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Trump's economic messaging tour takes him to Georgia, where he claims "I've won affordability"—as White House advisors concede in a high-level meeting that he "will do what he wants to do, say what he wants to say." No surprise then that Republican strategists are beginning to go public with their fears about the midterms. Jon and Dan react to all the latest, including Trump's plans for war in Iran, the saga of Texas Senate candidate James Talarico's cancelled interview with Stephen Colbert, and the rumored departure of spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, the face of DHS's worst lies.
For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [email protected] and include the name of the podcast.
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Hey, love it or leave it listeners.
It's me, the titular John Love It.
Here to tell you that I'm coming back to Washington DC
for Love It or Leave It Live at the Lincoln Theater
on April 23rd, that's right.
Spring in DC is all about cherry blossoms
and Love It or Leave It bringing you a stack lineup of guests.
That's what makes it America's number one late night
gay live comedy political podcast.
We're so excited to be back in DC.
It's a tradition now that we come around the time
of the car response and or even though the car response
in a really no longer has comedians.
I believe there's gonna be some kind of a magician
or a mind-milder.
Yes, a magician.
Yeah.
I'm a mentalist.
A mentalist, because I guess Trump wouldn't go.
It's also going.
Yeah, yeah, that's in there, yeah.
There's a man.
There's a mental case and then Trump is also going.
That's what it is.
Tickets won't last long.
They're selling pretty fast.
So get yours now while you still can
at crooked.com slash events.
Very excited for the DC show.
Got some big guests.
Some pretty exciting maybes.
Crooked.com slash events.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
Welcome to Puts Hey in America.
I'm John Favreau.
I'm Dan Fifer.
We're back.
We're back in the States.
We were just visiting.
We were just visiting.
We made it back.
They let us in.
They let us in.
How are you feeling?
So I've been back one day longer than you.
And the first day, the first day I got back,
I was incredibly tired because I, you know,
you do that thing where you live Tuesday twice.
Yeah.
Off at 2 p.m.
Landed 8.45 a.m. on the same day.
Yesterday felt pretty good.
Today I've been quite tired.
My body is not yet adjusted in the morning.
It really thinks it should still be sleeping.
I know only sleeping three or four hours
on the 14 hour flight home.
And then having it be first thing Wednesday morning.
Yeah, that's a hard way to go through life.
I did sleep from 8 to 5.30 last night, Wednesday night.
So I'm hoping that I don't end up like you on the next day.
Tomorrow's going to be the tough one.
But it was a great, great trip.
Thank you to everyone in Australia and New Zealand
who came out.
The shows were so fun.
Thank you to our team who put the trip together
and the people back here who held it all together
while we were gone and put the podcast out.
Seriously.
And Sophie, our fearless tour manager,
Adrian Reed Austin, who traveled with us
and then everyone back here who held down the fort
just did an incredible job.
So we're really lucky.
On today's show, now that we're back,
we're going to talk about Trump's board of peace
and his plans for war with Iran.
His affordability event in Georgia
where he again complained about having to talk about affordability.
We'll also get into the messy Texas Senate primary
and the dust up over Stephen Colbert's cancelled interview
with James Telleriko.
And what even the threat of pressure from the FCC
might mean for talk shows heading into 2028.
And finally, we bid farewell to one of my all-time
favorite Trump administration officials,
DHS spokesperson, Trish McLaughlin.
Quick note before we start, just want to ask everyone
to think about becoming a subscriber,
becoming a friend of the pod subscriber.
We have, I think we have a new polar coaster out this week.
It's a subscriber-only show that Dan Pfeiffer hosts.
What's on polar coasters?
People say it's the best show it crooked puts out.
Most people are in my family, but it is true.
It's an excellent show.
I never miss it.
Except so far, I haven't listened to it
because it's only been out for 24 hours.
I haven't been asleep for most of them.
But it's excellent, I hear.
It's Grypsen.
Do you want to talk about it?
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, it's going to.
Go ahead.
We were turning these organic plugs very organic,
because we're just doing it off the cuff.
We talked about a lot of things, John,
but we dug into a shocking new poll that shows
that the 2024 election was redone right now,
Kamala Harris to beat that on Trump by eight points.
How does that sound to you?
I guess it sounds pretty good.
Well, we can't, we do not have time machine,
so we cannot fix this problem,
but it does tell us a lot about the political environment,
and we're going into the midterms,
and some things Democrats should be thinking about,
as we try to retake the House of the Senate.
So here's the thing.
You're going to want to listen to Polar Coaster.
You're going to want to listen to our new episode
of Pots of America that's now subscriber-only,
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All right, let's get to the news.
FIFA Peace Prize winner Donald Trump has assembled
what the Wall Street Journal says is the,
quote, greatest amount of air power in the Middle East
since the 2003 invasion of Iraq,
as the president inches closer to war with Iran,
which would be the seventh military attack
against another country in the last year.
And what better place to make the case for war
than at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace,
which on Thursday hosted the first real meeting
of Donald Trump's Board of Peace,
which is a kind of fake UN,
made up of corrupt oligarchs,
tinpot dictators, human rights abusers,
and other global also-rands
who were deeply committed to Jared Kushner's vision
of turning Gaza into the West Palm Beach of the Middle East.
Here's some of what the Board's chair for life,
Donald Trump, had to say at the event.
Does everybody like to use it?
These are the greatest world leaders.
Almost everybody's accepted,
and the ones that haven't will be.
Some are playing a little cute.
It doesn't work. You can't play cute with me.
This building was built for peace,
and nobody knew what to name it,
and then Marco named it after me.
I had nothing to do with it.
I swear I didn't.
I had no idea.
They said,
there's a surprise coming.
I didn't know that surprise.
I thought they were going to give me a lot of money,
or something, maybe cash.
It can always use some extra cash.
I want to thank Johnny and FIFA
for all of the wonderful things they did,
and are doing.
They gave me their first peace prize.
They gave me a peace prize.
I think they saw that I got screwed by Norway,
and they said, let's give them a peace prize.
Very good. Thank you, Johnny. I appreciate it.
You didn't catch that.
They were swaying to guns and roses,
November rain.
Then the president threatened.
Any invitee to the board of peace that has not accepted yet.
I guess that includes the Pope,
who has not accepted.
Then he just talked about the peace prize,
the fake peace prize he got from FIFA,
and the fake institute of peace
that was fake naming for him.
He was hoping for cash, but he took that instead.
As he always is.
As he always is.
Also, good news, Dan.
Trump generously committed at this event
to giving the board $10 billion of our tax dollars,
which is both about $10 billion more than I'd like to pay,
and wildly unconstitutional.
But maybe I'm missing something.
Yeah, the whole thing is ridiculous and embarrassing
for everyone involved,
particularly United States,
that we felt the need to pull together
an entirely fake thing
so that Donald Trump could live out his model U.N. dreams
for everyone to say.
You mentioned that chairman for life,
but I just want to dig in on that.
In case you won't miss this,
the board of peace is not part of the U.S. government.
This is a separate organization.
Donald Trump is the chairman for life.
It's in the charter that he states.
Whatever years he may have left.
Up until he resigns
or passes on to the next life
to the great model U.N. in the sky.
And so that he, if this $10 billion,
which if the United States were to give it,
I presume Congress would have to
send it to when they'd have to authorize this,
presuming we still believe in the power of the person
of that entirely sure.
It is what the Constitution says.
If we still abide by that.
I would assume that to be the case,
but either way,
Donald Trump will control that money.
As a Democrat, let's say, God willing.
That person is not in charge of the board of peace.
That person has no say of the $10 billion.
We just gave Trump to control.
The most the next president can do is appoint
the U.S. representative to the board of peace.
Who is equal footing
with the representative,
whatever dictator is also on the board at that point.
It is a could not be more ridiculous embarrassing and corrupt.
Just remember that they
completely dismantled U.S.A. ID.
Now thousands, if not millions,
of people around the world.
Many of them children
will die starvation
and disease easily preventable
because we apparently didn't have enough money
for the small amount we pay in foreign aid.
But $10 billion is going to the board of peace.
It is ostensibly going to rebuild Gaza.
But no actual plans for that.
And there's no kind of oversight
that can help us check whether that actually happens or not.
And the entire Gaza plan
that you heard Christian did a PowerPoint on,
a few weeks ago or months ago,
whatever that was,
was basically just like
it only dealt with the building of buildings
and not all of the
very complicated political and governance questions
that involve Gaza.
And so there is no plan.
This is just money that is going into a slush fund
for Donald Trump for whatever reason.
Shocked that the Pope hasn't said yes yet.
Unfortunately for time, John.
Unfortunately for peace lovers everywhere,
Trump only briefly touched on the war
he may soon launch against Iran,
noting only that we'll know the outcome
of the ongoing talks with Tehran
in the next 10 days or so.
And if there's no deal, quote,
bad things happen.
He did get a question about this
on the plane later in the day.
Take a listen.
Today, on Iran, bad things will happen.
Iran doesn't really bad things.
What will that be?
I'm not going to talk to you about that.
Well, if there isn't U.S.
No, it's not.
Well, we need to make a deal.
We're going to get a deal one way or the other.
I'm not going to talk to you about that.
We're either going to get a deal
or it's going to be unfortunate for them.
I think it's actually a deal.
It's going to be a deadline
to make a deal.
I would think there'll be enough time,
10, 15 days.
Pretty much maximum.
Naturally, the president has been making a vigorous case
to the American public
and to our representatives in Congress.
No, that hasn't been happening at all.
Has it?
No, there's been no discussion, no national debate,
no congressional debate, no presentation
of the specific threat
that Iran poses the United States.
No discussion of
how this is in the U.S.
interest to do this.
What were to come next?
Because in the discussion about this
and the run-up involving the protests
that Iran jumped over repeatedly
was that this would be
unlike the strikes
last year to try to take out
the nuclear program.
This was to try to take out
we were told it was obliterated.
Well, there's dust remaining
if you remember, dust.
And to try to take it out
because there's very little evidence
that that actually happened
because if it did,
we'd probably be in a different place right now.
Or an attack for regime change in Iran.
Which has incredible
consequences for
the region, for what happens
if Iran becomes a failed state
who takes over?
If they take out the current regime,
if they can try to make it a democracy,
what role do U.S. ground troops play in this?
Where is the international coalition?
Maybe it's just the people who are on the board of peace.
We'll get involved in this.
It's truly stunning that we could be
by the time you listen to this
and there's been zero discussion
with the American people about what that means
or why we're doing it.
I mean, the optimistic take here
is that Trump frequently uses
the threat of military action
force concessions to force a deal
and that even when he does
make good on those threats
like he did with
the first strike on Iran's nuclear program
or most recently in Venezuela
with the capture of Maduro,
the military action is relatively quick
and committed.
Unfortunately, I'm not high
or jet lagged enough to be that optimistic.
What do you think?
I saw it right before we recorded
in the Wall Street Journal
that it's reported that they are thinking
of an initial strike
that might be more limited
to sort of pave the way
for a bigger deal,
just like a first course,
appetizer strike.
That seems to me a scam
for decades to get Trump to start this process.
Because I think he probably
is skeptical of
an Iraq-like invasion of Iran.
But if they could just start the hostilities
maybe they could get what they want.
It seems incredibly poorly thought out
and this is not Venezuela.
Maybe you can attack Iran
and you can do some bombing
and they will not respond
as happened last year.
But there are incredible consequences
if the regime falls
and Iran becomes a failed state.
Like what could happen there?
What happens to millions of Iranians
who flee Iran as refugees?
Where do they go?
How does that change the world?
It's just like this is one of those things
that could have huge global implications
for the world,
for the region,
for the United States,
for the global economy.
And there's no evidence
that this has been thought about
and certainly no discussion with the public about it.
So it is,
it's incredibly, it's insane
that we could be on the precipice of war with Iran
and it's not even being discussed.
And honestly Democrats are not being loud enough about this.
I think because we are getting very twisted
around the axle
of around questions of national security
and war and particularly
national security war when it involves Iran.
And they're afraid of being on the wrong,
like they tend to look at this and say
what is the best
Trump action?
And how do we ensure we're not on the wrong side of that?
We saw this with all of the
caveats and the Hemingon hauling around
the strikes last year
and I worry that that is happening again.
It's just like some people are talking about it
but more people should be talking about it.
And you know, I'm no expert on this
but I do reference what Tommy and Ben
we are friends.
But I don't think that you're going to
change the regime
with just like limited air strikes alone
with that sending troops.
And I don't think you'd be able to like
just send in a quick seal team
like they did with Maduro here.
So I don't know what their regime change plans are
but I don't think it's going to be as neat
as anyone might think or even as Trump might think.
Also it's a country of 93 million people.
It is a huge, huge fucking country.
And the idea that we are just
like sending over there
more forces
and military build up
than we have any time since Iraq.
It's insane.
It is insane that this is happening right now.
And it's just like one of the many
and we're like well see what he does 10 to 15 days
he's going to make up his mind.
That's what Trump said.
And remember from the last time
we struck a red.
He said he put a, remember he put a delay
of a few weeks on it.
Yeah. And then he's able to sign the next two weeks
and then he struck like two days later.
So that's how you always know it's about to happen.
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All right, so Trump spent the rest of the Thursday in Georgia
for a message event on his least favorite issue,
but one that the White House and Republicans in Congress
keep begging him to focus on affordability.
Apparently Susie Wiles and her deputy James Blair
convened a big White House strategy session
on the midterms earlier in the week.
That included a bunch of cabinet secretaries.
I'm sure they were all helpful.
According to journalist Mark Halpern,
who got to read out from someone in the room,
Blair quote, acknowledge that Donald Trump will do
what he wants to do, say what he wants to say,
not be data driven.
Everyone else has to stay on message
and be driven by the data.
In effect, two separate but related campaigns, end quote.
Here's how the Trump part of the separate
but related strategy sounded today during his visit
to Marjorie Taylor Greene's former district in Georgia.
And then I have to listen to the fake news,
talking about affordability, affordability.
You notice what word have you not heard
over the last two weeks, affordability?
Because I've won.
I've won affordability.
I had to go out and talk about it.
He won.
He won affordability.
He later said, we got things that are happening
that are as good as what you've heard.
I don't know if they can get better, to be honest.
He doesn't know if things, it's not, are you better off?
Are you better off than you were four years ago?
Are you better off than you were last year?
Now it's personally, I don't think things
could possibly get any better.
The way you are living right now is the best possible
way you could live in this country.
It is the best.
Hottest country in the world.
Hottest country in the world.
What do you think? Good midterm message?
You think this was what they landed on?
In that midterm strategy session?
A lot of thoughts on this.
One, when Trump says you haven't heard the word affordability
in weeks, he's not talking to voters
because he would hear it if he talked to them.
But it's also because everyone's been talking about
the massive cover-up of his relationship
with a child sex trafficker.
So what I positive to you, John,
is what if the Epstein files were a distraction from inflation?
Possibly.
Possibly.
I thought about that, had you.
It's all a distraction then.
It's all a distraction.
But the strategy is idiotic and doomed to fail.
For two reasons.
The first reason is you cannot have the president
United States, the person with the largest megaphone
and especially a president like Donald Trump,
who gets more attention than any president in history,
saying something that is not on the talking points
and then think the campaign is going to work
because Scott Bessett is using the talking points
at a press event in Iowa one.
Like, it cannot work.
You got to have your best soybean farmers out there.
Well, I mean, he has a personal connection
with soybean farmers, but that in and of itself
will not be enough to deal with the fact
that Trump is out there saying inflation is solved.
Prices are down.
What you were seeing in your bank account
in your grocery receipts is wrong.
Everything is perfect.
Oh, and by the way, the Dow is at 50,000.
And something you and I know from our time
working for a president during a tough economy
is literally nothing makes voters angrier than
using the stock market to tell them
that the economy is going great.
It will cause them to flip over the table
on a focus group.
It makes them so mad.
Like, it is a message designed to lose.
And the second problem is their talking points
are a strategy that you may remember
from the Biden White House's strategy
for selling the economy,
which is focus on your accomplishments,
focus on what you've done.
Like in the reporting on that,
from Sophia Kai from Politico,
she talks about how the big thing they're all supposed
to emphasize is their efforts
to lower prescription drug costs,
which is the exact,
literally the exact same thing
the Biden White House tried to do.
And it's a good accomplishment,
especially for the Biden folks,
because that was a bigger deal.
But at the end of the day,
that is not,
you can't tell people
who are mad about high prices
that you lowered their prices.
That does not work.
You have to make an argument
how you are going to do a better job
of lowering their prices going forward
and the other side is going to raise them.
And they can't have that argument
because Donald Trump will not let them have that argument
because it implies
that they have failed to lower prices.
So they have to exist
within the reality that he has created.
That is a reality that voters do not see.
It sounds delusional to them.
Yeah, you didn't hear much in the speech today
about how he's planning on lowering prices
or doing anything to cut costs
in the coming months at all.
Nothing, nothing about that.
No, he spent his,
like just thinking about the context for this,
is this is happening on a day
where he pledged 10 billion dollars
to a personal slush fund
that's ostensibly going to Gaza.
For Jared Kushner to develop condos there,
he is talking about a war.
Starting a war in the Middle East,
it is the exact opposite.
And one of the things that
this wasn't really in this meeting
but that Trump folks
have sort of acknowledged
on background reporters is
in the first year
they spent too much time
doing foreign policy stuff.
And so that's why they have,
they have cut the press
out of all their foreign leader meetings
because those always were dominant.
But on the day of the big affordability event,
he's doing his foreign policy
slush fund event
and threatening a war.
It's fucking,
we have the dumbest people
running this country right now.
He also is,
his whole thing on tariffs.
He talked about tariffs a lot during this speech.
He's really tied himself
to the tariffs in a way
that has surprised even me.
So he spent a ton of time
in the speech just like ditching
about how the Supreme Court
has not handed down a ruling
on his tariffs yet.
And they went to it tomorrow.
And they may do it tomorrow.
Yeah, by the day.
You might be listening to this.
But tariffs might be gone
by the time it's yours.
We're recording this Thursday
afternoon as most of you know
and so you're probably listening to it
Friday.
So he's yelling about the Supreme Court
and he's saying tariffs
are the most important thing
in the world at one point.
He says,
everyone in the country
would be bankrupt
without these tariffs.
Now, he has walked back
a good chunk of the tariffs
at this point already.
In part, I presume because
all of his political advisors
and economic advisors are like,
hey, these tariffs are fucking killing us.
They're probably hurting your polls.
They're one of his
least popular issues,
along with immigration
and the cost of living.
And they are just
an attacks on a bunch of goods
that just people are just paying.
I think there was just a report
that it's about $1,000 a family
that people are paying
because of the tariffs.
And yet, even if the Supreme Court
rules them unconstitutional
and lets him off the hook,
he's just going to double down
and try to just put them back on
through some other method
and then say that they're still important.
Like, it's just wild.
You got to get,
you got to hand it to the guy.
He genuinely believes in the tariffs.
Genuinely believes in the tariffs.
Because he's an idiot.
But you're exactly right.
Like, our friends
had never got to research
often do these word clouds
where they asked people
about either negative information
they've heard about Trump
or reasons why
you disapproved of whatever else.
And tariffs is always a giant thing
in the middle.
And he talks about tariffs
more than tariffs are actually
in place now.
Yeah.
And so what he's done,
it was just really impressive.
Which he has made his tariffs
the reason for all high prices
of people's minds.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which is really impressive.
And even American make goods
people that have their higher prices.
People think it's because the tariffs
because he keeps saying
tariff, tariff, tariff,
where it says it all the time.
And it means just really,
I have to say it's honestly
impressively stupid.
So just to, you know,
we're having too much fun here,
too optimistic.
So just to rate on our parade
a little bit.
One thing I noticed
while we were gone last week
is that the most recent
economic data has been
better than expected,
job growth in January.
It was twice as high
as expected.
The inflation reading was
better.
The inflation slowed down a bit.
We're not seeing any evidence yet
that voters are feeling
any differently
about the cost of living
than they have been.
But what do you think about
the recent economic news
and what do you think
Democrats should be planning for?
There's not much
you can plan here for.
And the economic news has been
a little bit all over the map.
You sort of get a good jobs
number and then you get a bad jobs
number and then some
revision, downward revision.
So the previous number.
So it's hard to say what is
actually happening.
And inflation is down
a little bit, but it's
we still have inflation.
And that is the problem
for Trump.
And the ultimate problem is
he cannot...
Look, the economy gets
better on the margins.
It probably helps them.
But the fundamental problem
is Donald Trump didn't promise
to slow inflation,
which is what this
report indicated.
What Donald Trump
promised to do was
lower your prices,
which he has not done,
cannot do,
and actually made worse
with his tariffs.
And so there is not a world
where he had a deflationary
cycle, which would be quite bad
for the economy.
Most of the economy goes
into recession.
And we have a collapse.
But voters are not
going to see lower prices
for food, housing, goods.
They may just see a slower
rate of increase.
And that's not something
I expect Republicans
to be rewarded for coming
November.
Yeah.
I think Trump making
things worse is the key
there, because you know,
there's a debate like,
oh, when the economy is
bad, does the president
get too much blame
more than the president
deserves when the economy
is good?
Does the president get more
credit than the president
deserves?
Like, how much is just
the president presiding
over the economy?
How much does that
really matter?
You know?
And this is a different
situation where the guy
literally gave a trillion
dollar tax cut to billionaires
paid for by health
care cuts that made your
premiums increase.
And then put tariffs
on all the shit that you
buy, which has made it
more expensive.
And that doesn't change,
right?
Like, even if the
economy slightly improves,
like, the fact that he made
life more expensive so that
rich people could get a break
is just the facts of his
first several years in
office.
And the thing that is
different than with
previous presidents is,
a majority of voters only
a year into his term
blame Trump for the
current state of the
economy.
Normally voters
should.
Normally presidents.
But, you know, but
normally presidents get
years when they inherited.
Like, Obama, people
were still blaming Bush
more than Obama for the
state of the economy in
2012 running for election.
They understood what
happened.
People believe correctly
that Trump has made
problems much, much worse
through action in the
tariffs in action, because
he's focused on so many
things other than actual
the economy and affordability.
And that is the problem
for him, which is why
marginal improvements in
the economy would not
help him as much as they
would help another
president who was not
being specifically
blamed for things
being bad.
Well, I mean, like, think
of the Obama's first
couple years.
We know that with the
Affordable Care Act,
taxes were only increased
on the wealthiest
Americans, and that
through the Recovery Act,
everyone else got
tax cuts, right?
And still, Obama
should do the blame for
the job loss that came
from the Great Recession
and just people's
economic well-being, which
was not very good.
Now imagine, Obama
actually raised taxes
on everyone, and raised
their health care costs
all in the first two
years, as the economy
was already bad.
That's basically
gasoline on fire.
Yeah.
Relatedly, Axios had a
story on Thursday about how
Republican strategists are
starting to get nervous
about Democrats, bigger than
expected wins and special
elections over the past few
months.
One anonymous Republican
strategist said, quote, the
pattern is clear that the
situation is going to be
much worse than the
election.
Republican strategist
said, quote, the pattern
is clear that there is
at least a current
10-point Democratic
overperformance from
Trump 2024.
And it's built on a
fired-up Democratic
base and a sleepy
Republican base.
A 10-point Democratic
overperformance.
Are you as bullish
as that Republican
is nervous?
Yeah, I'm a pretty
superstitious
guy, John.
You got a long way
of the election.
I don't know.
I'm not cocky about this
in any way, shape or
form.
But, and I do believe
that that
gap is going to
narrow some Republicans
will Democrats are
going to stay fired up.
I'm very confident about
that. Republicans will
get more fired up as we
get closer election.
This happens every
cycle.
And if we're being sort
of brutally honest about
it, Democrats had a
13-point overperformance
in 2025.
It's been 10%.
Here are some of
that has to do with the
races that have happened
in this short period of
time this year.
But it's obviously going
to narrow.
And just to put that
in perspective, the
final Democratic
popular vote margin in
the 2018 House races was
8.6%.
And we picked up
41 seats.
And that one now.
The map is different.
There's not the really,
you're not, Democrats
are not picking up 41 seats
at an 8.6% popular
vote margin.
But, you know, at 10 points,
certainly the House is
very much in good hands.
And that said, it is in play.
The things that are keeping
the Republican base
deflated aren't really
going to change a ton.
Like, I think their core
voters are going to turn
out more just because
it's an actual mid-term
not a special.
And our voters are
more trained at
turnout specials.
But the base is divided,
right?
There is in polling
15% of Trump voters
who regret or have
concerns about their vote
in 2024.
You have, in the races
we've had before,
seven to 10% of Trump
voters coming over to vote
for Democrats.
There are, you know,
a quarter to, you know,
a fifth to a quarter of
Trump voters who are
unhappy with the
Trumps on the economy.
And so those
sort of structural
problems are not
going to change in a
dramatic way in the next
nine months, I wouldn't
imagine.
Yeah, what I keep
looking at is Trump's
approval rating in Ohio,
Iowa, Alaska, Texas,
which are, you know, we need
two of those four states
to take back the Senate.
And because I think
that, like, if Trump's
under 50 in those states
that are going to
change in a dramatic way
in the next nine months,
I wouldn't imagine.
Yeah, what I keep
looking at is Trump's
approval rating in Ohio,
Iowa, Alaska, Texas,
and those states
Republican candidate
in this polarized era
probably not going
to get much higher than
Trump's approval rating
in those states.
And so, you know,
Trump's sitting at
48 or 49 even in
Iowa, in Texas, in Ohio,
like, I think those
candidates, especially
like Sherrod Brown
in Ohio, I think they
were pretty good,
good chance.
But I don't know what you
think is that.
They do.
They just have to,
it has to be a candidate
because there will be
people who are unhappy
with Trump.
But think the Democrat
is too far to the left
or whatever else.
And so, right.
Like, the environment is,
I would put it this way.
The environment is
suggestive of a path
the Democratic victory
of Trump's under 50.
It's going to depend
on how the campaign is
waged and also
who the Republican candidate
is as well.
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Speaking of the midterms, one midterm race that's been getting a ton of national attention
lately is the Texas Senate race, particularly the Democratic primary between Jasmine
Crockett and James Tallerico, whose appearance on Stephen Colbert's show this week caused
quite a stir in case you haven't followed this story, here's what happened.
On Monday, Colbert told his audience that, quote, we were told in no uncertain terms
by our network's lawyers who called us directly that we could not have Tallerico on the broadcast.
Apparently, CBS's lawyers were concerned that having Tallerico on might prompt legal
action from the FCC based on new guidance that Chairman Brendan Carr issued in January
about the commission's longstanding equal time rule, which requires broadcast, television
and radio shows to give candidates equal time if they have their opponent on as a guest.
Now, there has always been an exemption, at least as far back, I believe since 2006,
for talk shows like Colbert's daytime talk shows, late night talk shows, but in this
guidance in January, Carr said that he was considering getting rid of that exemption.
And sure enough, the FCC recently launched an enforcement action against ABC and the
view for exactly that.
The view had Tallerico on, without also having Jasmine Crockett on or their primary opponent
on or Ken Paxton or John Corden.
Colbert interviewed Tallerico anyway, put the segment on YouTube and told his CBS audience
what happened.
CBS then put out a statement on Tuesday denying Colbert's version of events, saying the late
show was not, quote, prohibited from airing the interview, only, quote, provided legal guidance.
Here's how Colbert responded on his show on Tuesday night and the tough questions Carr got
from Laura Ingram on Fox News on Wednesday.
Between the monologue I did last night and before I did the second act talking about this
issue.
I had to go backstage.
I got called backstage to get more notes from these lawyers, something that had never, ever
happened before.
And they told us the language they wanted me to use to describe that equal time exception.
And I used that language.
So I don't know what this is about.
I'm just so surprised that this giant global corporation would not stand up to these bullies.
I don't even know what to do with this crap.
I'll hold on.
Would you go, have gone after them for violating the equal time rule, as Colbert said?
Well, we've said as we've been very clear, is that broadcasters have a unique right and
privilege, a license.
And one thing they have to do is comply with the equal time rules.
But, complying with equal time, would have meant-
Why doesn't that have been enforced?
Once I'll last time that, it's been enforced.
In case you're just listening, the audience cheered when Colbert decided to crumble up
the statement from his company's own lawyers and put it in a dog poop bag.
Dan, what do you make of all this?
What's interesting is how the FCC got onto this, because it's been a well-established
principle for a very long time that while news shows are exempt from equal time laws, like
if you want to have to interview a candidate or put a president on, that you're not then
forced to give exact equal time to their opponent, and they then, for a long time, had exemptions
for interview shows, like the talk shows, the view, Colbert.
The reason why Brendan Carr has taken this on is, and I had forgotten this, I think my
brain was protecting me from trauma, but in 2024, Trump got very mad that Kamala Harris
went on the view when he did not.
So his campaign filed a complaint with the FCC, Biden had, the FCC chair was a Biden nominee,
he did not act on this, so Brendan Carr and his never-ending quest to appease Trump
and be a hero of the MAGA right has decided to take on the view, and now Colbert.
And this really does have, I mean, it's ridiculous, it's absurd, it's pretty stupid.
It has real implications just for how the 2028 campaign is going to be covered.
Like no democratic, if this is the rule, no democratic candidate will be able to go on
any broadcast talk show in that campaign, because no talk show is going to agree to do equal
interviews with all 27 democratic candidates or whatever.
And by the way, Republican candidates, because I saw a lot of people be like, well, this
isn't really about like a Republican democratic thing because it was about he needed to give
equal time to Jasmine Crockett as well.
Well yes, on Crockett, but also Paxton and Cornyn and Wesley Hunt in the other side of
the primary, because if you look at the actual regular law, it just says all of the candidates
running for that given office.
So it's not just a like primary, it's a lot of candidates that you would have to have
on.
And the rule is so arbitrary and stupid in its application that John Ossoff, who is running
for reelection in Georgia, was on Colbert the next night, but he is not officially filed
a statement of candidacy.
So he's not officially a candidate yet.
So therefore, there is not the CBS's attorneys, the paramount attorneys did not think it triggered
the law.
And this is an idiotic thing.
This is also so stupid because in this day and age, most of what happens in media is
outside of the FCC's preview, because the FCC is only in charge of what happens on the
actual broadcast networks.
Like we think of the view as a cable show, but it errors on ABC in a lot of markets.
So therefore, the FCC has regulation, but anything that happens on podcasts, YouTube
shows, cable TV is outside of the purview of the FCC for these purposes.
And by the way, Carr has been asked before whether he feels the same way about right wing
talk radio and said that right wing talk radio is not a target of the equal time new
guidance that he has issued.
Yes, it was the changing, like all of right wing radio, all of right wing radio rose
out because of a very specific change made by Ronald Reagan's FCC to allow there to
be right wing radio and not enforce the equal time on radio stations.
It is also just like, my first instinct was, well, the people who screwed Colbert the
most were his own lawyers, because like they should have just fought it, because who
knows if like Brendan Carr would have done anything anyway, clearly he would have, as
he showed Laura Ingram, clearly he did or is doing, is investigating the view for the
exact same thing.
So the lawyers did have good reason to believe that Carr would act.
Now if it was, if they were lawyers at a company that wasn't hoping the administration wouldn't
get involved in say a purchase they wanted to make of say Warner Brothers Discovery, which
they're still trying to buy at Paramount Plus, then perhaps the lawyers would have said,
fuck Brendan Carr, we'll fight this.
Yeah.
I mean, the, like we have no evidence, explicit evidence that the Paramount lawyers did
this as part as an effort to carry favor with Trump.
We do know is the larger patterning practice with Paramount and David Ellison who runs Paramount
Skydance in particular is to do things to win favor with Trump to kiss up to him.
And there are numerous examples.
There is the $16 million that Paramount paid to settle a ridiculous lawsuit around 60
minutes.
There is the putting of Barry Weiss over at CBS.
There is David Ellison telling Trump reportedly according to several reports that if he were
to get his hands on CNN, which is owned by Warner Brothers Discovery, which Paramount
is trying to buy, he would make major changes there with the implication of being Trump
up like those changes.
And so when something is the entire relationship between Paramount Ellison and the Trump administration
is one that reeks of corruption.
And therefore, the burden to prove on whether this was done out of legal caution or out
of a way to avoid pissing off Trump while you were trying, while one of the selling points,
one of the selling points that Paramount is making to the Warner Brothers Discovery shareholders
is that they, because of David Ellison and Larry Ellison, who's a big Trump donor in
one of the richest spent in the world, one of their close relationships with Trump and
the Trump administration means they are more likely to get regulatory approval for the
purchase of Warner Brothers Discovery than Netflix, which is run by people who have
donated to Democrats in the past.
And as for the dispute between Colbert and CBS Paramount and the lawyers over what they
actually said to Colbert because they released a statement basically saying, no, we just
gave guidance.
We didn't tell him not to air it.
Colbert did make the point that the lawyers, as they always do, read every single word
of the script and approved it before he said it.
And what he said that night was that they told him in no uncertain terms that he could
not air the Teller Rico interview.
So in case you're wondering if anyone's not telling the truth there, who's not telling
the truth?
So Colbert's interview with Teller Rico drew millions of views on YouTube, the whole
thing backfired as it did with Kimmel, as it always does, millions of views on YouTube.
It also helped James Teller Rico quite a bit, netted his campaign over $2 million of fundraising
in 24 hours.
Understandably, Jasmine Crockett isn't thrilled about any of this, though Colbert did
note on Tuesday that she has been a guest on the late show twice.
I think the last time was like May of 2025, I looked so not since the race is heated up,
but she has been on twice.
This has been and is getting to be more of a very messy and negative primary between Teller
Rico and Crockett.
The press conference where Crockett responded to the Colbert thing sounded mostly like this.
You know, we've all seen the attack ads that have come on behalf of my primary opponent,
supposedly wants to get rid of the facts yet, doesn't have anything to say about the
negative ads that are darkening my skin and this continual kind of, if she wins, we lose.
It's not even undertones right now.
It is straight up racist.
Early voting is now underway.
The primary is March 3rd.
Where do you think the race stands right now?
The polls have been a little bit all over the map.
There were many of them, I feel like.
There have not been a ton of them.
The most recent ones have had Crockett up a little bit on Teller Rico, but there have
been also been some polls showing Teller Rico up.
A lot of the polls we've seen are either from groups affiliated with one of the two candidates,
either they're super PACs or they're campaigns or from less well known polling outlets.
We're not getting like, we have not yet got like a New York Times CN poll or a Wall Street
Journal poll or something that are seen at poll, kind of the polls that we can judge.
Luckily from local Texas polls, so it's hard to say.
Early voting is through the roof.
Over the first couple days of early voting, there have been twice as many votes castes that
were over the same period in 2022 and a quarter of all the early votes cast in 2022 have
been cast in the first two days of early voting.
It seems to be up everywhere.
It does also seem to be up particularly high in parts of Jasmine Crockett's district, which
may be a positive sign for her, but hard to say in this early stage.
It's anyone's guess who's going to win this primary.
There's not enough to tell us how it exactly stands.
What do you think about how contentious it's gotten as a race?
It makes my stomach hurt.
It really makes my stomach hurt when I think about the 2028 Democratic presidential primary.
I know.
In this context, it doesn't have to be this negative.
It's been this negative.
The Teller Rico super PAC started the negativity by, say, maybe running a very explicit ad
saying that if Crockett wins the primary, we lose the general election.
Electability is hanging over this, which is what's going to hang over the 2028 primary.
We can talk maybe a little bit about that in a second here, but that conversation is
always heated and freighted with a lot of racial engender tropes and a lot of myths about
politics and everything.
It's quite messy.
It's counterproductive and it doesn't.
We'll see what happens in some of these other primaries, like Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota,
and Maine, whether they get heated like this is they get closer, because all those primaries
have a fairly long distance before people actually start voting.
This is the first one we were down in the wire and it's gotten nasty quickly.
We've obviously had both candidates on the show, even though the FCC can't make us.
It's tough, right?
We'll see positions are very similar, almost identical, and I think there hasn't been
a ton of polling in the race.
Even if there were, I think we both know that figuring out which candidate gives Democrats
a better chance of flipping Texas is like, electability is always going to be at least
somewhat of a subjective exercise, right, but what do you think about it in this context
of this race?
Well, so electability is purely theoretical.
The only way to prove electability is to win.
It's also a very fair question to ask here.
We kind of need to win this Senate race, and when you have two candidates who are both
very well-liked by Democrats who have her ideologically very similar profiles, I don't
blame voters for saying, I like them both, which one is more likely to win.
That's what I care about.
And selectability is so theoretical.
Perhaps the only data point you can bring to bear in such a conversation, and it's a very
imperfect one, is does this candidate have a history of winning tough races, winning
Republican voters, winning over spring voters, like Andy Beshear, who can come to voters
and say, look at all these Republicans and whatever, Josh Shapiro and Gretchen Whitmer
can say, or Rumi Geigo and John Assoff, because they look at these swing states that I have
a history of winning.
Does that translate to a presidential?
Maybe, maybe not, but it's an argument to me.
Yeah.
In this situation, neither can it has a particularly long documented history of winning over Republican
or swing voters, or dramatically outperforming how a typical Democrat, typical Republican would
do.
Telleriko's first race was in a pretty purple district, T1, narrowly, since then it was like
a Trump, it was a Trump district, right, but it was barely Trump did trick, but then
it's become, since then it's been a Democratic district and how it's been redrawn, he's
won easily, Crockett has represented a very, very Democratic district, she's performed
as you would expect the Democrat to do there.
And so you can't make that point.
So the only thing you can evaluate here is what is their stated strategies for winning
the race?
And I will stipulate that both of these strategies are overly simplistic, because you kind
of have to do both, but it's where if they put their emphasis.
Telleriko has said he is focused on trying to win over Republican voters that he can
appeal to folks who voted for Trump, disenchanted with Trump, Republican voters, Crockett has
taken a different approach.
She has said that her path to victory comes from her ability to excite the Democratic
base to turn out people in Texas who have, who are not typical participants in the political
process, that she can mobilize voters.
Like I said, neither of them have a record of doing either of those things per se.
I mean, they have anecdotal examples, but it's not like manifested in their histories.
If you ask me which strategy on its face is more likely to succeed, I would tell you
Telleriko's strategy.
Now whether he can implement that strategy, better than the Crockett can implement hers.
I don't know the answer to that.
I don't think anyone does, but this is the state that Donald Trump won by double digits.
There is no path to victory without winning over a significant slice of people who voted
for Trump, traditionally vote for Republicans.
That is just the math of winning in Texas.
And he is emphasizing that.
And Crockett is emphasizing the opposite.
And I think there is not a lot of history that mobilization in and of itself would be
sufficient to win in a state like Texas.
And that is just the fact that no matter now, I think both of them are being oversimplistic
in their approach.
I can't imagine that if either of them becomes the nominee, they will not then try to
do both.
Like, if you win over six percent of Republicans, but you don't turn out the full Democratic
base at a high level, you're not going to win.
If you turn out the Democratic base, like it's never been turned out before, but you can't
win over six versus six to seven or eight percent of Republicans, then you're also going
to lose.
But I had a long conversation with Caroline about this on Polar Coaster, which you can
listen to if you subscribe to Crockett's show and I'm going to write about this in
message box.
I think the next couple of days are a more deeper analysis of it.
But that's sort of my initial takeaway is, if you like, if you want to come at this
move of sex and electability, if you like, look, if you like Tyler Rico or you like
Jasmine Crockett, just go vote for that person, right?
If that's who you like more, but if you are bringing electability lens to it, then that's
sort of how I would frame the analysis of it.
I also think you and I have talked about this in the context of, I don't know, every election
since we've been doing this, which is this idea that a person who doesn't vote or who
has voted in the past, but decides not to vote in some election, is so much different
in their politics and political beliefs than someone who sometimes votes for Democrats
and sometimes votes for Republicans, is it doesn't really play out like that.
Like there is this view, there's this traditional view that I think we had prior to the Trump
era, that the voter who stays on the couch, the voter who stays home is like a liberal
or progressive and just hasn't been activated by a Democratic candidate who's exciting
enough or progressive enough or liberal enough.
And that someone who has voted Democrat in the past or hasn't even voted in the past,
but then votes for Donald Trump and votes for Republican is just as a conservative voter
and that's it and we've lost them.
And the truth is, when you, after an election, when you go interview these voters or even
during an election, you talk to them in focus groups, you realize that a lot of these
voters who either switch parties or sometimes stay home all together, are just have very
complicated views.
You could call them maybe moderate, but on some issues, they're quite liberal, on some
issues, they could be quite conservative and they just have this real mix of political
beliefs.
And so it really hasn't panned out that the non voter is just like a liberal sitting
home waiting to be activated by an exciting candidate.
And I do think what keeps people from voting and keeps people from, unless the obviously
voter suppression keeps people from voting, but if you are making up your mind about whether
to vote or not and making up your mind about whether to vote for a Democrat or a Republican,
what's keeping people from doing so, from casting that ballot is just cynicism in this
system and a belief that politics isn't going to really make a difference in their lives.
And a belief that both parties are too similar and that once everyone gets to Washington,
all they do is just yell at each other and nothing gets done and the whole thing is
hopeless and everyone's corrupt.
Like that is the, if there is a typical belief of someone who switches parties or just
switches between voting and non voting, it's that political profile.
And so I do think that's one thing for people to keep in mind as you think about who you
like, not just in this primary, but in other primaries.
I will just say for me personally, I have been impressed with James Taylor Rico, like
long before he was ever a Senate candidate.
And I like that he is running a populist campaign.
I like that he doesn't take corporate PAC money.
I like that he says the real divide in the country isn't between left and right, but
between top and bottom.
I think that you and I have talked about this as well, that like a Democrat who can both
sort of run against a corrupt system and corrupt special interests and the billionaire
class and someone who could also reach out to voters who were disillusioned with the political
system is probably like the best kind of Democrat.
And one that we think would have a good chance and I think that that's Taylor Rico.
I also like that he he is not making this campaign about himself or about Jasmine
Crockett or about Ken Paxton or John Corner or even Donald Trump.
He's like trying to make it in some ways bigger than politics itself.
He talks about how the most important thing is to love your neighbor.
And yes, that very much comes from his faith, but this idea that you should reach out and
love your neighbor no matter what they look like, where they come from, what they believe,
how they pray.
I think that's a pretty good political philosophy for someone who wants to be in government,
regardless of where you come from and what race you're running in.
And so I do think that Taylor Rico sort of not only will appeal to more people with
that philosophy, but it's just a really good philosophy and a public servant.
So.
I've really you and I talked about this a little bit in the many, many hours we spent together
last week.
And I've really wrestled with this because I do find the conversations about electability
to be exhausting and complicated and freighted with all kinds of racial and gender tropes.
And you know, we dealt with like this was such an overhang in 2020 and there was a tax
on candidates of color and women candidates in that race that really, you know, affected
the entire debate.
And also like James Taylor Rico, he I'm not saying he's a message box subscriber, but he's
a message box candidate like he is on like, like, that is what I like advocate for and
how he's running his campaign.
So I obviously like that a lot.
I also honestly have really liked Jasmine Crockett because she's like the other end of
the message box candidate is the candidate who's out there like knows how to get attention
is out there doing things.
I really enjoyed interviewing her in DC.
And if the net result of this is she's not in Congress.
I think that's a loss to the democratic caucus because we just have so few people who can
communicate in a modern fashion.
So that's why I sort of default to the strategy question like what strategy is the one which
approach for winning that I think it's more likely to succeed on its face.
We don't whether the candidate is the right can actually execute on that in what is a very
hard state to begin with.
I don't know.
But it's how like it telerico strategy in terms of like voter outreach makes more sense
to me as a strategy that can win Texas, but I'll say I've been wrong many times before.
So this wouldn't be the first.
Yeah.
No.
I feel bad for being so positive about James Taylor Rico because that probably means he's
not going to win.
But I will say like I think it is.
I think it is.
Maybe we should just Alan Dross Crockett right now, so at least we'll pick one we'll
get one.
Yeah.
Who's that third candidate who also wants to get Uncle Bear?
Yeah.
Good question.
I think it is unfortunate that maybe inevitable but unfortunate that race and identity has become
such a big issue at least in the online conversation and now I guess in the campaign itself judging
by the ads and the candidate statements or at least listening to Crockett right there.
And one of the reasons I think it's unfortunate is because when I think of what is appealing
to me about Taylor Rico's message and strategy and the way he's approaching the campaign,
it reminds me of Barack Obama.
It reminds me of AOC.
It reminds me of Stacey Abrams in Georgia when she came close to unseeding camp.
It reminds me of Ruben Gaiego and Arizona.
So I don't think that this is to me at least what is appealing about Taylor Rico has anything
to do with identity.
And so I just I think that to have this sort of populist style where you're also trying
to reach out to bring in voters who haven't always been with the Democratic Party, I don't
think that is endemic to any specific identity or area or geography right.
Like I think that anyone can do it and I think that people and people of different races
in different parts of the country have done it in the past to great success.
I think two things about this is one like well could like it would be great if people
could lower the temperature over the last two weeks.
And obviously if the I look to see if I could find any reporting or comment from the
Taylor Rico super back about the accusations about darkening skin, obviously if that's
true, that is horrendous and that should be disavowed immediately.
But the I think the two things that would help lower the temperature would be the idea
that Jasmine Crockett cannot win I think is is an unfair accusation.
You can argue that teller going to be more likely to win, but we're also bring a little
more humility to know what yeah, we shouldn't be throwing out can't wins for anyone.
Yeah.
So that's one and two and this isn't coming.
I haven't heard Crockett or her campaign say this because of a lot of online supporters
this idea that because Tallerico wants to reach out to Republicans, that he is some sort
of Federman.
He like you heard this about platinum or two that he is like he's going to be like Federman
is going to the Senate and he's going to become a Republican in a, you know, a Democrat
name only inside of the public.
I promise everybody like there is no evidence to suggest that.
He has been a very, also if you don't, if you don't get Republican votes, we're never
winning the presidency again.
We're never winning the Senate again.
It's just fucking math people.
Come on.
Yeah.
And so like if we could just like stop with those two accusations and just try to like
a good final two weeks or because if Tallerico wins the primary, he's going to need Crockett
support to win the general and if Crockett wins the primary, he's going to need Tallerico
support to win the general.
And so we got to run a primary where we can put this back together again in two weeks.
Really great.
Hey, love it or leave it listeners.
It's me, the titular John love it here to tell you that I'm coming back to Washington
DC for love to leave it live at the Lincoln theater on April 23rd.
That's right.
Spring in DC is all about cherry blossoms and love to leave it bringing you a stack line
up of guests.
That's what makes it America's number one late night gay live comedy political podcast.
We're so excited to be back.
DC.
It's a tradition now that we come around the time of the car response and even though the
car is honest and are really no longer has comedians that I believe there's going to be
some kind of a magician or a mind, mind melder.
Yes, a magician, yeah, I'm a mentalist, a mentalist, because I guess Trump wouldn't go.
It's also going.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's a mental case and then and Trump is also going.
That's what it is.
Tickets won't last long.
They're selling pretty fast.
So get yours now while you still can at crooked dot com slash events.
It's very excited for the DC show.
Got some big guests, some pretty exciting, maybe's quicker dot com slash events.
One last thing before we go on Tuesday, it was widely reported that Trisha McLaughlin,
the Department of Homeland Security's top spokesperson is leaving the Trump administration.
McLaughlin was one of the Trump administrations most consistent and ineffective liars, which
is quite a feat in that administration.
Her accomplishments include justifying the torture of the innocent people our government
sent to a torture prison in El Salvador, slandering the two Americans our government killed
as, quote, domestic terrorists, and initially blaming an infant's parents for ice nearly
killing their baby with tear gas, this was in Chicago.
Her husband, a Republican strategist, was also the beneficiary of a $200 million no-bid
contract from the agency she works at for an anti-immigration ad campaign.
And is it too much to hope that her potential future employers may not want to hire someone
who's not just a liar, but an ineffective one at that.
Immigration has gone from Trump's best issue to now one of his worst issues.
Most Americans don't believe a word, the Department of Homeland Security says, or the government.
I think ice has a 20-30% approval rating at this point.
Or is she going to end up a Foxpundit or the next White House press secretary?
Well, two things.
One, there's a lot of failing up in Republican politics, so it's very possible she will
end up on Fox, or what is basically big on Fox, which is White House press secretary.
But I kind of want to clear out here because you have been yelling about, podcasting about
tweeting about Trishman Glockland for a year now.
I can't remember were you on the plane?
Was it during your day off in Sydney from the beach were you tweeting about this, or was
it on the plane?
I cannot remember.
But I saw the news and I was shocked to get like a extensive Twitter thread from you,
celebrating her departure and documenting some of her lies from Australia.
I have to be honest, I wasn't even celebrating because, first of all, she might have started
planning.
It's not like she got fired, she may have started planning to leave in December apparently,
so she's just leaving.
A likely story from a liar, John.
Yeah, that is true.
That is true.
She did tell the Cincinnati inquirer where she's from.
I think she's like moving back to Cincinnati with her family and she didn't say that she
can't rule out.
I know.
I know.
And she said that she can't rule out running for office in the future, which if you're running
against her, sign me up.
But mostly, mostly it just like, it just, it got me angrier because, and look, it's, it
is her because she is the face of the administration, but it's like, you know, my, my anger and rage
towards Christy Nome, Corey Lewandowski, if I can Greg Bavino, Stephen Miller, as you
know, JD Vance.
Right.
Obviously, Trump, but like all of them over what they have done and what they are continuing
to do on immigration is just, it is so intense.
Like did you find, I skipped reading this for a while because I knew it would get me
both angry and sad, but did you end up reading the pro public of story about all the kids
in the Dilly detention center?
I did.
And I just want you to know, John, I did not put it in our many group chats together
for this specific purpose that I felt like you should find it organically and I should
wrote whatever you were doing at the moment.
I should ruin your day with it.
Well, I had found it, but I was like, okay, to what end am I going to read this and just
be like so angry and everyone's tweeting about it.
Like, I don't need to tweet about it too.
There's been enough tweets, but then I was, I, I like caught it like today.
Is it just preparing for the pod because there was a story pulled out of it.
There was a Miami paper about this nine-year-old girl, Maria Antonia Guerra.
And so, wild story, right?
She lives in Columbia with her grandmother and her mother lives in New York, I believe.
And her mother had overstayed her visa, but then married a U.S. citizen and is applying
for a green card.
So like, in the application process, everything legal and they had, they had met, right?
The daughter and the mother in Florida had to go to Disney World.
And so they went to Disney World once in the summer, I think, and they had so much fun
at Disney World.
They're like, let's go back in October for Halloween and we'll meet there.
And so the nine-year-old flies from Columbia where she lives with the grandmother to Miami
to meet the mother who's there with her.
And when she meets up with the mother instead of like leaving the airport and going to Disney World,
going back to Disney World, they're detained by immigration.
Don't tell them why they're detained.
Don't tell them why that either of them isn't, shouldn't legally be in the country.
They are detained in the airport for 42 hours straight.
And then they are sent to Dilly in Texas where they were held for four fucking months.
This girl was like, everyone's the old woman, the reporter, like, she lives in Columbia.
She is a citizen of Columbia.
And they still, we just held her in jail for four months.
And the reporter who wrote the pro-publica story, which everyone should go read, she
like got all these letters.
She asked for letters from a lot of the kids who were held in these detention centers.
And she writes of this letter.
She said, in one letter, decorated with small hand drawn hearts, rainbows and sad faces
alongside a sketch of Maria and her mother in government-issued sweatsuits,
the girl wrote that she felt like, quote, being here was my fault.
I only wanted to be on vacation like a normal family.
I'm in jail and I am sad and I fainted two times here inside.
When I arrived every night, I cried and now I don't sleep well.
I don't eat well.
There's no good education.
And I miss my best friend, Julietta and my grandmother and my school.
I just really want my house.
And it's like, you read that and then you read the statement from the Department of Homeland
Security about Dilly and the conditions at Dilly.
And it just is this fucking anodine statement that says, all detainees are being provided
with proper medical care.
And all are provided with three meals a day, clean water, clothing bedding showers, soap
and toiletries, and that they have certified dietitians evaluate the meals and everything
is great.
So it's like, you know what, that's your legacy, Trisha McLaughlin, whatever other job
you want.
That's your legacy.
Christine Ohms, Stephen Millers, JD Vances, all the rest of them.
They are keeping these children locked up in a detention center in horrible conditions
who are getting sick and who are going to have fucking trauma for the rest of their lives
for what?
For absolutely fucking nothing.
It just requires you to be such an empty soulless human to encounter a child in distress and
not do everything you possibly can to help that child be in a better situation.
Yep.
To err on the side of detention, not on the side of what is best for the child, whether
this is Liam from Minnesota, whether it is this or what's all the kids in that story,
it's just like, I don't even understand how like as a human being, you could approach
this situation that way.
And they will say, and I know JD Vance said this about Liam, he's like, what are we supposed
to do?
So if people who are eligible for deportation have children, are you never supposed to
deport the child with the parent?
I thought we didn't want family separation.
I am not saying, I don't think any of us are saying that there are not going to ever
be situations where like a horrible thing happens and because a family was here illegally
and has to be deported, that the children of that family are also have to be deported
and they have to spend some time.
We're not saying that.
Like exceptions like that, bad things happen and it is not the faults of children, but
sometimes they pay the price, like this happens in the world, we're not fucking naive
to that.
But there is a law in place, right, or at least the court's interpretation of the law,
the Flores Act, which says that children are not supposed to spend more than 20 days
in detention.
The Trump administration has decided that that no longer applies, but they don't care
about the fucking Flores decoration, if they can just have people, kids in there for
months at a time under these horrific conditions.
So no, this is not just, oh, we can't deport anyone who has children.
This is like you are locking up children and ruining the lives of children for nothing
because you couldn't get your fucking act together because you wanted to perform cruelty,
whatever the reason is.
I mean, the Leigham example, so perfect one, which is there was a different option which
was send him home to his mother.
Yeah.
But they would rather not admit, they would rather keep a small child in a de facto prison
camp that admit they are wrong or do something that suggests weakness.
But it's not like being kind of children is not weakness.
That's just being a basic fucking human.
Proven by the fact that in this case too, with Maria, after four months, suddenly one
day, they opened up Dilly and they let out 200 people, including her, just let her
out.
And how long are these children going to be traumatized?
How many of them have had to go through just fucking hell for nothing?
But it took them 200 days to hold them in a jail, like almost a year of a child's life
in like critical developmental phases.
It's fucked these people, man.
Fuck these people.
Anyway.
That's what I'm not.
Good bye, Trisha McLaughlin.
Yeah, I was just kidding.
Not celebrating.
I wanted to be a fun lighthearted thing when I said it, but then I read that straight
and I'm like, no, I'm just angry.
I'm still angry.
I would say in the outline, this was referred to as dessert.
It's not, no.
It's not dessert.
Look, we could have done RFK and, uh, who did he do the exercise?
Kid Rock.
Yeah.
We could have done shirtless RFK and Kid Rock.
Didn't do that.
Well, we couldn't.
There are no words at it.
It doesn't work in a podcast.
That was the problem.
We look very seriously at it, but it's just, it's just music and we're in the water
and BC.
That's another one.
I don't know.
Let's poop in the water, ever-funny, John.
No, I don't think so.
We have a small show to take that.
It's never funny.
Oh, God.
Don't, don't, don't jinx it.
Anyway, Dan, uh, hopefully next time we meet you and I will be less jet lagged.
We will be together on Tuesday.
Oh my God.
Oh, oh.
Talk about it.
Yes.
All right, everyone.
Yeah.
Tuesday is going to be the state of the union, but even before that, love it's going to be
back in the feed with a new show on Sunday.
Lucky him.
And lucky you.
Lucky you.
Yeah.
Bye, everyone.
Have a good weekend.
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Podsave America is a crooked media production.
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Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Heffkoat, Mia Kelman, Carol
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Our production staff is proudly unionized with the writer's Guild of America East.
Hey, Lover, leave it listeners.
It's me, the titular John Lover.
Here to tell you that I'm coming back to Washington, DC for Lover, Leave It Live at the Lincoln
Theatre on April 23rd.
That's right.
Spring in DC is all about cherry blossoms and Lover, leave it bringing you a stack lineup
of guests.
That's what makes it America's number one late night gay live comedy political podcast.
We're so excited to be back in DC.
It's a tradition now that we come around the time of the car response and even though the
car is honest and really no longer has comedians, I believe there's going to be some kind
of a magician or a mind, mind-milder.
Yes.
A magician.
Yeah.
A mentalist.
A mentalist.
Because I guess Trump wouldn't know.
Trump's also going.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's in there.
Yeah.
There's a mental case and then Trump is also going.
That's how it is.
Tickets won't last long.
They're selling pretty fast.
So get yours now while you still can at Krugget.com slash events.
Very excited for the DC show.
Got some big guests.
Pretty exciting, maybe.
Krugget.com slash events.

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