teens are now working for Sam Altman. You die, Mike Gravel, you live long enough to become Sam Altman. Dan, you were saying you love the Tim Horton ad? Oh, sorry. Willie Horton. I love it. I love an ad about a Canadian fast food restaurant. Oh, because he was saying, I thought his favorite ad was the Jesse Helms black hands, white hands ad. That's your favorite ad. You like the white hands crumbling up a letter about not getting a job. Yes. I don't know. I'm not familiar with the ad you're talking about. The best ad of the Obama era and possibly this entire modern era politics is the Mitt Romney singing America the Beautiful ad.

26:58Oh, good one. Really good. Is that a super PAC ad or is that us? That was us. And it's Mitt Romney saying America is Beautiful at an event. And I would say not the appropriate key. And so it's just a video of him singing it with all these headlines of, you know, Mitt Romney's firm sends jobs to Mexico and China. Santa Massachusetts outsources jobs to India. He has a Swiss bank account. The sound effects. The sound effects in the ad. It was because it's him singing and then it would cut to those facts and it becomes a sort of echoey hollow version of it.

27:35Jon Favreau:It's excellent. Empty factory. Yeah. Reverberation. Yeah. And a big empty room. And then it ends with Mitt Romney is the problem, not the solution, which is the exact right. Like just nails the message of that election so perfectly. I was just remembering the Hillary Clinton 3 a.m. ad. Good one. Remember that? It was so good. Mark Penn. Really good ad. Really good ad. Yeah, it worked. Oh, hey. Hey. Hey, everything a losing campaign does isn't wrong. All right. Basically, for those who, I mean, you can all look it up, but it's someone's getting a call in the middle of the night. And you can see that they pick up the phone and they're just like, it's like a normal person in a house.

28:13And then, but the whole point of the ad is like when something happens at 3 a.m. in the world, some scary thing that happens, who do you want picking up the phone, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton? And it was supposed to be obviously Hillary Clinton. Yeah. It was in the strength plus experience equals change era. That's right. Which, of course, leads to my favorite fact, which is change divided by strength plus experience equals one. I don't know that.

28:37Jon Favreau:The one that was most controversial. Well, from the McCain side, it was Barack Obama's the biggest celebrity in the world. And that was viewed as some. Britney Spears, Paris Hilton. It was a terrible. That was so stupid. And it was just like completely uncontroversial. But then on our side, we did one about how John McCain is old. and it was like, John McCain doesn't know how to use a computer. And it's like him attempting to type. And Joe Biden's an asking. I was very involved in that one. That was a real project of mine. And I stand by it to this day. That was great. And then it turned out he couldn't use the computer because.

29:08Because of the torture he experienced. He was like, well, I can't use a keyboard because I was fucking tortured for this country, piece of shit. And I'm like, oh, that's a botched buy. I was take that one down. Take that one down. He was very effective in the moment. I was like, it is when I think of like the most effective political ads though, i just do think of republican attack and it's like i think of the the wolves the wolves ad that wolf from george w bush george w bush 2004 watch that wolves ad it is chilling and it is a disgusting bit of misinformation because it it it basically relies on people to not understand that there were or not even consider that there were two attacks on the world trade center so it it says it says something i'm going to paraphrase it but it's something along the lines of like john carrey didn't support security funding after the attack on the World Trade Center.

29:56Oh, that's so sad. And it was meant to be about, and it clearly meant to imply 9-11, but it was actually about the 1992 bombing of the World Trade Center. So it was just a disgusting, it's just a, George W. Bush gets the kind of patina of not being Trump now, but man, that campaign, they were despicable. Yeah, they did blame Saddam for 9-11 too,

30:17Jon Favreau:so we should have been ready for that one. Yeah. Whoopsie. All right. Next question. Subscriber NH603er. How do you guys view the rise of the alt-right Groypers that seem to be gaining popularity with younger men? The James Fishback race in Florida fizzled out, but he made real strides with younger voters. Should Democrats try to paint the GOP as a party embracing those folks going forward? It feels like a very real phenomenon, unfortunately. Tommy? I think it's a huge problem. I mean, Nick Fuentes, the kind of leader of the Groypers, He was barred from CPAC, maybe, or maybe TPUSA. He was like barred from TPUSA events and really ostracized from the Republican Party as recently as like 2021, 2022.

31:02Jon Favreau:And then he had dinner with Trump and Kanye. And then later, much later, went on Tucker Carlson's show. And now that kind of like fringe, grope or right wing has been normalized. And Fuentes has tried to sand off his edges, but I think his listeners know it's a game and he has a big and growing audience. I think it was sort of embodied by Fishback in Florida and his candidacy that got, what, 10 % or something like that? I mean, it did quite well in that primary. Fishback also, I think, openly praised and associated with Fuentes. There was that Trump aide, Paul Ingracia, who said, I have a, quote, Nazi streak.

31:36Jon Favreau:I think he's still employed there. I think there's a conservative journalist named Rod Dreher who said that he believes 40 % of MAGA staffers are Groypers. Um, so I think the, the political piece that's important though, is I think it's, um, I think it's important not to paint all Republicans or all young men as kind of fringe nuts like this. I think third way has a poll out from a while back that has Democrats winning young men overall. This is a problem of, uh, radicalism within the hard right. And it is not one unique to the United States. In Germany, the AFD is getting like a quarter of men under 25 in that sort of similar levels.

32:20Jon Favreau:It's like in the EU, like 21 percent of men under 30 across the EU back right wing populists or far right parties, whereas younger women are breaking hard to the left. So I think we need to think about, yes, you know, creating a political cost for Republicans being associated with these far right fringe groups, but also think about the issues that are driving people into these parties, whether it's anti-establishment thinking, whether it's anti-immigrant sentiment, and think about how we calibrate to better reach these people. unfortunately because we are in a moment where some of these people say such extreme things um you know uh fishback said during the campaign that the biggest issue republicans aren't talking about is white genocide just said that um he also said if you want to set our kids up for failure you would feed them the absolute goy slop in our cafeterias that is uh basically a term that neo nazis have made popular conspiracy that that jews are feeding non-jewish masses by giving them low quality food.

33:24That's what he did there. Which we haven't even started rolling out yet.

33:29Jon Favreau:We're still testing it out. Wait, so goyslop is actual food? It's not just like dumb information? Well, it's both, right? I don't think, I think, yeah, there's a lot of different ways you can. Crazy. Yeah. But I think the point is, I don't think there's a need to characterize or editorialize or label these people. Just use their words. Just use their words to your point, Tommy, because I think sometimes I think also, unfortunately, you're calling someone racist, anti-Semite, like it has become so frequent over the last several years. And in politics, sometimes people use those terms and like maybe that you don't know, like the severity of what the person has said.

34:08And these are so severe that I think just laying the statements out there, using these people's own words is probably the most important thing to do without just shortcutting it or just editorializing it. You just put it out there for people. Yeah, I also do think sometimes, especially for people that are just hyper engaged in politics, we tend to get the direction wrong between behavior and points of view, right? We think, oh, if you persuade people that there's a climate, that there's a climate emergency, maybe they'll ride a bike. but actually the best way to get someone to understand that the climate is important is by getting someone to ride a bike and by their behavior they come to kind of reveal their preference and kind of take in the idea that what they're doing is part of their identity and so like yes you can try to persuade people and i think we should but also the the path to the like the kind of online right-wing extremist path is also just like a path to misery and loneliness right?

35:03It isolates you from women who want nothing to do with you. It leaves you in the kind of the throes of the Andrew Tates of the world trying to convince you of something that just simply isn't true. And it's like, if you want to live a happy life, you just have to get away from this stuff. And once you start coming out and sort of engaging with the world and being open to people that you might have thought otherwise wouldn't be, you know, sort of part of your community, all of a sudden you'll realize how stupid and terrible these other views were too. And just getting people to realize like, forget what your ideology is.

35:30Aren't you unhappy? Doesn't this suck? aren't you miserable being online and angry all the time susan on facebook asks if you were advising a democratic presidential campaign how would you recommend they talk about foreign policy in the world should they be talking about improving the united states global standing after trump i'm gonna go to dan first on this one yeah dan what do you got buddy i got it's this is an easy one one word answer don't i knew that's such a fucker i thought i'd go to dan first so he would say that and then Tommy could respond. Dan actually drafted the Darlene Graham answer.

36:01He said, here's what you say. You say you don't know about foreign policy. You're going to win, I promise. People are going to create, make fun of you online. They're stupid. If you say, I don't do foreign policy, you're going to beat this fucking

36:11Jon Favreau:congressman. You know what's funny? I bet there's a version of that answer where she's like, I don't give a fuck about this boring crap, you know, that's like more effective, actually, that people would have liked, but whatever. You can't say, I don't do foreign policy. You're currently a senator. Yeah, you're doing it. You're not just applying for the job. read up. No, she actually said one point. She's like, I'll read up once I get there. And it's like, once you get there, you're there. Yeah. I believe you're on some very important committees. Yeah, it's funny. I mean, really, really briefly, I think I would just the number one thing is we got to take back the mantle of being the anti-war party.

36:41Jon Favreau:It's crazy that we lost that to Donald Trump, especially given what we've seen him do in Iran. We need some sort of smart version of what a newly rebuilt USAID would look like. I don't think that you can just run it back the same way. It's got to be different. And then there will be there's going to be a big conversation about what a Democratic Party trade agenda looks like that I think is very relevant to people. But I don't know what that is. It's not going to be tariffs. But will it be repealing the tariffs? Yes. I mean, I think so. I don't know. It should be. I mean, you heard Jeffries the other day.

37:16I know. I heard Newsom the other day being like, I couldn't guarantee that I would repeal all the tariffs. Maybe not all of them, but like 50 percent tariffs on Canada for no reason. I feel like there's a kind of catch-all answer for this kind of question right now, which is we're not going to do, you know, we're not going to repeal things just because Trump did them. But we're going to we're not going to leave in place anything. Anything that he did was dumb and stupid and destructive to the economy. But there are some cases where long before Trump, we all would have agreed that we need to do something to protect American manufacturing.

37:42Right. That's not an unreasonable answer. To your point, Dan, about don't, I wonder if there's a political case, just pure political poll driven case that this election in 28 will be similar to 2008 in that you have a president who had just gotten us into a unbelievably unpopular war and, you know, hated or at least not liked around the world. And we actually saw in that election that it was not just the right thing to do, but like politically useful to talk about foreign policy and like restoring respect for America and ending stupid wars and investing more at home. Like it does feel like this is going to be an election where it would be beneficial for the 2028 candidates to talk a little bit about foreign policy.

38:29I don't know necessarily about like rebuilding our NATO alliances, but. We don't have to. Sure, Biden, save NATO. That's right. That's right. But let me give a real answer here. Like, I always joke about this because when we were in the White House, like you could watch it in focus groups and dial groups that every time Obama was in the midst of a financial crisis, every time Obama was doing something on foreign policy, that was it ending a war or making America safer? Like people, like people, the dials went down, people got mad. It was a constant, like you could see it in all the state of the unions.

38:59It was just like, it was a thing. It was a constant battle in the White House about how much foreign policy versus how much domestic policy you do. So I think you are correct, John, that in a campaign, especially if we are still in a war in Iran, foreign policy is going to matter. And you have to, to Tommy's point, be the anti-war party. We have to – like there is a space in this country. And there is, particularly in a campaign, especially given who a lot of our candidates are and the levels of experience they have, there's a threshold you have to meet to have people believe you can actually do that part of the job.

39:28And so you're going to have to talk about it. Yeah. All right. Dr. Guy Montag from Twitter asks, what do you think the pod accomplishes given the audience already agrees with you slash votes dem?

39:42Jon Favreau:It's nice to hear from Spencer Pratt's father-in-law, first of all. Dr. Montag. Oh, Dr. Montag. It's actually a character, like a Ray Bradbury character. But anyway, Dr. Guy Montag. I mean, I guess I'd direct you to the comments if you think that everyone agrees with or likes what they hear on the show. So that is not my point. Those will quickly disabuse you. I think over the years, I've heard from a lot of people in real life that they're like, oh, I listen to you guys sometimes and like Tucker sometimes or Ben Shapiro sometimes or fill in the conservative blank because a lot of people do kind of want to hear from the left and the right.

40:14Jon Favreau:But I mean, another big goal of the show is not just to like talk to people about what's happening in the world, but get them to get involved in politics, be activists in their own lives, knock on doors, donate. So that's a really big part of what we do here and why it matters, we think. Yeah. Also, the audience doesn't agree with itself. It doesn't always agree with us. And we don't always agree with each other. And I think if you turn on, say, Fox News right at this moment, you'll probably see a big picture of Hassan Piker and in between Abdul Al-Sayed and, you know, maybe a trans swimmer in there once in a while.

40:46But like and even in the mainstream media, right? Like I like I like I think Jonathan Martin is a great reporter. But when he is asking Rob Sands if he wants Kamala to campaign, he has a different interest than we do in building a big democratic and successful electoral coalition. And so there does need to be a place where we can have these inter-party, inter-movement conversations in a way that are productive and constructive. And that's, I think, part of what we try to do with our guests here. That's what we try to do with Crooked Con. And there does need to be a place for that. And that is valuable, even if a lot of the audience does largely agree and vote Democratic.

41:22subscriber ZZ asks best reasons to attend Crooked Con? Fab said there will be drinks. I want to hear more. What more is there? There's drinks. She wants to know their apps. Will there be canopies? Yeah, there'll be also Kay and Ayahuasca. What do you think? There'll be various kinds of cocktails you can get. Are your hands shaking? Is this a Pete Hexf. Burner account?

41:46Jon Favreau:You could meet a cute ice officer or National Guard. Oh yeah. to Washington to keep the peace. Suppress insurrections. Some great panels. Everyone wants a great panel. Yeah, that's right. Good conversation. Dan, what do you think? When I suggested this question, I said this would be a great place for an organic plug for CricketCon. By the way, hitting it out of the park down. Whenever you say organic plug, it really helps. I also just did an organic plug for CricketCon. I read the brief. This would be my pitch to anyone about Y2Cum is if you are a person who works in politics or wants to work in politics, there is no better place to be to meet the people at all levels of politics who are working in their communities nationally on Capitol Hill to actually bring change.

42:32It's a great place to network. It's a great place to learn. You said there are going to be incredible panels. It's going to be a lot of fun. So there's a real opportunity there. So organic. I wanted some music under that. We're also like the next two months, we're all going to be going crazy about these midterms. I mean, nervous, looking at the polls, hopefully be volunteering. And what a great opportunity after the midterms to just like get together with a bunch of people and be like, all right, so we all just went through that together. Yeah, we could all be together and wait for the votes in Alaska to come.

43:02I was about to say, we can talk about the elections we won, the ones we lost, the militia we're going to put together to rescue those voting tabulators from Wyoming.

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45:05This one is from Subscriber, Not Elijah. Sure. Cool. What's your worst compulsive news consumption habit? Opening tabs. I would say trying to inhale news via Twitter while walking. A lot of walking and then sometimes going to the bathroom.

45:22Jon Favreau:I was going to say. A lot of tabs. But there's a lot of times where I'm just like, well, I'm like, stop. You're walking somewhere. Just walk with the phone in your pocket. Yeah, walk with the phone in your pocket. I have too many tabs open and I often never come back to the ones I have open. I'm just sort of always falling behind my tabs. My biggest regret are the longer articles that I've never gotten to. Like, as I sit here, I'm like, oh, I never read that Atlantic story about the person you had offline. Tyler Austin Harper. Tyler Austin Harper. I was like, I had that open. But you listened to the episode.

45:50Yeah. So I got the gist of it for sure. And I heard you prepping for it. Like, you were next to me prepping for it. So by osmosis, I feel like I kind of got the gist. Because you're like, I remember you turned to me and you, can you believe this? And that's really calling you. That's the main takeaway from it. Can you believe this? And so I feel good about it. mine is too many twitter alerts oh yeah you i i've been with you when all of a sudden your phone's blowing up with like 10 twitter alerts i'm like you you really have that many notifications from twitter i do because i try to spend less time in the actual feed which i found to be very bad for me mentally in a lot of ways and now still still kind of sucks and so this way i am trying to optimize my news consumption for the people or the things i care about that's good that's smart no it's not smart because it's you're under constantly under fire under fire um b coletta from instagram asks uh any recommendation for podcasts newsletters etc to better understand what's happening on the right timey i feel like you've got this i mean will summer's false flag

46:51Jon Favreau:newsletter at the bulwark is a great way to have someone curate it all for you and explain it for you and kind of unravel and unpack all the insanity and the relationships and why they all hate each other um but then you got to decide if you want to dive in the pool yourself and start listening that's that's a different that's a different beast do you want to go down the tucker road and catch that monologue i've always i just have always enjoyed uh he can be an asshole about democrats he wrote i think he wrote a book called liberal fascists that tells you where his head was at but i just always found uh jonah goldberg to be a really entertaining writer i just always You've been consistent on this.

47:26I have, and he's anti-Trump. He doesn't like us much either. He doesn't like much of anything, but I enjoy his content. Brianna from Instagram asks, I want to become a speechwriter. Where should I start? And Isabel on Instagram asks, any advice for new college grads looking for campaign jobs? So when I watched the West Wing and wanted to be a speechwriter, but I didn't know a real plan or understanding for how to make that happen. As you can see from my, if you're familiar with this program, I sort of careen, do a lot of careening in my life. But I volunteered on the Kerry Edwards campaign in 2004, unbeknownst to me, John was upstairs as a junior speechwriter.

48:07And I just volunteered to write anything. So they needed regional op-eds in regional newspapers. Newspapers were these things they printed all across the country and people could read about their area. And so you would always have these surrogates that would be publishing local op-eds, congresspeople, pastors, whatever. And I just would jump and sort of do the draft of them. And they'd go up the chain and other people would edit them and fix them and make them make sense. I didn't know what I was doing. And then there were like several hurricanes that year in 2004. There was Ivan and three or four others.

48:36And so someone was always like, oh, we need somebody to draft the John Kerry thoughts and prayers hurricane victim statement. And I just ended up doing a bunch of those. And the people that I was writing them for remembered that I could put a sentence together when they were looking for someone to be in a junior job on Capitol Hill. So for me, it was like just as an intern slash volunteer, kind of just jumping on those things. Yeah. Work in the press office, communications office, if you want to be a speechwriter, because that's usually the best way into it, because they'll get a chance to write.

49:01And it's hard to just like apply to be a speechwriter without previous writing and campaign experience. Dan, Tommy, what about getting campaign jobs out of college?

49:10Jon Favreau:I mean, I just think like, don't think you can select your job. Take whatever job you can get. And don't worry about it not being a policy job or a communication job or the thing you want to do. Just get in the door, meet the people, work your ass off. People will notice if you are a hard worker that's smart, that's capable, that gets stuff done for them when they ask and they will give you the next thing. If you suggest that you want to be a speechwriter or work in the policy office, I would immediately toss your resume in the waste bin. because it's like you want people who are just going to come in and do whatever and then find their place and get there the way love it did by just taking an opportunity and being good at it um but if people there's always a warning sign when someone says they want to do policy as a 22 year old getting out of college going to work on a house campaign usually they've come right from harvard princeton somewhere like that love it you have some you have some questions oh yeah i have a few sort of hypotheticals that i'll put in front of you and i'll also just sort of thought starting questions uh there is a button in front of you if you press it you lose a month of life at the end of your life but you gain a week of your life at the current age do you press it and if so how many times oh oh you can press it multiple times multiple times well you lose a month that in your in your in your two months yeah right you start well you don't know when the end of your life is no but let's assume you're going to live to an old age so this is sort of in in your sort of decrepitude you're kind of declining moments you'll have less time but more or less time than you would gain having more time.

50:40So what am I gaining? Is it now a 53-week year if I push it once? You are younger for longer. You have more years of your current youth and vitality, as it were. But time doesn't freeze. No, time does not freeze. Everything continues. You're just going to be younger for longer, but not as much as you'll lose at the end of your life.

50:59Jon Favreau:If we're talking about being like between 90 and 90 and a half, I'm hammering that button. Wow. Interesting. That's not a good time. I'm not pushing it. Not once. But because we don't know, I'm not pushing it ever. Yeah. I went through and I was like, yeah, I'll push that. And then I'm like, if you don't know, I don't know if I want to push it. OK. I mean, you're you know, you're we're all at the point where we're likely to live deep into our 80s. That's really based on that. Based on that. I mean, it's just what the tables say, you know. I mean, the hard part is if you're an old parent with young kids, you probably want to save all the time at the end yeah that's a good point or you want to be more vital now this is the challenge or i mean why don't you why don't you just eat healthy and work out and then live a lot keep that extra month yeah press the button in the fridge in a sense okay the button is called are you pressing it no i'm not pressing dan nope tommy no now pressing it next question are you president uh no i i'm i'm i'm committed to the idea that uh being old and falling apart is just part of the experience and you got to do the whole ride it's true you know uh do you eat off the floor uh five second rule i usually do a five second well it depends on where the floor is if something just drops quickly i mean when you say do you eat off the floor i imagine like or what are your rules so for me i think if it's wet no no wet food comes back up but dry food yeah for sure no problem inside outside i don't care but if it's if that's out on the sidewalk i don't know i don't know or like it like if i'm in like an airport airport's tough airport's tough but home for sure oh god yeah uh next question you go back in time it's the year 1907 you're in vienna austria and there he is the source of so much pain and misfortune and death the artist and professor who rejected hitler's application to the academy of fine arts with the following note quote sample drawing unsatisfactory too many heads do you kill christian gierpenkarl Gripen.

52:55Kill Christian Gripenkirl. Why are we killing him? Because he rejected Hitler. Had he not, if he is dead and Hitler is accepted to the Academy of Fine Arts. Oh, so the presumption is Hitler gets accepted. Yes, he is the person. He was the reason he didn't get in. He was already given in. What if someone else wasn't going to get him in? Under the assumption that killing Christian Gripenkirl allows Hitler to become an artist.

53:15Jon Favreau:John wants more information on the admissions process. Is there somebody we could call? Is there a donation? Is there a way to get him on the tennis team? Yeah, do I know anybody on the board of the Vienna Society? Get him an NIL deal. I don't want to be killing this guy if Hitler was just going to get in anyway. Well, that's the question. That's blood on your hands. Yeah. What if the person whose spot Hitler takes becomes a worse Hitler? Right. What a coincidence that is. Yeah, that's interesting. That's interesting. Too much of a bank shot. I don't think I do it. I feel like Leavitt's guaranteeing it.

53:50I'm saying Hitler, the rise of national socialism is certainly dependent upon Hitler not becoming an artist. So I think you can safely say. I also think it's a it's quite a presumption to think that if Hitler didn't become an artist or if Hitler did become an artist, he wouldn't have found his way to Nazism somehow. And then you just killed just a persnickety. Yeah, I'm just trying to save this guy. Right. I mean, there is an argument for, I can't justify this, you know, because you'll just be going to jail for the rest of your life in Austria because people will be like, why did you kill him?

54:20You're like, you have no idea. Now I'm stuck in jail in 1908 in Austria. Yeah, that's a bummer. All right, next. Is the voice in your head in the first person, second person, third person, or does it shift? In other words, do you say, if you say something stupid, do you say, why did I say that? Do you say to yourself, why did you say that? If Dan does a good job in the pod, does he say, I really crushed it today? Or does he say, Dan really crushed it today? What do you, what is it? Please tell me no one says the third person. I know. Some people, it's not mine. I don't speak, I don't think of myself in the third person.

54:51Pretty sure I'm a you. That's interesting. Yeah, you're a second person. You speak to yourself. What do you, what do you do, Dan? First person. Yeah. It's funny. We love it previewed this, this one question to me and Tommy. And I started thinking about it and I was like, I don't think I do either. There you did. Your first person. You just did it. Now I'm talking. Right now you're talking. But I was like, I don't know if I identify myself. Like, there's definitely a voice in there, but I don't know if it's saying like, John, you did this or I did that. Like, I think I would lean towards I, but I'm not sure that I do this at all.

55:21For me, I think it's a back at next Melbeck. It's mostly for me. I it's mostly I. I. But every once in a while, I'll be like, God, you fucking moron. Like, I'll I'll definitely throw myself a punch.

55:30Jon Favreau:Yeah. Do I do? I bet I switch up between first and second. Definitely. No, never. Tommy hungry. Don't some people not have an internal monologue. Isn't that a thing that we know about? Yeah, it may become President of the United States.

55:46Final question. A wizard punishes you for being disloyal to Joe Biden. You are - Is the wizard Hunter Biden? It's the wizard. It's a wizard. Some kind of a wizard. You are suddenly trapped in the body of a dog in your family home. And as part of the spell, your family accepts that you are a beloved family pet and that you, the actual you, are on some kind of extended work trip and fine. how would you try to communicate what is happening to your wife and do you believe you could successfully tell your wife that you are a human trapped in a dog's body and in fact her husband and what would your strategy be just i would give up there's no way emily would ever be able to figure that out nor would leo be able to communicate that to emily if i was but no but you're you you're you know i'm me but like i'm trying to give your full brain like your full brain in there yeah i know and knowledge but i still have i'm still have a dog body and that's right not speak that's where you can bark you have the power of barking and pause to me what i was trying to get to is can i get to a point where it is clear that one bark is yes two barks is no because once you've got yes to no you're off to the fucking races if you could do number you can do numbers right there's ways it's like you're you're an alien trying to figure how to communicate with a person.

57:01I think my strategy would be to find paint and then use my paws to write a note. Wow, get some tomato sauce. Oh my God, that's so smart, Dan. Now you're like, you know, you're like - I was thinking of just like things on the ground. Before you were about to say paint, just like there's plenty of toys in my house. Just like move them with my paws to spell I am John. That's great. And by the way, freaky. Emily's in a panic. Emily's like, did I take the right person? What the fuck? Am I mixing things, fuck? Yeah. What the fuck did I do? What did I take?

57:35Jon Favreau:The challenge here is having Hannah be open to the universe of this communication happening. And I feel like that's far more my role, that the thinking the dog would talk to me. Well, now I'm trying to play it out because the first I would be like, oh, my God, Leo just or this dog, whatever, just spelled out I am John. So she texts me and then I don't respond because I'm on an extended work trip. and then the wheels start rolling. Is this a movie? It could be. It could be a movie. It could be a movie. All right. Well, that was all I've got. Well, that's food for thought. Food for thought, everyone.

58:10Great work. There are a bunch more great questions that we didn't have time to get to today. Reid is going to field a bunch of those in this week's open tabs. That's exciting. Love it. Have you sent them to Reid for open tabs? You bet. Our Substack newsletter. or subscribe to Friends of the Pod if you want access to our Substack newsletter and ad-free episodes of all of our great Crooked Pods.

58:40Pod Save America is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Listeners, here's a riddle. What do gearheads, news junkies, biohackers, comedy nerds, and true crime-obsessed wine moms all have in common? They all have heard a lot of ZipRecruiter ads. Let's face it, ZipRecruiter is everywhere. Why are they everywhere? Because great candidates for all your different roles are everywhere. Just like you, these people listen to business shows, sports shows, and yes, even this show. And when these candidates hear all these ads, it increases the chances of them going to ZipRecruiter and responding to your job post.

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1:00:33Jon Favreau:I am very excited to welcome back to Pod Save America the president of Vote Save America, Shaniqua McClendon. Great to see you. Good to see you too. How you been? How's D.C.? Seems a little steamy there maybe? It is very hot. I think it's 90-something degrees today. and Donald Trump still lives here. It's all the takes burning up the place. We wanted to talk about Vote Save America's work this cycle and your plan to take back the House and the Senate. No pressure. This year, you guys launched a program called The Crooked Dozen. It's an effort to flip 12 of the most beatable and most annoying Republicans in the House of Representatives.

1:01:13Jon Favreau:Tell us a little bit about The Crooked Dozen. Tell us about the effort. Yes. So when we were coming up with this list, we weren't just thinking about like, what are the most competitive races out there? We were thinking about who are the worst candidates out there, the worst Republican incumbents who just will get their constituents blood boiling and want to get them out of office. And so we were thinking about people who might seem like they hate their constituents. Like Congresswoman Miller Meeks, she's opposed to capping insulin prices, which seems crazy. And she actually has gotten into a lot of arguments with her constituents, so she might just literally not like them.

1:01:47and only won by, I think, around 700 points last time. So she's someone who has made her constituents angry and actually didn't have a huge margin to begin with. And so, but this is part of a larger electoral strategy that we had been thinking about for some time. Democrats are largely expected to win the House this year, but if Democrats only have a few seats that they have a majority with, that's not really a governing majority. You will have some people who might vote with Republicans sometimes and just make things more difficult. So we're thinking about how can we create a governing majority?

1:02:21So doing that by looking at races that maybe other people are not looking at, looking at fewer Democratic incumbents and seeing how we can flip more Republican held seats, which is how we got to some of the crooked dozen that we have now.

1:02:33Jon Favreau:I love it. Got to hit the gas. You know, it's that year. This is going to be a good year. We've got some big momentum behind us. I love that you just you mentioned Iowa, because that's also a state where there are two big statewide races where we have great Democrats at the top of the ticket. You got Rob Sandman running for governor. I want to govern for a day. We got to take that seat. We got a great Senate candidate, Josh Turek. There's an amazing New York Times piece about Josh Turek today, Friday, September 4th. That's worth your time. So I think it's really smart for you guys to focus on some of the down ballot races that maybe you're not getting the national attention or the money but need our help.

1:03:08Jon Favreau:Another one we should just talk about for a second is Max Miller. It's pretty obvious why he's on the list. We had Brian Poindexter on this show, his opponent. Good iron worker from Ohio. That feels like another exciting race. We have a big good opportunity for a pickup, right? Yeah, on both sides. Brian is great, but Max Miller is I mean, he's just awful. He's been in the crooked dozen, will continue to be in the crooked dozen. We haven't gotten as lucky with him. Two of the people who are actually in the crooked dozen already have been kicked out. What happens? You know that it kind of sucks for us because I would have loved to beat them.

1:03:41Same. But one of them, Andy Ogles, he was just too extreme and he did not make it out of his Republican primary.

1:03:48Jon Favreau:Can you imagine being too crazy for the current NAGA primary base? Anyway, continue. Sorry. Yeah. Which I think says something that could be exciting about at least just having normal Republicans in Congress again. And then in North Carolina 11, I'm not from North Carolina 11, but I am from North Carolina. So this got me excited. Charles. Sorry. Chuck Edwards, which I guess his name is Charles. Yeah, he just had some weird harassment scandal. I think he was censured recently and he gave some of his women staffers guns. So just a lot of crazy stuff happening in that office. But now they're not in the Crooked Dozen anymore.

1:04:24So we replaced them. We actually ran a little competition online to see who our audience thought the next two additions to the Crooked Dozen should be. And those results led to David Valadeo in California 22 and gave Evans in Colorado aid. If you, you know, if anyone wants to see it, they can go look at the post and see some of the comments from people who live in those districts and have strong feelings about them.

1:04:48Jon Favreau:I love that. Let the people decide what the masses dictate to us who gets on this list. We should just say Chuck Edwards, gigantic creep. I believe he harassed his staffers so often that he gave one of them, I think, a jigsaw puzzle in the form of an invitation to a date. Like, buddy, what are you doing? But yes, no, I'm glad we removed them and added some new folks to Target. All right. So let's talk about how. Vote Save America's tactics this year are not the same as they were in 2024. How are they evolving? How are you guys thinking differently about these races? Something that we have done since Vote Save America was started is always make sure when we are asking people to give us their time, attention or energy or time, attention or money that we're spending it as effectively as possible.

1:05:32And so after 2024, you know, I think a lot of people listening to this podcast probably went and knocked doors. They called voters. But if you are existing in today's world, when you knock on those doors, a lot of people have, you know, I know Simply Safe is one of our advertisers.

1:05:47Jon Favreau:Ring cameras. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of people do not want to talk to the canvassers who are coming by. And then, OK, I've gotten mixed answers on this. You have an iPhone. Are your text messages filtered now? Oh, God, yeah. It doesn't always help, but they are. Yeah. But you see a lot less of those like campaign texts coming through. So if you have people who are calling and it says potential spam, people don't answer that. And they're just trying to get you to vote. Same with those text messages that people aren't seeing. So we have been thinking about like, how do we respond to that? And, you know, in addition to kind of those changes, we also know that people, they trust the people who are in their lives.

1:06:25If they follow people online, they trust the people that they've chose to follow online. So the stuff that we're doing this year is really focused on how do we meet people kind of in their personal relationships, but also on their kind of like parasocial and online relationships. And that's what we're going to be mobilizing our audience around this year. And so I won't go into a ton of detail. We actually will be having a call this evening if you are hearing this on Tuesday. And so you can go to votesaveamerica.com to sign up. We're going to go into more detail. But generally, we will be training the audience on how to map their network into the targets that we're focused on.

1:06:59So they can talk to the people they know in those places and get them to vote, make sure they know stuff. Like, you know, that David Valadeo voted to throw a bunch of people off of Medicaid, even though he has one of the highest percentage of Medicaid recipients in his district. And so that's the kind of information we want to make sure people have to talk to the people they know. But we're also going to go online and make sure that we're engaging with some of the content that can reach people who might not otherwise pay attention to what's happening in politics, but also make sure you can share stuff in your group chats and just are meeting people more directly.

1:07:32And that's not to say that door knocking and phone banking don't matter in certain places. They do. But after so many hundreds of thousands of people, over a billion dollars was spent in 2024, we just knew that there were some new tactics that needed to be in the mix when we're trying to win these elections.

1:07:48Jon Favreau:You got to evolve. We're like Darwin over here in the political world. You got to evolve. All right. Where can folks go to get involved if they like what you're saying, if they want to be a part of it and they want to toss out the crooked dozen? Go to votesaveamerica.com. You can sign up for the call that we have this evening. Jon Favreau and Abdul Al-Sayed will be joining me and Greta Carnes. So it'll be an exciting call. And just generally, you can go to votesaveamerica.com. One other thing I'll throw in there is, you know, this work requires a lot of money. If you're paying attention to political news right now, a lot of donors are still really frustrated about 2024.

1:08:23But a lot of Vote Save America's work has been able to continue because of the people who listen to this podcast. So I want to say thank you for that. And if you are in a space to, you know, donate a little bit more and through our anxiety relief program, which is a monthly recurring donation program, it really will help us in getting this work done. And if you don't have the resources to do that, your time and attention is just important. So if you go to votesaveamerica.com, you can find all the ways to get involved.

1:08:47Jon Favreau:Excellent. Well, thank you for all the work you're doing. Thanks to everybody out there who has donated, volunteered, gotten involved in some way, talked to their friends about politics, just try to encourage people to care. We got to have some hope, people. Yes. This now is our moment. These midterms knock on everything. I feel like they're going to be good. And it's step one to 2028. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, we got to get some momentum and some wind at our back. And then we're going right into 2028. Shaniqua, great to see you. Thanks for all the work and talk soon. Yeah, bye. Thanks to Shaniqua for coming on the pod.

1:09:18And thanks to all of you for submitting your questions. As a reminder, you can find a volunteer opportunity near you or donate to the fund to defeat the crooked dozen at votesaveamerica.com. Dan and I will be back with a new show in your feeds on Friday. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Faris Safari with 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.

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