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can't pay your bill collectors with brand value.

0:34

And so Trump's legal troubles are becoming real

0:36

financial troubles. $83 million here, $5 million there,

0:39

a big judgment on the

0:41

way. At some point, those little sums

0:44

start to add up. Republicans, by the

0:46

way, have taken a short break from

0:48

their frivolous impeachment of the president in

0:50

order to pursue a frivolous impeachment of

0:52

the Secretary of Homeland Security. It's

0:54

an election year, and that means it's time to talk

0:57

about the border. We'll help you sort out how to

0:59

talk about it with Trump leaning or Biden

1:01

curious family and friends. Finally, right

1:03

wing media is sounding the alarm

1:05

about the greatest threat to America.

1:08

You guessed it, Taylor Swift. This

1:11

is as silly as it is mean, but it

1:13

is more likely than not that you'll find yourself

1:15

defending Taylor Swift as much as Joe Biden this

1:17

year. So we may as well start now. Welcome

1:19

back to the podcast for the 54% of

1:22

Americans who vote for progress in every election

1:24

and want to convince their conservative friends and

1:27

family members to join a majority. This is

1:29

majority 54. All

1:32

right, Jason, well, apologies to the audience. I'm in

1:34

a glass box right now. So I might have

1:36

like a huge echo going on last case of

1:39

emotion. I know I tried to find

1:41

somewhere that didn't have an echo like phone booth or

1:43

something. But more importantly,

1:45

$83 million judgment announced

1:48

by a jury in New York over

1:50

the past few days. And we,

1:53

as we're recording this podcast, there could be

1:55

a ruling in the James judgment as well,

1:57

which many people think is going to be

2:00

much, much larger. Jason,

2:02

you were the civil attorney here. What's

2:05

going on? I honestly

2:07

didn't realize there were two separate cases

2:09

until recently, like with two separate judgments

2:11

here, but the great state of

2:13

New York is truly delivering. We're

2:15

doing our part. So I

2:18

do have trouble keeping track

2:20

of these a little bit. So okay, let's review.

2:23

The E. Jean Carroll case is where the

2:25

$83 million judgment comes from, right? And that

2:27

is where Trump has been found liable for

2:30

sexual assault. And

2:32

then after that, he was ordered

2:34

to pay $5 million in

2:37

defamation, right? In a defamation claim because he

2:40

was found liable for sexual assault and for

2:42

defamation. And he went out and said, I

2:44

didn't, I didn't, I never met this woman.

2:46

And they were like, yeah, you did. You got to pay her

2:48

$5 million. And then after that judgment, he

2:50

went out and he was like, no, seriously, I've never met

2:52

this woman. And she's terrible. And he said a bunch of

2:55

other things. And then that brought a new claim. And now

2:57

the judge in that has said that's going to be $83

2:59

million. Now, just like what

3:02

will happen with another case that we'll talk about in a second,

3:05

that is going to get into the world

3:07

of appeals. Something that if people don't

3:10

already know, when you

3:12

win a big judgment, and

3:14

this is true for trial lawyers, just like it is for

3:16

plaintiffs, for the clients, it

3:19

doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get paid

3:22

right away. Because then then what happens is

3:24

like a new negotiation, usually and an appeals

3:26

process, like, and they go

3:28

hand in hand, because what happens is the

3:30

defense that's been ordered to pay all this money, they're

3:33

like, hey, we're going to find a bunch of ways

3:35

to appeal this. And while we do that, you're not

3:37

going to get paid. And we

3:39

may get the judgment to come down on

3:41

appeal, we may get it reversed on appeal.

3:43

So what is implied is, do you want

3:46

to negotiate a settlement? Do you want to

3:48

or do you want to risk like, do you want to do you

3:50

want to go all in and see, you

3:52

know, do you want to go

3:54

all in? Or do you want to take what

3:56

money we'll give you right now? That's

3:58

probably it. And maybe happening

4:01

a little bit behind the scenes because Trump is going

4:03

to be out there looking in this case probably

4:06

because of his financial troubles that there's

4:09

been a lot of people writing about lately. He's

4:11

going to be out looking for an

4:14

appeal bond, somebody to like invest in

4:16

him winning on appeal. But

4:18

the problem with that for him is even

4:21

if it doesn't work, he's got to pay

4:23

back. It's like any other loan. He's got

4:25

to pay it back with interest. So that's

4:27

the Eugene Carroll case. On

4:29

the other side, you have this case that the

4:31

AG, the Attorney General of New York, has brought

4:34

for some time, which is about the business practices

4:36

of the Trump organization. We've covered that on here.

4:38

It's been covered by a lot of folks. It's

4:41

about Trump overvaluing

4:44

his assets in order to get loans

4:46

at favorable rates and to get bigger

4:48

loans. And a bunch of

4:50

people are implicated in it. And

4:52

now we're going to get a judgment handed

4:55

down possibly today. And

4:57

it's going to be like high,

5:00

seven figures. I mean, eight figures, I guess that would

5:02

be. I can't even count. But

5:04

it's probably north of 100 million. And

5:08

so that is a whole other issue. So

5:10

it's two separate civil cases where he's, I'm

5:12

sure, going to be trying to delay an

5:14

appeal, but also trying to

5:16

figure out how much he would be

5:19

willing to settle for. And there's the wrinkle of he's

5:21

probably going to be asked in this case

5:24

to put up some

5:27

amount of money as sort of a down payment

5:29

on it that he probably wouldn't necessarily pay to

5:31

the people who sued him. But it would be

5:33

something where he'd have to pay it to the

5:35

court to let the court hold it. So

5:38

it wouldn't be available to him. And

5:40

what's interesting is, and I think this is

5:42

Florida. You may know more about this than

5:45

me. But in Florida, when you lose a

5:47

judgment, I could be wrong about this. But

5:49

I think you have to put up the entire amount

5:52

of the judgment in order to appeal.

5:54

And I think this is what undid

5:56

Gawker, because in the Gawker case, when

5:58

Hogan won, they couldn't appeal it. from

6:00

what I understand because they didn't have the amount of money.

6:04

But worth pointing out that this is in New

6:06

York – both of these are New York cases,

6:08

which means that he won't be bailed out by

6:10

his federal judges unless they truly come up with

6:12

something made

6:15

up because presidential immunity doesn't apply to these

6:17

civil suits and doesn't apply to New York

6:19

law in this case. So

6:22

he – yeah, there's no argument that

6:24

what he did to Carol, for example,

6:26

would be covered by presidential immunity predated

6:28

his presidency. Yeah,

6:31

I don't think. I mean, I guess there – if

6:34

the lawsuit were initiated while he was president,

6:36

which I think happened, right? Didn't it get

6:39

told until after the

6:41

presidency, which

6:43

had precedence in the

6:46

Paula Jones matter with President Clinton,

6:48

right? But

6:50

I don't think – I don't – this is

6:53

all – already the ball is rolling. I mean, there's judgments. And

6:57

then in addition to all of this, you

7:00

have the rather large issue

7:02

of whether or not he can

7:04

pay any of this with the PAC funds that he

7:06

raised. He falsely,

7:09

in the wake of the

7:11

2020 election, said that

7:14

he was raising a bunch of money for the legal – to

7:16

pursue the legal routes of overturning the election.

7:20

And he's just turned that into this legal

7:22

slush fund that he's been using to

7:24

cover the legal costs of witnesses who

7:26

he wants to keep beholden to him,

7:28

of other co-defendants for

7:30

the same reason. And it seems

7:32

to some extent – or to a

7:35

large extent, for his own legal defense. And

7:37

now the question is, if he has to put up money

7:39

as sort of a down payment on a judgment, can

7:42

he do that through money

7:44

that he raised for his own legal defense? Like,

7:47

can he pay a judgment with that

7:49

money? And it seems to me that

7:52

there's differing views on that among legal experts.

7:54

I have no idea. I've never

7:57

been confronted with anything like that. Thank you. times

8:00

reported that he has spent somewhere

8:02

around 50 million dollars from

8:04

his political action committees already on his

8:06

legal defense. So this is the legal

8:08

expenses themselves, not the judgment, right? And,

8:11

you know, as you point out, there

8:13

are differing opinions on whether he could

8:16

spend the money on the judgment. Now,

8:18

what we know about Trump is whenever,

8:20

you know, differing legal opinions is the

8:23

standard, you know where he's going to come out on

8:25

that and he's going to force the hand of

8:27

the law and I think

8:30

we can pretty much guarantee that he's going to try

8:33

and he's going to be, he's going to test

8:36

the courts, the norms, and

8:38

really just like everything he's doing, try

8:41

to run out the clock, right? Like

8:43

he, he'll try to do it. And

8:45

then who has to, who enforced this federal

8:47

election law, Jason? Well, the feds, who would

8:49

he be in control of if it became

8:52

president? The feds. And so he, you

8:54

know, even though the FEC is a little bit

8:56

more complicated, but you know, this is all

8:58

part of his strategy to get the presidency and nothing else

9:01

will matter after that. Yeah.

9:03

And on top of all of this, you have,

9:06

for him, I think the complicating matter of it

9:08

putting more scrutiny on his

9:10

finances, which he doesn't want. I mean,

9:12

it's well known that

9:14

Donald Trump has been unwilling at

9:16

any point to follow the

9:19

well-established norm of, you know, releasing his

9:21

taxes, releasing a true statement of what

9:23

he owns and doesn't own, where he's

9:25

doing business, like every other

9:27

president and presidential candidate, for the most part has

9:29

done. He has not ever done that. And he's

9:32

for the most part been able to avoid ever

9:34

having to do it. Well, if

9:36

he is struggling to find funds in

9:38

order to pay these judgements, then

9:41

it gets into what about the tens

9:44

of millions of dollars that you have made

9:46

since you were president by dealing with foreign

9:49

entities. I mean, by going into

9:51

a deal on a golf

9:54

events with the Saudis, by, you know,

9:56

doing stuff in Oman, you know, like

9:58

as he started. selling things off, which

10:00

he, it seems, is likely going to

10:02

have to do, who's he going to

10:04

sell them to? And at what terms?

10:07

Now, does that mean he's going to have to

10:10

divulge it? No, but it does mean that he's

10:12

going to get increasingly

10:15

more scrutiny, hopefully, from the media

10:17

about those ongoing business dealings, including

10:19

probably going back to money that

10:22

he and his family made from

10:24

foreign entities while he was president.

10:27

Yeah, and I think, like, if you're thinking about

10:29

this from the perspective of our goal being to

10:31

stop Trump from becoming president, even

10:34

in the scenario where he's pulling money from his

10:36

packs, that obviously helps the cause because that's money

10:38

he won't be spending on his election. And it

10:41

will be at least a chill,

10:43

it'll have a chilling effect to people who want

10:45

to give to his campaign. Now, some, some

10:48

of his base will be animated by this and

10:50

want to help him. But I would

10:52

imagine the big donors might

10:55

have some issues with that. Like, you

10:58

know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't put past them to just

11:00

want to curry favor with him and pay his legal

11:02

bills. But that would

11:04

be a taller order. But you know, on the question of how

11:06

much money he has, I'm going to read from

11:08

a section of this New York Times article, because

11:11

they, I think they did a pretty

11:13

good job of, on the one hand, on the other

11:15

hand, what Trump has. So they

11:17

said, well, Mr. Trump was entering the White

11:19

House, Alan Weisselberg, the longtime CFO prepared a

11:21

memo showing that the Trump organization was running

11:23

low on cash. It had $60 million, which

11:25

included more than 26 million tied up in

11:28

a partnership he could not touch. During

11:30

much of his presidency, the annual financial statements

11:32

Mr. Trump's company submitted to his lenders showed

11:34

that he had anywhere between 75

11:36

and 93 million in cash. Since

11:39

then, Mr. Trump's company has sold some

11:41

once prized assets. The operating licenses Golf

11:43

Club in the Bronx and Elisee controlled

11:45

his hotel in Washington. His proceeds from

11:47

the hotel hotel cell alone after paying

11:49

off the mortgage and other

11:52

investors were $131.4 million

11:54

before tax. Mr.

11:57

Trump's post presidential life, his business, the Trump

11:59

organization is also. struck new deals with foreign

12:01

partners, including Saudi back golf venture and a

12:03

Saudi based real estate company for housing and

12:05

golf complex to be built in

12:08

Oman. So I think

12:10

this tells you a complicated picture, right? He

12:13

was struggling at various points. He

12:15

sold some assets. And he

12:17

is grifting with

12:20

foreign governments

12:23

who, you know, I mean, to say this

12:25

is unethical is to point out the obvious,

12:27

right? He's never chasing down Hunter Biden. You

12:31

know, it's still not proven that he broke any

12:33

law as it relates to any of his foreign

12:36

relationships. I, again, I wouldn't be surprised if he

12:38

did, but it certainly hasn't been proven yet. And

12:41

definitely hasn't been proven that there's anything

12:43

involving Joe Biden in those relationships. And

12:46

then here we have in plain sight Trump running

12:49

to the Saudis to rescue

12:51

him financially. It's just sitting there.

12:53

Never mind Jared Kushner. Yeah,

12:56

never mind Jared Kushner. And what

12:58

I think is frustrating, but also important

13:01

for us to acknowledge about all of this is

13:03

that it matters. But

13:05

in the context of the 2024 election and

13:07

persuading people, it probably doesn't matter

13:10

that much. Because if at

13:12

this point, after all of the corruption,

13:14

and there is a lot having

13:16

to do with Trump and the Trump world, if

13:19

you're still thinking about voting for Trump, this

13:22

is not going to be the thing that persuades you. This

13:24

is baked in. Because the reason

13:26

that you're still thinking about voting for

13:28

Trump doesn't have anything to do

13:30

with Trump. It has to do with you. It

13:33

has to do with what you think Trump is going to do

13:35

that either is going to

13:37

be mean to the people you want to be mean

13:39

to, or is going to help

13:41

you either financially or in some other way.

13:45

So I think that's important to keep

13:47

in mind. And it's the reason that you're

13:49

probably not going to hear President

13:51

Biden, who is now talking quite a lot about

13:53

Trump, you're not going to hear him make a

13:55

lot of mentions of

13:57

the Eugene Carroll case of the Trump administration.

14:00

of Trump being found liable for sexual

14:02

abuse and assault and defamation. Because

14:07

it's about Trump, it's not about people's lives.

14:09

And one thing we should give the Biden

14:11

campaign credit for in 2020, I mean, they

14:13

won the election, so there's lots of things,

14:15

but one thing that they've done well then

14:18

and since is they

14:20

have done a good job of ignoring the

14:22

perpetually online crowd and

14:24

the perpetually online inclination

14:27

to try and throw

14:29

one more smoking gun on the fire

14:31

and say, look, now Trump did this.

14:33

Now he's disqualified, right? And recognize that

14:35

that's not going to happen. And

14:37

so even when Biden's

14:40

family has been attacked, Biden has

14:42

been very disciplined about not leaning

14:45

in to making this about the

14:47

two personalities and instead focusing

14:50

on what Trump and

14:52

the Republicans want to do and

14:54

what he wants to do and how it affects your life.

14:57

That is worth noting for everybody

15:00

who's listening to this, who's thinking about

15:02

how they can persuade the people in

15:04

their lives to vote for

15:06

Biden or to vote for Democrats in

15:08

the coming election, is that this stuff,

15:11

while it is scandalous and it

15:13

is shameful and it is

15:15

upsetting, it's not

15:17

as persuasive as what it's

15:19

going to mean for actual voters. Yeah,

15:22

I think of it on two fronts, right? What's

15:24

persuasive, which I agree, this is not it, right?

15:27

There is a lot of

15:29

polling that judgment in the

15:31

criminal stuff could make a difference. We'll see. But

15:35

it is helpful, I think, in terms of

15:37

just mucking up his mind

15:39

and the machinery of his election, right?

15:41

It's just like slowing him down. Now,

15:44

I would have to imagine, I mean, it's already

15:46

really hard to run for president. I would have

15:49

to imagine it is harder when your financial empire

15:51

is under attack and you might go to prison.

15:55

That's a distraction, to say the least. Yeah,

15:57

and I don't want to, you know, obviously.

16:00

Obviously, he has shown

16:02

himself to be fairly resolute

16:04

in the face of these types of things. And

16:07

if there ever was somebody who would be able to

16:09

weather this kind of storm and run a campaign, it

16:11

would be him because his campaigns don't rely on the

16:13

traditional machinery that other campaigns have. He

16:16

is his own earned media. He

16:18

has his own solid base. You

16:21

go through all this kind of stuff. This

16:24

will slow him down, but it certainly will

16:26

not stop him. He

16:29

was outspent by Hillary and still won,

16:32

in part because of his ability to

16:34

get earned media and push his own

16:36

message. This is obviously not the

16:40

open shut victory

16:42

that I think people want it to be, but

16:44

it's just one piece. You do everything

16:46

you possibly can, and this is part of it.

16:49

Now, I want to talk about something happening

16:51

on the Hill here, which is... It's

16:55

kind of snuck up on me because

16:57

it just seems so patently absurd, but

16:59

the GOP, House

17:01

Homeland Security Committee, approved two articles

17:03

of impeachment earlier today against my

17:06

orcas, the Homeland Security Secretary, over

17:08

his handling of the southwest border.

17:11

And this was an 18 to 15 party

17:13

line vote, and they

17:15

endorsed a resolution charging my orcas with

17:17

refusing to uphold the law and breaching

17:20

public trust by failing to stop migrants

17:22

who are coming across the border. This sets

17:25

the stage for a House vote as early

17:27

as next week on an impeachment. That

17:30

feels like a

17:33

reach, Jason, and if they impeach him, it

17:35

will follow the normal impeachment process that we've

17:37

all become familiar with, which would go to

17:39

trial in the Senate, and that would require

17:41

a two-thirds vote, which obviously not going to

17:43

happen. There's

17:47

two ways to look at it, which is

17:49

the absurd overreach, and the second is that

17:52

when Republicans look at polling and

17:54

data, remember what we talked about last week,

17:56

which is the objective data over what Biden

17:58

has done and not done. Well,

18:01

the one thing that the economists, and

18:03

I think most people looking at just the raw

18:05

numbers, that's just an inconvenient story for Biden right

18:07

now is what's been happening at the border and

18:09

in cities around the country. What

18:11

the Republicans are trying to do in this

18:14

case is do everything possible to put front

18:16

and center the border. Even

18:18

if this move isn't overreach, they're saying, all

18:20

right, this puts it in the news. This

18:22

gets everybody talking about immigration and the border.

18:24

So in that sense, though, unethical, it is

18:27

probably smart politically in my mind. It's

18:30

smart politically and it's right out of the playbook. It's

18:34

just the latest version of, I mean, what have we had

18:36

in the past? We had the caravan. Remember?

18:40

I don't know what happened to that caravan. I

18:42

think it was not, what was that,

18:45

three cycles ago? I think that was the 2018

18:47

midterm. Jeremy

18:51

says, oh, the caravan is still coming. I mean, probably

18:53

we're going to hear about a new caravan. But apparently

18:55

when the election happened, that caravan just was like, you

18:57

know what? It's not worth it. And

19:00

they just turned around. And then they

19:02

have different versions of this where it's

19:04

not really an immigration thing, but it's still a race

19:08

and ethnicity oriented thing, which was, wasn't

19:11

there a moment in, I think

19:13

in 18, was it 18 or am I going

19:15

all, I'm mixing up, maybe it was 14 when

19:17

Ebola had like invaded North Carolina, we were told.

19:20

I mean, No, I don't even remember that.

19:22

Yeah. So this is

19:24

the move. It's their SOP,

19:27

their standard operating procedure. Okay,

19:30

the economy is not,

19:32

if you have inflation to argue about or

19:34

gas prices to argue about or

19:36

the economy to argue about, then you argue about that.

19:39

If you don't have those things to argue about, and

19:42

you don't have some big scandal because you

19:44

haven't been able to generate the Hunter Biden

19:47

scandal into anything other than something that

19:49

has gained a lot of traction on

19:51

the right and might muddle the corruption

19:53

picture a little bit for some independence,

19:55

but isn't, it doesn't seem

19:57

to have anywhere near the traction of other. made

20:00

up scandals aimed at Democratic nominees, i.e.

20:04

emails or Benghazi, right? Those, because

20:06

it was their first time trying

20:08

it, they were much more effective,

20:10

I think, so far than, and

20:12

it's yet to be seen, but at least more effective

20:14

than the Hunter Biden stuff. The

20:17

other reason I think that it's generally

20:19

less effective politically, their approach to trying

20:23

to create and manufacture scandals against Biden

20:25

is because when they did that, you

20:29

didn't have the history with Trump that you have

20:31

now. So, you know, in 2016, when they were

20:34

talking about emails not being secure or

20:36

trying to talk about Benghazi, you

20:38

didn't have four years of Donald

20:41

Trump abusing power, getting impeached legitimately,

20:43

you know, enriching himself. So

20:47

it was nothing against a

20:50

supposed something, right? So now

20:53

they have to try and find a new

20:55

way to create a scandal. That's not going

20:57

as well. So you pivot back to your

21:00

Alamo, the thing that you always do if

21:02

you're the Republicans and you're coming up on

21:04

an election, which is you try to remind

21:06

white people to be afraid. And

21:08

that's, now I'm not saying that there aren't

21:10

issues with the border, there have been, there

21:13

continue to be. You are

21:15

much more of an expert than I am

21:17

on the migrant crisis because it's really a

21:19

true thing that's being dealt with in New

21:21

York City. But that's

21:24

not what they're after here, in my

21:26

estimation. Yeah, it

21:28

is. It's totally right

21:30

that it is a real crisis. I think they

21:32

are not, like their strategy

21:35

here is to not in any way

21:37

cooperate in the negotiations on the House

21:39

side. Now the Senate side seems to

21:41

be much more good faith. But obviously

21:44

the margins are always slimmer, you

21:46

know, especially since you could lose some progressives. Like

21:48

there was an article in Politico today

21:50

about how a lot

21:53

of progressives, mostly House progressives, but

21:55

some Senate progressives are unhappy with

21:57

Biden's signaling that he wants to.

22:00

to negotiate

22:02

and they feel like he's giving up too much.

22:04

And I sympathize with what they're

22:06

saying, because things like the Dreamers are

22:08

off the table, et cetera, but it's

22:10

just a reality that there's no world in

22:13

which even, like honestly, even if

22:15

with Biden saying he's gonna just essentially

22:18

agree to whatever the Republicans want

22:20

on this, they're still saying

22:22

no. Like they

22:25

just don't want to help solve this problem

22:27

because they want the problem for the election.

22:30

Like this is what they want. And I

22:32

think what Biden needs to do

22:34

is first ask what's in

22:36

the best interest of the country before the politics, right?

22:39

You look to places like New York City, you

22:42

look to places like Chicago, they

22:44

are buckling under the weight of

22:46

immigration. Nevermind what's been happening at the border long

22:48

before any of this kind of stuff, which I

22:50

think, like if everybody takes a step back, I

22:54

think this is a moment of empathy, right? Just

22:56

to say that, all right, border towns who

22:59

have been saying for a long time that

23:02

this has been unsustainable for them, I

23:05

think this is a moment for people who

23:07

are progressives to say, well, maybe I should

23:09

listen, because actually democratic politicians on those border

23:11

towns have been alarmed for a long time.

23:15

And so I think it's a moment of empathy

23:17

just to say, all right, well, what's going on

23:19

and how do we have a humane

23:21

response to a situation that

23:24

blue cities even are struggling with? So

23:26

this might be a moment to say,

23:28

whatever's going on is unsustainable. And

23:30

then to say, well, what are the solutions

23:32

at the table? And Biden is pushing really

23:34

sensible things like reforms to the

23:37

asylum system, because the asylum system seems to be

23:39

what people, like basically what's happening

23:41

is people are presenting themselves to authorities.

23:43

Like in contrast to what was happening

23:45

in previous immigration waves, people

23:47

were trying to evade the authorities. What they're doing

23:49

now is presenting themselves at the border saying, I'm

23:52

here, they entered the asylum system.

23:55

And a lot of these people don't have

23:57

credible claims of asylum, they just know that the

23:59

asylum system's going to take forever and once they're

24:01

in the system, they can just go about their

24:03

business in the US and assume it will take

24:05

so long and it won't even matter anymore, which,

24:08

you know, overwhelms the system and also hurts people

24:10

with credible asylum claims, which I know you know

24:12

a lot about. All that is,

24:14

I'll stop there and just say, this

24:16

is a moment for real solutions. The Republicans are not

24:18

interested in real solutions. Well,

24:20

with that, let's go ahead and look at this clip

24:23

of GOP senators talking about the border. The

24:26

former president calls this a betrayal. Is

24:28

that a, what do you think of that characterization?

24:30

It's certainly not a betrayal. Actually, we've got to be

24:32

able to deal with issues in law. That's

24:35

how we actually deal with things in America. Does he

24:37

have access to the bill? Doesn't

24:41

seem that way. It hasn't been released. How

24:43

does he know it's a betrayal if he hasn't read it? I

24:46

mean, don't be ignorant. Read the bill.

24:49

So these are two Republican senators, by the

24:52

way, just so people who are listening. Oklahoma

24:54

and Louisiana. Like this ain't Maine. And

24:59

so let's talk about the politics of this. Because when

25:01

you're going to talk about the politics of this with

25:03

people, and if they're going to bring up the border

25:05

as a reason to vote for Trump, I

25:07

think it is important to talk about this.

25:10

And an analogy you can use is

25:13

Nixon, when he was running, because

25:15

look, let's be honest, a lot of the people you're going to

25:17

talk to who are leaning toward

25:20

Trump are probably older. So

25:22

use an older analogy. Nixon

25:25

was secretly working back channels

25:27

to try and keep a

25:30

piece from happening in Vietnam while he

25:32

was running for president because he didn't

25:34

want the Democrats to get credit

25:37

for it, and he wanted to come in and be

25:39

the one that brings peace. So he kept the war

25:41

going, it turns out. Well, Trump

25:44

has the Straconian ideas about the border.

25:47

In the Senate, they are working on

25:49

a compromise about immigration, about the border,

25:51

and he is, when he's

25:54

saying it's a betrayal, he's acting like an

25:56

incumbent president trying to lean on his

25:58

party and tell them what to do. politically and

26:00

try and use his influence in the

26:03

House and the Senate. And

26:05

when he says betrayal, he means of

26:07

me personally. He means if you

26:09

do anything that allows Biden to

26:11

take any credit for solving this

26:13

problem that we are all saying

26:15

is a giant crisis, you will

26:17

be betraying me because I want

26:19

to spend the next, however many,

26:21

what have we got? 10

26:25

months? I want to spend the next 10 months, 9 months

26:27

saying that this is a huge crisis. And

26:30

if you do anything to alleviate that crisis,

26:32

I can't do that. So

26:36

you have senators who are not

26:38

up for reelection, right? And

26:42

because they're elected every 6 years and they're able

26:44

to have the luxury of being like, well you

26:46

know what? This isn't, I'm in

26:48

an off year, I'm in a, I can stand up

26:50

to Trump year, so I can

26:52

say it's not a betrayal and it's

26:54

ridiculous to go to betrayal. I can say that's

26:56

ignorant, that kind of thing. But then you have

26:58

House members who in

27:00

most states, the filing hasn't happened

27:02

yet for people

27:05

to run for office, which means they wake

27:07

up every day in fear, these

27:10

GOP members, of a primary that

27:13

has been shouted out on true social

27:15

by Trump, right? Of Trump just reaching

27:17

into their district and grabbing some

27:19

corporate lawyer who can say all the right

27:21

things and has never had a blog saying

27:23

that Donald Trump is bad for America or

27:25

at least knew how to get rid of

27:27

the one that he or she had. And

27:29

he can just say, you know, this person is

27:32

better for this district than Representative Smith who's a

27:34

rhino. And boom, you're done. And that

27:36

is why he has so much influence over the House right

27:38

now. Yeah, it's funny, you're giving them

27:40

too much credit, Jason. So many of these people,

27:42

Trump only asks that you're correct

27:44

today. He doesn't care at all

27:46

what you said about him before. Look at JD Vance, for

27:49

example, who's getting a lot of views, but right,

27:51

at least to Fannock. A lot of these

27:53

people would be fine. He wouldn't care. Nancy

27:55

Mace, right. I think this is an under

27:58

discussed element of the MAGAverse is that And

28:01

honestly, it's the smart move by Trump is he's

28:03

like, look, you can flip today, right? He's almost

28:05

like a Mongol invader, right? He's like, all right,

28:07

if you just pledged to me today, like, even

28:09

if you had, if you, if

28:12

you were willing to pick up arms yesterday, if you're willing to

28:14

put them down today, you're you're, you

28:16

know, part of this empire. And

28:20

it's smart, you know, he is. Look

28:23

at Nancy mace, like, everybody

28:25

in Nancy mace, like the representative from South

28:27

Carolina, everybody in

28:29

my life who is a moderate conservative was

28:31

like, you need to get Nancy mace on

28:34

the lost debate podcast. She's a moderate. She's

28:37

the future of the GOP. Well, what does

28:39

Nancy mace up to now? She sounds no different

28:41

than Matt Gaetz. Right? Because

28:43

she made a calculation that Elise Stefanik made

28:45

that JD Vance made that Josh Holly made

28:47

all these people made who tried to probably

28:50

given Holly too much credit, but the rest of them

28:53

at various points were like, I'm the intellectual, moderate

28:55

conservative who's going to call out Trump, right?

28:57

There's no place for those people anymore in

29:00

our politics. Yeah. He's

29:02

foused if Faust lost his ledger of

29:05

souls, right? Like

29:07

no permanent enemies, no permanent friends,

29:09

definitely no permanent friends. That is.

29:12

Yeah. And so it's

29:16

literally transactional. And

29:18

so the transaction right now is I would

29:21

rather talk about the border than have you

29:23

do anything about the border. Now what people

29:25

will come back at you when you say

29:27

this and say, because it's what

29:29

Trump is saying is, is no, no,

29:32

no, we would rather have a good border deal

29:34

when Trump is president than a bad border deal. And

29:36

Trump, you know, we've got it up on the screen

29:39

here, Trump true thing or whatever you call it, a

29:42

bad border deal is far worse than no border

29:44

deal. Well, that's

29:47

a cover, right? Because

29:49

as Senator Cassidy pointed out, he

29:51

don't have a clue what's in the deal. Like

29:53

they hadn't released it. He doesn't know. He

29:56

just doesn't want anything to get done. Well,

29:58

let me point it this way. If Joe Biden... Biden were

30:01

to say, all right, Ukraine

30:03

aid, Israel aid, and

30:06

a wall. Like that's

30:09

the only immigration policy we have. Trump

30:11

would still oppose that. Oh, absolutely. If

30:14

Joe Biden, and I actually think Biden should just mess

30:16

around and try to see if he could do this,

30:19

because I'm of the opinion that the

30:21

wall is irrelevant. Uh, because when

30:23

you, whether you have people with guns or lasers

30:25

or whatever, like it just

30:28

doesn't matter. Like, but, um,

30:31

call his bluff, say, all right, let's just have an up, like

30:33

a up down vote on the wall. And

30:36

then Biden either gets the

30:38

wall and says, well, I actually delivered on

30:40

your campaign promise or, um, Trump

30:44

says no to his own wall, right? Like,

30:47

you know, and by the way, you can get the wall,

30:49

by the way, like they can pass the wall and

30:52

you can just not build the wall, right? Like, yeah.

30:54

Here's the problem with that politically, which is

30:56

that what we have learned and what

30:59

several folks, several of the progressives that you mentioned

31:01

earlier have been pointing out, and I think rightly

31:03

correctly is that, uh,

31:06

the old adage, the old Harry Truman adage, that

31:08

if you give people a choice between a Republican

31:10

and a Democrat who sounds like a Republican, they're

31:12

just going to pick the genuine article, not

31:15

that they necessarily want the Republican, but they're just going to

31:17

pick the person, uh, who is

31:19

the thing that you're pretending to be. And so that

31:21

is the problem that I think that Biden runs into

31:23

here is that you can, uh,

31:25

to take a term from the Clinton years, triangulate

31:27

this, you can attempt to triangulate this by saying

31:30

things like what he's been saying, which is, you

31:32

know, we're going to shut the border down, right?

31:34

Which is a pretty draconian

31:36

and probably an exaggeration, certainly.

31:39

Um, but it sounds like tough

31:42

talk and it's an attempt to go after

31:44

those independents who are concerned about these issues,

31:46

but the question you have to ask yourself

31:48

is, will those people

31:51

give you credit for that? Even if you

31:53

do the things that they want, is it

31:55

worth it? Particularly if you're doing things that

31:57

you really don't want to do. Can

32:00

you even get any of those people? Well,

32:02

I think this is such a fascinating question because I

32:04

actually don't know the answer So

32:07

I actually had an interview with David from

32:09

last week, you know, like the Bush speechwriter

32:12

who's now like a Never

32:15

trumper and he was it's

32:17

funny you use the word tranq triangulation. He was

32:19

pretty brought up triangulation as a

32:21

positive He's David from

32:23

obviously and he looked at He

32:26

was looking he was arguing that the dick Morris

32:28

what he called small ball Right like Clinton picking

32:30

fights over school uniforms and all this kind of

32:33

stuff and losing those rights was actually helpful politically

32:35

in his reelection Obviously I

32:37

was in middle school. So I honestly have no

32:39

idea but it is an interesting theory,

32:41

right? Which is I'm

32:43

equal parts persuaded by people who say

32:45

our coalition falls apart if Biden does

32:47

this kind of things versus those who

32:49

say well like He'll

32:52

signal to the moderates that he's serious or

32:54

whatever I actually am kind of 50-50 on

32:56

that right which is like I actually don't

32:58

know but I hear smart people making both

33:00

arguments so quick

33:03

update on this and then I want to comment on What

33:06

you what you just said? So the update that

33:08

something just gave us is that Mitch McConnell has

33:10

just said that senators are close to releasing final

33:12

bill text of the border and immigration negotiations But

33:14

they're not there yet McConnell praised James Langford for

33:17

the job He's done negotiating with Democrats in the

33:19

White House that comes from Mexico in a punch

33:21

bowl. So we're still we still haven't released

33:23

it We still haven't

33:25

seen it. Here's here's why I think that

33:27

that analysis of what happened with Bill Clinton

33:29

and triangulation is correct And why it doesn't

33:32

really hold up in 2024 It

33:35

in those days one you had

33:37

Bill Clinton who was a Democratic

33:39

governor of Arkansas And he

33:41

had he had a record of Being

33:44

a moderate Existed in the Zeitgeist

33:46

as a moderate Democrat So when

33:48

Bill Clinton did things like say

33:50

we should have school uniforms Which

33:52

was a traditionally more of a

33:54

of a conservative idea. People saw

33:56

that as on brand They saw

33:58

that as as. The I'm doing.

34:01

You know, moderate democratic things and

34:03

it played into that brand, and

34:05

it was also more conventional time

34:07

work. Even if he didn't have

34:10

that record right, he could do

34:12

those things and when some people

34:14

over, but the small piece of

34:16

it was, he wasn't necessarily, in

34:18

most cases, picking issues where people

34:20

already had a bacon idea. And.

34:22

And already a polarized concept, right?

34:24

Like he wasn't going out there

34:27

taking a a republican position on

34:29

say, immigration. Huge, You know he.

34:31

He was careful about that sort

34:33

of thing. He would nod in

34:35

that direction. He would say things

34:37

about violence in video games. He

34:39

would do cultural cues. But

34:41

he, but he didn't just like acquiesce

34:44

on a policy issue. Now. The. Problem

34:46

I think Biden has A and then why

34:48

Biden And and I'll explain why Biden has

34:50

to do it differently from Biden has is

34:52

even abiding by the way, Has

34:55

a his history is as a

34:57

moderate democratic politician status history but

34:59

that history has been wiped away

35:01

by three really for years because

35:03

of the lesson of the Trump

35:05

attacked machine right and of just

35:07

the. I. Sleep. Just the

35:09

laziness of the way coverage of

35:12

politics works Now like. You

35:14

know it was right after an election. We

35:17

don't even get into the specifics about what

35:19

a policy negotiations are like, Cnn and everybody's

35:21

negative hours going to play politically and they

35:23

get into it right away because we've gotten

35:26

to a point where. That's. What

35:28

people know how to do. And so

35:30

they talk about everything that way and

35:32

it just becomes left vs right. and

35:34

the Average: The average independent voter who's

35:36

not sure what they think about things

35:38

particularly well actually particular one that's conservative.

35:41

For all the fights that people like

35:44

my friend Claire Mccaskill may have had

35:46

where I threw her comments about people

35:48

I gave see. They. Don't see them

35:50

as any different, I promise you. They.

35:52

they do not differentiate between the two

35:54

so in my view misuse the monologue

35:57

but in my view would biden has

35:59

to do to make those same

36:01

gains with independence is the stuff that he is

36:03

trying to do, which is to find stuff that

36:06

is not ideologically left or ideologically right, but just

36:08

affects people's lives. It's the stuff that they're doing

36:10

where they're trying to make it so that you

36:12

don't have to pay as many fees when you

36:14

check into a hotel, so that Netflix isn't as

36:17

expensive. It's the kind of

36:19

stuff where people don't go into it with a

36:22

currently baked idea of what's left

36:24

and what's right, and it just

36:26

plays the idea of, oh, this

36:28

guy gets stuff done. That, I

36:31

think, is the modern version of

36:33

that kind of triangulation, and to

36:35

finish the thought, because on the one hand,

36:37

you really don't have the same opportunity to

36:39

win people over, unless you would come into

36:41

the presidency and you'd been picking fights with

36:44

your own party the whole time. Then you

36:46

could, but then the other

36:48

reason is, it's such a juggling

36:50

act to maintain the democratic coalition at this

36:52

point, because it's so wide ranging, you really

36:54

don't have the luxury of taking those kinds

36:56

of positions. Yeah, it's

36:59

so fascinating. I think

37:01

we could talk for an entire episode about

37:03

the moderate image of Biden and how it's

37:06

been chipped away at and what

37:08

to do about that moving forward. One

37:11

option could be, because all of

37:13

this is signaling, right? One thing that could be interesting,

37:15

and this is not going to happen, but I'm using

37:17

it just as a hypothetical, right? What if

37:20

Biden got up and gave a speech and he was like, look,

37:23

let's truly do it and remind people that he's a

37:25

deal maker. To be like, look, Trump,

37:28

what do you talk about? What's the one thing you

37:30

care about when it comes to

37:32

immigration? The wall, right? You've been talking about the wall. By

37:34

the way, you could use this as an opportunity to remind

37:37

people that he didn't do what he said he would do.

37:39

I'd be like, well, you want

37:41

the wall. Let's do the wall

37:43

if you give me dreamers. Let's

37:45

do dreamers for the wall. Now,

37:47

this is never going to happen. So people listening are going

37:49

to be mad while the wall is like this or that.

37:52

They're not going to say yes to this, but let them

37:54

say no. And Then Biden, when he's on the

37:56

debate stage, if there's even going to be a debate or an ad, it's going

37:58

to be like, look, I was going to. Give you the

38:00

one thing you cared about for kids. That's

38:03

what we're asking kids for your wall And

38:05

you said no, you didn't even wanna do

38:07

a deal. On. And that to

38:09

people's. Like crystal. Clear and

38:11

I think that sellable to left. Which.

38:14

Is when I'm actually gonna do any of this.

38:16

But even. If we

38:18

did we would actually get something real

38:21

done for you. Or that we've been trying

38:23

to get on for a long time. That's.

38:25

Kind of maybe maybe out that me that

38:27

my revised proposal ice I think yeah if

38:29

I don't know if it's the wall but

38:31

there's something like is something or you like

38:34

look. At it or it doesn't

38:36

Even all it was really probably have

38:38

to be is biden with some credibility.

38:40

Say I've offered the Republicans everything they

38:42

asked for is A and and as

38:44

always happens they are hostage takers who

38:46

refused to submit demands and to say

38:48

it over and over and over again.

38:50

And I think. I think there's something

38:52

to that. Now with all that said, go go

38:55

ahead your head cause I'm just me From a

38:57

point on that, the reason why said a

38:59

while and are actually not. I believe this is

39:01

because Trump use the walls symbolically at a signal

39:03

to metaphor or what he cared about. So it's

39:06

a take. The metaphor shown that he actually doesn't

39:08

care about this thing. ah and showed people it's

39:10

almost like a King Solomon moment right back. You

39:12

actually don't care or okay with that. Let's

39:14

go to our ads. When we come back we're

39:17

gonna check in with Nikki Haley who has and

39:19

a Computer Men campaign against Biden and Trump. And

39:22

then I'm. I.

39:24

I'm sad to say we might talk all

39:27

of their football, but hot the politics of

39:29

football and America safer popstar Taylor Swift. All

39:31

this when we come back. Heart

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42:47

Jason, Nikki Haley is spot on

42:50

and she and her campaign released

42:52

a campaign today called Grumpy Old

42:55

Men. This is a

42:57

new series. I don't know exactly what that

42:59

means. I couldn't find the actual video here,

43:02

but this is their from their press release.

43:04

The series will highlight what the American people

43:06

can expect from Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

43:08

More chaos, confusion, drama and a refusal to

43:11

debate. Nikki Haley offers a better

43:13

choice with a strong conservative track record and

43:15

this is a quote from our campaign spokesperson.

43:17

Nearly 50% of Republicans and 70%

43:19

of Americans don't want to watch grumpy old men

43:22

stumble across America when our country is on the

43:24

brink and the world is on fire. Sadly,

43:27

this version of Grumpy Old Men offers no comic

43:29

relief, just chaos, confusion and a bad sense of

43:31

deja vu for the American people. There's

43:34

more here that's super duper cringe,

43:36

but I'll pause there Jason. I don't

43:41

know. First let's acknowledge solid movie.

43:44

Great movie, yeah. It was

43:46

a good movie. It's so good that they

43:49

had to say there's no comic relief

43:51

in this version. If they knew that people

43:53

loved that movie so much that they

43:55

might have a positive feeling with

43:57

that accusation that they're grumpy old men. You.

44:00

Know I can think of anything about the Nikki

44:02

Haley to do. Can. Just say something

44:05

about that grumpy old men, right? I don't even want

44:07

to know how old they were. But.

44:09

That hear the ages of the

44:11

Golden Girls. Okay, We're

44:14

seeing. This is upsetting. Dorothy: Fifty

44:16

Five Rows Fifty five. Plants Fifty

44:18

Three. Okay, now Sophia was all

44:20

there because she's the mom. Stan:

44:23

Fifty Seven. Am. You'd.

44:25

Work, we're not that far from perfect.

44:28

for a young I'm I'm about to

44:30

turn forty three and within a decade,

44:33

I'm. Honestly, my years are feeling pretty

44:35

golden. Now. The.

44:37

Not few short but there are few and golden. This.

44:40

Is not the segment for that that shows

44:42

actually a outta ten place and are nuts

44:44

if you free washed it is it really

44:47

holds up. I

44:49

parents but everyone says that but are now back

44:51

back to and I mean this is how boring

44:53

it is. Cigarette Nikki Haley as we start talking

44:55

about the Golden Girls were going to get to

44:58

Taylor Swift in a minute folks to hang around,

45:00

but look I can't think of what is better

45:02

for her to be doing at this point. It's.

45:07

It's not a terrible argument, right? Like

45:09

the is the best argument yeah you

45:11

can make right now. it's a generational

45:13

one. If you're her and we should

45:15

him me, You know what everybody is.

45:17

Making this argument about Biden is refreshing

45:19

that even if it's coming from his

45:21

own party at that, somebody is making

45:23

this argument about Trump as well because

45:25

obviously we can't begin. Can't go out

45:27

really arguing that Trump is too old

45:29

when you know he was a freshman

45:31

when your candidate was a senior. Year.

45:34

When he read it a little bit more from

45:36

this press release as it is super duper friends,

45:38

I agree that the strategy has crashed. I have

45:40

some questions about the execution so this is what

45:42

they wrote. Copy. Old Men a

45:44

preview. Basement Buddies. Both.

45:47

trump and bidens and most their time hiding

45:49

in their business set of out on the

45:51

campaign trail debate dodgers both trump and biden

45:53

don't wanna put their mental decline front and

45:56

center on the debate stitch stumbling seniors both

45:58

biden and trump will be octogenarian Prophetic

46:00

polls, both Trump and Biden are

46:02

spent like drunken sailors, and drama

46:04

divas. Both Trump and Biden are consumed

46:07

by investigations, chaos, and incompetence. Now,

46:09

I'm not sure Joe Biden loves to drama,

46:13

but if you're listening at home,

46:16

you too can be a campaign strategist. That's what

46:18

I think this tells us. This

46:20

doesn't require a lot, and honestly, that

46:23

feels like it was written by

46:25

Chachipiti. Yeah, it

46:27

actually really does. It

46:30

also feels like we've assumed all

46:32

along that running a

46:34

dead man or woman walking campaign

46:37

for the presidency in a primary is really a slog

46:41

and depressing. On the other

46:43

hand, they're in whatever, let's

46:45

give it a shot territory. I

46:48

imagine that if you're like a press person

46:50

in this situation, maybe it's a little fun

46:52

because nobody's going to be like, everything was

46:55

going great until you, the press person, tried

46:57

this because it's not working. So you may

46:59

as well try a bunch of stuff, and

47:01

that's probably fun. Now, speaking of new

47:03

trying stuff, Salty

47:06

was reading an article and was about to update us on

47:08

this thing that just broke about DeSantis

47:11

moving some money into Salty.

47:14

What do we know about this? This

47:16

breaking thing about DeSantis moving money into

47:18

what was an anti-Trump pack?

47:21

I guess maybe it's becoming an anti-Haley

47:23

pack, and that

47:26

seems to be the indicator. Okay, here

47:28

we go. The chief group backing Florida

47:30

Governor Ron DeSantis' presidential bid made a

47:32

$2.75 million cash

47:34

infusion to a pop-up super pack

47:36

right around the time that group spent millions

47:38

attacking former President Donald Trump. The

47:41

payments from the pro DeSantis never backed down

47:43

to win it back pack, a

47:45

group linked to Club for Growth were revealed in the,

47:47

I know it's a terrible naming, were revealed in the

47:49

latter group's filings with the Federal Election Commission

47:51

on Tuesday. Win

47:56

it back pack spent more than $6.4 million on digital

47:58

and TV ads over the summer. Okay, so

48:00

what that means is- That's pretty him. Yeah, it's pretty

48:02

him dropping out. Yeah. It's pretty him

48:05

dropping out, but it's still there. And

48:07

I have to imagine that, I mean, once

48:10

he's all in, he's probably going to use it to

48:13

hit Haley, right? Or

48:15

just hold on to it because in his mind, because you

48:17

know how these people work, he still looks in the mirror

48:19

every day and sees future president of the United States. So

48:21

he's just going to hold on to the money. Why

48:24

not? Right? That's kind

48:26

of what I see. His campaign manager

48:28

was his former chief of staff there. Also

48:31

this week, it was reported that the chief of staff

48:34

is heading back to Tallahassee. Is that

48:36

where our capital is in Florida? To be

48:38

the chief of staff again. And

48:40

so I think he's just going to kind of bide

48:43

his time and try to rebuild his

48:45

woke credentials

48:48

or anti-woke credentials over the next couple of years

48:50

and then try to run in

48:52

2028, right? That would

48:56

be the year 2028. Yeah. Neither

48:59

of these guys can run again. So yeah, everybody's

49:01

going to be lining up for that. I mean,

49:03

this is why nobody wants Trump to like, all

49:05

these people don't want Trump to win,

49:08

you know, like, because if just

49:12

the pure history tells us that if

49:14

Biden wins reelection, it

49:16

tilts heavily, heavily in favor of Republicans winning the next

49:18

time. It's just how the American people work. They want

49:20

change, right? It's

49:22

already something we're dealing with now. Right.

49:25

So if you're DeSantis, you're like, all right,

49:27

I would love to see an open field,

49:29

us versus the Democrats after the Democrats have

49:31

been in power for eight years because that

49:34

heavily stacks in their favor. Not

49:36

to mention the fact that if Trump wins, you have

49:38

to deal with the fact that he's

49:41

going to try to run again. I

49:44

mean, you know, like, which who knows

49:46

what's going to happen. Yet another reason

49:48

that we can't let him win. All

49:51

right. That's about as much attention

49:53

as we should give this fledgling Republican

49:56

primary. Now, folks, let

49:58

me give you a little background. before we

50:00

play this clip from the recount,

50:02

which is a supercut of Republican

50:06

and Fox News personalities freaking out about

50:08

Taylor Swift. There was some poll,

50:10

I don't even remember the origin, that

50:12

came out saying that like 18% of

50:14

Americans said that they would vote

50:17

for who Taylor Swift tells them to vote for.

50:19

Now we could get into, are

50:21

those people already liberals who know

50:23

who Taylor Swift is voting for because they followed

50:26

her politics, what is that? Who knows? But

50:30

it has them scared to death. And

50:32

for context, so yes, we see the

50:34

Georgia Fair

50:47

headline here that says, Maggie goes to war on Swift. Now Taylor

50:49

Swift is having a pretty good year. Isn't

50:52

she like time woman of the year? She's undoubtedly

50:54

a popular person. She is

50:56

a musical genius. She's an entertainment genius. She

50:59

is clearly someone who is able to speak

51:01

to the feelings of particularly young women in

51:04

this country. So I

51:06

can see why they're concerned. But

51:08

boy, do they look ridiculous.

51:11

Let's play this clip. We have had enough

51:14

of Taylor Swift for now. She shouldn't be liberal.

51:16

She should be a total conservative

51:18

given what given everything. The Pentagon's

51:20

PSYOP unit pitched NATO on turning

51:22

Taylor Swift into an asset. Yesterday,

51:24

she flew private from New York City to

51:26

Baltimore. Yet she constantly talks

51:29

about climate change. So just please

51:31

don't believe everything Taylor Swift says. We're all begging

51:33

you. I think she should just stick to her

51:35

singing and let her love life be what it

51:37

is. The New York Times just speculated

51:39

she's a lesbian. A new poll shows 18% of

51:42

voters are likely to vote for whichever

51:44

candidate Taylor Swift endorses. Oh,

51:47

Biden effectively has Taylor Swift as his

51:49

VP. Single posts of hers led to 35,000

51:51

new registrants. There's

51:54

arguably more power than the president. She's

51:56

sharing links. And her boyfriend Travis

51:58

Kelty, sponsored by Pfizer. her stance

52:00

on policy, economic policy, foreign policy. I don't

52:02

think that'll be... So don't get involved. Don't

52:07

get involved in politics. We don't want to see you

52:09

there. So they're

52:11

just begging her, Ravi. They're

52:14

trying to, on the one hand, they're threatening

52:16

her and trying to be like, look, you

52:19

are probably inclined to say something publicly about

52:21

this election and we want you to know

52:23

that we will unleash, and it's a real

52:25

thing, we will unleash the Bud

52:27

Light thing on you. We will

52:29

be... And not just the economics,

52:31

but your physical safety. That's a

52:34

real thing that they're threatening her with. And at the

52:36

same time, they can't help begging

52:38

her. We're begging you not

52:40

to get involved. The collateral damage is... Now

52:44

they're anti-Travis Kelsey, which they were starting

52:46

to be anyway because he did a

52:48

commercial for the COVID vaccine, for

52:51

Pfizer, saying you could get the flu vaccine and

52:53

the COVID vaccine at the same time. I

52:58

don't know, man. I think it's

53:00

going to be a mistake on their part. My

53:02

mom posted on Facebook after whatever that she wasn't

53:04

going to watch the Super Bowl and then she

53:06

recently reposted saying she's going to watch

53:08

it now because of all of this. I

53:11

would say the one thing that they're saying that makes sense

53:13

to me is that there's a grand conspiracy in the NFL

53:16

to help the Chiefs win. They

53:18

want to deal with... Obviously,

53:20

it helps with their ratings. This

53:22

is not an organization that

53:24

has acquitted itself well historically.

53:27

And so honestly, when they're floating these theories, I

53:29

do think they're asking really important

53:34

questions. I'm not saying that they're right. I'm

53:37

just saying we should look into these

53:39

things. Okay? Don't

53:41

you think? Just joining us, Ravi is

53:43

a Bills fan and the Bills were

53:45

vanquished. They raised important questions because the

53:47

amount of revenue that's at work here,

53:49

Jason, like you're just saying like they

53:53

do have an interest in seeing the Chiefs make

53:55

the Super Bowl. Why the Chiefs

53:57

are in the Super Bowl? These are heartbreaking. That

53:59

was funny. me real. Which

54:01

is that here's what I

54:03

would point to when people, because

54:05

you're going to have relatives, you're going to go

54:08

to a Super Bowl party and every time Travis

54:10

Kelsey scores or whatever, they're going to show Taylor

54:12

Swift and you're going to have a relative who

54:14

says some crap about it. And here's

54:16

what I would say, which is nobody

54:19

cares when they show like

54:22

when Jack Nicholson is at Lakers games

54:24

and they go to him. Like people

54:26

don't get mad about it. People don't

54:28

get mad when they show Spike Lee

54:30

at a Knicks game. But I'll

54:33

tell you what people get mad about.

54:35

They get mad about women being interested

54:37

in sports. And I can tell you

54:39

that like in this town I've

54:41

seen it with Brittany Mahomes. Now it's

54:44

like a classic example. Patrick

54:46

Mahomes' wife, Brittany, they're

54:49

high school sweethearts. They met in

54:51

high school, they stayed together, it's a wonderful story.

54:54

She is a former, for a short

54:56

time professional soccer player who when they first

54:58

moved to Kansas City before his big contract,

55:01

she worked at Lulu Lemon on the Plaza.

55:04

And she celebrates wins. And

55:06

there are people, including I will tell

55:08

you, friends of mine who are Democratic

55:10

operatives who hold themselves out to be

55:12

feminists who when their team was playing

55:14

the Chiefs would text message me things

55:16

thinking I would think it was funny

55:18

that we're really mean about Brittany Mahomes.

55:21

Who all Brittany Mahomes has done is

55:23

not only support her husband but do

55:25

things like invest in

55:28

the women's professional soccer team and bring it to

55:30

Kansas City and create

55:33

the very first stadium in the

55:35

United States built solely for a

55:37

women's professional sports team that's here

55:39

in Kansas City. They bought in

55:42

to other franchises here. They've got

55:44

businesses that they're doing here, charities. And yet

55:46

there are even people in Kansas City who

55:48

resent her for that. There

55:50

are people in Kansas City occasionally who

55:52

you will meet who resent Taylor Swift.

55:54

Overall, this Taylor Swift and her presence

55:57

here has been enormous for Kansas City's

55:59

economy. a flawed fan base, you

56:01

know, like with some real character flaws, we should

56:03

probably spend more time on this. My point is,

56:05

when people try and bring this up and try

56:07

and impeach the credibility of Taylor Swift, who if

56:10

you watch those clips, they

56:12

are trying to create Taylor, they're trying

56:14

to turn Taylor Swift into a candidate.

56:17

They're asking, what's her economic policy? What does

56:19

she think about this? Not

56:21

only does she not have an

56:23

economic policy, she's under no flippin'

56:25

obligation to have an economic policy.

56:28

She is a very successful woman who

56:30

is showing up to support

56:32

her boyfriend at work, which is a pretty

56:34

normal ass thing to do. And

56:37

so, when this comes up, people, I think, should

56:39

be mad about it when the relatives bring it

56:41

up. Well, I think the interesting question

56:43

would be, what does Taylor Swift do? And I don't,

56:45

obviously, nobody knows what's in her head, but she seems

56:47

like a fairly strong-minded person

56:50

and like people can Google

56:52

what happened with Kim Kardashian, if you want some

56:54

evidence of this. She

56:57

doesn't strike me as the kind of person who's going to be

56:59

intimidated. And I

57:01

think Fox News, also,

57:04

like they're unloading on her now. So the

57:06

question is like, well, if you're doing that

57:08

before I do anything, what is

57:11

the impact going to be then if I

57:13

do truly endorse, right? Because

57:16

then you've already, you've shot your

57:18

shot and my sense is it's not going to

57:20

make it any difference whatsoever. I

57:22

don't see this with looking at Fox

57:25

News and be like, you know what, like some

57:27

like coiffed haired Fox News. Hat

57:32

night. Tomaton is like

57:34

telling me not or Maria

57:37

Bartiromo is like, oh, you know what? I'm

57:40

obsessed with Taylor Swift, but Maria Bartiromo

57:42

made a good point about

57:44

Taylor Swift. It's ridiculous. Yeah. Here's

57:46

what's going to happen. This is my prediction. I'm going to

57:48

lay it out right here. What's going to happen is is

57:50

that in the run up to the election, Taylor

57:53

Swift is going to endorse bite.

57:56

She's probably even going to put on a concert

57:58

of some type, some sort of performance. for

58:00

Biden. And that's something that she was

58:02

probably going to do anyway. She has

58:04

spoken out about things like LGBT issues

58:07

and voting rights in the past. People

58:10

forget that she lives

58:12

in Tennessee, where these issues have been big.

58:14

And she's spoken out particularly on what's gone

58:16

on in Tennessee when it comes to voting

58:18

rights and that sort of thing. Now,

58:22

Taylor Swift and her

58:24

presence at football games has done a

58:26

lot for the NFL. It has brought

58:28

a lot of young women to be

58:30

interested in the NFL, and it's been

58:32

great for the NFL. Right now, in

58:34

the same way, what I

58:36

think is going to happen because of the

58:38

rule of association and the way things work

58:40

now is that as soon as she does

58:42

that, Travis Kelsey, who is

58:46

possibly right now the biggest star in football,

58:48

at least in terms of people knowing who

58:50

he is and his popularity, is

58:53

going to be brought along for that ride.

58:55

And Travis Kelsey is going to be seen

58:57

to be endorsing Biden as well. And what

58:59

I think is interesting about that is that

59:02

when you look at football, it is very

59:04

unlike basketball in that while there are probably

59:06

plenty of people in football who do not

59:08

hold conservative political views, there have been very

59:11

few who have felt comfortable because

59:13

of the Kaepernick situation and others like

59:16

espousing liberal views. And I think when Travis

59:18

Kelsey ends up doing that, even if all

59:20

he does is give a nod to the

59:22

idea that he supports Taylor and agrees with

59:24

her on things, if that's all he does,

59:27

it's going to allow a lot of very

59:29

popular football players to do that

59:31

more in the future. And that is, I think,

59:33

going to be a huge unforced error by the

59:35

Republicans. You

59:37

know, an anxious nation looks to

59:40

Aaron Rodgers for comment. That's

59:43

right. Well,

59:47

we should update that story really quickly. We said

59:49

McAfee had decided he was pulling Rodgers the next

59:51

day. After we said that, he had Rodgers on

59:53

for a quick hit. So I don't know what's

59:55

going on over there. Total cast. But

59:58

OK. All right, this

1:00:00

has been fun. Let's start grabbing ore real quick.

1:00:03

Again, for the third week in a row, I'm

1:00:05

gonna plug this. There's a few tickets left.

1:00:08

There's not a ton, but if you're in the Kansas City

1:00:10

area, we are doing an

1:00:12

event to benefit Jewish Vocational Services, which is

1:00:14

the local resettlement agency, specifically the one that

1:00:16

not only resettled my wife's family when they

1:00:18

came from Soviet Ukraine in 1989, including

1:00:22

my wife when she was eight years old,

1:00:24

but also the Rehufi family,

1:00:26

which is my translator's family, who a lot

1:00:29

of people listening may be familiar with that story.

1:00:31

And so myself and the Rehufi

1:00:33

family and my wife Diana will be doing

1:00:35

a Q and A on a conversation about

1:00:38

the Rehufi family's journey out of Afghanistan over

1:00:40

the last couple of years, which is harrowing

1:00:42

and quite a tale and people wanna hear

1:00:45

it, trust me. That's gonna be Thursday,

1:00:47

February 8th. So coming up

1:00:49

soon, Thursday, February 8th, from

1:00:51

6.30 to 8 at Union Station, we

1:00:54

will put once again the link in

1:00:56

the show notes there's

1:00:58

not a ton of tickets left, but there are some, and

1:01:00

we'd love to have folks there. Robbie,

1:01:04

we can do one for us, what's going on with you?

1:01:07

What is going on with me? Well, I go to

1:01:09

India in a little over a week for a couple

1:01:11

more weeks, working on that project

1:01:13

with Crooked. So I'm just, yeah,

1:01:15

just living the life in New York,

1:01:19

the brief time I'm here, working from industrious.

1:01:22

Yeah, things are pretty quiet over here. What about

1:01:24

you? Diana

1:01:26

has been traveling quite a bit for her

1:01:29

work as a keynote speaker. And so- She

1:01:31

was in Eugene, Oregon, I saw by the way. She was

1:01:34

in Eugene, Oregon. She's one of three dates I've never been

1:01:36

to. I really wanted to go with her and she was

1:01:38

like, it's a short trip, you're not going. And I was

1:01:40

disappointed because I wanted to check that one off. But, and

1:01:44

anyway, so she's been traveling. So I've been trying to hold

1:01:46

things down, the three of us here, and

1:01:48

a funny little story about my daughter

1:01:50

Bella, who's three and is basically a

1:01:53

complete clone of my wife. So she is

1:01:55

both adorable and brimming with

1:01:57

personality. And so- I

1:02:01

get a text from her teacher yesterday that's like,

1:02:03

hey, Jason, her preschool

1:02:05

teacher, FYI, we've handled it,

1:02:07

but Bella made some bad choices

1:02:09

today at school and

1:02:11

she had to go see the principal,

1:02:14

you know, and then there's some

1:02:16

more information and everything. And so then I was like, okay,

1:02:18

I'll reinforce it at home. So at bath time last night,

1:02:21

I'm like, I'm ready to like have this little talk with

1:02:23

Bella. And I'm like, Bella, did you have to leave the

1:02:25

classroom today? And she's like, yeah, I was sad. And I

1:02:27

said, oh, nice, Connie had me leave the classroom. And

1:02:30

I was like, oh, I said, so you made

1:02:32

some bad choices. And she's like, yeah. And I

1:02:35

said, so tomorrow we'll make good choices. And

1:02:37

she goes, and she looks, she's like

1:02:39

looking down and then she slowly looks

1:02:41

up at me with this like conspiratorial

1:02:43

mischievous look that I absolutely recognize from

1:02:45

my wife. And she gives me a half

1:02:47

smile and she says, but I really like

1:02:50

bad choices. I don't

1:02:52

want to expose Bella. I'm

1:02:55

so curious as to what these choices are

1:02:58

that she wouldn't keep her shoes on. And

1:03:00

she and another little girl kept, they think

1:03:02

it's really funny to trade shoes. And

1:03:04

I guess it's becoming a bit of a distraction

1:03:08

from whatever preschool things they're trying to

1:03:10

do. I also think

1:03:12

she may have kicked a boy in the face, which

1:03:15

I would not, it's

1:03:18

hard for me to hold Bella entirely accountable

1:03:20

for that when really the person to be

1:03:22

held accountable for that or her older brother

1:03:24

who plays with her. Like

1:03:27

he is like some, he's a

1:03:29

wonderful big brother and they adore each other

1:03:31

and he takes great care of her. But

1:03:33

he does sometimes play with her as if

1:03:36

she is not her, like his three year

1:03:38

old little sister, but instead his twin 10

1:03:40

year old brother. And

1:03:42

so she's gotten used to wrestling quite a

1:03:45

bit. And so, you know, we'll address that.

1:03:47

But anyway, it was hilarious. She said, but

1:03:49

I like bad choices. It's

1:03:51

interesting because I could be wrong about this, but true

1:03:54

strikes me as the kind of guy who doesn't get

1:03:56

into a lot of trouble in school. And it

1:03:58

would be fascinating if Bella is the. rebellious

1:04:00

one who's constantly

1:04:02

having... Yeah, he doesn't get in a lot

1:04:04

of trouble but he gets

1:04:06

into the like sort of he and a few

1:04:09

friends don't always get to be in the same

1:04:11

classes together because they you know they talk a

1:04:13

lot and he thought the whole thing was hilarious.

1:04:15

He was like, dad, she because he

1:04:17

went to the principal's office once in my kindergarten

1:04:19

and he was like, dad, she went to the

1:04:21

principal's office like three years before even I did.

1:04:23

He was like, oh my gosh. So

1:04:26

pretty entertaining. It actually reminds me of

1:04:28

my high school my middle school principal

1:04:30

who was my mom's first cousin just

1:04:32

passed away recently

1:04:34

and I saw him this year

1:04:36

at my grandmother's 87th birthday party

1:04:39

and he didn't

1:04:42

quite understand that I was

1:04:44

I had become a principal and so

1:04:46

I was explaining it to him and

1:04:48

he couldn't believe it because I was so bad in

1:04:50

middle school. He was like, I... He

1:04:53

was so proud. It was great and it's so weird because

1:04:55

I hadn't seen him since I was in middle school and

1:04:58

then it was on this year and then he passed away

1:05:01

but it was such a weird funny interaction. He was like,

1:05:03

whoa, like you were

1:05:06

a principal. That's so crazy. That's awesome. That's

1:05:09

cool. That must have made him happy. All

1:05:12

right folks, thanks so much for listening. Please leave

1:05:14

a five-star review. Thank you to the Midas Mighty.

1:05:16

You can find Ravi and

1:05:18

myself on social media, Ravi's at RaviM Gupta

1:05:21

wherever you do your social media and I

1:05:23

am at Jason Kander on the same. Remember,

1:05:25

we all have a platform. Make sure to

1:05:27

use yours today.