Can Dems Put Woke to Bed?

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Welcome to Plata of America.

I'm John Favreau.

I'm John Love it.

Tommy's off today.

On today's show, the White House tries again to limit the number of vaccines for kids based on

unproven conspiracies about autism.

Todd Blanche officially becomes the attorney general thanks to the Republican Senate.

AOC says woke one was crazy as Wisconsin and Minnesota Democrats head to the polls.

Jesse Waters does not want to talk about women's sports and Hunter Biden sits down with Tucker Carlson.

Then Montana House candidate Sam Forstag, a former smoke jumper,

stops by the studio to talk to Love it about his candidacy and the politics of his state.

He's really interesting.

I really recommend listening to that conversation.

This is a person who decided to run for office.

He literally is jumping out of planes to put out wildfires and then spending the rest of his

year organizing and doing union work and he's just a really interesting person.

A firefighter.

My kids would love this.

He's being into firefighters right now.

Well, they're going to listen.

I mean, a lot of our listeners are going to be big into firefighters after this conversation.

Keep proud of that.

Excellent.

All right.

All right, but first let's check in on how the president's war in the Middle East is going.

NPR.

Here's a headline from NPR.

Haunted by Hoover, Trump searches for an end game in Iran.

CNN decided to go with.

Trump has a Carter style Iran problem as the economy drags before the midterms.

We got a Hoover.

We got a Carter.

What else?

It's more Carter for the trifecta.

Yeah, no, he's definitely doing, yeah, he's definitely doing Nixon.

Nixon at the Department of Justice, Carter in the Middle East, Hoover, Hoover on the

bread lines. I mean, he's really, it is really all of them.

And and and in fairness, the comparison to Carter is even more apt than that because

the straight of Hormuz is a hostage.

That's the context for lots of reporting over the weekend that the president is desperately

looking for a way to accept defeat in Iran.

After the regime made it clear, they're not giving up control of the straight of Hormuz.

Trump is also weighing, dropping his demand for a nuclear deal.

It told Axios that he is quote, low-keying it with Iran and only semi negotiating at this point.

And then on Monday, responded to Iran's demand for reparations by demanding reparations

from Iran. Take that.

Not any of the cons losing their semis.

Sorry.

I don't think Tommy's down here.

They were never they were never semis.

Yes, that's right.

What are you talking about?

Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that the Iranian regime is intentionally dragging the war out

so that Trump loses the midterms probably because they're watching clips just like this.

You said in June that this was quote, the strongest job market in your lifetime by what metric?

The bottom line is that if you look at the overlaunched economy, then things are really, really booming.

Trump's administration has only added 548,000 net jobs so far, which is considered very slow growth.

It's growth, but very slow. Two million jobs were created in the last 18 months of Biden's presidency.

Are you really arguing that your numbers are better than that?

Well, I disagree with your number. We'll have to follow up on email.

I know you don't negotiate with the Iranians, but you do talk about the economy and you said

your bullish is going to be a heck of a lot of traffic moving every single day.

They're being right like if I wouldn't call it a heck of a lot.

How do voters feel about the president's work on jobs?

You know, these are the types of numbers that will make a lot of Republican members of Congress lose

their jobs come November. You can see it right here.

I mean, just look at this trend line. Trump's not approverating on jobs.

He has now 22 points underwater, swimming with the fishes.

Swimming with the fishes.

What kind of code switching was Harry doing at the end there?

It's like extra New York.

How does Old Donnie Riggler's way out of this one?

Love it.

If from the beginning they had said they were going for unconditional surrender,

that they were going to prevent Iran from being able to project power in the Middle East,

that they were going to fundamentally reorder the power and this critical part of the world.

What he had done, not unlike what he had done when he had the midnight hammer in the past

or killed Soleimane, like done a series of strikes and then claimed that the nuclear program was

set back at away. Barack Obama could have never dreamed through his deal.

Maybe they could call bombing the nuclear sites and sort of incapacitating a large percentage

of Iran's military as some kind of victory if they reopen this straight.

But now, Iran has proven that the US military, despite all it's might combined with Israel,

cannot stop it from controlling this vital waterway.

Trump looks weak. The country is not behind it.

There's all these reports about our depleting military capacity.

And now at the end of it, the best he's going to accept is we're back to where we started.

Now to be clear, I hope that happens. I would rather us get back to the straight being open

and not having this on again, off again, war in the Middle East and all the instability and danger

and chaos that that entails. But it's still a total capitulation by Trump.

And I don't think the straight is going to be open because Iran has recognized correctly

that this is their sole point of leverage now. And that's why there's always reporting last week

that Iran and Oman were heading towards a deal. And I guess they haven't negotiated it,

but Iran's basically like, yeah, we negotiated this with Oman. But we're not opening the straight

until the US ends the blockade. US forces out of the region, compensation for the war,

sanctions relief. They're asking for all of it because they don't really want the deal because

they actually want to lord it over Trump. And you know, and from Trump's perspective,

he does it like he keeps going, you know, they talk about exit ramps. He keeps going past

different exits on the highway. Each time he goes past one, the next exit is worse than the last one

because now what can he actually do? He can't, he doesn't want, he's not talking about a military

strike. Remember he's talking about horrible, the worst military strike since World War II,

and we're going to destroy them as early as last week. We were just talking about that.

And today he was asked and he's like, you'll see, you'll see. But we don't have the munitions.

We're running out of munitions. We, there is no intelligence that said that any further US

strikes would bring them to the negotiating table or do anything or cause them to change their

behavior in any way. So basically what he wants is for the straight to reopen and then say a nuclear

deal will happen some other time. But he can't even do that because they're not going to open

the straight. And they're not cooperative rhetorically, right? Like he really, really what he wants

is for this all to just go the fuck away. Like everyone just shut up about Iran. I don't want to talk

about it anymore. I don't want to think about anymore. We won. I'm done. It's over. Everyone

stopped complaining. And so he, he does these threats to say they're coming back to the table.

They don't cooperate and say we are back to the table. They have this annoying way of not

helping him with his PR problem. Right. Because they can read the news. Yeah. And watch clips like

we just did. The Guardian says that there's two factions in Iran arguing about their strategy on

this. One thing that if Trump is weaker after losing the midterms, he'll have less reason to deal.

The other things that losing Congress will force Trump to negotiate. What do you think? My instinct

on this is that it is no easier for Iranian political factions to predict Trump's conduct that

it is for us to predict Trump's conduct. I think that there's a third door, which is, and this is

by the way, something that some of the Neocons have been wish casting for, which is Trump is a little

bit constrained by the politics right now because all of these Republicans he's dealing with

do not want to be settled with an ongoing war in the midterms and the cost of gas and

the anger from the part of Trump's base that were convinced that they were voting against

foreign wars. So they want all this to stay pretty quiet. If Trump, whether he wins the midterms

or loses the midterms, there are those who believe that will give him the flexibility to finally

do the escalation that they're desperate for him to do. He'll be, he won't be running again.

Other Republicans can criticize. They can be a debate about it in the 2027, 2028 Republican

primaries. But there's a version of this where losing the midterm may weaken him politically,

but might put him in a position to do something drastic and quite terrible.

Yeah, I was thinking about it the other way in that like, because I don't know that escalation

does anything at this point because I don't know that they can he can bomb them into submission

since they've hit all the targets. I do think he could give them more.

There's that too. He could capitulate more. And you could see him doing that again after the

midterms just to get it off his plate and to go around saying that he ended the war and he's a

peace president and like it's a terrible deal and everyone tells him it's a terrible deal,

but he doesn't care because he just lies. Yes. And then he gets, you know, he's he's doing his big

kind of president at the end of his term. Yes, doing his sort of like big diplomatic

achievements that he can kind of put in his museum tower. Part of this is a wish that the

elections are somehow a hinge on which there could be some change in the dynamic.

The other argument is the Trump we have today is the Trump will have six months from now.

He doesn't give a fuck what happens to these Republicans for the most part other than how it affects him.

He's already said that in many interviews. What's driving him is what will drive him then,

which is how his ego is reflected in the embarrassment of losing a war, being able to claim that

he got a better deal than Obama. What have you? That's the case in January as it is today.

One person who seems less afraid of pissing off Trump these days is BB Netanyahu.

He just rejected the US backed peace plan for Gaza saying that the IDF won't withdraw any forces

until Hamas completely disarms and that they're not afraid to quote stand up to the US.

That would be Israel. What did you think that's all about? Yes. He also said again that as long

as he's prime minister, there will be no Palestinian state, neither in Gaza nor in Judea and

Samaria as what he says, but the West Bank. And that's regardless of whether Hamas is in charge.

So they can negotiate and deal with what it means for Hamas to be disarmed. And there may be

legitimate disagreements inside of that, even though Benjamin Netanyahu is not a good faith actor

and there is no disarmament that would be acceptable to him, obviously, but there is an actual

policy question in what it looks like for Hamas to be disarmed when

you're leaving those weapons inside of Gaza. Fine. But if he's saying there will never be a

Palestinian state, he's been saying for a while. Yes. But he's saying even now,

after they've leveled Gaza, even if even as Hamas has agreed to the terms of this deal,

which means handing over power, even in a deal in which there will be an international force,

like all of these steps, the steps that would have to happen and that should be what determines

the creation of a Palestinian state that Israel recognizes. He is saying that that cannot happen

on his watch. So you have Trump now saying, you know, on the, the Trump administration kind of

quietly saying he's gotten election in October. He's trying to protect his right flank. Let's wait

till after the election, which by the way is a large acid is not a forward people like John Cornyn

and Cassidy and the rest. But okay, he gets, let's say they they then y'all who manages to just

stay in power. He gets the other side of this election. Then what? He is saying he will never

agree to a plan in which the Palestinians have a state which means he will never agree to a plan

in which Israel is not the sovereign in Gaza and the West Bank. Right. Which means that they will

he'll never agree to a plan where Palestinians and people who are living in the West Bank in Gaza

are anything but second-class citizens with fewer rights than Israelis, which is if people, you know,

people who are probably Israel get upset when you call it an occupation or that it can act like

in a part-tied state. But when you're talking about the West Bank in Gaza, like what what do you call

it if there's never going to be a Palestinian state and Israel is just going to control both

areas the entire time. Are they going to make them full citizens of Israel? And it probably doesn't sound

like it. And you have Israel taking more and more of Gaza for this security perimeter. They no

longer even really recognize the original border of Gaza as where a Palestinian state would begin.

You have settlement, expansion going on at a pace. They are doing everything they can to make

any kind of a Palestinian state, both politically and practically impossible. Meanwhile, you have

those who I think are rightly, incredibly disgusted and critical of Israel saying that a two-state

solution is now ridiculous and stale and dead talking point because of what's happened. They want

a one-state solution in which every which Palestinians have equal rights. Those that are pro-Israel,

that is anathema to them because they believe in a Jewish state. If you believe in a Jewish state

and you find it repellent at the idea of Israel being in a part-tied state, then the answer is a state

in which Arab Israelis and Jewish Israelis have equal rights, but there is a Jewish majority that

requires a Palestinian state in which they can govern themselves and live in freedom and autonomy.

That is the reality. Benjamin Netanyahu is the obstacle to that possibility and everything else.

You can blame all the rhetoric you don't like. There's tons of anti-Semitism, but it is

this Israeli government and the Israeli people backing it that are now making Israel this

pariah nation around the world. Yeah, and I don't know that an election even that get for Netanyahu

is going to fundamentally change too much about that scenario that you just described.

So let's, but by the way, I just think we should just keep arguing. I think we keep arguing

on about social media and accuse each other of all kinds of things. Yeah, I know that it was

quite close. We're very close. We're very close. Very close.

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One surprise addition to the White House schedule on Monday, an executive order on childhood

vaccines. The order changes the federal government's official guidance about which vaccines

kids should get and how soon. On the completely unproven theory that combining different vaccines

into single doses and administering several vaccines in a single doctor visit, which has happened

for decades might cause autism. Specifically, the EO calls for the measles mumps and rubella vaccine

called the MMR to be given as three different shots, even though they're not available separately.

It asks states to revisit vaccine mandates, which is their choice, and it pairs down the group of

vaccines that should be recommended for all kids taking HEPA and B vaccines, the flu vaccine,

and the COVID vaccine off that list of recommended vaccines. Somehow, though, what Trump,

RFK Jr. and noted health experts Steven Miller said about vaccines in the oval on Monday was even

worse than the EO itself. Large amounts of like vats of vaccine are currently pumped into a child's

body. There are some groups that have virtually no problem with autism.

And I have to say that their groups that are in big into the world of vaccines.

Nothing bad can happen from what we're doing. Nothing bad can happen. It's possible it doesn't work.

I don't think that's much of a possibility, frankly. We don't know a lot.

The U.S. passed all of 2025's measles total by July, so far of this year,

2,371 cases, 37 new outbreaks versus 2,000 for all of last year, a little over 2,000 for all of last

year. MMR coverage among kindergartners has fallen from 95.2% in 2019, 2020 to 92.5%.

So good job, everyone. And now we're going to be telling kids and families to split the shots up

somehow, which will mean more missed visits. Yeah, I mean, what do you think happens if you tell

everybody that you have to go to the doctor three times instead of one time? You can answer

the question. The country's that have done this. I think in Japan, split up the MMR vaccine and what

do you end up with? You end up with outbreaks of months and Rubella. That's just what happens. This

is all... And we'll talk about Bill Cassidy and his capitulation on Blanche. This is somebody who

is in position of power. He is a doctor. He believes in vaccines. He had a moment where he could

have stood up to this and he took the ridiculous false assurances from RFK Jr. at face value

because he wanted to be convinced by RFK Jr. So he could avoid the hard vote and voted

RFK Jr. out of committee. And now we have, as destructive, a health secretary, as you could imagine,

in this job, being alive is already challenging. We don't need to put it on hard mode.

Like that is what this is. Vaccines are a miracle. This is all based on false science.

Like even... This idea too, like, oh, you know, we give our kids 72 jabs or whatever number of

jabs. That is a number based on giving kids the flu shot and that they are not counting the shots.

The other countries also give their kids just not real. And then on top of that, because they

think of vaccines as somehow harmful, even though there's no evidence that they are harmful. In fact,

they are one of the great miracles of modern life. They have changed the world. They've made

being apparent a very different experience than what it had been 100 years ago. When other countries

don't give kids vaccines, they react by saying, can you believe it? We're giving our kids more vaccines.

Yes, that's cool. They're not willing to spend on some of those vaccines. They're not willing to

add them to the schedule. They're rationing fucking healthcare over there in Europe. The day the

Danes are rationing the healthcare, we're giving more vaccines than they are. And part of the reason

we have to do that is because our health system is so much fucking worse that we don't catch a bunch

of stuff that they might catch in a universal system. And so when you remove some of these vaccines and

say, what could happen? Well, what's going to happen is there's going to be a bunch of kids that

get happy. There's going to be a bunch of kids that don't get vaccinated for road of virus or what

have you. And they're going to get sick in that window because the doctors that recommend these

vaccines and recommend them happening when kids are born or early on are not fucking malicious.

They're not looking to harm kids. They're not sadists. They know that if you increase the window,

if you cause more delays, if people don't show up to the doctor inside of that group of kids,

are people that don't get hurt, maybe permanently injured, maybe die. That is what's going to happen.

I'm bummed about it. Wow. I'm really mad. I'm going to need

a hearing check. It makes me really sad. The CDC, in their own website, still says that there's

no published evidence of any benefit from separating MMR. It's just, in the way these things get

like sort of seep out into the public consciousness, we're getting another example of it. We got one

just today because they have, they're still trying to do a number on Fauci.

So they got his phone, his government phone, and they released all the texts.

There's one text where he's like, oh, one thing we should look at as we're developing these

COVID vaccines is if there's any effect on miscarriages, because there's like a

thrown out of hypothesis, that's something that we should look at.

These are new vaccines. It is a new technology. Let's make sure that if it causes some

kind of response by the body, that there isn't a higher incidence of miscarriage, we need to know

that about this vaccine. A completely reasonable question for Fauci to ask.

So it was January 2021. He said that the second dose of the COVID shot theoretically could be

associated with miscarriage in the first trimester. So that's something to think about. Then they tested

it. Of course, it was like, by the time it was widely available, like it was fine, and they had all

the right recommendations. They were held approval, by the way, for pregnant for a while.

For a while, because it's yes. So they did like everything they were supposed to do. Now,

everyone is like Megan McCain is like, put him in jail. I'm serious. I'm not.

I'm not. And then now they're they're they're recirculating this debunked theory, where there's

this study that apparently shows that I mean, I know it's you don't they are they are numerically

illiterate. They're medical. Yeah. Katie Pavlich. The mandated and doctor recommended COVID 19 shot

for pregnant woman was effectively an abortion shot. According to new documents just released by

centers Johnson and Paul, the authors of this study claimed a miscarriage rate of 12.6%. But the

raw data revealed an 82% miscarriage rate. Is that what happened? An 82% miscarriage rate. No,

they read the study around. They read the numbers wrong. They're all fucking idiots in every single

right wing, not every single one. But all these right wing accounts now are putting out that

there's an 82% miscarriage rate for the COVID shot. So completely irresponsible and fucking dumb.

It's also we all live in the world. A lot of pregnant women got the got the COVID shot. If there

was an eight some 80% chance of miscarriage because of the COVID shot, that would be one of the

worst health catastrophes that would be it would be like fucking children and men out there. And

they're just first of all to get to they're just misreading the number even that 12% of my that might sound

like a lot, right? You're just if you're just casually consuming this information, the point at like

a lot of first trimester pregnancies and then miscarriage. That's why people don't tell their family

until they're through the first trimester what they found is when you looked at all the data,

there wasn't a spike. It didn't go above. There wasn't a statistically significant increase in

miscarriages. That's all that and they look at it and they do the best they can. They weigh the data

against the safety that the COVID vaccine provides. And these are scientists and doctors doing their

best to try to protect pregnant women to protect children to protect people from all kinds of viruses.

And because of the conspiracy-addled minds of the people in that room, they can none of them doctors.

None of them doctors. None of them with medical degrees. And and forget even the recommendations.

Like forget like the maybe that j guy the seed went over and jay back up with whatever's

nameless. But like okay, these are these these are recommendations that would harm people 100%

just the way they talk about that that's a vaccine injecting the little ones the jabs the 70 it's

all meant to it's it's it's all meant to make people question be afraid of these vaccines. Meanwhile

the the vaccines we give today are so different than the ones that were given even 20 or 30 years

ago they have much less of of the antigens in them. They're much more precise. We've learned a lot

about vaccines because science is amazing. And so the dozen or so vaccines that that kids will get

in early childhood today actually have less far less like a tenth as much of the kind of antigens

that was in one protester shot 30 years ago. We have we have figured out how to do this in a

way because because the people doing this research care so much because they didn't become you

don't become they're not researchers in vaccines because they're what like power mad

covid mask people know that their doctors trying to provide us do the best care or produce the

research for the reasons they got involved in medicine in the first place and there these people

are like who decided it's a fucking conspiracy to give kids autism. Meanwhile, I don't know given

the state of our fucking our education system our healthcare system our infrastructure maybe we

could use a little more autism get people on these fucking spreadsheets figuring this stuff out.

Don't laugh at that don't laugh at that staff. God forbid we have a we have more people in this

country that don't like that that that like staying inside and doing fucking math.

This seems like a little bit of a self-interested. I got every vaccine and look at me I know how to make

eye contact it's not that hard. Look at a John right now right in the eyes he can't look at me who

has autism now. Neither of us. Well one light-hired moment in this whole thing was someone one of

the reporters asked Trump afterwards you're a proud father would you have vaccinated your children

differently. In this man with that like straight face doesn't just doesn't even skip a beat just

is I did I did I took I took my children for five different vaccinations I went with my wife

and we took each of them for we separated out all the vaccines. Do you think that man has ever taken

any of his children to a doctor's appointment ever do you think he knows that they do you think

he ever knew who their pediatrician was. Can you imagine Donald Trump in the same room as one of

those toys where you move the the little things along the wires with it imagine him sitting

against the wall and there's just like a kind of big red stripe behind him you know. And he's

walking into the suit and tie to he's got to take take work off because he's got to take Don junior to

get a vaccine. Come on buddy you'll get a lollipop at the end. It's me Donald Trump taking my son.

He and Ivana were just going together to the doctor's. I would have loved someone to follow up on

that question. Be like oh when did you when did you do that what pediatrician where did it where

did they go famous hyperconductor act Donald Trump sitting in a waiting room with a bunch of

coughing children inconceivable inconceivable he didn't he just he just missed his son's wedding.

What are we talking about. Anyway right before the vaccine event Todd Blanche was sworn in as the

next attorney general in a private ceremony in the oval office on Saturday the senate voted to

confirm Blanche and the only knows were Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins but three yeses from

the three members of the so-called Yolo caucus of Republicans John Cornyn Tom Tillis and Bill Cassidy

who had this to say and on giving his family protection from IRS programs. That's totally wrong

totally wrong and so I will go back this is not a black or white decision that is wrong and no

American should be targeted by the law but no American should be above the law and that frankly

almost weighed devote no. Wow. Actually it's a it's quite a black and white decision there's

there's a yes vote and there's a no vote. He's either he's either confirmed or he's not confirmed.

I will say that in the in that oval the vaccination event some reporter was like so was the

weaponization fund dead and he said well that's up to the attorney general now just like we thought.

Yeah the like fecklessness of Cassidy and Cornyn and Tillis three people that Trump's

personally ruined their careers he got involved to get them out of office he successfully did it.

He he has now put forward as his attorney general nomination someone who's oversaw the

politicization of the justice department unlike anything before in American history which is a

tough category RFK was the attorney general who personally met with Galein mask Max well

oversaw her transfer to a cushier prison has overseen a justice department in which they've gone

after Lisa cook and and James Comey and fucking the the the the sandwich thrower all the way up and

down in any like so beyond the pale so obviously unfit so clearly a moment to just stand up and say no

as you could ever imagine in the senate and then this guy has has the audacity to then claim it was

a hard decision he talks about tearing up in this interview with the given the incredible amount

of responsibility on his shoulders to have stood in those hallowed halls and been responsible for

such big decisions much like he always imagined it could be to be on that in that storied senate

chamber and he is saying it as someone who completely failed his moral responsibility he will that

he completely gave up that power to Donald Trump in a way that is pathetic and that defines him his

whole life is defined by his decision to be a tool for Donald Trump a stooge for Donald Trump

and he's giving interviews about how we be he was at the out having had the opportunity I mean

look at this way sometimes we say these people do this for Donald Trump because all they want is

their job and their title they're afraid honestly none of those things he lost his job lost his title

he doesn't have anything to fear anymore he's just and he just thought okay sure it's it's Todd Blanche

it's kind of lazy he said something about like well it wasn't about like the perfect attorney general

was like maybe another one would be worse what what are you talking about I really think they've

sorted Todd Blanche into the serious guy who talks honestly behind closed doors and that's what

they've convinced themselves but this is where they all like love Rubio still right in their mind

Rubio's like the adult in the room even though he is like capitulated on just about everything that

Donald Trump is asked him to do right and says crazy things in public now same way they can see Doug

Burgham even see as a serious and reasonable person even though he's out there saying that the

reflecting pool was destroyed by by vandals the other part of this too is they act they're acting so

powerless they had so much power Cassidy Collins Murkowski Tillis Cornyn they could have come

together and said we want to ban by law any kind of insurrection as fund we want a public assurance

from Todd Blanche that he won't consult with Donald Trump about ongoing cases they could have

they could have in law they could have passed a law that said no settlement with the IRS could

carry forward into the future that it can only be provide there's all kinds of things that they

could have done with their actual power that that was not impossible just required some work

like actually getting together and figuring it out and caring enough to do something without acting

like every vote that happens to you is the like there's no forward planning to it it's like well

that's the vote today nothing I could do he's acting so it doesn't fucking matter it's really wild

I would love someone to really I mean this is not I wouldn't because what's going to happen is

Todd Blanche will continue to do horrible things and then someone will ask them you know what

did you think about Blanche doing that and maybe they'll say oh I'm so disappointed that he did

that I never thought he would do that yeah I was really sure you know he gave me his assurance yeah

boy am I it's like you know it's like how Susan Collins talks about Brett Kavanaugh and Dobs you know

yeah that is the and like Susan Collins now gets to have this vote no and as everyone the point

people have made again and again is that she only votes against Trump when it doesn't have a

consequences is what's happening here but I do think there's like an alarm that's not going off

a dog that never barks with Susan Collins which is what kind of fucking non-leader is she she has

all this power in the Senate and she had other the appropriations committee she could have gotten

some other so much she could have done with this group of people she's still good they could do it

right fucking now they never will he is desperate he is it is a it is a close Senate Mitch McConnell is

quote unquote recuperating at home you know his his doctor Jonas Salk says he's getting better

Clara Barton says he's doing quite well so there's that he's working from home

some kind of home all right so that's it Todd Blanche Todd Blanche is our new attorney general he

was the old attorney general so we're not gonna notice much of a difference he's just gonna

continue doing whatever Donald Trump tells him to do personal lawyer now the attorney general

but still the personal lawyer all right let's get to the midterms on Monday speaker Mike Johnson

launch an exciting new messaging effort called the contrast for America they transpired by Newt

Gingrich's famous contract with America which most of the people alive don't remember anymore

aiming to reframe the election as a fight against actual communism that's not a joke it's if you go

to the website uh... which i don't encourage you to try but if you go there uh it shows the

history of communism in different milestones in different communist takeovers um and then it compares

then it compares democrats wanting to raise taxes to to that they call that communism now that's

that's now that's communism raising taxes uh republicans are betting that their only chance to

win the midterms now is to capitalize on the democratic infighting over a few ds a candidates and

and also more progressive democrats like a duel winning their primaries the cycle

here's aoc giving her theory of the case to abc's john carl on sunday in response to questions about

Wisconsin frontrunner francesca hung and a duel doing his best to pivot to a general election

message what do you make of those controversial statements i'm sure you see and i mean she's

uh you know that the thanksgiving dust up she says she doesn't you know still believe that but uh

you know uh the abolished prisons abolished police my understanding is that um is is that francesca

hung has made clear her present stances to her yes she's moved away from right she's moved away

from it and i have a local city councilman that has this uh uh saying woke one was crazy and i think

that we all share in the goals of having as low a crime rate as possible i think that

you know during lockdown of course rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today

when asked about his son piker's comments on nine eleven senator bernie sanders called it a

dumb statement do you agree do you disavow those comments that america deserved nine eleven

of course of course it was a dumb statement and of course i think uh hasad himself would say

that was a dumb statement he disavowed it i want to be held accountable for what i say and what i do

look i'm less concerned now with who i'm campaigning with a lot more concerned about who i'm

campaigning too so republicans are hoping that democratic quote unquote extremism will be for this midterm

cycle what the dobs decision was for 2022 sort of a way to change the subject away from a deeply

unpopular incumbent um what do you think you think it could work i don't uh because one is a

fear mongering message about democrats trying to make every democrat sound like the craziest

thing people saw on the internet the other is a real decision having real negative consequences

on people's lives that the republicans actually did i also think it is part of you know they can't

there's no campaigning that they can do to uh diffuse the fact that they overturned

row they did that they wanted it and in fact a lot of the people uh who were very happy to see

roe ver turned also supported abortion bans uh at the six week mark or with no exceptions for

rape or incest uh um or uh the life of the mother so they were saddled with their actual position

this is fear mongering about democrats to make people think that they can't have i don't know

universal health care and a tax code that uh was as high as they were in the communist days of america

i don't think it could work i mean it could work but i think that it'd be one thing if republican

candidates and an alternate universe were out there being like you know Donald Trump we break from

him sometimes because he can be extreme and these democrats are extreme to where the only thing

holding holding the line between crazy Donald Trump and crazy democrats of course that's not

what they're going to do um they're all in for Donald Trump so i think that uh i think it's

to be tough and also it depends on like most people when you are i mean we saw this in the

the new york time santa poles of the senate battlegrounds from last month which is you'll get a

majority of voters in that poll in the senate battlegrounds at least said uh democrats are too far

to the left they think the democratic party is too far to the left but when you ask about the

democratic senate candidate running in their state they don't think necessarily think that that

democratic senate candidate is too far to the left and so in midterm this goes race by race and

if um you know if you're a democrat running that race and they try to tag you as a dsa

candidate or they try to say you want to abolish prisons like you just say no that's not what i

believe yeah this is what i believe i have i have this agenda that is not my agenda and so you

know they'll i mean on the margins for you know it voters who aren't paying attention until they

go cast a ballot could this work maybe i don't know but i think in a midterm for most voters it's

probably going to be um it's going to be tricky when you get down to the individual race level yeah

i guess will it work well yeah it's going to work on some people this is they're trying to make

democrats their job fundamentally look what is american politics today it is uh from the right

does an effort to make extreme republicans seem reasonable and reasonable democrats seem extreme

and uh to pretend that politics is ultimately not about what the tax rates are and who gets health

care and who doesn't that's what everything that's why they got a fucking uh former uh NBA guy

trying to get into the wmba it's like it's all part of one big thing the the i was thinking about

francescahont because i joked about it love it or leave it and i went through the tweets and they

are quite silly uh and this is the moment where we're going to talk about these things because the

primaries are wrapping up we're having an intraparty debate right now this is the moment where i

dole pivots to the general where there's the most sore and hurt feelings where we're trying to figure

out what worked and what didn't you're trying to reconcile all these things uh in wisconsin whatever

happens in the election let's say francescahont is the winner maybe she is maybe she's not either way

tom tiffany right like oh my god i can't believe she tweeted that about Thanksgiving

tom tiffany uh objected to wisconsin's electors he uh signed on to the to the to the ken paksten

lawsuit to try to overturn the election he continues to say that there were hundreds of thousands

of fraudulent votes in wisconsin he said that the trump should cut off funding to madison that

wisconsin the state he's trying to lead should get less money because it is not going along with

trump's immigration policies he did not he refused to say that uh trump shouldn't invoke

the insurrection act he is and he's he uh sponsored a resolution in congress uh to support trump

for sending people to fucking secot in elsevedor he's an extreme and radical person and if you ask

people do you want a governor who uh was in a bad mood in christmas in 2020 or somebody who believes in

uh deporting people to a foreign gulag and uh support sending more money to ice and cutting

taxes for billionaires like where do you actually come down on this i think people if given the

choice faithfully uh would choose somebody who maybe said some kooky stuff in the past and that's

our job it's like get back to that i don't think there's voters who're going to be like well

her Thanksgiving tweet was crazy it's going to be they're going to think oh she wants to abolish

police she wants to and i'm afraid about crime and so she's going to have to do if she's the

nominee reassurance of people that she cares about public safety and do it in a way that is convincing

i also um this is my own maybe this is makes me a bit of a neo-lib

shell but uh there was a time when democrats really enjoyed hating communists and like really

kind of got into it about how stupid and deadly and dominadiology is that like there was a kind of

consensus that fascism and communism were programs for morons and losers uh that were deadly

and stupid and we should fight them with everything we've got because we believe in a democratic

liberal order in which uh we protect people from the worst kinds of destitution and have a safety net

and give everybody opportunity but also support the freedom to say what you want and pray how you want

but also start a business and create products and uh uh try to uh build things and innovate like that

was sort of what we all used to believe and one way to deal with the communism's crap is to have

democrats out there who are willing to say like i believe in free markets as long as they're fair and

give everybody a chance which is something a lot of democrats used to be a little bit more comfortable

talking about because they were less afraid of being attacked by people on twitter well i mean

i think a dual even in the primary it towards the end was talking about like

because he'd be asked oh aren't you dsa too and he was like no i'm i i believe in free markets

i like free markets yeah you know and and look franchesca hung in fairness she's like uh she's

been saying like while i'm a i was a small business owner you know the challenge is like when you

call yourself a socialist it's like well what does socialism mean and this is the whole thing with

you know well defund was actually just a slogan and abolish is just an aspirational abolish police

and abolish prisons that's just an aspirational thing that's not real well then don't use the

fucking slogan no it's just extremely unhelpful way of achieving my vision right it's like it's like

you then your then your upset that people don't understand that you actually have a nuanced

view of public safety because you embrace the slogan abolish police like of course they're

not going to understand that you have a nuanced view if you use that slogan or you just say you're

socialist that's what you probably shouldn't call yourself a socialist right because i because it like

i think there are plenty of people that are democratic socialist to our socialist but a lot of

people ascribe to it because they think being a democrat is correctly cringed uh the word liberal

was actually maligned by republicans for a long time uh and they're really social democrats

right that's what they are they are social democrats which and i really do think there's a lot of

people that have convinced themselves that democrats are just sort of incremental socialist right

in both directions but i think they're socialist that believe that about democrats and think

there's there are people uh uh uh uh uh uh uh that there's a kind of and there are lefty democrats

who believe that about that somehow we're that really to be a liberal is just to be afraid to say

what you really want as opposed to having a framework for viewing the world in which government

helps to address inequities and solve problems,

but fundamentally you do believe in all kinds of freedoms,

including the freedoms that go along with the free market.

Well, yeah, it's just,

if you believe in Medicare for all

and a wealth tax on billionaires or abolishing ice

or whatever it is,

just say you believe in those things

and just talk about those policies.

Like the labeling doesn't seem like it's helpful

in any way, shape or form, but I don't know.

That's just me.

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How do you feel about what one was crazy

as a way to explain the excesses of,

I guess it's just 2020, maybe 21,

whatever that time period was?

First of all, I think it's, it has the benefit of just being kind of true.

And I saw a few people talking about this,

which is, okay, we're now saying kind of more publicly

what we were all saying to each other in private.

Like, boy, we've lost our minds a little bit, haven't we?

And to me, what's interesting about it is,

like whenever, I care less about what people were saying,

on the internet, it more about what our candidates were doing.

And I think about everyone raising their hand,

about decriminalizing the border,

or kind of taking kind of more lefty positions.

It's what settled, Kamala,

with the sort of, that, you know,

that, that, that questionnaires

from the height of this moment of woke 1.0.

And images like the, you know,

probably the, you know, Pelosi kneeling with the Kenti cloth was maybe,

maybe that was a little much.

And, but what, what, what, what was happening then was,

first of all, there was, we were dealing with a once in a century pandemic.

We, we were having a genuine and important conversation,

nationally about systemic racism and policing.

It did lead to a lot of important conversations about reform.

But I do think that a lot of people felt like they were performing

something they didn't totally understand or believed,

and they would leave the criticism to others,

because they just weren't going to take on that work.

Right? And so everybody kind of went along with certain parts of it,

but they weren't totally sold on, right?

Or they, maybe they didn't say themselves, right?

But they didn't want to get in the muck.

They certainly weren't going to go out there and say,

I actually don't believe in defunding the police.

There wasn't a lot of equity.

There was a lot of value in poking your head up above the trench line there.

Yeah, well, I mean, when you think back to like,

what was woke 1? Right?

Because now we're just saying,

oh, it was all crazy.

And, and, and you're right.

People like, at least people on the left kind of instinctively know,

what that means. Yeah.

But it's like worth talking about what it is,

what it was.

And I do think it's like three different things we're talking about here.

There's, there's policies, right?

So there was defund, the police,

it was the big one, but there was also abolish the police,

abolish prisons, which I don't even,

I didn't even remember from then,

but now we're, we're seeing all the tweets from back then,

abolish borders or open borders or decriminalize all that.

So there was that, then there was language that was used.

And there was like, there were words that no one actually uses in,

in real life that were chosen to replace words that had been

deemed offensive, but weren't always offensive.

Well, even in your interview with friend Jessica Hong,

she talked about justice impacted individuals.

Right, which is a funny thing because I remember when I interviewed Andy Beshear,

and he, and I was like, what are Democrats do wrong?

Or whatever, I asked him some question about Democrats and what he would change.

He's like, well, we use language that, you know, people that's,

I don't know if he said faculty lounges, but it's that kind of idea.

And he said, you know, like, justice impacted individuals.

I remember when he said that to me, I'm like, is he just saying that phrase

to like pick out something to mock because I had never heard that?

I was like, what is he talking about?

And then she said it to me and I was like, oh,

oh, I guess that is something, justice impacted individuals.

So there's a whole bunch of language that made the left and Democrats seem

like completely out of touch and that they don't speak the language that most people speak.

Right. Then there was the public shaming.

I won't say cancel culture, but public shaming, right, which is there was a tendency

and this was mostly on the internet, though it, it led into the primary a little bit in 2020.

Responding to like someone's statement or position that you disagree with

by trying to yell at the person, label them bad, shame them,

instead of persuading them that they're wrong or calling their idea bad

or their statement bad, like they were bad.

Yeah.

You know, like that's, it's like also the difference between like,

that statement seems a little racist versus like you are a racist for making that statement

or sexist or whatever it may be.

And so there was a little, there was as we were discussing real problems to be solved,

systemic racism, police violence,

a brutal way of treating immigrants, whatever it may be,

there was this belief that if you yelled loud enough or took a strong enough stance

and called out the people who were taking the opposite stance loudly enough

that like that would be the way that you fight it.

And I think that since then people have learned that maybe the most effective way

is to try to like bring people along to persuade them and then you know,

if you can't vote against them or organize against them, right?

But it's just there was a, there was like a substitution for real politics

because the discussions were happening online and people were just doing a lot of yelling and name calling.

Yeah.

It also like, it was, it followed, so Trump wins in 2016.

The meat, meat to happens in 2017.

You have a series of terrible killings by the police that follow and then into the,

into the end into the pandemic and then the death of George Floyd.

And it was this moment of saying, look at what we've tolerated, right?

Look at how much injustice was sort of baked into all of these systems.

Look at how much we were ignoring that was in plain sight all around us.

Now is the moment we're going to tear these things down.

We're going to tear these systems down.

And that was exciting and it was exhilarating I think for people, especially for activists

who suddenly found that there were millions of people in their homes

or seeing their messages.

They weren't out at bars.

They weren't at, they weren't in an office.

They weren't living, they weren't at a park.

They were home watching their screen and, and all of us collectively worked at it

taking in a lot more of this and more receptive to it.

I mean, we were, you know, I mean, we were doing pods from our homes

and you just knew that you put so everyone was seeing it all at once.

Right? There's a lot of people going out to do jobs that they had to do.

But as a side, our culture was being made by people fully paying attention all the time

from their couches and all of that was, it meant that everything was heightened

and you lacked the feedback loop of being in the world.

Right? You lacked the feedback loop of talking to someone face to face and trying things out

and also, by the way, stepping away for a little bit.

Right. Well, there was also a thing too where, so, you know, George Floyd's murder

and a very important discussion afterwards about reform, reform policing, systemic racism.

And then, you know, there would be some vandalism and, you know, windows being broken

and, you know, people spray painting, A cab, all cops are bad.

And then some people would be like, well, that's not great, you know, to do that kind of stuff.

And then the response you get is, how can you care about that when they're these bigger issues?

And the truth is, it's, the reason you care about that is because the rest of the country is watching as well.

And there's a, most people, a majority of people who think police brutality and police, police killing is a problem and very bad.

But also, they like police in general as a concept.

You know what I'm saying? And so, like, for those people, if you tell them, no, no, no, it's also okay,

looting and vandalism and saying that all cops are bad, like, that's okay too.

Like, they're just not going to agree with you.

Well, I also, I do think that there was an impulse.

And, and especially in like a kind of a political show like this or political debate more generally,

there was a, I don't remember what the book was called, but the thesis was something like looting.

A, okay.

I work for a major news organization.

And my book is called Looting. Yes.

It's terrific.

You know, it's like, sort of, but it's sort of written as an academic speak, like looting and the praxis of freedom or something.

And I remember feeling this at the time because it was so heightened in the internet with such an intense place that you would, you would say,

like, hold on a second.

These things are counterproductive, right?

Like, this leads to backlash. We're trying to avoid that backlash because the cause is so just, right?

Like, because the cause of accountability for violence against the police,

against people by the police is so important because it's like, yes.

But because the cause is so just and important, that's why you have to be careful.

But, but, but, it's why you have to be extra extra like think harder about persuading people.

Well, and, and so then you say that's, and so therefore, because the looting or the damage will be taken out of context,

even if the vast majority of people are peaceful, it will be, it will cause a backlash.

But even in that moment, there was a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, pressure, again, simply saying, because looting is wrong.

Because that, that business being destroyed, uh, hurts the people that work there, the people that own that business,

even if it is a big company, by the way, but it hurts the people that work there that aren't for a big company whose jobs depend on it,

but a lot of them are going to be small businesses. And that is just simply morally wrong.

Even if the ultimate cause for the anger, what led to the protest itself is just, it is just wrong, even if it weren't counterproductive.

And there was very little space for that. But here we are years later. And actually the failure for more politicians and people in authority to, to remember those lines and assert those lines.

In the same way, by the way, a bill Cassidy or a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, John Cornyn are afraid to draw those lines.

Uh, they are paying because they went along with a kind of style that the country has now looked back on with a lot of disdain.

I will say on, on the other hand, um, after AOC made those comments, I saw a lot of center-left folks who sort of always thought that the woke one was a little crazy.

Um, just not being very thrilled that she was just laughing it off. And they want a more serious explanation about what actually was crazy and what progressives have learned.

And sort of like more of a mea culpa on this. And on, I understand that. But also it's like political leaders on the left moving away from some of the fringe year unpopular positions that they took in the past is a good thing.

Well, in like one way to incentivize people changing their minds like that is to welcome it when it happens and not complain about it because I think changing your mind is good.

Apologies are good. Recognizing that that past positions weren't the best is good. Like we, you sort of want us, it's almost like in a different way.

It's when a, a, a Trump voter is like, oh gosh, I didn't think the deportations were coming to my town. And like instead of being like, well, you're an idiot.

You know that the response should actually be like, great. Well, then welcome. Welcome to our movement.

Well, look, the term woke was stolen and turned into a pejorative. But one of the ways it was used at the time was it doesn't matter when you got woke.

It's that you are right like it's just like that that that you've woken up to what's happening in our society. And that's a good thing.

Like that to me, the other part of the woke one is crazy is part of the problem is, okay, fine.

Time is flattened on the internet and in political ads that the fact that now people are walking away from certain styles of rhetoric or positions that were more extreme than they want to take right now.

Good. Those old clips are still coming out. Comma LaPaid and blood for what she said in 2020. We all are for what we are all paying in blood for what Kamala said in 2020.

So part of it wasn't just her to be very of course not most of them that ran of course it wasn't just her was everybody was every was it was a it was a it was a cultural kind of like whatever a cute cultural moment of people kind of kind of

of kind of in the sort of reverie. But regardless. One way to get past it. It's not just disavowing it like I appreciate a goal now saying that was done.

But people can smell when someone wants to say something and like those are different between saying and and and hung to this well is between saying like.

What I'm running on is what I'm saying right now and these are my current views and I've said things in the past and I don't stand by all of them and people evolve versus just being like look I said some stupid fucking shit in the past and I like I looking back on it.

I don't really think that anymore and you can trust that I love I that as a governor of this state that I will support the police I believe in policing the people that the people some of the most vulnerable communities in our society dependent having good responsible community policing that they can trust that's what I want to build.

I don't want to abolish the police I think that that's dumb and I regret embracing it as a slogan because it doesn't actually capture what I think like there is a way of talking about this that is going to honor your values that doesn't just you're not just going to get past it.

You can't do the robot like these are my positions now I will never talk about what they were before and by the way like a.o.c. knows that of course like a.o.c. like that or she I think she I I liked it I agree yeah I thought it was great but no but I think she's trying to signal showing like this there is a way to talk about this in an honest and authentic way that helps people see past something you may have said a few years ago.

You know where people are going to be able to hear a lot more about the best path forward for Democrats and maybe we'll even have a conversation about.

Whether woke one was crazy or not where John cricket gone it's happening in DC the weekend following the midterms and we've said this before there's a special rate for friends of the pod subscribers but.

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Polar call all your friends are talking about him that's right.

So before we move up this it's election day as you're listening to this both in Wisconsin where Hong has been in a commanding position for a while now and in Minnesota where the

Democratic primary for the open senate seat the Tina Smith is vacating is happening between lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan she's been on the show and

Congresswoman Angie Craig we tried to get around the show and it's tightening more than more than people expected any final observations on either the Wisconsin gubernatorial race or before we move on to Minnesota I

did notice there's one last state navigate state navigate poll that has hung at 44.

Crowley at 22.

He gained seven from their last poll undecided nine KELOLA rose at 11 Brennan five and.

Barnes is still at six in that poll.

Yeah we'll see I mean I do think like.

The fact that the Republicans have gone behind Tom Tiffany has meant they haven't had any kind of fractures primary on their side we've had one.

On ours I do not think we have shradder assaulting glory in this primary I don't think it look particularly you have the lieutenant governor dropping out because of some sort of.

A ledge campaign malfeasance by the campaign manager didn't reflect very well especially in a state that's been dealing with a scandal around fraud and Medicaid you have Crowley who got out and got back in at the

behest of of Tony Evers the governor who could have run again people thought he would if any decided not to and so the end result is people feel like oh no we ended up with somebody that has these kind of crazy old post and has

sort of been mired in this sort of right wing scandal for a few days and all that I do think has obscured the stakes in this election the next Wisconsin governor may oversee the.

The presidential contest that could be close that person will be responsible for certifying the election Tom Tiffany is an election denier and I Democrats we have these big emotional anxiety you know anxious debates about our candidates we worry about them saying the wrong thing we worried about them having extreme positions that are out of step with the voters the Republicans are not doing that Tom Tiffany the voters of Wisconsin do not want an election in I believe that they believe in fee and free and fair elections and they believe in a society.

In which when you lose an election that's okay you look to fight another day you don't claim Donald Trump won and try to tell a bunch of your fellow citizens that their vote doesn't count they don't believe in using the insurrection act they don't believe in deporting people to foreign

cool logs they don't believe in this mass deportation scheme in which our cities are overrun by ice agents and so we have to remind us we have to focus on painting the extremism of Tom Tiffany is the real threat to Wisconsin and after the Wisconsin after this primary we have to like get our heads in the fucking game.

We haven't talked a lot about Minnesota Angie Craig I would say is the more moderate candidate she has been a pay you flan again has been sort of attacking her on her vote for the Lincoln Riley act which Craig first defended and then backtracked on Craig is more pro Israel she's called off or she said she doesn't want a pack money in the way a pack was still doing some fundraising

and some spending for her she also won't commit to not voting for Schumer Peggy Flanagan is committing to vote not vote for Schumer as leader Peggy Flanagan said she would have supported that vote to cut off military and financial aid to Israel that they took Angie Craig didn't vote for that and Peggy Flanagan is wanted to you know reformize she has not gone as far to say abolish so it's it's what we've seen in some of these primaries but not I would say the differences

aren't as stark as they maybe were in Michigan or some of the other ones what do you think about this race we the polling sort of all over the place we don't know it reminds me a little like the old saying about like you know why why is the fights so contentious well because the stakes are so low I'm not saying the stakes the stakes are low there they're actually quite high there big differences between them but I think apart because people think we can win a Minnesota and because I think Peggy Flanagan is not sort of a DSA city council person she's a right.

Lieutenant governor that a lot of people really respect where's Angie Craig is a little to her right or more you say a lot to her right whatever it feels a little bit less it's gone a little less certainly national attention and I honestly a little less

attention for me I've had Peggy Flanagan on the show I really like her I really like her I've no no knock on Angie Craig but I just Peggy Flanagan is just a really inspiring person to me she'll be the first woman Native American to be elected to this Senate and just a really dynamic and interesting person I think it is because like you said whoever wins

I don't know that it changes like the race rating I don't think it makes it more of a toss up if Flanagan wins versus Craig or vice versa I the other reason I might have gotten closes

Angie Craig's been going after Flanagan for her connections to the states fraud crisis that walls has been dealing with that the Republicans have been all over it's remember it's what originally led Trump to send in ice to Minnesota and all that so she's been trying to tag her with that so that might be and and basically saying

make it an electability argument saying that a Flanagan wins that Republicans will spend the whole race tying her to the fraud crisis as well now you could argue that they'll probably do the same to Angie Craig even though she's not the lieutenant governor because they'll just say any politician in Minnesota is part of the fraud crisis but you know that's that's one one argument they're having there.

All right speaking of the Minnesota primary I don't know if you saw the story about Royce White over on the Republican side he is a former NBA player who has run before for federal office and is now trying to get in on the discourse about the WNBA and trans rights by declaring that he's entering the WNBA draft

and is canter freedom has also made this another NBA player has also a former NBA player has also made this announcement as well white even put on a wig in interviews with Alex Jones and Benny Johnson because that's what we're doing now most most folks on the right are eating this up it's also causing some conflict because it's forcing them to talk about women sports.

Here's our boy Jesse water struggling with this very problem yeah this is week three of the five covering the WNBA right and I have to say I am done I hate the WNBA I mean I don't mind women's basketball my girls play basketball but I don't want to cover women's basketball I don't want to be a WNBA analyst we get paid to have an opinion about everything and this is something I don't care about every time I open up the run down the way I'm going to do it.

I'm going to go down and see the WNBA in it I feel like Jessica must feel every day we have to do this again really this again I don't know a father of daughters a father of daughters you know the as you know John that I'm a I'm a season ticket holder to angel city that's right that's right the women soccer team here in Los Angeles that is because I am married to someone who used to basically be a lesbian and they just kept the women sports when they transition so we do it.

We go to the games and we have a great time and there was a little dust up about this a couple months ago a player wrote an op ed about about about this and believing that people that were born as biologically male shouldn't play in women sports and that there should be a regime of testing and this led to a you know that the debate we've had at Nazim about well if you have a regime of testing that just punishes women who are forced to be examined when when

they sense of putting more power in the hands of the men and it really kind of creates a situation in which women have to prove that they're women and all this debate is happening and do you know many trans athletes there were in the National Women's Soccer League at that time zero zero

same as the WNBA right now it's zero and the WNBA and so they really like talking about this they really like talking about women's sports and I suppose that they can keep doing it and if these guys and there are people who believe that if you've gone through a transition that doesn't give you any advantage or others who simply say if you went through male puberty you have an advantage doesn't matter what happens and I'll leave that other up to experts to decide.

However, if they would like to play in the WNBA they better fucking transition let's get them on some more months they they let's let's let's get them in the let's get for a couple years let's see a voice I mean not to get into it but they seem to think that all you it's just based on self identification that if you just say I identify as a woman that you are eligible for the WNBA draft and nothing in the rules as that.

The the league is going to have to figure out what the rules do say or like or or what the qualifications are because it's as you have to be a woman but like what does that mean if someone ever wanted to who has transition to someone ever wanted to play the WNBA that they're they're not dealing with that they're dealing with a couple of men.

You know who have not transitioned just saying that they're women and putting on wigs which is a very different thing.

But yeah that's that's that's what we're doing right now just to two men who really want to get attention is is where we're at and even Jesse Waters doesn't want to give it to them even Jesse Waters is bored by this yeah I don't

That's what's happening that's what's happening good luck follows well again some attention alright last thing before we get to Levit's interview with Sam Forstag Tucker Carlson's new coalition includes Marjorie Taylor green Thomas Massey and maybe Hunter Biden.

On Monday Carlson released a highly anticipated I guess two hour interview with Hunter Biden who is just he is just making the rounds on to Biden here's a clip here's how it went I'm supposed to hate Tucker Carlson because he's an anti-Semite and he's this I know you're not you're not an institution right 100% no you know you know you might know that's what my point being is that I would just say so my point being is is it like if it's anti-Semitic.

To point out that BB Netanyahu is evil incarnate.

Then you know what I don't know what to say to I don't know what to say to people anymore what do you think what do you think about all this he started by talking about how much I was you love Candace Owens because you can't just show too.

You know it's like he he's got like all of Joe Biden's ego but none of the civic mindedness is how it always feels to me well it was very it's um

He's just doing like a panda thing right which is like it's a little Bideny where he like wants to be

Sort of nice and gracious to the person he's sitting down with but he does it in a way by being like oh yeah everything you say is amazing and great

But oh I have disagreements with you just agreements with you

But like I don't think you're an anti-Semite blah blah blah and it's like also going after a BB Netanyahu like that to him like where

What was your dad on this one?

Well, it's also it's so fun to only argue with the dumbest version of your opponents

That's true when you put a wig on and try to join the WNBA

It's also true when you say it's anti-Semitic to say that BB Netanyahu is evil. What are we doing it?

Well actually, it's I'd say why don't you have a maybe sort of interrogator less stupid version of this and see how far you get there

Like Tucker Carlson has had Holocaust deniers on his show

He has embraced a whole host of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories

He has been flirting with all kinds of anti-Semitism

He has accused so many people of having dual loyalties like he has engaged in a ton of like anti-Semitic

tropes he has used anti-Semitism and how he makes his arguments

Whether you want to sit there and sort of be the the arbiter of of whether or not Tucker's an anti-Semite for whatever reason

White people tend to be circumspect about saying to other white people you're not a racist

Right, but somehow when it comes to anti-Semitism

You're there's a lot of people that aren't Jewish there a lot to be like I've checked and you're not

So okay, buddy. Great. Thanks. Thanks for letting us know

We were waiting for the Hunter Biden in premature on Tucker Carlson to let us know whether Tucker Carlson is an anti-Semite or not

And now there's one last thing to worry about

Here's my thing about the the whole Hunter Biden

Mediator on all of the various

Right-wing hosts and all the different places he's going

I'm not like this is not a debate for me about like the platforming and you can't go on someone's

Show that you that you think is awful or whatever. It's like if you're going to do that

Have a discussion

That is about the places where you disagree have a little debate about it

You don't have to be screaming at each other if you don't want but like if you're just gonna go there to be like

Oh, you're actually awesome and and then like wait for Tucker or Candace or whoever to be like and I'm sorry that I went after you so hard hunter when

You know your dad was president like what is the point of that? Well like who gains from that other than you

It's my question like what what kind of good are you doing? Are you introducing Tucker's audience to

Hunter Biden's views on the situation that are different than what Tucker Carlson believes in because if that's the case

That's one thing

But that's not what he did there. That's not what he's doing with Candace Owens

It's not what you fucking sat with Nick Funtas like what do you do in man?

Yeah, so like to what end is all of this exactly to what end?

I don't know what end aside from like your own. Yes, right

That's the thing and I like again

I don't want to sign motivations because maybe there is some other motivation

But I don't know I don't know what the intention is

Yes, other than sort of just because all all he keeps doing is just going in these shows and pandering to the host

It also is like

There's a certain kind of sort of broken brain person on social media that's been just really eaten up the huckert

The hunter-bottom tour. Yeah, they love it. They love it. It's like like he's some kind of

Sort of world-weary truth teller, you know like he's tried like he's like he's traveling around kind of telling these sort of forbidden truths

Like the forbidden truths being that like I guess Mike Johnson's gay and Tucker Carlson loves juice like that's over

About the Mike Johnson. Yeah, I forget about this all these Republicans are in the closet thing

And that that the closetocracy he called it is like the is actually the bigger threat than oligarchy

Which is like oh okay, man, and that just it's this weird

But I guarantee if he sat down one of those interviews

With one of the Republicans that he had accused of being in the closet. He would be like oh not you. I think you're great

No, I think you love obviously we

No, no, we definitely we disagree on a lot, but you're amazing. Yeah, you're amazing

It's just it's just very predictable what's gonna happen every day

And like you know, I agree like actually like boy politics sure seems not like no fun when you talk about hard issues

And get into the nuance of things and question Tucker Carlson about his views and actually sort of

Interrogate some of these difficult and thorny issues that we're facing or why the right has become so radical and

conspiratorial and extreme or what actually drives politics to not work for people when you're not saying it's because

Josh Hawley is secretly gay and and and actually anti-Semitism isn't that isn't isn't isn't

Connected to what's happening on the right whatever you want to say like yeah, it's it gets it's almost like becomes like work

You have to really focus on it spend a lot of time on it and sucks. I agree anyway. Come on Potsay, America anytime

All right, when we come back Montana House candidate Sam Forstack

I

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Sam Forsag welcome to the pod. Thank you so much for having me John. So first of all

uh, let's just give people some background on who you are and what led you to run for congress your smoke jumper

uh, and

uh, this is your first time running for office just tell people about yourself

Yeah, it's my first time running for anything higher than vice president of my union local

Um, until seven months ago I worked as a smoke jumper for the US forest service

So in a short version of that as we parachute in a remote wildfires to put them out while they're still small

And I was a leader in my unions local when all the doge cuts began and what that looked like in Montana

Is in large part, you know, they said it was all about government efficiency

But the people we lost for the lowest paid workers we've got in our agency

I mean when they have fired 360 montannans just in the forest service just on Valentine's day two years ago

85% of them were gs6s are below making

1970 an hour or less

And my agency was people the people who swing the tools and conduct the science to maintain our public lands

I when I reached out to Ryan Zankey

Thorepelpokin in the seat

Who should be the person you can reach out to when your members lives?

You're being turned upside down. I got crickets

So I decided if he's gonna take my co-workers jobs. I'm gonna come take his just so people understand like how just to get

When doge comes in and makes cuts to save money

Sure what happens when you're trying to say put out a fire quickly before it gets bigger like walk people through what happens

If say the equipment you used to rely on is no longer available like day-to-day

What did it mean for them to try to make government more efficient?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty clear none of this was about efficiency

It's about power and consolidating that power in the hands of the select few including the richest man in the world who happened to be at the

Helm of this thing but on the ground what it looked like even last year

And I know it's worse right now is public safety was hampered

I mean I jumped a fire in early July last year a time when usually you are not in a state of resource scarcity

Resources being the the manpower and the people you need to help fight a fire if you don't catch it with those first eight

Jumpers on the ground and I'm you know setting up a task force and I get told hey

I know you're requesting three hot track crews. They're not available in the region

So we're going to order six contract hand crews instead because they don't have the same capabilities

So we're going to need more people and that's the only way we get any help to you in the next few days

What it means on the ground is we all pay so much more for so much less and it takes longer to fight those fires and

I'm those stories are endless

And so you're making and now you can do this for about seven years and you're making

$19.75 an hour seven years in and because of these cuts they have to bring in

Contractors and private companies that are going to make much more money. Yeah

And cost a lot more than what the kind of

The trained people would have done. Yeah. Yeah. I mean the real goal here was

Cuts and privatization to turn into another source of profit

You know another story is last year I jumped a fire outside of steamboat spring in Colorado and you know as jumpers

Most fires we catch with the first you know four eight twelve

Smoke jumpers on the ground, but when you don't you step back and you set up a large incident to make sure that you can save houses

We had hundreds of houses at risk in the immediate vicinity this fire we ended up catching at around 500 acres

And on the second day I put it in order for pumps and hoses

Which is a pretty basic firefighting implement just to get water to the line and they tell me well

We used to have a gear cash here in steamboat last year, but they cut that they shut that down with the cuts

So you're not going to get those pumps and hoses until the end of next shift because we have to overnight air mail

The pump and hose kit from Denver to steamboat and we got to drive it up to the line

Then we got to get it up to you so you're not getting it till the end of the day tomorrow

So not only is our firefighting hampered. I mean, I cannot imagine a more expensive way to

Deliver hundreds of pounds of water pumps than that

So you're a smoke jumper and just that basically you're going to the places where cars can't reach vehicles can't get to

To try to solve problems before they get bigger

What does that look like if there's a smoke jumper in congress like what do you see as the problem?

You're trying to search to that you view as

Uh

failings get enough attention right now

I really smoke jumping like a lot of firefighting right we're not so different from hot shot crews or engine crews

You're training crisis management and whether it is the housing crisis that we're dealing with in western Montana

Where we have the least affordable housing market in the country that's a surprise to a lot of people

Yeah, I didn't realize that until until learning about this. It's you know, you're making 19 say 19 dollars an hour in a

Area that we think of as rural so must be cheaper, but the average house is what like 500,000 dollars now days of mzulah

It's just shy 600k you go to bozeman. It's around 900,000 dollars in a place where a decade ago is probably closer to 200,000

The flathead valley in northwest montana not so different. So the I mean the crises are you know, it's in housing

It's in health care. It's in child care where again median wage is $60,000 in Montana

The average cost of child care is just shy 19k if you can make it through a waiting list

And these are all crises that so many people have felt like our elected leaders at the federal level aren't

dealing with any sense of urgency with

And we have leadership nationally not so long ago telling us the economy is better than you think it is

You know, meanwhile. Yeah, me and a whole lot of my co-workers. Well at the end of four years of democratic control

I'm running this democrat. Well, yeah, we're making 19 bucks an hour and you're in a community where you'd be lucky to find a home for less than

500,000 bucks and life did not get better if you're in a situation like that over the preceding four years and people felt like

The folks in power at the national level are not listening to us quite clearly

I mean what better articulation of a disconnect than to tell people things are better than you think it is while homelessness

Just doubled or tripled in every major city in montana over the preceding five years

What's interesting is when you say we've had leaders saying the economy is better than you think it is

I genuinely don't know if you're talking about Joe Biden or Donald Trump

One thing you said recently is that the national party did everything they could to make it hard for a democrat to win in places like western montana

What do you mean by that? What I mean is we had people at the national level who quite literally were not listening to us

And we have people who are dealing with a housing crisis

20 miles away from what you and I were talking about earlier places like the Yellowstone Club where you got to be a multimillionaire

Just to be considered for membership

And you go 20 miles up the canyon you're in bozeman

We have homelessness that's doubled or tripled you have people living in the back of their cars or trailers and people who

felt like

Rightfully they their problems were not being solved at the national level and when that's the case when things are that bad

Process is not an attic, but excuse for not dealing with those things

And I want to note I would offer the national party that all they could to make it hard for a democrat to win the democrat did just when

This seat I'm running for it's montana's first congressional district

John tester one western montana while he lost the state last year by just shy of a point

Even in a tough environment like that so we know we can win this thing

And the project here is to win in a meaningful way and rebuild the coalition we used to have when we could win

Statewide and when democrats could conceive of ever having a meaningful majority in the u.s senate

You know, you've seen people talking about like abolishing the senate

It seems like for a lot of people it's easier for them to wrap their minds around fundamentally changing the constitution

Then winning in places like montana state wide again even though

John tester you know represented montana in the senate max focused

What do you think right now?

Uh is like if if if I went to montana and asked a bunch of people

um

When uh when you think of a democrat you think of blank like what are they what do they think when they hear about a democrat?

I think right now people think about john tester who was our senator until a year and a half ago

And not so long ago democrats had serious power in place like montana

I mean 2009 we had a 50 50 split in our state senate

We used to have it in 2016 we had a democratic governor steve bullock who was reelected on the same ticket as Donald Trump

2018 john tester reelected again in our state um

Democrats have found a way in in montana to win even when Donald Trump is gaining power

I mean 18,000 montanans voted for Donald Trump and john tester in 2024

Those are the people who

deserve a candidate who's actually going to speak to our experience and talk about how government

Need to be a thing that can make your life materially better when the market is not meeting that need and government has also been failing on that job for a long time

Um, and i think clearly you look at what's happening around the country or even in our race right where

I started this primary nobody knew who the heck I was in December of last year

Um, and we had a crowded competitive primary that included uh candidate who was the democratic nominee for governor last year

people who'd been running for a year um, and what we saw is that people are really hungry for candidates or for

Just anybody who can actually reflect our experience and say like it's not just your problem

The fact that people can't afford a house. It's not just your problem that when your car makes a funny noise

Well, that might mean you can't afford rent next month because i've lived it too. It is our problem

And of course people are gonna address problems with more urgency if you've lived them. How much do you think

The way like so the way democrats we have obviously there's like a huge problem with like the democratic brand

How much of that do you

Ascribe to say like right wing media

Uh, sort of hammering people kind of pulling the most extreme versions of a democrat

And then how much you actually laid at the feet of the democrats themselves?

Uh, john i would say we hold these truths to be self-evident

The democratic party messed up pretty damn bad and they got us into this situation

We had four years of power. Yeah people were facing

Massive issues. I mean between fire seasons

I helped put together the Montana coalition to solve homelessness

people to dozen homeless shelters together from around the state and

We ended up getting some legislation passed in a republican super majority the first one in state history

Um, and the reason that was able to happen is because the problems were so

Damn bad. I mean quite literally. I'm not exaggerating. We have

Triple the number of on-house people in a place like Montana. We're in the northern rockies

It is not a hospitable place to be living on the streets people die every year and

I mean if you were working two or three jobs at a time like i was the entire time

I was going to college and still graduating with that

um, and

You look up and people are telling you the institutions. They just need tweaked a little bit

That does not inspire faith. Yeah, and that doesn't give anyone a reason to be hopeful or engage with politics

And so what happened a lot of young people did not engage with politics last year

They did not turn out in vote and we are now quite literally not the party of working people

Most working people most folks making under a hundred cages voted for a publicans or

I'm shooting unions right i come from a union background

We have the Gibraltar of unionism in Montana. It's but

um most incredible town you can go to

Western Montana will have a union members voted for a publicans last year and a lot of young people didn't turn out

Those are all the people that are the base of the democratic party. I want to be a part of

And if we can't give those people a reason to actually engage and

And we can't show them that there's a place in this party for them

Not just for the people who are rich enough to make it through these processes that we create for federal candidates

Well, then we don't we don't deserve their support. So let's win it back

So Joe Biden he's this I think long time centrist figure he

wins in 2020 and he actually tries to bring in Bernie brings in Elizabeth Warren

He puts in a trust buster at the FTC

He governs much further to the left than anybody would have expected Joe Biden to govern

Still not as far as some people would have wanted him to go has some success and

Democrats are largely punished in part because of all the

obstacles like up the filibuster in the Senate the supreme court like Democrats are in some ways punished because

He's unable to fully achieve his agenda and then they and then who wins the Republicans who are then immediately

deregulate

Pass massive cat tax cuts to the rich overturn

Put on judges to overturn row and environmental and union regulations and gutted all and so so like when you're talking to

People sort of in your union that that voted for zincier or voted for Trump

Like how how do you how do you talk about this like what what's your argument

My argument is that I understand why a lot of people like my co-workers and union members some of them

voted for the slubs who are tearing all this down all around us and

Man does it piss me off as somebody who spent a year and a half and working with members who I mean

I remember Cara who

Lost her job in one day with no cause and no notice 15 years into her federal service

Because she just happened to have taken a lateral transfer that year to do more remote work during chemotherapy

You know members who are getting texts in line at the airport to go to their grandmother's funeral saying they lost their job

They were only making sixteen bucks an hour at in the first place

But you know what I also work with a lot of people who well if you're making sixteen bucks an hour

And you're working for the federal government and housing cost have just doubled or tripled in your community

And you can't conceive of ever owning a home

Well your life just got worse and as far as I'm concerned there are two primary roles for the federal government first and foremost

It's to protect your constitutional freedoms right a lot of those in the Biller Rights of Freedom from the government

Second, it's to make sure you can meet your basic material needs

When the market is not meeting them and the market was meeting them even worse after four years of democratic control

And you know what if you are working two or three jobs at a time or if you're working a thousand hours of overtime like I had to just

Scrimp by through a winter on my mortgage for a 980 square foot home

You might not have the time to follow the intricacies of policy-making or politics

You shouldn't have to to be able to judge the people in power on what sort of results they get they delivered for you

And so I would just say like the people we need to win back are a lot of the people who got these folks elected

It is a lot of working people

It's a lot of union members

And it's folks you don't start a conversation with by telling that they're wrong

Because it frustrates me so much to hear people's what I hear often say like well

Do they see like why are people voting outside of their own their own self-interest their own material self-interest

It's not more in your interest to vote for somebody who's going to make your life worse a little slower than the other guy

Yeah, I also would you don't tell people what their interests are presumably

So there's also been a part of this debate about sort of how did the democratic party lose the men what happened to the men and the working class

And a lot of people tend to better place to address than a podcast to this two-week

Yeah, two guys in a podcast studio. This is where I was supposed to solve it all but

You know, I think tester has talked about wokeness is being part of this

You said something interesting the other day, which is just that

Basically if you have a member of congress whose worth millions of dollars trying to be a tribute for the working class

that person may feel a little bit

More afraid to

Say pushback on trans issues or have a position that might not have a majority

But actually they want to be supportive of trans people

How do you think about this like what like do you think that the social issues are part of democrats problems like Bernie

Has because he's such a kind of people understand what Bernie stands for he's had on the other hand more room to say

You know what I don't think we should defund the police or we do need to have a strong border

I think a lot of it comes back to credibility and I had this fascinating split screen for the last eight years of my life

Where I'm doing wild and fire in the summers six to nine months out of the year

And then I was doing organizing an advocacy in the winters between that and I worked for you know the coalition of homeless shelters

I mentioned for the state library association even for the ACLU and

when I

Well when I would be in the middle of fire season

There's not a lot of other jumpers who go to policy work and so you bet your tale everybody wants to ask me about whatever

They might have seen on the news. Maybe it was on Fox news and if we got time in between digging line or cutting line

You know, I tell them you know that story will hear the people that I know in the winters who are just trying to live their life with dignity

without government telling them how to do it

And I I think that that's a piece that that has been lost and I'll tell them what else I saw when I'm at the state legislature

Is well we just saw in 2017 deep cuts and a dismantling of our mental health services in the state when we had a budget shortfall

And over the following eight years when we had surpluses did they reinvest in all those basic public health care services that they cut

No, they invested in tax cuts to cut the top income tax bracket year after year after year

And that's the same thing we see at the federal level

And it's what it is is it is big brother not watching you because they don't need to now even though they can they're singing and dancing

Well, they pick all of our pockets as working people and by the end of that conversation

A lot of my coworkers are pretty pissed and they weren't pissed about what they saw in the news

They're pissed about the fact that that is why I am poor

And that is why I am poor in a world where we just minted the first human trillionaire

That's something that should make us angry and that's the sort of grievance of all the festering

misdirected grievances that kind of economic grievances what government's supposed to be here to help address

So let's talk about your opponent

Zinky won this race most recently by eight you said don't John tester won one more votes there

Even as he wasn't able to eke out a victory. It's very very close right now

What is the case you're trying to make in the closing days to try to get more people to understand why your opponent just

Sort of a Trump back talk radio host is not exactly what Montana needs. I'm yeah the contrast here could not be any better

If you ask me I mean yeah the fellow I'm running against he was the handpick successor for Ryan Zinky dropped out of this race

About four months ago and good riddance and he dropped out because he saw that wasn't gonna be easy for him after a whole year spent

gutting basic public services that you know people like me might have dependent on as a kid someone

She's belly was full thanks to food stamps sometimes

gutting our public lands where if there's a consensus issue in Montana. It's our public lands

Um, and so what did he do? He dropped out with 48 hours until the filing deadline and immediately endorsed this fellow air in Flint

Who's a far right talk radio host? He spent the last 10 years in air condition recording studio

Spune Hayton hot air nothing against their condition. What's wrong with it? I don't think I think you're sort of losing me

Nothing long. He did a lot of good work in an air condition recording studio. Sorry. Continue

Well, and we got the guy is a political pundit and we have plenty of pundits and political puppets

In Washington right now. I would offer we there's no dearth of those we got enough of them

What we do have a lack of is working people who know what it's like to be working three jobs at a time

Paying your rent on a credit card. I know what that's like people who actually know what it's like to have your belly full

Because a food stamp or thanks to food stamps when your parent falls on a hard time and like

People who don't have that perspective are gonna perhaps fight with a little bit less urgency

When snap benefits get used as leverage during a government shutdown like they did this last time around

When half of my members were furloughed at the end of those six weeks and a lot of them are showing up at local food banks

That are also having to curtail food benefits because some of that comes from snap

Um, it just feels like across the board there has truly been a lack of urgency when we had the political will

To pass really big important legislation like like you mentioned like the IRA right well

A whole lot of that money never actually got out the door

And people are hurting right now. I mean if you were on the edge of of not having your home like Kathy

Who's house I was at?

Kathy lives in mile from my house

She's in now one of four thousand mobile home lots that are owned by out of state private equity firms

And the state of Montana and Kathy's lot right has gone from three hundred seventy bucks a month to over eight hundred dollars

Kathy doesn't have ten years to wait for all of these resources to propagate through the system

And for half of them to go to large corporations

So that maybe her life gets better like Kathy needs help right now

And it feels like we did not deliver that help to people who really desperately needed it

And well what happens the party out of power gets elected and it turns into something really scary and dangerous

There's also a big fight in Montana now over data centers

There's a lot of there's a lot of outside money. They see you know Montana. It's cool

A lot of land. You can build a lot of big facilities. Yeah

Where are you on building data centers in Montana and how does that contrast with the Republicans?

Yeah, well my opponent got the better part of a million dollars from

American mission one of open AIs super PACs just in the month of May to get him through his primary

Even though they tried to make sure no one could run against the guy

So what we're up against is a pretty terrifying amount of money that this industry is planning to leverage in this election

I think 150 million they're planning to drop on

Elections just this year

For us while we have a proposed center that is in theory going to use more electricity than every residential home in the state of Montana

And our power rates have already gone up 30 or 40 percent in the last three years

So what I would offer is we need to pass a damn law at the federal level saying they can't build these things until and unless they show that they're going to provide all their own power

Doesn't have to be on site offside's even better put power on the grid

We need it ideally carbon neutral power

Um making sure that they're not going to dirty our air and water. I mean you see these terrifying videos of dirty water

Well, there are more water efficient cooling systems

They cost a little bit more but this industry they can afford it they're planning to spend four trillion bucks on dieting development in the next seven years

Right now we have none of that all we have is an executive order trying to preempt state regulations on AI and

Where I am too. I'm I'm coming at this. I'm also a relatively young candidate

I think that this technology is perhaps the biggest existential threat that we've got as a country

I mean

We've read the sci-fi novel before we're all living in it right now

This is if their promises are true

Well, this is a technology that could it could cure cancer or it could kill all of humanity

And we and that's a big delta say it's a big difference

Yeah, and right now it seems like we're only using it for all the bad stuff

And what in the last two weeks you probably track and we had two instances of these

Models breaking out of the system and hacking into other outfits and they're under a full-scale cyber attack from an AI system

And nobody knows there's no oversight or regulation of this right now functionally speaking

and if we can't get our arms around it and have real federal oversight and make it so we're ready to pull the plug on this thing

if it poses a threat to

The future of our children in our country like we're gonna be in a tough spot one other issue that's been

Uh, oiling in Montana is because in part for what all the reasons you're saying the democratic brand is

Can be pretty toxic you have an independent that has a lot of backing from this is the first effort about this first

You heard of it now so for people that don't know about it basically

There is an independent that's running with the backing of a lot of democratic politicians

There's also a democratic candidate on the ballot today as a recording this is the last day for that democratic candidate to drop out

So that everyone can coalesce around the independent candidate

Do you believe that bankmen should drop out?

Right now yeah today's the deadline. I think they just had a press conference the last couple hours

Things the third or fourth in the last week between the two of them. Yeah each one announcing I'm still running

I'm still running yeah, they're both still running. Yeah, it's still here

Yeah, it's an interesting like game theory problem because they're like they've been a breakmanship

But what do you want to have it's what do you want to have happened before midnight today?

What I want is to make sure Kurt Almy who's the Republican running in that race is not our next senator

And I will be entirely honest. I am so deeply frustrated with the entirety of how this thing is played out

Yeah, I mean the probably north eight million dollars has been sent to spent

To manufacture this situation we're in right now where neither candidate's gonna have a chance to winning against the Republican as long as they're both in this race

That's obscene. Yeah, like that is actually disgusting and we have all whatever angle you're looking at this from we've all

swallowed a spider to kill a fly and

I mean eight million dollars again

That is purls before swine in a state where people are being pushed out onto the streets because they can't afford the basics

At this point of coin flip would be better than what they got going right now

And what I've been telling the both of them is that I really hope that they will both sit down in person in a room

And sort this out because a lot of how we got here as a country is a lot of our national leaders

We're putting their own ego before the good of the country and it feels like nothing changes and well the reality is nothing changes unless we go change it ourselves

Yeah, it seems like

Coin flip would work can we just do that wouldn't I mean like basically after you we want one candidate to go up against

The Republican and one of them would have to drop out but neither one wants to do it is basically where we're at

And so sounds like you would you'd you're just want one of them to drop out and by the end of the day

Yeah, that would be better than the situation where in this this standoff

And but I will tell you too

that center race

You know, I have faith in them to sort this out and to do the exercise the basic skills of my dad

It's a kindergarten teachers teaching his students right oh, I sit down look at each other have a conversation

But if they whether or not they do that western Montana Montana's first is where we have a chance to win

Yeah, this is the place a Democrat just one by just by almost one percent and

I think there's a real temptation to just spend all your time talking about whatever

Yeah, the

If it bleeds or reads, you know wherever the controversy is but this is a place where we just had to turn out in the democratic primary up 17 percent

It was down for on the Republican side

I think this is a place where we can have a foothold in a place like western Montana or the Rocky Mountain West or rural America something the Democrats don't really have right now

Um, so yeah, we're spending all our time talking about that and that whichever way that race goes

I think both of those are very different kinds of candidates

Yeah, and whatever happens by the end of the day

That's what will happen and then we have to focus on doing whatever we can to win your seat and and the center race

And people can go to sam from montana.com if they want to help out

They can go to sam from on tana if they want to help out and and you're going to have a lot of money coming up against you

And in a state like montana like

You know a million dollars dropping that race can have a huge huge impact. What are people that

That what are Democrats?

Not understand about menta like

You forget even just the politics just as a place what people care about

Uh, I think there's a lot of kind of assumptions people make about like rural voters

How they view the environment, how they view public lands like what do people miss?

I mean our public lands are a way of life

truly, I mean

You're protecting your gun rights and protecting your public lands. There's the two consensus issues in a place like montana because

Um, well, that's what people depend on to keep your freezer full

Uh, if you go to your public lands and use them for hunting um, that is how people find sustenance

That's what people depend on if you can squeeze in a sunday afternoon between your three shifts

Just to go hike in or skiing like that's what makes it worth living

Um, and that is not a democratic or a publican issue

I mean part of what pushed me into this race in november when I was thinking about is it worth leaving behind

Smoke jumping

Which is the only retirement the only health care I had the only career I really had

To run for this office because whatever

The administration tells you the hatch act exists and you cannot run for public office

I don't employ um, I got a mailer from ryan zinke

Saying that he's the teddy roes of ultra public lands

A year into all of these these cuts where my members lives are being turned upside down where we're down 20%

We've lost two thousand red-carted firefighters

We're all seeing what the consequences of those are right now where we got smoke choke skies montana unless people to fight all those fires

Um, and he's sending out a mailer with this little teddy roes of eltad on and his boy scout outfit

Um, everybody claims they're for public lands

But it's a lot like these other issues like public lands aren't just lines on a map. There are a lot of people

Most of them not making a lot of money who work their tails off

To make sure you can make it up a road to the trailhead or up a trail

To access your forest and a lot of those people are

Accord the rural economies if you go down to hamilton

Well, you got rock him on labs who's lost 30 or 40 employees so far. You have forest service outposts

These these are a core part of our community in our economy and and we all just got gutted

And um, so people are pissed and they should be pissed but being pissed is not enough and uh, you know

When people say well, are your friends who might have voted for these guys ready to see they were wrong

That's not what it is

I think right now people are just angry at both parties because you're paying for 20

A gallon at the pump for unleted and we're in another war that this guy started this time

But none of us wanted and we're spending billions overseas and all of our lives are worse

So we got to move past being pissed and being angry and

Talk about reimagining a lot of the programs that montana's helped past like mic man's field is

Was the leader of the u.s senate from montana

Who ushered through the great society and create help create medicare and medicate an npr and pbs

And these are all the things that are under attack. They're all the all the things we're called on to reimagining expand

So people can meet their their basic needs and have time for the kind of empathy and compassion that your neighbor deserves

Sam, I am 43. I'm about to turn 44 you should look great. I skimmed fantastic. Thank you for saying that could I be a smoke jumper

How how athleticism how much is required and my past my prime is it possible?

You know, I fell a rookie at 47

Um looking at you. I mean you look pretty darn fit just from across a microphone, but

No, what's required is it's a six week rookie training program most people got five or six years five to ten years of fire experience before you get picked up and

About 40% of people make it through so it's six weeks of

Getting the hell beat out of you and pt and um learning how to pilot a parachute

I want to know what a parachute now. I can't do it. I was I forgot about the jumping part

I want to know what the like physical I would I'd say I would like to know what those like

What what is like the physical requirements that I would like to do a smoke jumper training? Yeah

And maybe I don't think I can jump out of a plane

I actually struggle from a high diving board to jump into a pool

So I think that's like probably not for me, but maybe I could do the training

Sam Forsack. Thank you so much. I keep forgetting the website. What's the website again?

No, the website is samfermontana.com or you can find us on socials

It's just at samforce.dega cross-platforms and I need all the help I can get it is a rare thing

To see a working person in the halls of power

And I need if everyone pulls together and helps out

Well, we can actually make this happen and we can start changing our country for the better

Thank you so much. Thank you John

That's our show for today. Thanks to Sam Forsack for coming on Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday

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