What The Special Elections In The South Mean For The Midterms
2026-08-11 22:06:00 • 24:41
I sense very clearly that America is struggling to find herself and she's unsure and she's
uncertain.
They know that where we are now is really bad.
They are trying to figure out how we got here.
We're trying to get out of a zero sum game and we're trying to think about maybe even a
new dynamic way of moving forward as opposed to continuing to have this fight.
I'm Jane Kostin and this is What Today.
Welcome you to another day of the worst guys you know make a great point.
In this episode, President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, continues his media tour by
sitting down with Tucker Carlson for an episode of Carlson's podcast and they get to talking
about someone they have both come to despise.
Can you even imagine the people in, not the people, Donald Trump having a thought
about using the power of the executive to benefit anyone but himself first.
No, no fair.
On today's show, we talked to former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrew about his new podcast
touring the South to learn about the changing electorate.
Before we start breaking some of those southern stereotypes, here's what we're following
today Tuesday, August 11th.
I saw that you are someone like me that's worried about child's and vaccines that they
give too many and I agree with that.
You know, I have four kids.
Not too many wrong.
Yeah, too many.
It's too many.
Yeah, the hepatitis B which is a sexual, you know, you don't need to give it to a kid
who's just right.
Exactly.
Exactly.
But with me, it's too many but it's something bigger than too many.
It's too big.
It's too much at one time.
They give me massive.
Do you ever take a look at it looks like a Coca-Cola bottle?
You know, like they're pumping this massive amount of fluid into a shot's body.
No, they aren't.
Also, there are many ways you can get hepatitis B.
Also, physically born.
President Trump shared some weird Coke bottle vaccine analogy that I'm not even going
to try to understand with Real America's voice host Wayne Allen Rooht.
On Monday, Trump signed an executive order calling for revamped childhood vaccine recommendations.
The recommendations promote his long held but, and this is important, discredited theory
that childhood shots should be spaced out into separate medical visits.
Unsurprisingly, public health experts worry that children may become infected with a vaccine
preventable disease before returning for another visit.
If we haven't said this before, folks, please listen to your doctor and not the sleepy
orange man in the White House.
This is an astonishing story reported of secrecy and deception to keep the president safe
while a plane load of reporters and White House staff on Air Force One reportedly served
as unwitting decoys.
That was ABC News' Martha Raditz and she is not kidding.
According to a new report by the Washington Post, President Trump secretly flew out of
last month's NATO summit in Turkey on an alternate military aircraft.
All the while, the White House made it appear that he was flying on Air Force One.
The Post said the operation was prompted by an Iranian assassination threat against Trump,
and the Ruse was carried out as journalists and some White House staff members were led
to believe they were on the same plane as the president.
Now, remember, Trump had flown to the summit in his new Katari gifted and retrofitted jet.
But before leaving Turkey, he said he would fly partway home on an older model Air Force One
plane instead.
So when he was preparing to leave, Trump boarded the old Air Force One jumbo jet, which was
headed to the UK in view of television cameras.
However, according to the Post, after boarding, Trump was secretly shuttled minutes later to
a smaller plane via, get this, an airport catering truck.
Trump then flew to the UK on that smaller jet, essentially leaving everyone on the old
Air Force One unaware they were being used as a decoy.
A Syrian court has sentenced ousted president Bashar Al Assad and his brother to death for
murder, torture, and crimes against humanity.
The White House is now in the U.S.
and is now in the U.S.
It's been a long time since the U.S.
had been in Syria's 14 years of a war that left about half a million people dead.
Six other former officials were also sentenced to death in absentia today.
The verdicts are the first against Al Assad or any members of his inner circle since his
family's five decades in power came to an end.
The sentences, however, are mostly symbolic.
Al Assad and his brother fled to Russia and received asylum after the Syrian government's
David Hurn with a different crime.
After a U.S. Attorney, Janine Piro admitted that she had no proof that he vandalized the
reflecting pool.
That's based on new reporting from the Wall Street Journal, and if it wasn't obvious,
it's highly unusual for the DOJ to pursue charges after it had already dropped charges.
Why would a grand jury even give the Department of Justice and indictment?
Especially when the presiding judge in the first case will hold a hearing next month as
to whether the dismissal of charges against Hurn should be, quote, with prejudice so
that he couldn't be charged again for the same alleged crime.
I'm sure the judge would be fascinated to hear how on Sunday Trump sat on true social
while accusing Hurn of vandalizing the reflecting pool, quote, there was substantial other
damage to the reflecting pool.
Also but, unfortunately, there is no video or proof, other than the damage itself.
So do some up.
Trump is aware there is no proof David Hurn did anything wrong, but he wants the Department
of Justice to charge him with a crime for doing something he didn't do, even after the
Department of Justice dropped previous charges against him because of a lack of evidence.
Normaison, one of Hurn's attorneys, told the Wall Street Journal, quote, this would
add another bizarre turn to a sad chapter in the DOJ's history and further harass an innocent
man.
I take this is fucked up.
And that's the news.
Let's talk primaries.
It's voting day in states across the country, including in two southern states that have
already voted once this year.
In South Carolina, Republicans will select their new Senate nominee after Lindsey Graham's
sudden death.
And in Alabama, voters in several congressional districts are heading back to the polls
after the Supreme Court told the state to use a map from 2023, despite that map being
struck down by lower courts for being racially discriminatory.
If you think that's confusing, imagine being one of many Alabamians trying to figure
out where and how to vote today.
All of this is happening in the orange tinted shadow of Donald Trump.
It's clear that there really isn't anything Trump wouldn't contemplate if it meant
he could hold onto power.
Here's Trump speaking about the midterms through right wing television host and conspiracy
theorist Wayne Allen Rout.
You have the right to declare a national security emergency for elections.
And the Supreme Court ruled in 1983 under Reagan that I and S versus Chata, that if you declare
a national security emergency as the president of the United States, they can't challenge it.
It can only be overturned by a two thirds vote of both houses of Congress.
So if you do this in the next month, we will get photo ID, proof of citizenship, and a
limit to mail in ballots.
Let me get the straighters up and okay, I'll leave it at that.
All right, we'll leave it at that.
I want to be very clear.
Doing this would be unconstitutional and would run into issues in courts across the country.
Part of why Trump lost before the Supreme Court on tariffs was because he argued that he was
doing so under a state of national emergency.
The president does not run elections.
He does, however, want us to be terrified to vote against him in his party.
But I don't think it's working.
To find out more, I spoke to Mitch Landroup.
He's the former mayor of New Orleans and one of the hosts of Crooked Media's newest
podcast, Longplay, which examines politics in the ever-changing South.
Mitch Landroup, welcome to what a day.
Hey, it's great.
It's great to be with you.
You are in the great state of Mississippi right now, but you've been traveling the South
all summer for your new podcast, Longplay.
Can you tell me about it?
Longplay, this little group that I'm working with has been traveling across the South.
You've been in Georgia, been in North Carolina, just came back from where, from Tennessee,
where Elvis filmed the Jamagame in Hernandez, Hideaway.
We were in Memphis and then we jumped down to South Carolina and then now we're in Mississippi.
The idea is to try to figure out how the South is trying to find itself again and how it's
becoming the really kind of focal point of future elections both on the federal state and
local level.
For many years, you served as the Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana and the mayor of
New Orleans.
And earlier this year, you saw your state's congressional map get struck down in a landmark
case that basically gutted section two of the Voting Rights Act and took protections
away from underrepresented voters.
Right.
What have you been hearing from voters across the South about redistricting?
What we're finding is that not only communities of color, but people that really feel very
strongly about having a fair and open and transparent electoral system are outraged
by this and there's a lot of energy on the ground and not only federal elections, but statewide
elections and local elections as well.
Democrats have fallen very short in the last many years.
So to that point about a lot of energy on the ground, there's a special election in Alabama
today where voters in four of the state's seven districts will go back to the polls to
vote in a map that the Supreme Court allowed the state to use back in June.
But I was just reading about how there are reports that a lot of voters that are confused
about where and how they're supposed to vote.
And that could impact turnout.
What has it been like for everyday Americans just trying to figure out their polling place
or what district they're in because you have people who are showing up to vote and being
like, you can't vote here.
Also, you already did vote, but now you have to go do it again.
Look, let me just say this for people that are not focused on politics every day, just
run of the meal, regular folks, you just want to go to work.
You know, take care of their kids, make that paycheck every week.
They're just generally confused about where they're supposed to go.
But this is why reapportionment doesn't happen during the middle or you don't do it right
before elections because you are you effectively disenfranchised voters when you make it harder
for them to go vote, whether it's historically a poll tax or whatever crazy idea they can
come up with or just changing the districts in the last minute.
We just came back from Memphis.
I was at one of the churches there and I was talking to the pastor who was telling me
that he had two churches now they're in two separate congressional districts.
And so people just practically, you've seen this.
If you with your mom and dad, you go someplace and they changed the polling place where
they voted their entire life.
Now they're confused.
They don't recognize the people in the polling place.
They don't know exactly what precinct to vote in when they crunch a bunch of precincts
together and the Republicans in the south have basically wasted no time in Tennessee.
As soon as that bill was passed, I think within three or four days, the governor got a call
from the president and he was like, yeah, I'm going to bring my legislature right into
session.
They brought the legislature into session and within a good, I don't know, 15 to 30 days,
they had now eviscerated the last African American voting possibility in the state.
They had already two years before taken away Nashville.
And so that's just in Tennessee.
Now in Louisiana, after they went through the reapportionment, which they did very, very
quickly, they were not able to do that.
And so there's one congressional district left.
But what you were going to see, there's no question about this is that you were going
to see the elimination of the opportunities for African Americans to actually ascend to
state offices and federal offices, unless and until this has changed.
And the reason you know that is because after the Civil War, when reconstruction started,
there were actually protections in place.
And so what happens when you gave really qualified people a fair shot, they got elected
and they happened to be African Americans and they were in Congress and they were in
the Senate until the deal was done and they came back in and they started to eviscerate
it.
The African Americans rights and took those rights away and then the number of elected
officials went away until the voting rights act and the civil rights act were put in place
to make sure that we gave everybody in the country an opportunity to be represented
and to have the ideas and their thoughts and the great diversity of this nation reflected
in the people who were elected.
So we're in the middle of a very, very serious fight about what the idea of America is all
about.
And if you don't have access to the ballot and you don't have the ability to vote for
people who are representative of the way you think of the way you act or the way you live
or the way you love, we're going to create a very segregated and bifurcated country where
we have a minority of people representing a majority view.
And that in my opinion will not stand for a long period of time.
If you also absolutely do not want a segregated bifurcated America, stay tuned.
We'll get back to my conversation with Mitch Landroup in a moment.
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Let's get back to my conversation with Mitch Landrew.
South Carolina also has a special election today.
People will vote on who will replace Lindsey Graham as a Republican Senate nominee,
including his younger sister, Darleen, who's serving in this place.
You and other folks were just in South Carolina.
How do Lindsey Graham's long-term supporters feel about Darleen Graham as a candidate?
As you know, after Lindsey Graham's untimely death, the president appointed or got the
governor to appoint Governor McMaster Lindsey's sister, whose name is Darleen.
As she decided that she wanted to not only fulfill his term, which goes until January,
but she wanted to run for his six-year term.
It was very interesting to those of us that are watching from outside of that Republican
tent that a bunch of folks in South Carolina said, Mr. President, we like you, but not
so fast.
There are a bucket load of well-known Republicans basically saying, hey, look, we love
the Lindsey and we want to honor him and let Darleen serve, but not for the long term.
So I don't know what's going to happen there, but I was really surprised at how not totally
supportive people were of heart, not that they didn't dislike her.
They actually kind of think that she's liberal because of what she's done in the past.
So they're a little bit wary of her.
I don't think they're going to let Trump tell them what to do.
And when you say what she's done in the past, what are they saying?
Because she was working with folks with disabilities, right?
That's exactly right.
And so I can't, no, I can't look.
I don't want to defend the Republican view of this, but I think their view is if this
woman has a heart and if she's been helping people and she's been working with the government
to give assistance to people who actually need help, they go like, oh, well, maybe she's
not really one of us, which says a lot about them, right?
It makes you crazy in a sense because for a lot of us, she could be a spectacular person.
But if she's going to go vote the line with Trump and she's going to allow Trump to continue
to abuse the American public to steal money to actually abuse power so that America gets
weak and not stronger, you know what?
We need to elect the Democrat in South Carolina to stop Donald Trump from basically continuing
to destroy the country, which he's well on the process of doing.
To that point, you know, Trump's numbers are in the trash can.
They're in the toilet.
They're not in the trash can.
They're in the toilet.
Exactly.
And you're seeing those drop in numbers happening in states like Mississippi and South Carolina.
I think, you know, his approval rating, the state of Mississippi is the lowest it's ever
been.
And this is Mississippi we're talking about.
So that's right.
When you've had the chance to talk to people who voted for him in 2024, what are they
saying about him now?
There is a very, very, very strong yearning in the very soul of America to find a new way
forward that I would maybe summarize like common sense, common ground, but definite red lines
around the crazy shit coming from the left and the right.
The people don't know exactly how to get there.
Now the way it, the way that kind of shows up on the, let's say the right side of the
50 R line between the 30% of the people that love Donald Trump, no matter what and the
20 other percent that kind of voted for him because they thought he was going to protect
their ranchers.
That group of people where independence sit and Republicans, this is kind of what they're
saying.
They're like, man, I don't understand.
I thought this guy was for me.
He told me that he was going to stay out of wars and make sure we didn't spend that money
overseas that we spent it here, making my neighborhood safer and better.
He told me that he was going to make my costs go down.
And essentially he spent 18 months putting money in his pocket, helping his friends, punish
his enemies and making my life frickin miserable when he passed the bill to give the 1%
or a big tax break.
And then he screwed me in my family by cutting Medicaid so that the rural hospital where
my daddy was supposed to go when he had a stroke did not exist.
And now I'm pissed or that I had a special needs kid or I might have been born at night,
but I wasn't born last night.
These tariffs are killing my pocketbook.
And they're essentially saying they're pissed and they feel betrayed and they are open
to a new way and new people because they're not married to Trump.
They want the world to work for them.
And the Democrats therefore are people who are running on the Democratic side have an
opportunity to capture that group of people.
So long play is all about how politics and the South are changing.
And I think politics and the South have been changing for a very long time.
That's correct.
You have Georgia is basically a purple state now.
You have increasingly large cities across the South.
There's population growth.
We've got redrawn congressional maps, but just like what it means to be Southern has changed
a lot since the solid South of the 60s or 70s.
So as someone who has not just been a Southerner, but you've been a representative of a Southern
city and of a Southern state, what have you learned about Southern politics in 2026
as you've been visiting and talking to voters?
Well, the important thing for people across America who have evidently looked down on
the South, there's not only one way to be Southern.
There's a lot of ways to be Southern.
And like every region of the country, it's a very complicated place.
In Georgia and North Carolina, you hear those folks saying all the time, my God, masses
of people are moving here.
And it's changing the dynamic, not just because of the new people changing it, but because
of them being changed when they get there.
So culture, food, music, entertainment, the way people commune, it's creating new possibilities.
And you see this, I sense very clearly that America is struggling to find herself and
she's unsure and she's uncertain.
They know that where we are now is really bad.
They are trying to figure out how we got here.
We're trying to get out of a zero sum game and we're trying to think about maybe even
a new dynamic way of moving forward as opposed to continuing to have this fight.
So the big point of long play, the reason why the show's called long play is because
we go back far and we want to look ahead for it.
We're not just operating in the moment.
And so we're trying to be very thoughtful about what it is that we're seeing, what it is
that we're hearing.
And I'm here to tell you, I think we can win again in Georgia.
I think I saw for a win that race.
I think Roy Cooper is going to win in North Carolina.
I was with Teleriko on the border in Laredo and I watched him talk in front of a group
of 300 people and shortly thereafter talked to two Hispanic men who were born in America
that had voted for Trump three times that said, I'll never vote for him again because
he's betrayed us.
There is a thing happening here that we have to pay attention to and if Democrats who
want to win, understand that you have to do what it takes to win, which is to be smart.
Not just ideologically bent, you have to have common sense.
You have to people have to know where you're going.
They have to know that you're for them.
You're not for something that doesn't matter to them.
If you figure that out and you get good candidates that are smart and strong and tough and thoughtful,
there's a really good chance that we could actually win back the House and the Senate.
But then when we do that, we have to govern in a way that improves people's lives or we
will get thrown out too.
And I think we're in the midst of a huge jump ball right now and it's ours to win if we
want it.
Mitch, thank you so much for joining me.
It's great to be with you.
Thanks for having me.
That was my conversation with Mitch Landrugh from Romero of New Orleans and co-host of
Crooked Media's newest podcast Longplay.
Before we go, in less than 100 days, voters will have the chance to stop Trump's agenda
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