One challenge for Republicans is that their secret weapon also seems to be the Democrat secret weapon.

One in five Trump voters in those states now disapprove of the president's job performance, which is the main reason Democrats are now leading or effectively tied in every Senate race.

But she never hit 50 in any of those, even the last one. So, like, it is notable that in New York Times-Siena polls, we have both Tallarico, Mary Peltola hitting 50 and 51 this far up.

Transcript note: 'this far up' probably means 'this far out'.

But it's not going to be because, like, his character was somehow defective to voters. It will be because Republicans came home and decided to hold their nose and vote for Ken Paxton.

52% think that the Democratic Party is too far left in these polls, which is not entirely unsurprising because they're red states. Only 35% say their actual Democratic Senate candidate is too far left.

And so I do think, you know, for all that we have maligned Chuck Schumer, for Maine, for some of the other ones. Like, you gotta give, I mean, Mary Piltola and Roy Cooper

Transcript note: 'Piltola' is Peltola; the sentence trails off into crosstalk.

And it also shows that like, you know, it is important to maybe get candidates that at least appear to voters not as far left as the National Party for all the talk online otherwise.

Voters aren't fucking idiots because they know they're voting for the person on the ballot in their state, not the random person they saw on Fox News in New York City.

Nearly three quarters in Alaska call conditions fair or poor. two-thirds in Iowa, Kansas and Ohio, even Texas, 56% say fair or poor. So people are just fucking pissed.

But even if you look at these governor's polls, the one race where the Republican is clearly ahead is in Kansas. And that is a state where the only state where there is a retiring Democratic governor who's currently the incumbent.

But I do think, I think that there's something about incumbency and people just being fucking pissed at the leadership in their state and in Congress that's going to have an effect.

Clearly the private polling on both sides is similar because both parties are starting to move money around accordingly. Biggest Republican super PAC has now started pulling money out of North Carolina and moving into Kansas.

And so they're conservative enough, especially with limited resources as they have, that I don't think they would start throwing money at some of these Trump plus 15, plus 20 seats if they weren't A, seeing something in their internal polling

another he urged his supporters to surprise vote by mail and vote early which is a pretty stunning reversal if unsurprising

Transcript note: The segment is unpunctuated; 'to surprise vote by mail' probably reads 'to, surprise, vote by mail'.

Democrats are out there like we're going to we're going to, you know, stand up for affordability and cost of living. going to do all that and then trump's like here's tom con's cell phone number about daylight saving

Transcript note: 'tom con's' is Tom Cotton's; the second segment is unpunctuated.

Nebraska farmers are all fucking rip shit at him because he's trying to do the import beef, import Argentinian beef to try to bring down the price of beef, even though they're growing the beef.

I think black voters is a big deal too. Like in that Times poll, where Abdul was leading by five. He was 76-13 with black voters. In that same poll, Jocelyn Benson was running for governor. It was 92 to one.

So I think that the, the Obama visit is going to be very, very helpful.

it is worth noting that the republicans have spent nine figures now trying to rehabilitate ken paxton's image and james james tallarico is more popular in the latest time sienna poll and has a bigger lead than he did before

Transcript note: The segment is unpunctuated and repeats 'james'.

I guess the strategy would have been Donald Trump not endorsing him and letting John Cornyn win. That may be the only strategy that would have worked probably.

jd vance after the vice president went to florida said nixon's views quote don't belong in america suggested people like her should leave the country.

Transcript note: The first segment is unpunctuated.

Also, the registration advantage has just, now it's a, the Republicans have a 1.5 million voter registration advantage in Florida, which is just enormous right now.

I think Angie Nixon's a fantastic candidate, very inspiring. And she says she's not DSA anymore, but just the fact that she was DSA at one point, I think that's a harder thing in Florida than other places.

Okay, quick update on how Republicans are using your tax dollars to enrich their pals.

Well, the New York Times just published a truly mind-boggling report about how in Noam's final hours on the job, she reportedly approved the purchase of two Gulf Streams for $160.

Transcript note: 'Noam's' is Noem's, and the price is cut off at '$160'.

And like, it made me think, I'm like, oh, she thinks, she really thinks she has like a political career ahead of her still.

I mean, so far, of course, you know, things could be different on the ground in Ohio, but so far every clip that has come out from the Vivek Ramaswamy campaign since he has been campaigning for governor has been embarrassing.

Of course, one other possibility, just throwing this out there, is that people actually have questions and concerns.

In just four years, data centers are estimated to consume nearly 12% of all the electricity generated in the United States.

They're taking over farmland and forests in rural areas and small towns, huge amounts of land, hundreds of acres, millions of square feet. Meta's next data center will be almost twice as big as Central Park.

And because they also consume enormous amounts of electricity, data centers can require billions in new power plants, transmission lines, substations, pipelines, generators, costs that can end up on everyone else's utility bills.

Democrats, independents, Republicans, you see it in every poll, no matter how the question is asked. There's more common ground on data centers than almost any other issue in politics right now.

But the response from people who want to build these data centers, who have the power and money to make that happen, is to dismiss these concerns as stupid or manufactured or evidence of a Chinese psyop.

there are legitimate reasons to build data centers and to do it in ways that mitigate people's concerns and actually benefit communities it is possible for example to design data centers that use dramatically less water and run on clean energy

Transcript note: This stretch of the transcript has no punctuation or capitalisation.

it's possible to make companies pay for the extra power they use and pay to upgrade the electric grid instead of quietly sending the bill to everyone else.

It's possible to make them pay communities billions of dollars in taxes instead of giving them billions of dollars in tax cuts.

Loudoun County, Virginia, which has more data centers than anywhere in the world, gets an enormous amount of revenue from these companies that's funded brand new schools and roads and parks.

And they can only do that if they know about these data center projects before they get built and have a say over how they get built and where and on what terms.

Again and again, people who run these companies and our government tell us that this is all just the price of progress. Even when the people who pay the highest price don't get much of a say in how that progress happens.

Now there's the same thing about AI, promising medical breakthroughs and automated agents and lives of leisure to people who can barely afford housing and have no idea whether their jobs will even exist in this new world.

Transcript note: The sentence is split across two segments at 639 and 'Now there's the same thing about AI' appears to drop a word.

People are sick of being told that the future is something that happens to them.

That's why all across the country, these AI companies are finally being forced to stop and listen and negotiate with people over land and water and utility rates before they're granted the privilege of operating in our communities.

That's not standing in the way of progress. That's making sure everyone benefits.

I was watching this video that more perfect union did of this couple and the data center goes like up right next to where they live. And, like it goes all day and all night.

And, you know, the president of the United States is out there saying that the only reason to oppose data centers is if you want to be poor and backwards.

they think it's a pr crisis right like they don't see it as a they only see it as like a like a public relations problem to solve and they are now belatedly throwing money at the problem

Transcript note: This segment has no punctuation or capitalisation.

And now they're doing more of the Leighton County version where they're, you know, paying a bunch of tax revenue to these communities. They're starting to say, okay, well, we'll do renewable energy or we'll pay for the electricity.

Transcript note: 'Leighton County' is a mistranscription of Loudoun County, discussed earlier in the episode.

if you're going to go through, you know, a revolution like this and a physical build out of infrastructure like this, you might want to have some laws, regulations.

It's kind of like the people who work in social media companies who don't give phones to their kids and social media to their kids.

the most powerful grassroots movements i think political grassroots movements um are happen without any politicians or leaders being aware that they're even coming

Transcript note: This segment has no punctuation or capitalisation.

this is an issue that i think a lot of politicians even people who are more opposed to uh what's been happening with data centers and how they've been built um they've missed it too

Transcript note: This segment has no punctuation or capitalisation.

the whole feeling i got from that convention and his speeches especially is like man they're just out of gas it's over

And it's like it is it's glazing Trump and the Democrats are going to kill you. That's it. They don't have anything else to say about anything.

think it was two and a half million people which is flat over what Hannity gets normally at the exact same time on Fox

Even Trump's biggest fans didn't seem totally sold on this one, in part because it would cost an estimated $1.3 trillion, and also it will never happen.

the entire purpose of this was there's a lot of people out there who don't pay a lot of attention to politics and I'm going to try to fool them

reporters went and interviewed all the Republicans in Congress and they all said, no, we don't want to do this because it would increase the deficit and increase inflation because we are in still an inflationary environment.

So it's going to I mean, he's going to if he loses the midterms, he's just going to say the Republicans sucked.

JD Vance to me is the Republican version of reading the stage directions and he's also the Republican version of another problem we have in our party which is the too many front-of-the-class students

But like, I just think that he doesn't his problem is not that like he sounds too crazy. His problem is that he's too fucking boring and phony and smarmy.

if he thinks that he is going to solve the problem of Donald Trump breaking his promise to not get involved in more wars by like some rhetorical flourish where he's like using Charlie Kirk's death. Like I just it's not going to work.

people didn't remember that he was the guy who went out there and said, yeah, we pushed these completely unproven false conspiracies that Haitian immigrants were eating pets because I disagree with Joe Biden's policy of allowing them to legally be in this country.

Transcript note: The line follows one labelled Dan Pfeiffer that the same thought appears to run through; the label marks this line as Favreau's.

That is a line that also wouldn't survive one follow-up question from an interviewer. It's like, oh, so you're saying that, what evidence do you have that James Tallarico, like, wants to fuck kids is that what you're because you're talking about his web browser

there's plenty of other positions that Democrats have have taken and maybe a lot of Democrats have taken that I would try to build an argument around about why those positions are out of step with the American people

He's going to get out on that trail as a candidate for president and start saying some of this shit. And most people are going to be like, what do you mean? What are you talking about?

But like if he does have any kind of belief, it is the belief that he has espoused many times. In speeches that we probably won't hear again, where he talks about like it's blood and soil nationalism.

the people on stage and on Fox News did take the opportunity to paint Democrats as terrorist sympathizers, particularly Muslim Democrats like Abdul El-Sayed and Zoran Mamdani.

Like having him as the 51st vote, if that's what he is, could be the difference between, you know, replacing Sam Alito or Clarence Thomas or God knows someone else with Eileen Cannon for 40 years on the Supreme Court or not.

Transcript note: 'Eileen Cannon' is Judge Aileen Cannon.

But judges, 42 out of 46 Trump judges he has voted against. He has not voted for a single appellate court judge from Donald Trump.

My item this week is a conspiracy theory about the end of the world. And somehow it's the people worried about the killer robots who are the normal ones in this scenario.

Transcript note: The lines after 'My item this week' are mislabelled Elijah Koch; content shows Favreau is still introducing Favreau's own item.

All very alarming, but lest we get distracted by whether our computers are going to kill us, the investor slash podcaster slash poster axis of techno douchebags has been very busy investigating something much more sinister

Transcript note: Mislabelled SPEAKER_00; content shows Favreau narrating Favreau's own item.

I'm like, yeah, it's scary. And a lot of people at these AI companies were like, I wonder why it was this that got everyone going nuts about it because people like Elon, Sam Altman, Dario, Amadei, have all been saying it.

Transcript note: Unlabelled; attributed to Favreau because it answers a remark addressed to Favreau and another panelist then replies 'I'm with you though'. 'Amadei' is Amodei.

What's more, the people who are least likely to trust government are the very people who liberals most want government to help. And that's because their experience with the government usually sucks.

And if Democrats don't figure out how to deal with the time tax, I think the party will never be able to earn back the trust necessary to deliver the change we want and help the people who need it.

Which was running a volunteer program called the Welfare Solidarity Project when I was in college at Holy Cross. And I had learned about Clinton's welfare reform in an intro poli-sci class.

I drove a mother and her two children to like a homeless shelter, like in time for them to get the last spot in the shelter because they couldn't figure out the paperwork.

because they're just saying, oh, it's a work requirement, but it somehow is scored as like a trillion dollars in cuts, which is because they know that the work is so onerous that people aren't going to be able to get it done.

miss the importance of making sure that when we promise to pass a new government program or benefit and somehow we get it done then it also has to be delivered in a way that makes the recipients think oh government helped me

Transcript note: The start of the sentence is lost; the line opens 'leftist or liberal or center left or whatever else like they all sort of'.

And then I think and then for the left, it's, you know, well, as long as you're for Medicare for all, that's great. But if you don't pass it, then you go back and you fight for it again anyway.

But like at some point, there has to be some kind of realism in what you can get done because people are going to stop trusting you if you don't actually deliver tangible benefits that improve people's lives.

One thing that Democrats would have to deal with is, and we're seeing it right now, which is the right just weaponizes these like individual stories of fraud. Some of them are now are just made up, but some of them are real.

And it's like, fine, I would be for a voter ID if the government could guarantee that it would do all the work to verify that every person voting is eligible to vote.

Like, voter ID, fine, but the burden shouldn't be on the voter. They have enough other things to do. The burden should be on the government to make sure everyone's eligible to vote and then make it easy for people to vote.

And look, and this goes back to why next time Democrats are in control of government, like right at the top of the list has to be every single thing we pass has to actually work for people and they have to feel benefit.

But look, and the Affordable Care Act obviously ended up, even as an overall program, more convoluted than we would have liked at the beginning.

And he would you know, I would I remember like cutting down that section in the state of the union every year because I was like, this is like such a small ball details.

I also worry that the catastrophe that was Dose has now like ruined the idea or the possibility of a better doge, a good doge in the future

Transcript note: 'Dose' is a mistranscription of DOGE.

And as someone who's worked in government, it's like, yeah, they did it poorly. But like, we've all like, we've seen government in action and it is old and outdated and there's too much bureaucracy and there's too much paperwork.

Where and even now you have DHS out there just, you know, trying to vacuum up any information on anyone it can possibly get.

And I was like, no, this is actually a book about why people don't trust the government, which is maybe the most important challenge that we're dealing with right now in the country.

I hesitate to say this, but I do think the environment may be even better for Democrats than it was in 2006, just because Trump is even more unpopular.

House is my baseline expectation for sure. Senate, I still think it's close. Maybe I give a slight edge to Democrats if we're talking today, but not by much.

Transcript note: The middle sentence is unlabelled (?) in the transcript; content shows it is Favreau's answer.

Because I don't think that this is a done deal for J.D. Vance by any means.

Transcript note: 'Vance by any means' is unlabelled (?) in the transcript; the preceding line's '2020' is a mistranscription of 2028.

Like, I think you just got to make the argument for what you believe and what you're for and then let the voters do their thing.

So I am, I am much more open to, uh, the left side of the party when it comes to, uh, issues like economic issues, Medicare for all, um, and, you know, taxing billionaires and all of that.

I guess somewhat on immigration, though, you know, that's an example, right, where, like, yeah, I would love to get rid of ICE tomorrow and prosecute people on ICE for what they've done over the last several years.

I think we need to reform our immigration laws so that we don't just offer people a path to citizenship, but also we're probably gonna have to change asylum laws.

We're probably gonna have to make sure that we don't have an influx of undocumented immigrants like we have over the last 10 years, because I think that sort of hurts the cause of immigration.

And the vast majority of Americans are, you know, and this has been true for the last couple years under Trump, but it's been true for a couple decades now, which is like, we can't afford shit.

I know everyone now looks back on it and thinks it was hope and change and unity, but really it was like the economy's not working for everyone, and also there's too much corruption in D.C.

So she tried to outflank him on more social and cultural issues. And I think that was probably a mistake.

I think abolish the police, abolish prisons, defund the police are incredibly unpopular positions.

I think it is, you know, most Americans don't want that. But I would also say it's not the most salient issue. It's not even like one of the top five or 10 most salient issues for most Americans.

which is why I think sometimes it's like the best way is to like kick it back to the schools to figure out and parents to deal with.

I think if you kill civilians, it is bad. Whether you're the Israeli government, whether you are Hamas, whoever you are, if you're killing civilians, and maybe either recklessly or intentionally or whatever, that's bad.

Transcript note: The preceding exchange with Piker ('Hamas is worse than Israel' / 'I don't think Hamas is worse than Israel') appears garbled or reversed, so it was not quoted.

And like, people are so desperate to find sort of like the version of a Nick Fuentes on the right on the left. And I don't think we have one. And I don't think Hassan is that.

Transcript note: The last sentence is unlabelled (?); content shows it is Favreau continuing the answer.

And because there's a number of genocide scholars, some Israeli genocide scholars, some human rights organizations in Israel that have said that, I'm like, yeah, I think it probably is a genocide.

Transcript note: Labelled SPEAKER_01; content shows it is Favreau continuing the answer.

I also think the people who say, yeah, they've committed a genocide shouldn't be like drummed out of the Democratic Party or told that they're idiots or told that they're like doing it for social media likes, you know, like it's a tough issue.

But as a taxpayer, I don't want my tax dollars going towards a government that is engaged in what the Israeli government has been engaged in.

I don't think it was a terrible thing to do. I think it was a real head-scratcher. Like, I don't know why you would take that meeting.

Transcript note: The first sentence is unlabelled (?); content shows it is Favreau's answer.

And I think that sentiment has greater power to unite or bring together a coalition of people with differing political views, heterodox political views, than almost any other issue, for sure.

I would certainly posit that the Hassan Piker stuff is way overdoing it at this point. But I think some healthy criticism is okay.

the easiest path to victory is the whole country is pissed at Trump, or the majority of the country is pissed at Trump, and people are pissed about cost of living, and they're pissed about this war, and that's enough, right?

It's a DNC problem, which was quite obvious, which is why I pushed Ken on it. And he just didn't really tell me the truth.

people who are immigrants whose family are immigrants they have like sometimes a deeper connection and an even deeper patriotism about this country because of the chances it gave them

It may not be fair at all, but I think the question I always ask myself is, if we knew it wasn't going to be fair versus if we knew it was going to be fair, how would we change our behavior?

Transcript note: Unlabelled (?) in the transcript; content shows it is Favreau's answer.

but if you want to feel better, what would stop Trump is the fact that states control their own elections, and the federal government traditionally does not.

Transcript note: Unlabelled (?) in the transcript; content shows it is Favreau's answer.

this is part of what has sort of plagued politics and international politics ever since October 7th, but probably before that as well, which is this like, it's this conflation with how people are feeling about Israel with anti-Semitism,

Transcript note: Unlabelled (?) in the transcript; content shows it is Favreau's answer.

and Gaza and Palestinians, like, they're going to look at your positions and the votes you've taken and the things you've said more than they're going to look at, like, your religious background and how you identify.

Transcript note: Unlabelled (?) in the transcript; content shows it is Favreau's answer.

Lefty policy positions, language that was used to replace certain words and phrases that had been deemed offensive. There's some public shaming and cancellations. But one fertile breeding ground for woke one was elite college

Transcript note: Line ends mid-phrase at 'elite college' where the transcript drops words.

Of course, the right has been saying this for a while, but mostly I thought it was a silly caricature, like most of the right's silly caricatures.

I got to say the first thing, it's the first thing I've read that made me think that the right-wing depiction of academia may not be a complete caricature.

And that also my experience as a 2003 Holy Cross grad was just completely different from the experience of a 2023 Bates grad or in your case, professor.

would use such hyperbolic language in a professional setting like that because it obviously wasn't an attempted lynching, even if they called the police for racist reasons. That still has nothing to do with an attempted lynching.

Transcript note: The start of the sentence is missing from the transcript.

I mean, even like I could you could hear some like super lefty liberal progressive professors propose stuff like this. But like even when you scratch the surface, like what the hell is like white supremacy in physics or like what?

I mean, it seems impractical. It also seems a bit like it's constraining academic freedom in a way.

And you can imagine that the sociology department was like, you know, left to the point of being like Marxist, right?

Transcript note: The rest of the story (about the political science department) is lost in a transcript gap.

And I always thought about it as real social and political change is very difficult. It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of focus. You can't bring it about by just like posting and tweeting and a lot of symbolism.

So even if you do think that what you're doing is not necessarily changing the world and is not the work that needs to be done, you kind of feel pressure to do it anyway. And so then everyone gets caught up in it.

And of course, this is where I think sort of the internet and social media really sort of, you know, make this dynamic even worse.

The economic model for academic institutions is insane to me. I mean, like, you had a couple of jaw-dropping stats in the piece. One in three non-tenure-track college professors earns under $25,000 a year. One in four is on public assistance.

And it just seems like there's this inability for colleges to ever hold costs down. And I don't understand why that is.

There's a whole discourse now about Woke One. AOC, you know, laughed off things she said in 2020 and quoted Chiyose and said, Woke One is crazy. You know, Democrats have quietly sort of retired a lot of the vocabulary in November.

Transcript note: 'quoted Chiyose' is likely 'quote-unquote'; 'in November' may be 'since November'.

Your former colleagues at Bates voted unanimously to suspend the requirement that we've been talking about that they had fought so hard to pass until 2029, which just so happens to be after the next presidential election.

But like in three, four, five years when the labor market ended and we haven't fixed all the other issues in higher education, then it becomes even less of a value proposition.

Transcript note: 'when the labor market ended' has lost words, probably 'when the labor market is upended'.

His only public event on Thursday was a signing ceremony in the Oval Office where he officially changed the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America and said that either the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean may be next because our president is a moron.

Now, if you're all concerned that Trump isn't paying enough attention to the other stupid war he started that's now bankrupting the country, fear not, the president posted some great news about

if everyone pretended that Trump was on the ballot and everyone voted based on how they view the job that Trump's doing, Democrats Senate majority and a huge House majority.

Transcript note: Words are missing at the segment break after 'Democrats' (presumably 'would win a').

And the reason it went viral is because it was reposted by Donald Trump.

He's not going to be able to, and he's going to, he will, I guarantee he will end up, uh, like criticizing if not indirectly, directly the Republican nominee, uh, because that's just who he is.

Oval every day and just holding court with all the reporters while the Republican candidates are out there trying to distance themselves from Trump or, you know, get their own message out there or whatever they're trying to do.

fortunately trump's pathological narcissism is the gift that keeps on giving for the democratic party because in just a few weeks he's also going to make every republican candidate on the ballot endure a first of its kind

Transcript note: The segment is lowercase and unpunctuated.

And do you know the National Republican Campaign Committee is asking House members to $25,000 for themselves and a guest to attend the convention.

Transcript note: A word (presumably 'pay') is missing at the segment break after 'House members to'.

The DOJ, their arguments here are very much not, oh, the federal government should have a say in how we control elections and run elections because they know that is explicitly forbidden in the Constitution.

I do find it hard to believe that even the Supreme Court would throw this election into complete chaos

Cases have reached a 35-year high, as U.S. kindergarten vaccination rates have reached a record low, all since the

Transcript note: Words are missing at the segment break before 'a vaccine skeptic without a medical degree in charge of America's public health'.

Could it have been some people, perhaps people that ended up becoming the Secretary of Health and Human Services, constantly spreading anti-vax propaganda that was incorrect?

You'll be like, oh, well, they did the thing about MMR, but we're still recommending because we are doctors who understand science that you should get your MMR vaccine in two doses and not three separate vaccines that don't exist currently.

And so now that has like, as people thought at the time, the polarization over COVID and the COVID vaccines has now transferred to measles and will continue to spread

And so it's going to take a long time and more than just the change in an administration to actually like rebuild people's faith in public health, which is awful.

New poll from Texas Public Opinion Research on Thursday showing Telefrico up six on Paxton.

Transcript note: 'Telefrico' is the transcript's spelling of Talarico.

All the Republican candidates who don't want to appear with Trump and may not want to appear with Trump in the lead up to the midterms, maybe the only one less popular than is Ken Paxton.

Transcript note: A word (presumably 'Trump') is missing at the segment break after 'less popular than'.

You know, Mike Collins clearly has a long history of surrounding himself with pretty bad creeps.

So that's all why he's doing well. But then having Mike Collins as an opponent, probably also helping.

I do not think that spending every day from now until November talking about denouncing, defending, piker will either make hassan piker go away or help democrats win the midterms

i think it will instead keep one very polarizing leftist influencer at the center of the discourse and give republicans and right-wing media excuse after excuse to cover each new denunciation

On the other end of the spectrum, Stanford finds employment for young workers in AI-exposed jobs down 13 to 20 percent. Even that larger number measures the problem in tens of thousands.

the transition, regardless of what's on the other side of the transition, is the most precarious part here because of politics, right? And 80% of Americans want more regulation.

Transcript note: The 2105 segment opens with the end of Yang's answer before Favreau speaks.

He's sort of understating the issue here, but it does seem like, um, this could supercharge all of the political trends we have seen over the last decade in ways that are quite destructive.

instead of the Democrat, and then a bunch of people will think, oh, because there's not the D attached to his name, that maybe I'll give him a shot, even though all of his positions he could fit comfortably within the Democratic Party.

Transcript note: The thought begins at the end of the 2508 segment, labelled Andrew Yang: 'You are right about the brand and the math. The challenge I see is...'

But the challenge is, at some point, Republicans are going to get smart to this and figure out that if someone's not running with the D next to their name, but they have a lot of the D positions

Montana, the Republicans going to win because the Democrat won't drop out and Seth's in the race. And so then they split the vote. The Republican wins.

I was very much on the like, I don't know about this is not a great idea for Biden to run. And I was way more vocal.

Transcript note: The 3168 segment opens with the end of Yang's answer.

and I feel like it's indicative of a larger issue we have, which is we're, we're all very good at talking about what's bad or what we don't like, but you can't beat something with nothing.

although the governors you talked about, too, I sort of blame all of them, too, because they could have run. They could have run before the debate. They could have not endorsed her and forced a primary afterwards.

if you're going to run for president and you need to, and we need someone who runs for president, who's like going to be for something. And you understand immediately why they're running for president.

the history of third party candidates on a presidential level, like the system just makes it impossible for them to win. Ross Perot got what, 18 percent of the vote,

Transcript note: The segment opens with the end of Yang's answer; Perot's share is garbled as '18 percent of the vote, 90 percent of the vote'.

Now, all the documents that the White House released also confirm what the intelligence agencies and the government found back in 2020 when Trump was president, that not a single vote was changed.

The idea that our names and addresses are somewhere sitting in China. They're also sitting out there on the Internet. Anyone can get it. Every campaign has it. It didn't require any hacking or nefarious moves to get it.

But Trump tried to make it sound much scarier than it actually was. Our voting machines are vulnerable. Didn't really give a lot of evidence for that.

And yet the president went out tonight to talk about random voter conspiracy election fraud conspiracy theories and let us know that Nicolas Maduro meddled in his own elections

if you were someone who is deeply concerned about our election security going forward, would you have gutted many He's eliminated much of the funding that goes towards election security. Because that's what Donald Trump and Elon Musk did do.

Transcript note: A word or two is missing at the segment break after 'gutted many'.

because this was a speech that was cooked up, by the way, by John Solomon, the pretend journalist who then has become a special government employee, and also Bill Pulte.

it's clear that his intention is to sow doubt among Americans in the sanctity of our elections. And clearly, as sure as the sun comes up, is going to cry foul if Republicans lose the midterms.

as we get closer to the election, he'll probably do a, you know, the communists and socialists are trying to steal the election to take over America

In other words, the president's family company is now charging Wall Street for early ish access to the market moving statements of the president, who will then profit.

So Vance tried to tiptoe away from Trump on Epstein and Iran.

the other parallel there is going to be like Gore's relationship to Clinton and how Gore tried to separate himself a little bit from Clinton. And that was a hard thing to do.

Transcript note: The 2383 segment opens with the end of Pfeiffer's sentence before Favreau's reply.

the 250th anniversary could have been a moment where, you know, a president decided to try to at least try to bring the country together or didn't try to bring the country together, but at least offered entertainment that anyone could feel welcome

Good for you, Scott. That is the attitude I want to hear from all the libs on July 4th. That is the attitude. Don't let him take it away.

He toured the East Potomac Gulf links and will start renovations on that federally owned public course September 1st, despite a federal judge threatening, quote, serious consequences if he moves ahead without approval, which he seems to be doing.

Transcript note: 'Gulf links' is the transcript's spelling of golf links.

the Atlantic's Michael Scherer found out that the new White House colonnade walkway made of, quote, polished African granite carved in Italy, Trump said he paid for himself, was actually paid for by us.

Trump said the slaughter ruling, quote, greatly increases presidential power at a time when it is most needed. He is right about the first part.

I think that the upshot of whole thing is there are no more independent agencies except for the fed the one potentially and so that means that justice department intelligence all the rest of them

Transcript note: The second segment is lowercase and unpunctuated.

You know, listening to the whole thing there, he's going to let it become law.

but maybe she'll go to Congress and vote in a way that doesn't align with some of the more extreme positions, in which case, great. Everyone deserves the grace to change.

I'm not concerned about like DSA candidates or progressive candidates knocking off incumbent Democrats in deep blue districts. That's what primaries are for. Primaries are good.

don't be afraid to distance yourself from DSA positions that you disagree with. If someone asks you whether you agree with abolishing prisons and police and borders and you don't, just say that.

You don't have to attack the people and try to purge them from the party. You don't have to attack their character or their person. I don't want to do that with anyone who won. But you can disagree with the ideas.

He's publicly called the Israeli government's action in Gaza genocide, joining Bernie Sanders and Representative Bailant is one of the only three prominent Jewish elected officials in the country to do so.

Transcript note: 'Bailant' is the transcript's spelling of Representative Becca Balint.

I do think that it would behoove people on the left and especially people who have been marching and organizing and protests for Palestinian rights and have been right on this issue from the beginning to call that out.

hold two ideas in our head at the same time that it is horrendous what the Israeli government has done. And that the most important issue is the fact that Palestinians are being slaughtered and now people in Lebanon are being killed.

There's so many states now where Republicans have taken power in a state legislature and then gerrymandered the state legislature to such a degree that it's almost impossible for Democrats to make any ground.

so badly that they can't. And ultimately, what fixed Wisconsin was state Supreme Court elections.

in 2024, the Democratic side outspent the RSLC, the Republican counterpart to you guys, roughly 175 million to 49 million, a little better than three to one

and the disappearance of local news because if you're reading about politics now, you're reading about national politics. And if you're reading about national politics, you're reading about presidential level, maybe congressional level, but probably not much about your state level.

Transcript note: The thought begins at the end of the 3956 segment, which is labelled Heather Williams; the content is Favreau's follow-up, which Williams answers 'That is exactly right.'

It was like that is sort of like the central theme of American rhetoric, at least like when I was starting to learn to write speeches for Obama, like looked at King, looked at like, you know, King's promissory note.

or that the original sin of slavery is somehow something we can't overcome and actually we're just bad. It started in academia.

Transcript note: The segment opens mid-sentence after a stretch where the transcript dropped words.

And I think like PPI has 51 percent of Americans say they're extremely or very proud to be American. That's down from 82 percent in 2013.

There's a record low 58 percent extremely or very proud in its 2025 read. That's down nine points in a year. And then for Democrats, especially, it's only 36 percent of Democrats are proud of their country.

just because he took all those things and try to reappropriate them for the right and for his vision of the country doesn't mean that we should abandon them

be honest about what we've done wrong and what our weaknesses are and what our challenges are, and then realize that the structure of our government and the exceptionalism of is America allows us to sort of overcome those challenges.

Transcript note: 'the exceptionalism of is America' is garbled across a segment break.

And I do wonder why so many Democratic politicians shy away from sort of that deeper analysis of both what is wrong with America and then and how to make it right.

I have wondered whether that triumphalism was its own kind of complacency. So whether believing too hard that progress was inevitable is part of what left people like us sort of flat-footed

we have like just endless details and policies but there's no story or theory or moral case that sort of connects the big happy fifty thousand foot version of what America should be with all the white papers.

especially the parts that seem problematic for their narrative. The, you know, most obvious one being that we are all created equal and the Declaration of Independence seems like a real problem for them.

Declaration says equality first and citizenship follows from it. Cass uses the same Jeremiah structure to argue that citizenship is what creates equality. You say this is fundamentally un-American. I agree.

Transcript note: The transcript spells Oren Cass as 'Orrin Cass' and Jeremiad as 'Jeremiah'.

But I do think that the right has at least landed on immigration as central to something deeper about the argument we're having about American identity than the left has at this point

I still think the left sees it as like an issue we just have to figure out and move on to the issues that we want to talk about. But I think it is so connected to everything else.

J.D. Vance attacks it because he's like, how can he not be grateful to this country? And of course, the idea is because he is an immigrant that he, you know, he needs to be more grateful to this country.

but it's clearly in his mind, immigration, people who are different, people who have different political beliefs, like they're all, they can be in this country, but they have to, they have to be grateful to, I guess,

But Trump's is very easy. They're bad. I'm good. Everything is this Manichean struggle. Everything's very simple, good and evil, black and white. And the liberal story has never been that.

We all have the potential to do good and we all have the potential to do bad, which is why you can't make decisions about a government based on one group of people being right and the other being wrong.

Transcript note: The thought begins at the end of the 3544 segment, which is labelled with the guest's speaker id.

Every story needs a villain. Right. And so of course the villain should be the billionaires. And like, maybe that works for a while and maybe you can pass great policies, but like, it doesn't lead you

Transcript note: The sentence breaks off at 'it doesn't lead you' at a segment boundary.

we're not going to get rid of the other half of the country, right? Or if we are, then we're basically just them in another form, right? Like, the whole point of this is to figure out a way to live together

The president who took us to war is now bored because he has no attention span because he's an 80-year-old fucking, you know, just narcissist and doesn't know what he's doing.

Transcript note: The cold open replays words said later at 893, where the transcript is unpunctuated.

And what you realize when you're in government and you're doing diplomacy is that sometimes if you want to actually make progress, you're just going to have to eat shit like in the press.

And then he wants to kick these negotiations over the nuclear material and everything else, Israel, Lebanon, all of it down the road because he really, probably correctly so, that once the strait is opened, everyone will stop paying attention to this.

Transcript note: A verb, probably 'believes', is missing before 'probably correctly so'.

And so I don't think Netanyahu's going to let him, let Trump just be able to turn away from this, even if they reopen the strait, because he's got an election coming up in November

There's plenty to criticize him on and still say, you're glad that the war is over and that hostilities have ended. And I don't think that's being soft on Trump or that we should congratulate him.

I cannot believe we just went through this fucking catastrophe that has set this country back on every possible front because of this idiot.

But I think that, like, I still think in a way that's playing on their field. And I think that we don't want, like, the vision of government we want is not a strong man or an authoritarian who makes all the decisions

like this is the stupidest war imaginable you don't know why he's doing it he doesn't know why he's doing it you're being hurt

Transcript note: Unpunctuated in this stretch.

we now have an allegation that the president of the United States potentially had sex with an underage girl that was part of the trafficking ring that Jeffrey Epstein let, child trafficking ring. We don't know for sure, right? All this is uncorroborated.

Transcript note: 'Jeffrey Epstein let' is likely 'led'.

And that is an incredibly serious allegation. And the team in the sit room, you know, they don't take it seriously. They immediately say, oh, it's wrong, right? Like, oh, she made it up.

And no matter how he is remembered, and no matter how much of the country turns against him, he is going to be like, well, I'm rich. I think I did great. And he's probably going to die happy.

their voters prevented them from having a spine and and standing up to donald trump like that's what corinan's saying right now he's a free man now because he doesn't have to face his voters

Transcript note: 'corinan's' is Cornyn's.

I think that in the Democratic Party, like especially, we could use way more creative ads, ad makers, types of ads, the way we place them, the way we deliver them to people. Like, I just think we need a lot of innovation there.

you don't want to tell people to either donate to someone who is the marquee race that is going to have more money than God anyway, but you also don't want to tell someone to donate to Amy McGrath in Kentucky.

if people can't do that and the government can't deliver on that then they're not gonna trust the government then we're gonna get more trumps

Transcript note: Unpunctuated in this stretch.

i think what we are lacking is uh our candidates who who know first what they want to do and why they're running and what they believe and then second go figure out how to sell that to people

Transcript note: The segment opens with the end of a Miller line about a Jon Stewart clip before Favreau speaks.

reading too many polls looking at too many focus groups that like they think that they have to sort of walk on eggshells um to run and i think that uh ironically becomes the biggest weakness of most of the candidates is the caution

And yet we did it, and it worked because Obama knew what he wanted to say and knew what he wanted to believe and knew what he believed, and that was that, and wasn't afraid to lose.

whatever that platform is, as soon as people hear a soundbite of it, it's like touching the hot stove. And then suddenly everyone descends on you and says, oh, you're like the worst person and you hate marginalized groups.

ram's line about um people talked about bathrooms not and too much and not enough about classrooms it's like no like no we didn't like they talked about bathrooms we were put on the defensive we didn't have anything to say

Transcript note: 'ram' is Rahm Emanuel; unpunctuated.

abolish ice doesn't make sense to me not just because i read a poll and say that it's like not enough people support it but it doesn't make sense because like we need immigration enforcement in this country

i never said that we didn't need that i just said that we didn't masked, unaccountable men in the street, beating the shit out of people and murdering protesters and throwing people in detention centers with subhuman conditions.

Transcript note: 'we didn't masked' drops a word, probably 'need'.

But I just believe we need immigration enforcement and we need to rip up the system we have, start from scratch, but we still need it.

I think the reason you see people start punching at each other is because, like, we all want to believe that we have agency. We all want to do something about the situation that we're in. The truth is we can't for a while

everyone is broken in some ways. And we just have to decide who is better and who's going to help us and who's going to abide by the laws that we've written and who's going to fight for people the most.

weakest attack on Paxton. And I actually don't want people to hit it too much because I don't think that most people are going to be like, oh, well, he cheated on his wife and therefore he's disqualified.

but I do put it in the category of more, it is sort of tactical. He lied for the purpose of not having a bigger political problem than he did, and I don't think that worked.

And like, what are my values and can they be consistent across both parties? And people who seek forgiveness, I believe should be offered grace. Like that is a foundational value for me.

donald trump has clearly decided to combine his birthday with America's birthday. And what does he have to say about America's 250th birthday? He doesn't have anything to say about it because all he can think about is himself.

which is, by the way, why Mamdani did great, or one of the big reasons why Mamdani did great. It's not just his viral videos. It's because everyone can remember like exactly what Mamdani wanted to do.

a time when political violence is on the rise and radicals on both ends of the political spectrum are speaking more favorably about armed resistance.

choosing the path of armed resistance caused his family and the families of other revolutionaries immense suffering. I think it also offers some lessons for those of us involved in politics today who desperately want to avoid such violence and suffering.

And he knows enough about Donald Trump now, and he's like, oh, Trump is bad, right? Trump's a bad person. And even me, I'm trying to catch myself, and I'm like, well, I don't know that anyone is good or bad.

Figuring that out is important, not just when you're talking about people that we would all say are bad people, but that people who make mistakes and do bad things can come back from it, you know?

if there's something you can do directly to stop the killing of the kids in Vietnam or people in Vietnam then you could get yourself there but to get yourself to the point where you're like well if I plant a bomb in the Pentagon

Transcript note: Unpunctuated; the sentence ends in the next segment, labelled as the guest, with 'that is a place that most people don't go'.

I like to blame the internet for this today. But back then, I guess it didn't take a bunch of online groups and algorithms and all that to radicalize people. They radicalized each other just by being in close contact.

And each time, as there have been throughout history, there's a small but vocal contingent on the left that either celebrates or glorifies or seemingly justifies the violence

there's a very thin line and sometimes it's not even visible between seeking to understand why radicalization and violence occurs or the justification of violence happens.

And yet people have agency. And you want to make sure that everyone always remembers that we have agency.

And, you know, when he said, you know, Hamas is a thousand times better than Israel. I was like, OK, well, this is not I do not agree with that.

Transcript note: The preceding line renders Hasan Piker as 'Hassan Pike'.

Yeah, you can get to the point where you understand that. But do we think that was good for, nevermind Israel and, you know, the rest of the world, but just the Palestinian people themselves?

there's Israelis who are horrified about what their own government is doing, just like there are Americans right now, horrified by just like there were Americans in the 60s.

And he announced that he's stealing $2 billion from taxpayers so that he can potentially hand out cash payments to January 6th rioters who almost killed police officers and basically anyone else he thinks has been mistreated by the justice system.

This guy, Jake Lang, he admitted to using a bat to attack police. He was on trial for assault when Trump pardoned him.

we may never know who they pay how much they pay them who applies who gets who gets accepted into this fucking slush fund who gets denied none of that because uh trump picks the people on the board

Transcript note: Transcript is unpunctuated and lower-case in this stretch.

Republicans decided to remove the funding instead of the parliamentarian, admitting that they didn't have the votes anyway, probably because enough of them realized that asking taxpayers to fork over a billion dollars for a ballroom no one asked for is fucking crazy.

It's like the most cartoonish version of corruption by like an aging dictator. He's just stealing money, you know, smash and grab anywhere he can. He's just putting gold everywhere, ensconced in his fucking DC home that he's turning into fucking Versailles on the Potomac

Transcript note: The segment follows a Pfeiffer segment mid-riff; it is labelled Favreau and runs straight into Favreau's next topic introduction.

and then he dubbed paxton a true maga warrior uh who would presumably vote for all the ballroom funding and insurrectionist payouts that trump asked for

do you think Tallarico is a better candidate than Beto and then do you think um Paxton is a worse candidate than Ted Cruz I think on all three measures this is better for than it was for Beto. And Beto came within three points.

Transcript note: 'this is better for than it was for Beto' drops a word, probably 'Tallarico'.

the 192 page report is, um, riddled with inaccuracies at times incoherent, uh, ultimately incomplete.

there's also no mention of Biden's decision to run again, his age, Gaza, inflation.

any candidate who runs for president in 2028 who complains about unfairness at the DNC, whether those accusations are fair or not, accurate or not, like no one's going to believe Ken Martin because he has this credibility issue

Transcript note: The segment at 2488 is labelled Dan Pfeiffer, but this sentence runs on into the Favreau-labelled segment at 2515, where the speaker refers to Ken Martin's interview 'with me', which was Favreau's.

He did a whole thing with me in the interview about like, you know, we're actually fine and we're investing in state parties and you need to spend and all this kind of stuff. But like, I don't know. Can I believe that now?

I also got something from someone at the DNC saying that a lot of the outlets are mistaken and saying that there's... no pathway to removal for Ken, that it's actually just a simple majority vote of the DNC.

after the midterms happen, if they are as expected and things go well, again, you can hear the DNC taking credit for it in advance and they will have nothing to do with the victory.

But trans issues was not as there weren't as many people. And this would go against sort of the prevailing narrative. Democrats who wanted the party to move to the center on trans issues as there were on crime and immigration

Transcript note: The sentence is garbled across the segment break; it means fewer Democrats wanted a move to the center on trans issues than on crime and immigration.

non-college black voters and non-college Latino voters, along with non-college white voters, very much want the party to move to the center. And really the only demographic group that most wants the party to move to the left is white college grads.

Now, some of this is in wording, but that doesn't sound very exciting to ease housing regulations and expand energy production.

a little more than half of the electorate that you're trying to get who thinks the party is ideologically good where it is right now. And then you've got almost similar percentages on either side. So that is a tough thing to navigate.

it's a good reminder that people who are, even in Democratic, even in midterms, right, which is a more engaged electorate, even midterm voters are just not paying as much attention to all the shit that we talk about every week.

The Israel numbers, crazy. Only 20% favor more aid to Israel. 74% do not. 15% sympathize with Israel over the Palestinians and 60% Palestinians over Israelis.

A mysterious super PAC called Lead Left, which was formed earlier this month and whose website initially linked to the Republican platform WinRed, has now spent about $600,000 to boost Galindo.

everyone should get the word out because this isn't just someone who's like crazy lefty. This is like fucking concentration camps for Zionists. Are you fucking kidding me?

And Republicans, of course, are so fucking cynical and having a field day with this and being like, oh, Democrats, Democrats are the ones voting for the anti-Semites and the people who want to put Jews in camps, not Republicans.

And so I think to the extent that politics has invaded everything in a way where it's like hobbyism, like people are sort of viewing it like they view sports and who's winning, who's losing.

I think when you are having all these conversations mediated by all of these algorithms, then what you're exposed to, and especially if you're someone in media, is you're exposed to the most extreme opinions on both sides.

So that's how I met Barack Obama. And he came up to me within like an inch of my face and was like, are you trying to tell me I have to take out my favorite line?

He's at his worst when he has to read off a prompter and you can tell that he is reading something that his staff wrote for him and he doesn't like it because he has this feel for the crowd.

he wants to over explain everything. And if something's not working or he thinks something's unpopular, like his instinct is, OK, if I just explain more, more facts, more statistics, then like it's going to land.

And because I think that, you know, it's, it's no accident that that sort of coincided with just trust in political institutions, media, all institutions going way, way down.

Transcript note: The segment opens with a host's comment ('And you talked about a little bit with the book'); Favreau's reply begins after 'Right.'

And everyone was like, we have to give an Oval Office address on the oil spill. I was like, great. Do we have a solution to stop the oil spill? And we didn't.

He was just just like summarizing his social posts. So like it wasn't judged well because it didn't do anything, didn't solve any problems.

i hope it's changing because i i you know i very much believe that democratic politicians are left-leaning political figures should absolutely be everywhere all the time

Transcript note: 'democratic politicians are left-leaning' is likely 'or left-leaning'.

there's this sort of innate caution that I think for Democrats is born of now having lost two elections to Donald Trump and a lot of, most Democrats in the party don't trust their instincts anymore

I could also like count on one hand the number of democratic politicians if I was working for them that I would trust to go on Joe Rogan

We have in the Democratic Party, we have a lot of front row kids who are in class. They were in the front row raising their hand, asking for more homework.

you would talk about how amazing Israel is and our closest ally and wonderful. And it's like you have to be pro-Israel no matter what. And that's like the whole, that's like a core thing to the Democratic Party.

And I think even when obviously October 7th happened and I was just horrified, I think it's like, you know, what Hamas did was like the worst things you can do to other human beings.

I was much more likely to think, well, that's just people who are on the far left and then as more came out and the war went on and the killing continued, I really did start changing my opinion of the Israeli government

I also think like, you know, here in the United States, I very much believe that we have a president who is, you know, has authoritarian tendencies and wants to turn the United States into something that I don't believe it should be turned into.

And so I'm always like, why couldn't that happen? Israel as well, right? Like that's just, I think that's what BB Netanyahu and a lot of the Israeli government has done there as well.

Transcript note: Words seem lost at the segment boundary ('why couldn't that happen [in] Israel'); 'BB' is 'Bibi'.

we would get like so much pushback from the Biden campaign, from friends of ours in democratic politics that we've had forever. It was like, what are you guys doing? You don't know what you're talking about.

I think that if Democrats just write off the Maha movement, as a bunch of kooks then that is not only wrong but politically um dumb

Transcript note: The first words close a segment labelled Lauren Bostick; the sentence continues in Favreau's labelled segment at 2779, and the host's turn ends just before 'Well, RFK Jr. is a great example'.

a lot of it is stuff that michelle obama could have said when she did let's move as an initiative in the white house and i get it like the i i'm very into health and wellness i fiercely disagree with him on on vaccines

and I think actually some of the stuff that I probably agree with him most on, he hasn't made as much progress on as some of the stuff that I don't agree with him on.

Like I'm very against this war and I want it to end. And Tucker Carlson gave a 40 minute monologue on his show about the war that I listened to this morning and I like posted it.

whether we give each other grace for making mistakes for not using the exact right words for changing our minds, for going back and forth on things, for making mistakes. And I think that both parties have had issues with that

and so I always find that people who have been on campaigns who have organized door to door and have talked to actual voters usually are better at persuasion more practical more pragmatic

I think empathy to me is like probably the most important value there is and I think about this all the time as a former speechwriter

anyone who experiences a harm like that or who's thinking twice about the political decision they made I want to be open to that person and like welcome them over and say like come on over to our side

I think Trump did that well in 2024 and now I think a lot of the that came over to Trump in 2024 are probably now the first ones to leave because he hasn't quite delivered what they thought.

Transcript note: A word (probably 'people') is missing at the segment boundary after 'a lot of the'.

I think more people need to be involved in the act of governing. And when something doesn't happen between elections, reach out to your member of Congress, run for office yourself, get involved in your local community.

and then once Trump won we were like we should continue doing this podcast but we should build the media company that we've talked about and just started from scratch

It was basically the people who were in political media were too self-serious, and they weren't treating the topics with the seriousness they deserve, and we wanted to flip that

I was raised Catholic, went to a Jesuit college, and then, like a lot of people, strayed from the church because of its external politics, its internal corruption, and my own personal debt. and skepticism and, to be honest, failings.

Transcript note: 'my own personal debt' is likely a mistranscription of 'my own personal doubt'.

I'm not quite back there just yet, but starting with Pope Francis and now Pope Leo, I've started to think that the Catholic Church as a moral, political force may have something to teach all of us, believers and non-believers alike

for me at least, sort of the moral and spiritual struggle at the heart of our politics right now, which is, are we here to serve each other, or are we here to dominate each other

Transcript note: The start of this question (roughly 1308-1334) is missing from the transcript; the sentence refers back to Trump's attack on Pope Leo.

And one of the reasons I think he's been politically successful is he sort of feeds on this cynicism that people have about politics, justified in so many ways, and says, yeah, I'm an asshole, but so is everyone else.

Trump's backed off a little bit. Hegseth today was asked about Pope Leo, and he kind of just said, he'll do his thing. So it seems like they're backing down.

they actually see his message as a threat to the core of what MAGA-ism is, which is, you know, and like Stephen Miller has articulated this on television before that, you know, the world is force and power and strength.

And I think that Trump's also feeling defensive about the war, defensive about immigration. He knows neither of his positions on these issues are popular at all.

And it was dispiriting to hear most of them criticize Leo and defend Trump.

Well, Obama won Catholics in 2008. And then Biden clawed back some Catholics as well in 2020.

And Lampedusa, for people who don't know, is an island that, you know, desperate migrants have been trying to reach for over a decade now, and many have died there. Obviously not an accidental choice by Leo, which basically the Cardinals confirm in that interview.

They go through state. They go through diplomatic means. That was my first question. I was like, why wasn't this a State Department meeting?

Which is this idea that if we are always online and we are only if our relations with people, our relationships with people are built on or mediated through these algorithms, we are losing something essentially human about ourselves.

anthropic, which is Claude, the LLM, convened 15 Christian leaders, Catholic and Protestant, for a two-day summit to ask for advice on how Claude should respond to grieving users, to suicidal users, to being shut off.

And so obviously, there's reasons to have that meeting for cover and for self-interest reasons. And then there's reasons that if you, let's they actually do care about the betterment of humanity

Transcript note: Words appear dropped after 'let's' (probably 'let's say').

It's funny because I occasionally use Claude for research. And so before this, I noticed I was prepping, I was like, okay, so I just asked Claude, I'm like, do you think you're a child of God?

even if you just did catholic social teaching and the new testament you can train them on all of that that's not what makes you human what makes you human is not like all of the knowledge in the world

when I think about Democrats, you're talking about, you know, broadening the party and having a big tent. And, you know, part of that is accepting and embracing people in the party who may not have 100% Democratic views.

There's something else that I think you get from Catholic social teaching, which is the ability to show grace to others and empathy to people who don't think like you

And you also, when people make mistakes or they say something wrong or they stray, I And you give them, if they want to be redeemed, you give them grace.

Transcript note: Words appear dropped after 'they stray, I'.

Quick reminder, it's now been 43 days since Trump first declared victory in Iran. Now we are on week seven and counting.

He also shared two posts from warmonger Mark Thiessen, my predecessor at the White House, that suggested he should kill the Iranians who don't want to deal.

Transcript note: Transcript spells the name 'Mark Thiessen' (Marc Thiessen).

So if the war ends tomorrow, we're looking at six months until the strait is open again and global energy supplies go back to normal and the price of gas comes down

I would bet their calculation is he's trying to get a deal. He's trying to get us out of this. Let's just try to wait to ask for the funding until the war is over.

Transcript note: The segment opens with the end of Pfeiffer's answer ('for it. And then that becomes the most important ... vote'); the quoted words follow it, and Pfeiffer's reply 'the risk to that strategy' comes in the next segment.

Let's talk about the great news of the week. Democrats won the Virginia referendum to redraw the state's congressional maps, which will likely net Dems and other four seats in the Commonwealth and hold 10 of the 11.

Transcript note: 'and other four seats' is a mistranscription of 'another four seats'.

we're for ending gerrymandering everywhere and if the republicans don't like the bill from 2021 that would end partisan gerrymandering for whatever reason because some of them have some problems with the way it's then tell us what you want to do

we want to overturn citizens united we want to get rid of money in politics do you also then let's do it

i think that there should be term limits and maybe age limits for members of congress and supreme court justices great let's do it all

would you be pissed if the filibuster wasn't there yeah i would be annoyed that they could they maybe could pass a few more things but like i believe the filibuster is bad

i also think it is very understandable if you're an independent or if you're a republican and you're deciding whether to come out and vote or not or vote like if you're in a district that's going to get gerrymandered

When you add up all the states now that have redrawn their maps, Democrats are, as of this moment, plus one in the overall count.

and they're spending all the money they have, which we're about to talk about, then you could get a closer environment than you've had in some of these special elections, which I do think is possible.

Transcript note: Segment is labelled Dan Pfeiffer, but these opening words finish Favreau's sentence begun at 2166 ('once you get closer to the actual midterms and everything's nationalized, as you said,'); Pfeiffer's reply starts at 'Republicans are going to get their shit together'.

The DNC's total cash is actually negative 4.5 million, which seems less than ideal.

Seems like Trump is responding to the grim political outlook with his tried and true method of firing people. So he reportedly considering forcing out more members of his cabinet.

Transcript note: The quote starts at the end of a segment labelled Dan Pfeiffer; it is Favreau's topic change after Pfeiffer's fundraising answer and continues in Favreau's labelled segment at 2587. A verb is missing before 'reportedly'.

Just, you know, just when you have a government job, especially one that involves counterterrorism and Homeland Security, I don't know. You don't want to put yourself in a position of being blackmailed.

just the way the attention economy works now, if you are not famous, it is very hard to become famous out of nowhere in national politics on a national level.

having covered, unfortunately, over my time in this job, far, far, far, far too many school shootings, is that the response was quite quick. This is not a Novaldi situation, notoriously, right, where there was a slow response.

Transcript note: 'Novaldi' is a mistranscription of 'Uvalde'.

And all we know is that we do live in a country that has more guns than people. It's one of the few ones on the entire earth that could say that.

And I've really gone back and forth and struggled on this question. There's part of me that feels that the exercise itself of a lockdown drill does something kind of toxic and pernicious.

In fact, he said in states that he's lost by 20 or 25 points that he would win if they counted the votes correctly. And he now has the federal government and the Department of itself trying to make that ridiculous lie stick.

Transcript note: 'the Department of itself' is clipped; 'Justice' is missing.

the Department of Justice sent a letter to the Los Angeles County Registrar, along with, get this, a password-protected thumb drive with a list of names the federal government believes are likely non-citizens

Obviously, they want to disrupt and sabotage the election. They want to keep the ballots from being counted. If it comes to that, right, they want to have some special reserve pool of, you know, putatively tainted ballots they can try to throw out.

the Department of Justice's response was to file a federal lawsuit against him and other California election officials in an apparent attempt to sow confusion and chaos in a voting cycle that, again, can't stress this enough, has already begun,

So just people should keep that context in mind when the Department of Justice is out there saying, we sent you a list of 20,000 names. The last time they did this, they literally didn't even get one.

But I do worry about there's a few things I worry about. One is, you know, trying to seize ballots, you know, after while they're being counted.

That idea floated by Pete Hegseth and enthusiastically endorsed by the president, but a poll out today showing that 80 percent of Americans disapprove of it.

And particularly on this day, as we're thinking about this awful shooting in Bend, I felt like we passed some tests when I saw the polling today and the president had to climb down from this.

Like there, there, there is a kind of like violence porn thing with this white house that, you know, between the, the, the, the killings that are happening in the Caribbean and the idea of live stream

America in this post-Black Lives Matter, post-COVID moment, the moment of backlash to the progress of social movements that had happened in the early parts of the decade, the sort of rise of the kind of Donald Trump right.

So like everyone, you can have a lot of people acting in good faith and still sort of the machinery gets very ramped up in which it becomes very hard for people to see each other across that divide.

So, like, part of what we do is reduce things because we can't help but to. I mean – I only have so many minutes in a show. Like, it's just part of what we do.

Does it help anyone to have Jordan Neely in a prison prison? You know what I mean? Unclear that it helps him and helps society.

While a woman two seats down from me was having an incredibly aggressive and profane monologue to a person I think she was imagining in her head.

And it's not the same, right? There's something distinct about the way that like large urban America is constituted. And this sort of unique question of like what to do.

the kind of non-compassionate but totally understandable question of like this is my space too and i don't want this person here and that's not the most like large-hearted or charitable but it's also not an insane or despicable thing for a person to feel

Transcript note: Lines run together without punctuation; the guest's interjections follow this passage in the same line.

what should we do what this is not an easy thing he doesn't he's refused treatment but he is also very very ill and there's like a few thousand of folks like that at any given moment in the city

So, and that's a much smaller population than the much larger population of people who are housing insecure in a place like New York City. But it's also like the most visible, right?

They don't have the money to afford housing. And if they did, they would be in it.

My big takeaway was that he is more of a searcher and almost kind of lost soul-ish person than, again, the kind of narrative produced of, you know, Marine, like, like,

Yeah, it's the white flight, it's the sort of white ethnic and Jewish white flight 70s story where people were living in the Queens or in the Bronx, where I'm from, and things got bad, and you moved out to Long Island.

Like the sort of migration, the economic polarization, the migration of college educated white voters in metro areas, suburbs away from Donald Trump, right?

I was just hanging out with some family members from that part of the world. And they were, when I was growing up, they were Republicans. And they're all like, oh, we love your show. We watch you every night now.

But in Georgia, there is a large pool of Democratic voters. And I think some real mobilization organization among those voters that's happened over the last 8 to 10 years.

And the fact that you've got a close gubernatorial race says to me that a lot of that stuff that's been happening there is a trendline.

And I think, you know, one of the advantages I think John Ossoff has, I think it makes him a particularly interesting figure, is that he is wholly a political creature of the Trump era.

That's not true of Chuck Schumer, right? It's not true of a lot of folks. But most of the old guard of the Democratic Party are like, what is going on?

But I think if he wins by what it looks like he's going to win by, absolutely.

But the way the electoral college system works, which I think is completely awful and anti-democratic and we should scrap, but the nature of it is that math matters.

Well, I think Warnock is more obviously affirmatively planning to.

I think, I guess the one thing I would say about Ossoff, I do think his Jewishness is quite relevant because I think that the biggest fault line in the Democratic Party right now is Israel.

And it's the most, and it's the one that I think is, it's sitting there waiting to in the 2028 primary.

Transcript note: A word is missing after 'waiting to' (probably 'explode' or 'blow up').

Here's a young, handsome, southern senator, first Jewish nominee, has been critical of Israel. There's a lot of ways in which that's checking a bunch of different coalitional boxes.

So, I mean, the most powerful, most important and best known Republican in the world is of the belief that the way to win is to for him to be on the ballot.

every time Donald Trump has been on the ballot, 16, 20 and 24, there's been a fairly significant polling miss where Republicans outperform their polling benchmarks. you know, by four or five points.

I mean, lots of stuff in politics gets complicated, but this is one that's not that complicated. It's the least popular war since at least Vietnam and less popular than Vietnam right off the bat.

But the president of the United States did say the nuclear program was obliterated a year ago. And in fact, said that anyone who said it wasn't obliterated was essentially guilty of treason.

You know, they're all making these sort of noises, bring it to a close, but not really doing anything to break definitively with Trump on this. But it's obviously an enormous albatross.

And the answer kept changing. We went to war with Iran because they were imminently going to strike Israel. So we had to strike them first. Okay, that's a little weird.

One is just thermostatic public opinions are best friend, right? Like backlash, like midterm elections are always good for the out party.

Transcript note: 'opinions are best friend' is probably 'opinion is our best friend'.

The president has massively overplayed his hand and massively over understood his mandate. He also just seems like completely checked out from caring at all or even pretending to care what the median voter thinks.

The one thing you got here is that it's rare that a president unilaterally raises prices. in as clear a fashion as Trump has with two actions, the tariffs that he put on without congressional approval, which raised prices, and the war.

The big thing that I think Democrats have done much better, I think that this sort of idea of heterodoxy, different candidates in different places has really...

my reading of the evidence is that there's like a pretty good claim, like a fairly persuasive claim that like the U.S. has committed mass murder in the Caribbean where we have killed 220 people.

It's like, how much energy are you going to invest in things like that? And there's literally 500 other versions of that, that I think is going to be difficult for Democrats.

It's going to stay blocked. It will stay that way almost certainly through the midterm and election in 50 days, which means that's not going into effect.

Plus, their litigation strategy is they try the door. It's locked. They wait a few minutes. They try it again. Might as well try it again. Try it again. Try it again. So they'll be trying it again.

Now, just to state the very obvious here, it's not clear Donald Trump really understands AI. I don't even know if he understands the images he posts are made by AI and not real.

The pace at which these learning machines are getting smarter is accelerating rapidly and they are now smart enough that they're doing things they were not predicted to do and crucially were not supposed to do.

summer when OpenAI gave 1,200 artificial intelligence agents a security test, a cybersecurity exam. And what those agents did was they cooperated with each other to get on the internet, even though they were barred from being on the internet.

I just want to be clear on this. They committed a felony. If a person did it, that's a crime. Black and white, breaking and entering, cybersecurity intrusion.

First, there are enormous financial rewards for whoever who can develop this technology the fastest, somewhere on the order of trillions of dollars and perhaps, and I'm not exaggerating, the greatest fortunes in human history, literally.

belief that this relatively small group of people have that if they don't develop the technology, someone else with worse judgment and worse morals will. So you might as well do it because, well, you're the smart, responsible builder.

this has reached a point of consensus where because the technology has gotten so good, and it really has, the people closest to this really do feel like they're on the verge of making something they cannot control.

It might not be nuclear or biological cataclysm. It probably won't be literally apocalypse. It might just be hacking lots of different computer systems like your bank or the Federal Reserve or knocking out global internet service for a few days or disrupting critical infrastructure.

Seems like a good time for the government to step in somehow. But the problem is the president has victory arches and ballrooms to build.

Remember that we really could have used in that crisis a leader who was smart, prudent, and informed, and instead we got Donald Trump.

And it's very hard to like look at those two teams and be like, you can't just use your usual heuristics here, if that makes sense.

So at that level, it's like you don't have to think they're being altruistic to also think they're genuinely concerned about the dangers.

It earned $1.4 billion of the $2 billion Trump has raked in since returning to the White House, according to filings reported by the New York Times.

Now, this move comes to light at a time when the crypto industry is right now trying to write the rules for how it will be regulated by the very government Trump currently sits atop.

But adjacent to that, the thing I keep thinking about this is like, is this the legislative priority right now? Really? Like of all the things happening in the world, like there's a war still ongoing.

Which is, I think that there needs to be some regulation. I think the arguments being made by those people, even if totally self-interested, win the day right now.

emergency session to regulate AI right now into this Congress that's doing this with crypto. Like, I don't know what's going to come out the other end of that, given the money that's floating around, given the interest at play.

And of course, there are two public dissents from, you guessed it, Justices Samolito and Clarence Thomas, who would be perfectly happy to just throw the midterms into total chaos and let the USPS decide if you get to vote.

Transcript note: 'Samolito' is a mistranscription of 'Sam Alito'.

Because what you feel tonight is all the lower courts of different ideological valences have looked at this and said, no, you can't let the Postal Service just decide not to give people their ballots.

And it's like the right real a long time ago this fulcrum, which is like, if we can get five or six on there, we're good.

Transcript note: 'the right real' is clipped, probably 'the right realized'.

It's an alarm, but it's also a window in the fact that, like, there's still something binding part of it.

It seems like every day we had a new report on just how corrupt Donald Trump's family can be.

Think about that for a moment. An oligarch close to a foreign adversary bankrolled the wedding weekend of the son of the President of the United States?

That's a weird thing to say. Also, I don't think that's... Catholic theology at all, just to be clear, not to get too sectarian with it for a second.

of that apocalypse. Or what a kind of society stripped to its most reactionary elements will look like when it all crumbles. That kind of underlies so much of the political rhetoric and discourse, particularly people like Stephen Miller.

Transcript note: The start of the sentence ('this deep reaction ...') is clipped between lines.

Yes, like the distilled essence is that you can quite literally right now go and make a bunch of bets about cataclysms and catastrophes and shocks and try to monetize it.

as I agree, has been ubiquitous with me in my adult life, but is very, very left-coded, right? I mean, the conservatives I know and talk to, like, they don't think that's happening for a long time.