The Strategy for Winning in Mississippi

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With 45 million square feet of office space in 1 20 cities across 34 countries, we've got you covered. For global co-working to custom office solutions visit we work.com . Welcome to Plot Save America. I'm John Faber. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, we're gonna talk about the news that uh US and Iranian negotiators are on the verge of an agreement to keep negotiating. Uh also talk about Trump using our money to cover statues in gold and the push to put his face on a new $250 bill. Exciting. Also talk about Republicans losing their minds over James Tallerico, Rubio topping Vance for the first time in a 2028 poll . Sorry. Great stuff. Couldn't help myself. And Jill Biden finally admitting that her husband's debate performance was so bad, she thought he was either having a stroke or on drugs . Deep breaths. Then uh could Democrats have a chance at a Senate seat in Mississippi? Democratic nominee Scott Colomb stops by the studio to make his case . Before we start, if you are not a subscriber to crooked media right now, what are you doing? You just listening to all these ads on Podsave America and Podsave the World and Offline for nothing? You could be listening to ad-free episodes. You could be supporting independent pro-democracy media, which is kind of important to do right now if you've been looking at the news and seeing what Trump's been doing to the media landscape. Um, and also we got cool subscriber-only shows like Polar Coaster with Dan. Uh today we're gonna be talking about uh James Talarigo versus Ken Paxton. But if you really want to nerd out on that race and hear all about the polls and Dan's take on this. You get to listen to Polar Coaster this week. All right, Dan. Another day, another siren emoji heralding a deal to end the war in Iran that appears to be an agreement to keep talking about the nuclear program that ostensibly led to the war in the first place. That's where we are. Axios reports and other outlets have confirmed that pending final approval from Trump and the Ayatollah, negotiators have agreed to quote, a memorandum of Understanding that says the Strait of Hormuz will reopen for, quote, unrestricted movement by commercial ships in exchange for ending the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, and then everything else, including sanctions relief and Iran's uranium stockpile, will be the subject of negotiations that will take place over the next sixty days, during which time the ceasefire will be extended, despite the tit for tat airstrikes between the U.S. and Iran over the last few days, so not off to a great start there. Um, questions remain: will Iran go back to enriching uranium? Will they get pallets of cash? Will they still control the strait? No one knows. But Trump addressed this last question during one of his marathon cabinet meetings on Wednesday. Would you accept a short term deal that allows Iran and Oman to control the strait? Nobody's gonna control its international waters and uh Oman will behave just like everybody else who will We don't need anything uh at all, which is why we're making the deal. And also we're gonna control the straight. No one's gonna control the stra it. If Oman doesn't let ships through, we're gonna blow them up. It all makes sense. Here's what a senior U.S. official told Axios about the deal. Quote, this is an agreement to get everybody to the table. We will work out the details in negotiations. That's not these negotiations that are leading to the deal that official is referring to. That is the future negotiations that will happen. Um, Trump mouthpiece Scott Jennings responded to the story by dutifully tweeting the US appears to be getting everything we want. Uh is this everything we want? Getting people to the table? Well, if you it's an existential question, John. If you want very little and you get very little, did you get everything you want? Just saying. Very good. Very good. I mean it's kind of hard to believe that the thing that there's been so much breathless reporting on so many siren emojis over the last couple weeks was simply an agreement to keep talking. And I know it says they're going to open the street of four moves for unrestricted commercial traffic. Now the problem here is is there are still min es in unknown places all across the Strait of Hormuz. Some of which Iran was laying just this week, they were laying more mines. That's what started the airstrikes again. I wouldn't say the strait is open, I say the strait is slightly ajar, because obviously some some ships will get through. There are these ships that are stranded there that the US was pledging to escort, which we then abandoned that after like one six hour period. So and it is it better that the United States and Iran are not bombing each other? Yes. Is it better that maybe a couple ships will get through there? Yes. Is this the treaty of fucking Versailles? No. This is a very minor It's not even an agreement. As you said, it's an MOU. So cool. Right. Like of course it's great to cease hostilities, because no one wanted this fucking war in the first place. Um, at least most people in America didn't want it and the rest of the world. Um but this the questions here are simple. Like, is Iran any further from developing a nuclear weapon than when this war started in February? No . We did nothing to push back the Iranian nuclear program that Trump hadn't done with the first round of strikes last year. So nothing has been achieved on that front. Is the regime any less radical? No. In fact the regime is now more radical. Are the Iranian people any closer to freedom? No. They are not. In fact, they are going to be more repressed by an even more radical regime. Is America any safer? No. Is the Middle East any more stable? No. And so what did all of that cost us? Well, uh, fourteen American lives, tens of thousands of lives in the Middle East, at least $50 billion in counting of taxpayer dollars that have gone to fight this war, and an estimated $4 billion in higher fuel costs so far. So that's what we had to pay . Those are the costs that we had to bear for getting abs a fucking lootly nothing except maybe the straight back open, which it was at the beginning of the war. And it's also not like Iran was on the cusp of a nuclear weapon when we started this pro cess. The whole thing is so stupid. It the whole thing is so fucking stupid. It's like it's mind boggling we've been talking about this for so long that this has happened because it's so stupid. The enriched uranium they are going to negotiate to figure out what to do with is only there because Donald Trump pulled us out of the Iran deal, so Iran went back to enriching uranium. All the uranium that's there has been enriched since the end of the Iran deal, which Trump pulled us out, and now. The best case scenario here is that we spent billions and billions of dollars. We used up all of our missiles. Uh five years. Five years to uh rebuild the munitions. That's the estimate. Which I'm sure will be a boon for a bunch of defense companies in which Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. have invested. The you know American troops have lost their lives. People all across the region have lost their lives. And for nothing. We're just we're off the best case scenario is we have a deal that is worse than the one Obama cut twelve years ago or whatever it was. And we are very far from best case. And now like do we think the Iranians really believe that if these negotiations over the next sixty days go poorly that Trump's going to start bombing them again, like what, right before the midterms? No. Well actually he might.. Yeah Maybe, maybe. But I don't think I don't feel like um I don't think this is a a great play in terms of keeping any kind of leverage over the Iranians at this point. Um so they they know they can close the strait whenever they want. So and lay mines whenever they want . So that's what's happening there. I'm sure the deal could be announced any minute now. Who knows? Um, we'll just look for more siren emojis from from Axios and and look for look for Scott Jennings to just sort of regurgitate whatever the administration tells him to, because that's what he does. Um right, so the White House press corps was briefed on the potential deal, as well as the latest bad economic news by uh struggling soybean farmer uh Scott Bessent, which is the administration's resident populist, Bessent had to contend with news that inflation has now risen to its highest level in three years, and the GDP grew even slower than previously estimated in the first quarter of this year. Osta Goolsby, the Chicago Federal Reserve President, told the Wall Street Journal that the U.S. economy is moving in a quote stagflationary direction, which would be the worst case scenario. Um Scott Besson's response to all of this? Okay, Doomers . I I believe we've already seen uh oil prices come down uh substantially. These are short term challenges that we will get over and I think we'll move forward. Is inflation sticky because the PCE was uh at a three-year high. Uh well first of all the P PCE today month month over month was point two, which was we're we're looking at decimal points, but the estimate was point three . Are you seeing signs that American households are dipping into their savings to pay for the higher costs of things like gas and groceries? And does data like that concern you right now? Well, so a lower lower academic literature would tell you lower savings rate can mean one of two things. Uh the the kind of the the doomer view that you took or that people have more competence. I'm no economist, um but does the literature say when people are dipping into their savings during a uh global energy crisis that they are confident they are doing so because they are confident about their finances they're confident they need to drive their car to work. That's what they're confident So, you know, we've had a number of auditions since Caroline Levitt has been on uh uh parental leave. Uh we had JD Vance, we had Marco Rubio, and now Scott Bessant took a turn at the podium and At this moment in time where you know somewhere between two-thirds and three quarters of Americans are very mad about the economy, ex economic anxiety is at the highest level possible. That you want to dismissively arrogant Wall Street uh centimillionaire, I think he is, uh to be your spokesperson. You don't want someone who exudes like money coming out of their pores. As Tommy refers to him as a a pissy cadaver . Yes, it's fair enough. Kind of looks like that. Um I think the question now is like if this deal is signed today, um would it actually help get inflation and growth moving in the right direction again before the midterms. It would lower oil prices, which will eventually at some point in time lower gas prices because oils because oil futures will come down. But you know, we're not going to see anywhere near the sort of traffic going through the strait that we had before for six months at the earliest and probably longer. And even if and the the true economic damage is done here, right? It with the growth has been stunted, inflation is up. It'll take a while for all of that to come down. The Fed is even thinking about possibly raising interest rates again because of the PCE numbers that Bessett mentioned. And but let's just put aside the economics where I feel deeply uncomfortable talking about them, focus on the politics, where I am mildly more comfortable. Is look, people's opinions about this economy are pretty set in stone. People's opinions about Donald Trump's handling of this economy are pretty set in stone. People are gonna start voting in a couple months. And even if things do get a little bit better, which seems highly unlikely, we know from years and years of data that people's impression of the economy lags the reality by months. And so even if things got a little bit better, it's unlikely to be uh help Republicans this fall. A CNN business reporter, uh their business reporter, David Goldman, um, was asked about like when when we might see three dollar gas again. Guess which year he said for three dollars gas again. It's not gonna be twenty twenty six, is it, John? Uh twenty thirty two. Twenty that's I would say I was gonna guess 2030 just because by the way you asked that question, that's it was gonna be far away, but that's even further than I thought. That's what um your reaction was similar to um CNN's Pam Brown, who also was like, What did you just say ? He's like, Yeah, well by the time he's like if you just look at the futures, uh this is what the futures markets say right now. Um, because it would have to be down to like I think around seventy dollars, uh oil would be have to be seventy dollars a gallon and up seventy dollars a barrel. And um, you know, it's like down to hovering around a hundred now, so it's not at what it was at with like a hundred and twenty, but to get from there to seventy, um, yeah, it takes the straight being fully open for quite a while. Uh the other thing about the strait is it's not just boats moving through the strait, it's that Gulf countries cease production because they could not get oil through the strait, and so they have to restart production, and that takes time. And that is on top of the facilities that were damaged from the Iranian missiles as part of the war that Trump started. Uh one area of the economy that's uh undeniably booming, construction firms that Trump has contracted to make the nation's capital look like one of his failed casinos. The New York Times reports that the no-bid contractor hired to paint the reflecting pool, a tackier blue, uh is quote, being paid an inflated and excessive profit margin, you don't say. The Times also reports that the administration has funneled over $60 million worth of national park admissions fees toward repairing the pool and some of DC's fountains. There's also apparently a $5 million dollar contract to coat a bunch of equestrian statues by the Lincoln Memorial in gold . What ? Uh this is all ahead of America's 250th birthday celebration, which Trump is merging with his own. The president will ring in the big 8-0 with a UFC fight on the South Lawn, and they've just started to build the arena, which looks like a Roman Coliseum that's being sponsored by Axe Body Spray. That's that's what it looks like. It's real a real eyesore. Uh the White House has also announced a list of musical artists who will allegedly perform for this summer's festivities, like Flow Rida, Vanilla Ice, CNC Music Factory, Millie Vanilli and YoungMC. I say allegedly because already Millie Vanilli and Young MC have said they're actually not performing this just in the Commod ores also said absolutely not. They were on the list as well. So um that list is dwindling, Dan. Did you follow how the Young MC and Millie Vinelli things played out? Young MC, I think, did not realize what he was signing up for, so he pulled himself out. Millie Vanilli seems to claim based on a very bizarrely worded statement from the quote unquote real Millie Vanilli, that the Millie Vanilli that was booked was a Milly Vanilli cover band . Now, if you know these history if you know your cover band , yeah, Milly Vanilli is also a cover band of Milly Vanilli, so uh it's rusting that is Russian nesting dolls of cover bands here. Didn't one of them die ? I think we only I don't know if we have Millie or think we're it's only Millie? Millie or Vanilli dead. Let's see. Uh okay, I don't know which is which, but one half of the RB dance duo, Millie Vanilli, Rob Pilates, is dead. Uh the other half of the duo, Fab Morvin, is alive. That's what Wikipedia tells me. Okay. Well, either way. Either way, no the Mill Vanilli will not be performing as as we commonly know them. For many reasons. For many reasons. If he actually could get the original Milvill to perform, that would be impressive. Now of course while all this is going on, you know, Trump can't be paying attention to all this. He's he' hundred feet long. That's longer than the tallest building in the world if you set it on the side. And we're now covering it with the most beautiful blue. Very thick you think of it as a very sophisticated form of rubber. No leaks, no problems . And it's beautiful. It's called American flag blue. That was the color we chose . Thick rubber doesn't leak. That's the blue. That's the blue that we're going for here. Just uh just covering the reflecting lake. Calling it the reflecting lake There you go. There you go. So there's also this story today that Trump is pressuring Treasury officials, uh, the people who print the money uh in Treasury, to put his face on a special two hundred and fifty dollar bill in honor of America's two fiftieth and in honor of Trump, of course. Um and this made me wonder: like, okay, the corruption, huge political problem, the biggest political problem, I'm sure. Um obviously, all of this also looks extremely out of touch um while the economy is in the shitter. You think people also might feel just a bit uneasy about Trump's messianic rebrand of America here? I mean, it's just like the face is on everything, the name is on everything, there's fucking gold everywhere . It's a little fucking creepy. Okay. So I want to get to that question, but can we dig in on the two hundred fifty dollar bill for a second? Yes. So Besson was asked about this at the briefing, and he pointed out that there is a law that says that you cannot put a living person on money. And that there's a bill before the eighteen hundreds. And yes. And it was after after George Washington, our first president, refused to put his face on currency while he was alive. And so there's a bill before the House and the Senate right now that would lift that restriction for the purposes of allowing Besson to put Trump's face on the money. And my message to I'm going to speak directly to Mike Johnson, John Thune, and frankly every congressional Republican . Immediately, if you do not immediately go to the Capitol right now and vote on that bill to put Donald Trump's face on our money, then you are traitors to the MACA cause. You are weak, woke liberals. You have to do this. Vote for it right now. I can think of nothing no better use of your time. I got a better idea, Dan . Uh remember, they all went home before the Memorial Day break because they couldn't come to an agreement on the budget bill that was supposed to fund ICE and all the other bullshit in there, like the $1.8 billion slush fund for January 6th uh riot ers. Um Democrats have the ability to offer amendments um in a in a voterama process. Uh so if I was Chuck Schumer or a Senate Democrat, I might offer an amendment about this and let's put everyone on the record and see what they think. See what all the Republicans think about the Donald Trump's face on the two hundred fifty dollar bill. That I like that too. That's a great idea. You you have really grow aged into a legislative strategist late in life. So that's great All right, let's get let's get to the let's get to the meat of your question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Basically, sh do I think voters are creeped out and maybe a little scared by Trump basically cosplaying dumb self-serving shit instead of lowering people's costs. Like that is the fundamental thing. You add a side of uh pretty uh blatant corruption to it, that's pretty bad. I think people see the, you know, Trump putting his name on everything, his face and everything. And I think maybe last year they would have seen that as scary. I think this year they think it's stupid because the Trump of 2026 and not the Trump of 2025. 2025, he was single-handedly destroying federal agencies, sending massed agents everywhere. He was astride the world. He was bizarrely popular. And now he is a deeply unpopular, doddering old man who can't stay awake in meetings. He he is losing wars to Iran. He just looks weak. He seems different. He just seems smaller now. And you see that in the polling where major pluralities of people and large majorities of independence no longer describe him as strong. They see him as weak and indecisive. And I think so I think should people be creeped out by it? Absolutely. I think the approach is probably not fear. It's derision. I was gonna say, I don't I probably I probably articulated it wrong. I don't think it's fear like oh no scary dictator kind of thing. When I said uneasy, I feel like um uh people look at it and first of all, I think part of this is me when the ballroom thing first happened, not thinking that the ballroom was going to be a big deal. And then realiz ing that the imagery of the East Wing being demolished was more powerful to people than I had imagined. And not just from a corruption angle, because at that point it was just we're gonna knock down the East Wing and I'm gonna build a ballroom, right? And um and it wasn't just like, oh he's not focused because we didn't , right? But it was still like, what are you all what are you doing? I think that people have not um there's going to be a lot of focus and a lot of attention on Washington, D.C. over the next couple months because it's America's 2 50th anniversary birthday, and there's going to be a lot of activities in D.C. And so those images are gonna be broadcast and everywhere and just like people tuning in to what's happening in DC with like Trump's face on the Justice Department and his name on everything and the gold everywhere. I kind of just think it's it's a small thing, but I think it's just sort of adds to the like, what the fuck is happening right now? Like it doesn't make you feel it doesn't make you feel good about America. At a time where people, most people will wanna feel somewhat patriotic or happy about America's 250th birthday. Making it all about Donald Trump, I do think like cuts to the core of what like it bothers people in a like a fuck, this is not our country. What what is this kind of way? Yeah, I think that's right. I think it's also just people are gonna see it and be like, why is this such a high priority? Yeah, like yeah, what yeah, and it all combines, I think. It's like what are you what are you doing? Podsave America is brought to you by Policy Genius. 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So if you're not satisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money. No questions asked. Remember to head to Z Biotics.com slash crooked and use the code Crooked at checkout for 15% off . There's just a bit more corruption to discuss before we move on. This is uh this is just sort of your standard issue corruption. Uh according to ProPublica, uh Trump advisor and family friend Peter Nav arro. Remember Peter Navarro? Uh he did all the tariffs that everyone's enjoyed so much. And jail time. He did jail time too. Jail time and tariffs, yeah. Um so it turns it turns out he pulled some strings last year to funnel a six hundred and twenty million Pentagon loan to a North Carolina startup owned in part by Donald Trump Jr. What do you think? Is an early early wedding present? Like we talk all the time about the crypto schemes and the Qatari jets and all the other like very extravagant and extraordinary corruption. But there really is just a staggering amount of, as you said, mundane corruption, just like funneling contracts to your friends so that they can make money off tax off the taxpayers. And Trump is probably, although not definitely going to pardon his sons before he leaves, maybe Peter Navarro will cross the threshold of people who will get pardoned, you know, because he did serve time for Trump for a while. Um, and he already has a pardon, I believe, or at least a commutation. Um, but the people who actually facilitated this, the people who work in the Pentagon, the people who work for Peter Navarro, they're not getting pardons. And they're probably going to see the the inside jail cell because of it. And that is happening across the board. And like there are a lot of people who think who are serving their MAGA lords, they're doing what they're told. And they are going, Trump's going to pardon his close friends and his closest aides and the rest of those people are gonna be in under tremendous legal jeopardy because of what they're doing. I realize it's easy to become numb to all the stories about corruption and all the numbers, but what happened here is uh this is a pretty clear-cut one. They set up this office in the Pentagon called the Office of Strategic Capital. And uh this was set up in the in the Biden administration, and the idea was uh the government wants to um give out some loans to uh companies, startup companies that are uh involved in developing rare earth minerals because we don't want to depend on China for that. We wanna depend on the US, and so this is good. It's good for the government to sort of help these startups that are doing this. It was a um they had $1 billion lending authority under Biden. Donald Trump comes in and they they they increase it from $1 billion to $200 billion. So now it's $200 billion dollars that the government is handing out to these companies. And in the Biden administration, there's a process. You bid for this if you're one of these companies, you apply. There's a rigorous process. They decide to take you or not. They reject some companies. They just obviously we want to give loans to the best possible companies because it's taxpayer dollars that we are giving to these companies. So we want to make sure they're the best ones. Except one company, Vulcan, um, skirted that entire process and in fact didn't even apply. The White House, Peter Navarro, calls the defense department and was like, You gotta give the money to Vulcan. You just gotta give the money to Vulcan. And that is the company, this small company in North Carolina that Don Jr. had just invested in just a couple months before this. And once it got the money, once it got the huge contract, the valuation of the company went from 200 million to $2 billion , a 900% increase. That is how much money Don Fucking Jr. made because his really good friend, Peter Navarro, the two of them are very tight, called up the fucking Pentagon and said, make this happen for Don Jr.'s company. There's so much like this. There is, you know, just heard the other day that they about you know Trump had a big investment and made investment in Dell right before a big announcement where Dell was going to get a govern ment contract. Same thing with Robin Hood. Just it's across the board, just everyone is robbing the treasury with two hands at all times. I was gonna say it's not and it's not just like they're using their office or they're abusing their office and just the fact that they have the office to make money. No, no, no. They're like stealing from you. They are they are putting their hands in the taxpayer pockets and stealing. Um, because this is just taxpayer money that's been handing out and with no accountability or oversight whatsoever. Is this company going to succeed? Is it a good company? We don't know. Don Jr. owns some of it. That's all we need to know. Money out the door. Taxpayer dollars. It was only a year ago that the government told us that we cannot afford to keep rural hospitals open. Right. Yeah. But we can we can give a favorable contract with a huge profit margin with people who put the weird rubbery paint on the b on the pool. We can give contracts to Don Junior's company. We can encase Washington DC based horse statues in gold. Where's Elon? Where are the Doge bros? Where's the all in pod bros with all the fucking uh come on guys? Probably investors in the Donald Trump and the Donald Trump Jr. company. Lots of waste and fraud right here. You guys were saying it's all kinds of waste in the government. You've been pretty quiet about this . Fucking losers. All right. Uh the moment from Trump's cabinet meeting that actually got the most airtime wasn't the Iran stuff or the thick rubbery coating . Um it was this. I don't care about the midterms. Look what happened last night. That was the prelude to the midterms. Yeah man, we noticed. We noticed you don't care about the midterms. It's coming through, coming through loud and clear. Um, he was referring, of course, to the Texas Senate runoff, where Ken Paxton , uh, the uh deeply corrupt beneficiary of a last-minute Trump endorsement, absolutely crushed uh incumbent Senator John Cornyn by almost 30 points. Um when drum said look what happened last night, what do you think he thinks Tuesday night demonstrated about the midterms? He's simple-minded fellow, John. I think he very simple-mindedly looked and saw that a candidate he supported won a race. And then he then presumes that candidates that he support will win similar races in the fall. Now, what Trump is too simple-minded to understand is that among the people who voted in that primary in Texas, I imagine Trump had a 85 to 95% approval rating. These are Texas primary voters . When people go to the polls in the fall, Trump will have somewhere between a I don't know, forty-two and thirty-two percent approval rating, depending on the district and the state. So which seems like a slightly different environment for his candidates. Also, I think just I just want to stick like this. Ken Paxton was winning this primary, whether Donald Trump endorsed him or not. He may have won by more, but there were reports in private that private polling had Paxton up 10 points before Trump's endorsement. We knew from the runoff that even though Cornyn got the plurality of votes, there was a strong majority when you added up Wesley Hunt and Ken Paxson votes. There was a strong majority of people Texans who did not want John Cornyn. And when incumbents go to runoffs, they almost always lose Yeah, I was gonna say uh also um the turnout was so much lower. Uh did you see some of the estimates on turnout? Like it looks like between the first race and the runoff, um Paxton got about seven thousand more votes uh in the runoff, and Cornyn lost about four hundred thousand votes um between the first race and the runoff. So it seems like a ton of Coronin's voters just stayed home and decided not to vote, and then the most engaged, craziest MAGA voters turned out for Ken Paxton. Yeah, which was always sort of the fear. And it's not like this was the only race on the ballot. You also you had congressional runoffs and you had a very important attorney general runoff as well. So I guess we could talk let's talk about um how they're going after James Talarico, who's now the Democratic nominee in that race, and then we can sort of talk about the the race ahead um from now until November. Um it does seem like uh MAGA World is a a bit more nervous about Talarico than they're letting on , um, as evidenced by their uh subtle new strategy of questioning James Tallarico's masculinity. It's very subtle. I don't know if you can figure it out. Um Paxson uses victory speech to call Talarico low-ti Talarico, tofu Talarico , and Sixth Gender Jimmy. Um, Steven Miller tweeted that Talo Rico will make history as the first transgender Senate candidate. Um here's the gang from Fox as the five on Wednesday. This baby lotion soft uh child he does he looks pre-pubescent. The major factor in this race, Greg, is whether Talafreco's vegan. You say you have a girlfriend. Why don't you name her? Are they gonna have a coming out party? Or is she still gonna stay the secret girlfriend? And is this totally not fake girlfriend also a vegan? He looks like such a beta male. He was, he was, beta or que was his big brother in the after school program. They'll say, they'll say, but he's a seminarian. How dare you not? He put the semen in seminarian. Uh what do you think they're trying to tell us? They dislike his policy ag enda? I get it. I get the line of attack. And there is a universe where you can execute that line of attack, um, maybe in a way that's somewhat effective. Feels like if you're already calling him a gay pedophile in May, um not a lot of runway left . Where where are you going in where are you gonna be in October? I am curious about what is driving this attack. Like is it in the data or are they just echoing the thing that Trump said on Air Force One two weeks ago? I think some of it is like instinct, right? Like they have okay, the the clips of James Telarico that have been, you know, all over the internet and right wing media are uh something something vegan. He's not a vegan. Um which clearly these people just actually don't know that he's not a vegan, and they think now he says he eats meat because he's like got caught or something. But he was never saying he was a vegan. That was not a clip. The clip of him saying that , you know, technically there's six sexes because of chromosome abnormalities with a small fraction of people, which like great. Um, and and like a couple other clips like that. And and he looks young, right? Um and so they're like, yeah, he looks like this like their their go-to is he's a beta male. But they can't just say that because there is an element of that's exactly what they say. Well, I'm they can't just say that. Yeah and like leave it at that because there's an element of oh shit, we just nominated Ken Paxton and we could lose, so we've got to take everything to a hundred. Um Yeah. So I think a couple things here. One, obviously their strategy, their only way to win is to nuke Tel Rico. This is going to be their same strategy with Grant Platinum, it's going to be the same strategy with whoever wins in Michigan, particularly if it's Abdul al Saeed. Um, like that this this is is their approach. It's really it's only it's the only thing they have, right? They basically, this is the weak woke, and two liberal attack that we talked about a few weeks ago. There are actually two separate things embedded in what they're doing here. There is James Talarico is a low-T , possibly gay beta male. He's not man enough for the Senate, which is really quite a thing to say. Um, and then there is James Talarico is a liberal elitist extremist who's out of touch with Texas values. That is the God is non-binary. That is the false attack, he's a vegan. And those are two separate things. Obviously, the second one pulls well. Like it like we we don't even we know that that's that we know that that is an average document . I'm not sure the he's a beta male is a particularly effective attack. I don't I don't know that they're I I guess I would say I don't know that they're entirely separate because the the out of touch the typical out of touch liberal who is a male is obviously a low T beta male. Like we are we are also low T beta males because we are libs on the co ast and we're probably vegan. And we probably have pronouns in our bio. That's a pretty deep It's a very online take. It's a very online take. The other one is a uh it's a deeply dishonest because it takes a lot of his cont quotes out of context and edits them, some of them quite uh un uh unfairly. But I think that there is I'm just not in pres idential politics, strength and toughness matters a lot. Right? How you define strength and toughness is very important. You can define it in ways that are much better than sort of like brute force strength that you know Trump sort of has tried to swagger his way into the Oval Office. It matters much less in congressional incentives. No one sees you as being tasked with staring down the Iranians or taking out Al-Qaeda or stopping crime in the streets or whatever else people associate probably incorrectly with toughness. And so I I think that the like Trump has sort of sent them on this path and it is red meat for the Fox base . And so it's one thing if like Jesse Waters and the Yahoo's on the five do it. It was interesting to me that it was such a big part of t uh Paxton's victory speech. I just I just like took note of that. Well I mean he is a he is a politician who if not successful will end up being appointed on Fox pretty easily. So the the the line his his speech was interesting because he did like he very Trump esque in that he was very excited and enjoying doing the Tal Rico attacks and responding to the crowd. And then he was reading with no emotion, lines about lowering people's costs. Um not what he's not where his passion lies. His passion lies of course in in theft. He likes stealing from people's um sometimes quite literally he stole stole someone's pen. So like a thousand dollar pen someone someone left lying around, there's like video of him just stealing it. Very friends and neighbors. That would that would be move. So Talarico's out there responding to the beta male line of attack. Here he is at a rally on Wednesday in Houston . Uh this is his first stop on a statewide tour uh and his first appearance since um Paxton won the uh the runoff. In a time when there's so much debate about what it means to be a man. My dad showed me. Every Saturday morning he would mow our lawn. And then without telling anyone, without anyone asking him, he would go next door and mow our neighbor's lawn. She was elderly, she was a widow. He never talked about it. He just did it. Because that's what a man does. He serves those around him. He takes responsibility and he does what's right even when no one is watching. So uh in addition to that, uh he also uh did a sit-down with with CBS Ed O'Keefe. And, you know, he said that some of his past remarks were cringy and that he would say them differently as well. Um, he's been, you know, there's been plenty of photos that the campaign's been uh pushing around of him eating barbecue because he's said he's eaten barbecue forever. Um so, you know, it's all of a piece, but if you were consulting on the campaign, how would you advise him to push back on this and I think um more importantly like how much time and energy um would you be spending on it if you were on the campaign before we do that I just do want to stipulate uh that Tim Salarico has a very, very real chance of winning this race. Yeah. Well that we should talk about that for sure. Yeah. But this is our best chance in a generation to win statewide office in Texas. We have not won a Senate race in Texas since nineteen eighty eight. We've not won statewide office of consequence in a century it's this century. And obviously the closest that a Democrat has come was better or work losing by two point six percent to Ted Cruz in 2018. But this is a different world. 2018 was a good environment for Democrats. 2026 is a great environment for Democrats, as we sit here today, at least. This is a hard thing for me to say, but Ted Cruz is much more likable and has higher, much higher fair , much more likable and more popular than Ken Paxton. This blew me away. In September of 2018, Ted Cruz had a was had a favorability rating that was nine points above water . Yes. Ken Paxton, depending on your poll, is five, seven, ten points below water. And we'll never be above water. That is just he's he will never see the surface. The and what is the most important thing here is that there is a demographic pincer movement happening in Texas in this moment. So in 2016, Hillary Clinton did better in Texas than almost any other state. It's a state where she actually had the largest improvement of a Barack Obama in 2012. It's one of the very few states, and maybe the only state where she did better than Obama did in 2012. And the reason that happened is she blew the doors off Latino voters. And Trump won by decent margin because white voters of all stripes, college-educated and working class, voted for her voted for him and Mess. What has changed since 2016 is those college-educated white voters, of which there are a ton in Texas, particularly in the cities and suburbs around those big cities, have moved dramatically in a democratic direction. And then starting in 2020, Latino voters moved towards Trump. And Trump won Latina voters by 10 points in Texas, according to the exit polls. What has changed since then is that those college-educated white voters have stayed exactly where they were before, and maybe even more fired up now than they were back in 2024. And Latino voters have moved dramatically away from Trump. Trump's approval rating among Latinos nationally is minus 50. In the generic Unidos, you okay that's in the New York Times fault. In the un idos US poll of battleground districts around the country, they looked at the battleground districts. There's a poll of Latinos, battleground districts in the southwest, which is mostly but not entirely Texas. Democrats are winning the generic ballot by 38 points . And so if James Halarico, if he can get Kamala Harris, Joe Biden-style numbers with college-educated white voters and something like Hillary Clinton's 2016 Latino numbers, he wins that race and he wins it by a couple points. Yeah. I saw that um I saw Nate Cohn said something similar and then also said that even if you take the latest Times poll, the national poll, and you um match the def the and you match the shifts with the different demographic groups in Texas, if you like make it a then you then um it would tilt blue Texas. Yeah. Even before you knew the candidates. Right. He has to navigate what we all talked about to get there. But this like this is not the previous discussion of Texas. It's not like a lot of other red states where we talk about where like we got this popular candidate, and maybe they can just persuade a bunch of these voters and maybe we'll get there where there's no more path. You can dr the math tells you that this state is in play if Talarico can achieve what should what should be achievable Democratic numbers. So that's that. Okay. No, I was gonna say,, yeah now that's a a good setup for what I think the challenge the Talarico faces is um I I I've been thinking about sort of Grand Platter in Maine and this, you know, I think there's been no bigger gap between what voters on the ground think of a candidate and what the internet conversation about that candidate is than than Platiner. And I the reason I feel more confident about Platinum is pretty much because the size of Maine. And I think that like Grant Platiner may meet most of the voters he needs to meet in Maine. And obviously, James Helrico is not going to do that in Texas because no one can do that in Texas because big fucking state. And so he does need to make some decisions on like how to puncture the internet caricature of him that a lot of voters are going to come in contact with and also through through television ads and other ads from the uh Paxton campaign and from the Republicans, and figure out, you know, like where to spend his time, what to say, what his ad strategy is, and your thoughts on all that. Yeah. So my thoughts are I guess the way to think about this is the strategy they're running against Tel Rico is the strategy they ran against Kamala Harris in twenty twenty four. The goal is to define him before he can divide himself. Like Tel Rico very well known among Democrats and very politically engaged people . To the extent that other people even know who he is, it's they kind of vaguely have this sense that he is like a Democrat who talks about his faith a lot, maybe is as much as they know. Um and you know the general vibes that he's not a typical Democ rat. And so that's a vacuum that the right is trying to fill before Taler couldn't. So what are the mistakes that Kamala Harris made that led her to be defined? The first is when the attacks came, like the infamous they them had, you she never took them on took them head on. Like and we can debate the ad strategy around it. We know all the discussion from all the people who work there about which ads tested good and which has ads tested bad. But as thinking siloing that conversation in ads is stupid. She wasn't like she was out talking to voters to try to disabuse them of that notion. Like she didn't never took that attack on. So you're gonna take these attack ons. I th I find both even though I'm less concerned about the masculinity attack, then perhaps you or others may be. The fact that he took it on the first day shows the right instincts. The fact that he sat down for the interview with Ed O'Keefe to take tough questions about the things he said shows the right instincts. You have to take them on. Because if you don't, then voters aren't just going to assume that they're true because people are naturally cynical. And the second thing is you cannot allow there to be a vacuum. You have to be everywhere, all the time, all at once. You have to be omnipresent in the media, on social media. You have to be like you know it's always the worst comparison but you have to be like momdani like there should be no interview turned down no podcast you should turn down you should visit every county in Texas or whatever is logistically feasible remember it took better like two years to do that so maybe that's impossible but do be everywhere so that people see you because when people see James Halarico they like him he is like he has real appeal with this segment of corn people who would who would have voted for J John Cornyn over a Democrat, but will might vote for a Democrat over Ken Paxton. And so you got but you gotta be in front of them and you gotta do be there is no you cannot waste one minute, every single day minute of every single day has to be out there communicating. And I think he he ran his primary campaign like that. He's run his sort of career like that. So I think that that's what they're gonna do. But like if you think you're being aggressive, you're probably not being you should be more aggressive than that and keep going. I have seen um a lot of uh right-wing folks who are uh quite religious online um make the argument that you know James the idea that James Taller Rico's faith and um uh pension to talk openly about his faith and and and you know being you know uh being a seminarian um is uh is is the idea that that's going to help him is like liberals idea of what a person's of a person of faith is. And like liberals have no idea because the fact that he is using passages from the Bible to sort of um talk about his progressive values is like blasphemy to some on the right, blah blah. And I think that they have that wrong because like I don't think that James Tallerico's view of his faith and the way he talks about his faith is going to win over evangelical Christians that were going to vote for Ken Paxton and voted for Donald Trump three times anyway. I don't think that's the point. In fact, I don't even think it's, oh, this guy um preaches and his Christian faith is what's gonna do it for me. I think the fact that he speaks from um he speaks in the language of morality is refreshing to people who don't necessarily vote all the time or sometimes switch between the parties. It's all the like the people in the middle, that when you hear someone and especially a Democrat talking about how their faith has moved them and how it um sort of uh sort of animates their values and their decisions about politics, like I don't think it at the very least, I don't think it hurts. I don't think it hurt pushes people away. But I think for some people, they're like, okay, well, this guy has a moral grounding. And even people who aren't religious necessarily or don't share his Christian faith may be like, okay, this guy believes in what he's saying. It it's like it it gives him an authenticity that again, when you meet him, you realize that it's that's that's what it is. He really genuinely believes this and it and it animates him and it drives him. And I think that that is worth a lot in politics today. These things these right-wing people are saying are so fucking stupid because if the a literal meaning of the scripture was why these people voted the way they vote, these evangelical Christians voted the way they voted, they wouldn't voted for Donald Trump . What I'm gonna take an even hackier view than you, like I agree with you obviously the way he talks about from this he talks about things that are from a moral framework is refreshing. The fact that he talks about his faith is a massive, it's authentic to him, which is incredibly important, but it's also a massive signifier that he is a di is different than your typical Democrat. And if he wants to win in Texas, he has to be different than a typical Democrat. That's why it's important. It is not because he's going to get into a theological debate with a three-time Trump-voting evangelical minister and persuade them to his side. It's that he can communicate with people, he can relate to people whose faith is important to them, or their faith community is important to them, because that is a that is a touchstone to begin a larger conversation about where Texas goes, where the country goes. Like it is a way in with a group of voters. It is not the fact of his faith is not delivering votes among other people of faith. It's just one way in which he can connect to people. I also think there's a way in which Talerico has already started framing the race, and he did this in a video um right after Ken Paxton won. Um where he is trying to make this about um him and everyone else as outsiders trying to upend a corrupt establishment and it's it's about the system, right? And he so he he attacks Ken Pax ton as corrupt, and he calls him the most c corrupt politician in America, but he said he's part of a corrupt system that James Talerico wants to change because it is the re and you know, this is Ossoff said the same uh says the same thing, this is the reason that you can't afford anything because these people are stealing your money. And making it about voters and about why can Paxan would be bad for voters because they are feeling like they can't afford anything and he's going to make it worse because he's a thief, just like Donald Trump. Um, I think is a very potent message. I have a a greater worry that if it's about you know, beta male low-ti Talo Rico versus um, you know, criminal adulterer Ken Paxton and it's like a character versus character race, that's not one that he's gonna have uh as as much of a chance to win as a as if he makes it about um you know outside versus the, you know, outsersid versus the system, change versus the status quo. He's just got to make it bigger than about him and Paxton. And I do think that, and it's not just for Tel Rico, but it's all Democrats, because Paxton uh gives you so many, is a target-rich environment because he gives you so much to talk about because he has such a bad record and he's corrupt stuff like that. It is very easy to turn this into a race about what a bad person Ken Paxson is. And I think it would be a mistake to just just talk about Ken Paxson as a bad person. You've got to talk about how Ken Paxton has fucked over the people of Texas when he was attorney general and how he would continue to do so in the Senate. Like that is where the that is where you win it, I think. Podsave America is brought to you by Blinds.com. There's a version of your home you haven't lived in yet where the light behaves, where the rooms feel finished, where you sleep until you decide to wake up. Oh man, isn't it nice to sleep so you decide to wake up? You wake up, you're like, did I just do that? 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Uh Thursday was Marco Rubio's birthday, and his best present came from Emerson, which has a new 2028 poll out showing he's effectively erased JD Vance's lead as a top contender for the 2028 Republican nomination. In August, he was at 9% and Vance was at 52%. In this latest poll, Rubio's at 35 and Vance is at thirty six, one pole, Emerson pole, obviously grain of salt. Does seem like there's there's some Mark Momentum here. Our friend our friend Sarah Longwell sees it in the focus groups too. You you've a couple different places. What what's what's going on here? I think Marco Rubio's greatest asset right now is that he's not JD Vance. I mean that's that I think that's it. I don't think he has done anything in particular that people love. It's not like he's just been crushing the job at the State Department. It's not like his stewardship of the Iran war is making people happy. It's not like people are deeply dialed into his role as the overseer of the viceroy of Venezuela. I just think he is a Republican who might seem slightly more competent in normal than your average Trump cabinet member and is not as awkward and off-putting as JD Vance. You see that um that fun Daily Mail story that has sources say that um Vance is considering abandoning his twenty twenty-eight bid. Um and uh he feels more isolated than ever now that Tulsi Gabbard's leaving. Um and it even got his team to respond, saying that it was all made up and everything, of course. But I'm sure he and Tulsi were just plotting in the back on how to fail fail to stop Trump to do bad things. He has been very subdued lately. Yeah, he's off he's he's offline. Remember, he quit Twitter for Lent. Yes. And then he just and then after Lent he just has he's kept it off his phone. He says he gets more done now . Good for him. Good for him. Honestly, offline listener, JD Vance. I was gonna say if he wants to come on offline, we can talk about it. Uh, you see that uh Gretchen Whitmer ruled out running for president in 2028. She may have like partially walked it back, which is weird. But it's see, she sounded in the actual clip. She was pretty clear that she was not running. I this does not surprise me. She has really done none of the things that the people who are r who are obviously running for president are doing. She's not out trying to get a lot of national attention. She's not making herself a foil against Trump. She's not going to all these cattle call events like Al Sharp's National Action Network and some of these other big events. She hadn't to I have not heard of her like meeting with donors, hiring staff, you know, talking to people, like the the people who are who are running, they're calling other people and they're making sure they know they might be running and you know and trying to persuade those people we hear from some of them. Um, but uh so I it's not surprising. One thing that I think is I did occur to me when I read this is with gre it let's presuming Gretchen Whitmer does not run. There are really only two other women who were thinking of running, and that's Kamala Harris and AOC. Oh yeah. I was gonna say AOC and who else? Oh right, Kamala Harris. Yes, and neither of them I think are I think most people would say the odds are against both of them running. Oh. So you could with the point being is you could end up with an all male field, which should be kind of gross in twenty twenty eight. Yeah. I think though for Gretchen Whitmer , it's like good for you. Like that is the if you no one should ever feel pushed into running for president because you are mentioned as someone who could be president. Like, like she is someone on pap er who seems like absolutely she could run for president. She clearly like doesn't feel the fire in the belly, like doesn't want to go through like and it's like, good, that's that's the better decision to make than to be like, all right, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna put the everyone through it. We're gonna go through the whole paces. Like it's a very big decision. It's a life-changing decision. And I mean also you gotta think about the party and the makeup of the field, and like if she doesn't want to do it, then like good for her for for bowing out early. Um all right finally speaking of deciding not to run for president uh I want to just quickly take you back to June 27th, 2024 . The night of Joe Biden's debate with Donald Trump. Uh we were there. Not at the debate, but you remember. You remember the night. We were together. We were together. You might remember that right afterward, uh Joe and Joe Biden dropped by a watch party to thank supporters. Um and here's what Jill Biden said then. Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question, you knew all the facts . Never gets old. Um now , uh Dr. Biden's out with a memoir, which she promoted in an interview with CBS Sunday morning this weekend. Uh and here's how she recounted actually feeling watching the debate. I don't know what happened. I mean when I as I watched it, I thought, oh my god, he's having a stroke. And it scared me to death. That's the time of my life I don't really want to go back to. I mean, I I I will say I maintain a deep well of anger at the Bidens, people around Joe Biden who f who helped keep him in the race, the people around Joe Biden, who attacked every one as basically traitors to the cause who thought Joe Biden shouldn't run for president either before or after that debate. Like that still makes me very mad. I have come to the point this many years later that I just have to decide that I can no longer give a shit about the who knew what when. Like obviously she was lying then. She's probably lying now. In fact, um uh quite a few Biden advisors told Alex Thompson that they do believe she's lying because they pointed out if she thought he was having a stroke, why did she take him to an after party and then go to the Waffle House? I mean, yeah, I've there l obviously lots of questions here. Here here's my thing, right? I just I have made a personal decision that I'm just going to try not to get that was basically a summer of pure unadulterated ra ge the whole time what was happening. I can remember my blood pressure at the time. Yeah. Yes. I'm trying not to revisit that period in my life. I so as I sit here today, I care less about what Joe Biden has to say about what happened in that moment. I care less about what Mike Donald or all the other people who covered up for Biden have to say about what happened at that moment. What I care about is what what happens going forward. And what bothers me the most is not the the time the timeline of events of twenty twenty-four, but whether Democratic leaders now will ever reckon with the massive breach of trust that came because of how all of that was handled. They telling voters that what they saw with their eyes before the debate was that they shouldn't believe that and then telling voters what they saw at the debate they shouldn't believe. And that lack of trust hurts us with our own voters, hurts us with the other voters. And we have to be thinking about way at all times about how to rebuild that trust. Like we should optimize strategic decision making at the highest levels as party for how to we rebuild trust, not just with our voters, but with all voters. And that is, I think, as I try to find a way not just to throw my phone against the wall every time I see stuff like that. That's where I'm trying to direct my positive energy. That was just remarkably disciplined and a delta view. And you know, now I'm gonna Austin just boot. Um didn't you already do a YouTube about this. I was gonna say, and I'm gonna um yeah, I'm gonna take that path as well because if you want to hear me flip out about it and Tommy, we have we have it on YouTube from this morning when it was fresh . But I I I I really comp I completely agree with that. Was that today you did that today? It was today, yeah. It's been a long time. What a fucking day. I know. Um but I agree with you. And that's the only reason I care about it now too, because I and I I read that I think I said it to you too, that that tweet from um Zay Jel ani who said, like he's like, I think people are underestimating how much the lack of trust people have in the Democratic Party is due to what happened around then. And I do think that. Like, you know, you can ask, do you think Biden and what happened with Biden is going to be an issue in twenty twenty eight? And narrowly no. But I think that the people are going to remember that the Democratic Party when I say Democratic Party, I mean the the people in the White House, the campaign, plenty of Democratic pundits, plenty of people online who were still fighting that fight, um lied to people. And didn't even lie to people in a way that was like like lied to people in a pretty obvious, obviously false, transparent way. Um and so that's like it's worse than a lie. It's treating people like they're fucking idiots, which is basically what they did. They told the whole country. That's the bigger thing. They told the whole country like , you know what? You know who the the problem is. It's these these these fucking DC establishment bedwetters who think that Joe Biden did bad in the debate. Those they're the problem. All I'm w we're with all you people and and you know we we believe that everything was great. We know we think you believe that too. And they like they think people are gonna believe that. Like come on. Yeah, there was a level of delute delusion and deception that was bigger than it or like dismissive. I think dismissive is the right way to put it. It was bigger than just the Biden's age stuff. It was inflation. Yep. It was Gaza. Gaza. Yep. And the combination of all of those things have put the Democratic Party in a bad place with its own voters, not to mention everyone else, and we have to be thinking about how we fix it. And that that that's one of the reasons why I got so mad about the D SEC and Chuck Schumer coming in and putting their hand in these races. And in and in some cases now, putting their thumb on the scale, but not saying they're putting their thumb on the scale by funneling money through Apex super packs or these other super packs in these other states. Like that's the And I thought you were going to say this is why I got so mad at the Ken Martin thing too, because that was the same idea. Yes, that's exactly right. That's that's it too. And that's allowed me to experience the same pe many of the same people because I wrote that message box and two and a half seconds after the autopsy came out, calling for Kim Martin Resign. I really put myself at the front of the line for the people on online to come out to say, like, where's the autopsy of your work in 2024? Pushing more good men out of jobs. But this is what and this is in in the context of going forward . I just want the people running in 2028, the people who are gonna be talking about the 2028 race, like when the Biden stuff comes up, when the DNC stuff comes up, whatever, like if people who are willing to say , totally fucked up, I was wrong, bad move, oh uh uh you know, wish I was more honest, wish I was more transparent, like great. That's fine. But you gotta say that. You know, people like, yeah, where's the autopsy of your work? Uh we're fine to say when we fucked up. This whole company was started because of a fuck up . Because we were so confident that Hillary Clinton was going to win. We were fucking wrong. I wish that we had gone harder Joe Biden earlier um than than the debate. Said that before too. You know, like it's it's okay. You can say that you were wrong. It's fine. You don't have to issue a you don't have to issue carefully worded statements that evade the question because you know what? People aren't gonna trust you. So So, anyway, good luck on the book tour, Jill. Um, all right. When we come back from the break, you'll hear my conversation with Mississippi Senate candidate Scott Cologne. Podsave America is brought to you by Built. Whether you're renting or paying a mortgage, one of your biggest monthly expenses should be working harder for you. That's where Built comes in. Built is the membership that rewards you with points on every housing payment wherever you live. Built started out rewarding members on their rent. 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If you join, you also get ad-free episodes of all your favorite pods, ad-free episodes of PodSave America, love it or leave it, offline, pod save the world, you also get bonus content like uh our new extra episode of Pod Save America called Pod Save America Only Friends, Dan Pfeiffer's Polar Coaster. You also get access to all of our excellent substack newsletters like PodSave America open tabs and tons more great content. So stop what you're doing right now and go ahead and subscribe at Crooked.com slash friends. Check it out . Looking for your next office? Discover WeWork's new real estate platform built for a smarter way to work. With 45 million square feet of office space in 120 cities across 34 countries, we've got you covered. For global co-working to custom office solutions, visit wework.com Scott Colomb, welcome to uh Plotsave America. Thank you so much for having me. You are a uh a district attorney in Mississippi. You're seventh generation Mississippian. Yep. Your mom is the first black woman elected to her region's chancery court. Your dad worked for Ronald Reagan before becoming a Democrat. When a Mississippi voter asks why a guy with your resume is running for Senate as a Democrat in 2026. What do you tell them? I tell them that we've got to have a senator that's fights for Mississippi. Somebody that understands that the tariffs have been terrible for the farmers, for the small businesses, that it's been terrible for the people going to the grocery store and that are struggling. And I'm not going to DC to be the Democratic senator. I'm not, we're not a state that can afford that, right? You know, Mississippi's got three million people, California's got close to 50 million. You guys got two senators. We got two senators. We have to use that to bring resources and jobs and opportunities to Mississippi. And our current junior senator, she's betrayed that. She's totally betrayed that. The people of Mississippi know it, and that's why they're gonna go in a new direction this November. You are running in a state that Trump just won in 2024 by 23 points. Mississippi Senate race and maybe laugh. Yeah. Make the case to the skeptic. What what do you see on the ground that suggests you could become the first Democrat, really the first Senate candidate, to win a state that the incumbent president just won by 23 points. So, you know, I get this question asked to me a lot, as you can imagine. And I used to a answer it like I was David Axel Ride. I would say, well, hold on, guys, you know, in nine presidential years, you know, we get much closer , right? Like our last Democratic candidate for governor got within three points of winning. Uh, you know, last year we broke the supermajority in the state senate. But what I realized is I needed to explain to people why I can win. Right. And the reality is , when I ran for district attorney in 2015, I ran against a 30-year incumbent. I was in a district that people had thought I had no chance of winning. But what I realized is that under the right circumstances, with the right opponent, and the right candidate, you can win a tough race in Mississippi. And those those three things are are totally at play now, right? I mean, I was with some uh I got invited to on the Gulf Coast, some Mississippians who previously voted Republicans. Okay. Notice I didn't call them Republicans. Mississippians who previously voted Republicans. They reached out to my campaign and said, listen, we love what you're doing on social media. I was on a podcast and they were like, we love what you say on the podcast. You're talking about Mississippi values. We want you to come meet with us. They said, maybe two or three people. We'll see how it goes. When I got there, it was 20 people. Former, former Republican voters. And they talked to me about how in this particular moment they feel like they're getting betrayed by the Trump administration with 1.7 billion dollars for people that assaulted cops that the president's cronies get to control. And then you look at Senator, our junior Senator, right? I call her Cindy High Prices because all we got is hot prices from her. So, you know, you look at her and she's a part of the corruption. I mean, she's gotten campaign contributions from fertilizer companies that are under investigation for price fixing. Wow, those same fertilizer companies are really hurting our farmers. The tariffs hurt them. Now we got fertilizer costs because of the war and our rent up, price fixing, she's taking money from . She is, you know, I mean, one of the Republicans, former Mississippi Republicans told me, he said, listen, when I heard about her going to Las Vegas, $10,000, campaign contributions to stay at luxury hotel to eat at luxury restaurants that reminds me of the corruption we're seeing in DC and you know we gotta we gotta go in a new direction and just tell us what you're running on and I'm running on making everybody's life in Mississippi better. You know, it's it's how do you do that? I mean you gotta talk about the issues. And the other thing that I think is important, and this is for everybody listening. It's a mistake I think people are making. We're making it too much about the candidates. We're looking for celebrities to do the profile. Oh my God, they're great speakers. Me, you know, I think I got a lot of charisma. I think I'm charming. I think I can give a good speech. I think you're charming so far. But I'll tell you this: going out there campaigning, listening to voters , the no I ask voters all the time. What matters to you? The number one answer, someone who does what they say they're gonna do. It's not about us, it's about them. We have to make sure voters can trust us again. And that has to be not just running 30 second commercials. We can't advertise our way out this problem. We gotta go back and touch voters. We gotta get, we gotta gain their trust. And when we get power again, we have to deliver. We have to make sure people understand that their vote mattered, that we make their life better. And so that's a big part of my strategy is I really get out there. I campaign. Anybody follow me, John, I don't know anything that campaign that campaigns more than me. I mean it's three events every on Saturday and I love vot ers. I love voters. And I I listen to them. You know, I don't just do town halls. I do town halls. But at some point you're just talking to people that, you know, from motivated to vote, right? I go to the festivals, I go to the housing projects, I'm gonna do a food truck where I pull up at the union uh halls, go to the plants. We gotta go to the voters and we gotta gain that trust. So the the former uh comm staffer in me uh believes you are totally right that you should not give the answer like David Axarot would give the answer. That's what we would tell. Yeah. But don't be a pundit. But now I am a pundit. Yeah um so Mike Espy loses by seven point eight in twenty eighteen. And I remember on that race uh consultants on the Espy campaign being like, pay Mississippi, it's gonna happen. Talk to Espy, it's it could and then Hood lost the governor's race by five point five in twenty nineteen, and then Brandon Presley, you mentioned like lost by only three point two in 2023. So it's a narrowing margin. Absolutely. Still a margin. Yeah. Like what's the theory of the case that you're the one who can actually close it as opposed to being like the next data point where and then and then Scott got even closer. Yeah. I mean, some of it's the environment, right? I mean, you look at 2018 , the economy was pretty good in Mississippi. You look at the economy now, the tariffs have been terrible. Nobody talks about how the tariffs have hurt Mississippi. You know, I was talking to a woman, a dollar general manager, right? And uh I was shooting a little commercial in there and I didn't ask her permission first. So, you know, you try to get, you know, What are you doing with those cameras? If we do it 15 seconds real quick, get out of here, uh, uh direct the camera real quick. And she noticed me and she said, What are you doing? I said, Well, listen, I'm a I'm a Senate candidate. I'm running against uh Cindy High Smith. She had no idea who that was. And I was like, well, listen, don't worry about her. I'm the guy. And uh and so I started talking to her. I said, listen, tell how the customers are doing. And she said, you know, they're struggling. I'm seeing them every month trying to figure out can they pay for diapers, can they pay for groceries? And prices keep going up. And she was like, I don't know what it is. I don't know what I can do. I feel helpless. So I asked her, I said, What do you what do you think about the tariffs? It was almost like a bullet went off. She was like, Yeah, you know what? It is the tariffs. It is the tariffs. You're right. They're bad. And um Do people um that you talk to connect that to the guy they voted for by 23 points. Do they say like tariff, bad Trump tariff? Like do they put it all together? You know, I think tariff is a bad word. You know, I don't know that they always do. I mean, there's a lot of voters that say they know it's bad because it became a popular term here recently. But we need to change the the the name of it. It's a it really is a working class tax. It's not a terri it's a working class tax. It's a sales tax. I mean and it's unfair to working people. It's a gr it's a terrible way to to collect revenue because if you make you know 15,000 a month or you make 2,000 a month, you're paying the same tax. Yeah. And uh so you know, we're connecting the dots for them, but I'll tell you who's really feeling it, and they understand it are the farmers. You know, I mean, I could tell you story after story about how farmers are struggling in Mississippi and now the fertilizer costs. And and the and the problem is, you know, you talk about the corruption and how she's allowing the corruption, how she's partaking in it. But then you had to add that with she's totally absent in the state. I mean, she had done a town hall in six years. She does not campaign. I mean, she her only strategy is scare tactics. 30 seconds She uh yeah, a recent Democratic internal poll had her, I think, at fifty-five percent unfavorable. Yeah. Uh it's like twelve points underwater from Trump around state. Why do you think she's so much weaker than the brand? Yeah. Um you got a senior senator in that state, I'm sure Roger Wicker that's that's more popular than her. Like what is the specific Hyde Smith problem as opposed to generic Republican? You have to think about it this way. You know, when I was uh this is a great way to to really bring the the story home. When I was a child, my dad was Republican, uh before he supported Obama in 08. Uh he he actually was real uh Republicans for Obama. Obama Obama switched him. But uh anyways, uh when I would go to like Jackson State football games at halftime, you would see Thad Cochrane or halftime with a $50,000 check going to Jackson State. That's a hard guy to beat. You know what I'm saying? It's hard to get motivated if a guy's bringing fifty thousand dollars yeah you know and we actually have a d tradition in Mississippi of having senators that understand this position has to bring resources back to Mississippi. You know Trent Lott I don't agree with him on a lot of things but he did a lot to bring job s back. I mean he was majority leader at one point. The majority leader was from Mississippi. So with her, a big problem is the people, even Republicans are like, excuse me, voters who used to vote Republican, they are like, she is totally MIA. We can't find her anywhere. She doesn't do anything. You know, I don't think we've ever had a sender that's this absent. And um, she thinks that all she has to do is be a hundred percent MAGA and she's gonna she can win. But the reality is I've been out there talking to voters and they want somebody that's 100% Mississippi because they they understand the stakes. It's not like things are going well. If you ask, I mean you can ask the most uh loyal Trump supporter supporter right now. Are things going well? They ain't saying yes. Right. You know they ain't saying yes. So if you become Senator, you uh you're the you'd be the junior senator from Mississippi. Uh seniority in the Senate, you'd rank towards the bottom, like all new senators do. So, like, what do you you're making the case that she's not bringing home resources to Mississippi? How do you make the case to voters that like if you go to the Senate, you'll be able, even though you're one of a hundred and sort of uh you know a junior senator help bring home uh resources to Mississippi. Yeah I mean one I'm gonna use my vote and my voice to really to really represent Mississippi. I'm not going there I keep saying this I'm not going there to be a celebrity. I'm going there to deliver for Mississippi. And so that gives me leverage because I'm not, you know, if a Republican offers something that makes sense for Mississippi, I'll support it. If a Democrat offers something that makes sense for Mississippi, I'll support it. Now, of course, you're right. You know, as a junior senator, you gotta be smart. And what I want to do is I'm gonna find issues that Republicans already support, right? Like economic development is a big thing in Mississippi. How do we bring in industries to develop capital to get our state moving in the right direction. I mean we're not like uh LA where you got builders I mean, you know, it every you know it's it's really And we spend it wisely. Well, you know, I'm gonna let y'all control that. But you know, but for Mississippi, we need capital. We need economic development. We've gotta be even Republicans, you know, leaders know that. And so that's a area where I I, you know, can be impactful that's really bipartisan. And the other areas, we gotta find, like for me, I gotta find smaller problems that I can help solve. Like I had a good friend of mine who mentioned to me that uh dental care is really bad in Mississippi. It's at the bottom. And so, like, that's a problem that I can help solve as a senator from Mississippi. That's not a partisan thing. So, trying to find solutions to practical problems that make people's life better. And the other thing that I'm gonna do , and I've learned this from campaigning so much, is you know, we can't stop campaigning. I mean, I know once you win, you gotta govern, but you also better still campaign. Because a place like Mississippi, if they feel like you go to DC and you're just making money or you know, just a celebrity, it's not gonna work. So for me, we gotta have strong anti-corruption legislation that makes clear that we're not in there making money. You know, that's why I support a ban on stock trading . That's why we can't have people become lobbyists right after they become senators. We gotta get the corruption and the perception of it. Cause that helps the people that aren't openly corrupt. Yeah. Right? Cause they can say the people are like, well, you know, they're corrupt, but so are so it is's, everybody corrupt. We gotta show them we're not corrupt. We're public service, we're not there to make money. And uh it's beneficial to me that like you said, my mom uh was a transfer career judge. And I learned my ethics and values from my parents, and and and and so I was I was you know I'm really trying to honor their honor their legacy. That's why you know it's important to me to be transparent and be somebody that people can trust, because I want to honor my parents. I also want to honor the ancestors that sacrificed so much for me to even have this opportunity to talk to you. You uh I was just thinking like the last Democratic senator uh from the state that voted by uh double digits, this many double digits, like in the twenties for Trump is uh it was Joe Manchin. Yeah. And his model was like cut deals, piss off your party constantly, and then you know, vote with the president when it suited the state. Is that your model too? Well I, think uh sit at the match it try to get a little bit more attention than I'll try to get. You know, I mean he he does love attention. You know what I mean? So for me, I'm more uh gonna be trying to use my leverage and voice to cut de als that make sense uh benefit Mississippi but not try to be just somebody making constantly complaining about things. If if if I'm sure you'll hear this from voters, if they're like okay, you say you're not gonna be a a typical Democratic Senator, you're gonna be a Mississippi senator. I don't like the Democrats, I don't like what they've done. Where where do you think the Democrats have gone wrong? Where where do you break from the party? Where would you be different than a typical Democrat? Yeah, but we gotta talk about economic issues. That's the first thing. I mean, because if people like I I knew this because I had a friend of mine that was a barber. He unfortunately passed away. Shout out to Jasper Pittman. He was a great political head. And uh and uh so in in in 2020 when when President Biden won. Th wasere a lot of enthusiasm. There was high turnout. And uh 2021, 2022, he he was a Democrat. He started getting sour on the par on the party because of inflation. And then what he felt like was, man, we're talking about sending all this money to Ukraine . We're talking about foreign stuff. Like, man, my life's not gotten better. Prices are up. Like, we gotta start talking about me. We gotta start talking about the voters. And you know, I was able to convince him that it made sense that we made sure Russia didn't and Putin didn't take over Ukraine. But I was a trusted messenger. And it was too many people that didn't have trusted messengers to help them understand that Democratic Party did care about the fact that inflation was out of control. That we did care about the fact that the border seemed like it was out of control. And, you know, that a lot of people feel like that hurts workers. Yeah. That hurts workers. And so we got to talk about economic issues. The other thing is that we have to, like, I feel like the last couple years, we've been trying to figure out, you know, the answer to Trump is, no, President Trump wants to make everything about himself. He loves that all the attention is on him. And we've been either making every campaign about him or trying to find somebody that can be as much of a celebrity, right, as him. Somebody who can convince these voters. I think we got to go back and we got to make our campaigns about the voters again. We had to have candidates that not can only go on a podcast and make a case, but they asked about how she be able to be comfortable taking 75 selfies. Yeah. Right? Jo going to a festival where nobody knows them. You gotta like people. You gotta like people. And that's great for me because I love people. And my opponent, she can't stand Mississippians. I mean, she does not campaign at all. Um so the the the challenge for Democrats, as always, is uh it's like o,kay, we want to talk about economic issues, we want to talk about making people's lives better. And then the Republicans don't let you because they make all the attacks about their favorite wage issues. Hyde Smith's campaign manager called you the transgender defender, said you were handpicked by Schumer, bankrolled by Sora, soft on crime, all the radical sex changes for children. I just unloaded the clip. Yeah, yeah. All the favorites. Walk me through how you answer that. Like not for our audience who knows it's garbage, but like for a voter in Mississippi that will hear those ads fifteen times between now and and November. So I knew that she was gonna do that. I knew exactly all those attacks were like one player, yeah. Yeah. I mean and so if you look at my campaign announcement ad, I tr y to preempt it, right? So for example, I know in Mississippi, the way to counter a lot of that stuff is to show people that your life, your life is like theirs, right? So my announcement ad centered around my family. I've got two daughters. I coach their soccer te am. Listen, I mean, come on. I mean, you think people are gonna fall for that? Like, my dream, what this is what I tell my daughters. I say, listen, you know, there's not uh many ways you can disappoint me. But if neither one of you become a basketball player, I am going to be disappointed. Does that work? I mean, one of the the the the junior one of my youngest ones is starting to work. Because I say, you know, when you get older, if you ever complain, I'm gonna always remind you, I wanted one thing, and you didn't deliver for me. So, I mean, and the other thing is we we gotta lead with our values. You know, for me, you know, I do soul for Sundays where I talk to church faith leaders, and I I center them and talk about you know there's a lot of for whatever reason we've allowed uh people like Sydney Hyde Smith to to trick voters into thinking that we Democrats don't believe in faith democrats don't believe in family. Like, I have much more in common than to the average Mississippi family than she does. You know, my wife, she makes me drop the kids off at school sometimes. She, Cindy High Smith is never doing that, right? I go to the soccer game, watching my kids play. She's not doing that. I my wife make me go grow. Let me keep stuff and say my wife makes me do it. As a good partner. As a good partner, my wife is training me well. As a good partner, sometimes I have to grocery shop too. And so I'm at the grocery store talking to people, listening, you know, my life is like theirs. So I'm gonna cut through that mess by showing them how my life is like theirs, showing them my family, and centering the voters because you know every every Monday I drop a video called Mississippi Matters Monday and I'm having voters kind of man on the street style asking people say what matters to them. All the stuff she's attacked me on, no voters ever said that's what matters to them. It's not on their mind. It's not. So her, you know, for me, if I can raise enough money to counter her lies with the truth and tell the truth about her, we're gonna win. I'm telling you, we're gonna win. The wins at my back. So what's what's the the message to a donor in California or New York deciding between writing a check to your race and to say North Carolina, Maine, Ohio, even Texas? Yeah. Yeah. Um, that's probably higher on the D S C C list. Yeah, but whoever's making those lists, I mean, what what's the results? Right. So I mean maybe we need to redo the list a little bit because Mississippi's a cheaper state to compete in. We're a cheaper state to compete in. Um but you know we have Christianists you and I agree we have Christianist Pi save Mississippi Day. Yeah this is it's day 28th from now on. Now on we're going to talk about Mississippi. And the reality is you can't save America unless you save Mississippi. I mean, we have to matter. When the country has done well, everybody's paid attention to what's going on in Mississippi. We focus on the voters in Mississippi, making sure that they have quality education, quality health care. We don't let these people that want to take our country back, control everything. And when we got, you know, when we done poorly is we ignored Mississippi. And there's there's plenty of examples of Mississippi being ignored and we've seen the results of that. And to get ourselves out of this mess, what we have to remember is rural America matters