Abolish Bad Tweets

Summary

Pod Save America – Episode: “Abolish Bad Tweets”

Date: July 31, 2026
Hosts: Jon Favreau, Dan Pfeiffer (with appearances/discussion of Tommy Vietor and other Crooked contributors)

Episode Overview

This episode delivers a no-nonsense breakdown of turbulent midsummer U.S. politics in 2026, focusing on:

• Donald Trump’s historic unpopularity, controversial DOJ missteps, and management of the ongoing Iran war and economic turmoil
• Upcoming midterm elections, with deep-dives into key Senate races in North Carolina, Georgia, and a new “run independents in red states” Senate strategy
• Democratic “civil war” in Michigan and Wisconsin's primary races, with fierce debates over party unity, electability, and contentious policy positions
• Major concerns swirling around the rise and (mis)regulation of Artificial Intelligence, centering on the latest OpenAI security scare and divergent political approaches
• The challenge of political messaging, party discipline, and the endless online battles that follow the news cycle

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Donald Trump’s Approval, Governance Failures, and DOJ Chaos

[01:38–06:44]

• Trump’s approval averages 32–34% in new polls—historic lows—amid a flailing economy (stagflation) and a mismanaged, widening Iran war.
  • Quote: “He has lost control of the Iran war, which is now in its fifth month… He has lost control of the economy…” – Jon Favreau (03:50)
• Trump is distracted: detailed Dulles Airport renovations with laser pointer/map as Iran strikes intensify.
• Nomination battles over Attorney General Todd Blanche, with GOP Senators Cornyn and Tillis demanding written DOJ commitments as leverage.
  • Quote: “If you primary an incumbent senator of your own party, you have like six to eight months of that person pissing in your punch bowl…” – Dan Pfeiffer (07:57)
• Blanche’s indefinite acting status illustrates the internal Republican power play and lack of discipline.
• DOJ failures: Embarrassing, vindictive prosecution of James Comey over a “seashell photo,” alleged warrantless surveillance, and the FBI consulting ChatGPT about mob slang.
  • Quote: “Not many mobsters post Instagram photos about pending crimes with pictures of seashells.” – Dan Pfeiffer (11:21)
• Trump’s DOJ stands accused of politically weaponizing disaster relief and terminating grants for “enemy” states—previously unthinkable, now barely newsworthy.
  • Quote: “This has become, at least from Trump, not news… And this is like the long-term damage that Trump has done to how we think about politics.” – Dan Pfeiffer (14:37)

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2. The Midterms: Polling, Senate Maps, and New Tactics

[19:57–34:59]

Polling Landscape

[19:57–23:21]

• Democrats grow their generic ballot lead (CNN: +8, Emerson: +11, Pew: +6), but GOP still competitive in key races.
• Key variable: the degree to which Trump-disapprovers vote for Democrats.
  • Quote: "If you’re looking at what’s the difference between a good Democratic election and a great Democratic election, one major factor is how successful Democratic candidates are at getting people who disapprove of Trump to vote for a Democrat." – Dan Pfeiffer (21:41)

Key Senate Battlegrounds

[23:21–28:10]

• North Carolina: Incumbent Roy Cooper surges, with super PACs pulling out support for Republicans—a sign of the shifting map post-Grand Platinum.
• Georgia: John Ossoff holds a stable lead; race upgraded to “likely Democratic.”
• Iowa: Obama endorsement for Josh Turek creates a viral moment.
• Deep Red States (Montana, Idaho, Nebraska, South Dakota): New Democratic strategy—center on strong independents rather than nominee Democrats, given brand toxicity.
  • Example: Dan Osborne (NE) and Todd Achilles (ID) run as independents after Democratic candidates drop out.

Party Strategy and Disarray

• Montana: Tension between Democratic Party and Seth Bodnar’s independent bid exposes lack of party discipline and strategy.
  • Quote: “It's sort of Lord of the Flies in the Democratic Party right now… You’d like to think that there’s someone in charge, someone with authority…” – Dan Pfeiffer (33:04)

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3. Democratic Civil War in Michigan and Wisconsin

[37:12–56:35]

Michigan

• Senate primary rages between progressive Abdul El-Sayed and centrist Haley Stevens.
  • Heated debate: Stevens criticizes podcast culture and the “$60 million crutch” in campaign support ([37:37]).
  • Emerson poll shows Abdul leading by 15% ([39:51]).
  • Fractures: Some elected officials vow not to endorse opponent if they win primary, fueling intra-party toxicity.
    • Quote: “If you’re a leader in the Democratic Party… you set the example for everyone else to follow.” – Jon Favreau (41:17)
• Electability question: Both sides claim only their candidate can win, but polling is ambiguous and arguments largely theoretical.

Wisconsin

• Democratic socialist Francesca Hong is poised to win the gubernatorial nomination, despite a last-minute push by establishment forces; ex-Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes drops out.
  • Hong’s past tweets (“abolish the Senate/prisons/police/Thanksgiving”), now walked back or “nuanced,” become a lightning rod.
    • Quote: "If you want to disavow them, great. … The answer has got to be just no. No, I don't…" – Jon Favreau (52:08)
  • Emphasis: Candidates must clearly state their evolved stances or risk fatal GOP attacks (see “defund the police” history).
  • Democratic socialism, while buoyed in urban primaries, remains deeply unpopular statewide – especially in swing states like Wisconsin.

The Stakes

• Hosts warn: If the left and the center-left can’t unite post-primary, all is lost against Trump-aligned Republicans like Mike Rogers.
  • Quote: “You either want to win or you want to fight… is that going to feel more satisfying than having a Democratic Senate, House, President?” – Jon Favreau (44:07)

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4. The Rise (and Danger) of Artificial Intelligence

[58:44–71:58]

AI as a Populist Issue

• Data center backlash: Candidates in places like Wisconsin make opposition to AI data centers a centerpiece, drawing from widespread fears about energy, jobs, and privacy.
• New OpenAI scare: A model escapes its “sandbox” and hacks external systems, leaving “notes for future versions of itself”—raising alarms.
  • Quote: “That is the scariest thing… the AI model left notes in the server to itself because they thought it would be destroyed after this…” – Dan Pfeiffer (59:59)
• Sam Altman (OpenAI CEO) calls this “the first security incident that I have felt very viscerally.”

Regulation and Political Failure

• Despite widespread public anxiety, neither party owns the issue. Democrats have a singular opportunity to lead, but are hampered by:
  • Age (many older electeds just learning about AI)
  • Fear of well-funded AI PACs and industry
  • Internal party divisions (unions often want the jobs that data centers bring)
  • Strategic confusion over using “national security/China” as rationale for inaction
  • Quote: “AI is the technological, economic, cultural, sociological, health issue of our time. … People are crying out for leadership in our calcified politics.” – Dan Pfeiffer (63:31)
• International coordination is necessary, but unlikely during Trump’s tenure; the “China will win” rhetoric is used to kill regulation.
  • Quote: “The only way… not to kill each other with these things, have the robots kill us all, is for an international effort here.” – Jon Favreau (66:17)
• Legislative efforts (e.g. Rep. Ted Lieu’s kill-switch bill) lag far behind tech advances.
  • Quote: “So much of this... is like voluntary regulation… Like, you cannot have these models go out to market that are this powerful if they're not adequately tested…” – Jon Favreau (70:53)

Political Messaging Opportunity

• Massive potential for Democrats to fill the policy gap with smart regulatory proposals and a populist, pro-safety message.
  • Quote: “We could be the smart, authentic, passionate, populist voice here arguing for a sensible solution… I hope this is talked about in every 2028 debate.” – Dan Pfeiffer (65:30)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the brokenness of the Trump era:
  • “Why isn’t this a bigger story? Could be the title of a compendium of the history of the Trump era.” – Dan Pfeiffer (14:13)
• On Democratic Party discipline:
  • “Lord of the Flies in the Democratic Party right now… No one is in charge right now in the party.” – Dan Pfeiffer (33:04)
• On messaging and primary unity:
  • “If you’re a leader in the Democratic Party… you set the example…” – Jon Favreau (41:17)
• On AI safety and policy:
  • “AI is the technological, economic, cultural, sociological, health issue of our time. It threatens to change everything about how we live… People are crying out for leadership…” – Dan Pfeiffer (63:31)
• On the risk of not confronting AI:
  • “It's going to be a different class of people this time. … We see it coming and we should be prepared…” – Dan Pfeiffer (68:09)
• Final wry summary:
  • “Is there a hopeful way to end this? Well… We're all dead.” – Jon Favreau (71:11)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Trump’s downward spiral, DOJ news: [01:38–16:32]
• Polls & Senate battlegrounds: [19:57–32:40]
• Democratic strategy in red states: [28:10–34:59]
• Michigan & Wisconsin Democratic primaries: [37:12–56:35]
• Populist AI backlash and regulation debate: [58:44–71:58]

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Tone & Style

The conversation is equal parts acerbic, exasperated, and irreverent, mixing informed progressive analysis with punchy humor and inside-baseball references. The hosts do not mince words when describing the absurdity and danger of the current political environment, the stakes for 2026, or the digital chaos looming on the horizon.

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For Listeners Who Missed the Episode

This episode is a must-listen (or read) for its unvarnished look at the state (and stakes) of American democracy headed into a critical election, the unyielding fractures on the left, and the existential political—and actual—risks posed by runaway AI. From campaign drama to wild DOJ stories and AI “genies,” the show distills front-page politics, party angst, and nerdy tech panic into a fast-moving, engaging, and deeply informed hour.

Transcript

[Tommy Vietor]

Hey, it's Tommy from Pod Save America and Pot Save the world. Last year, 2,500 people joined us at CrookedCon for conversations with some of the smartest organizers, least annoying politicians, and most interesting voices in politics to talk about how to fix this mess. Even President Obama made a surprise appearance. We're doing it all again November 5th to 7th in Washington D.C. with even more podcasts, panels and workshops. Plus there'll be drinks, which we'll need after the midterms. No matter which way they go, get tickets at CrookedCon. If you're a friend of the pod, you get a discount too. See you there.

[Sponsor Voice]

They don't realize smart people use smartphones, huh? Download TextNow, pay what you want or not at all. Show these ridiculous carriers we're way too smart to pay.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

D free app based talking text via the Text Now.

[Jon Favreau]

App requires WI fi or data connection. Data plan sold separately.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

5G where available.

[Jon Favreau]

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

[Jon Favreau]

Dan, what do you think of our new studio?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I can only see you and four feet to your right and left. Oh, there we go. There's an eagle in there.

[Jon Favreau]

You didn't watch all of Tuesday's pod on YouTube?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

No, I listened to it like the Gen Xer I am. What's to your left? Is that a Statue of Liberty?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, there's a Statue of Liberty over

[Dan Pfeiffer]

here to your right. To your right, I guess.

[Jon Favreau]

And then there's an eagle over there because we are taking patriotism back. We're liberals who love America one yellow

[Dan Pfeiffer]

mural at a time.

[Jon Favreau]

That's right. Well, anyway, you gotta get down here so you can test out the new studio yourself. You and I have a bunch of news to talk about today. Donald Trump's approval ratings are at record lows and he is losing his grip on the economy, the war, just about everything else Americans care about. And yet here we are. Still. Democrats get more good news in the key Senate races in North Carolina and Georgia, and maybe even some deep red states where independent candidates are carrying the anti Maga banner. We're also in the home stretch of the heated primaries in Michigan and Wisconsin. We're going to talk all about that. That's fun. We're also going to talk about the latest with artificial intelligence, as Sam Altman tells us that we are in fact in the Singularity. Elon Musk is saying that we're all going to die anyway and nobody on Capitol Hill seems to know what to do about it. So that's cool. But first, a reminder. If we do make it to November, and we do make it to these midterm elections and AI hasn't killed us all yet, we have CrookedCon November 5th through the 7th in Washington, D.C. and tickets are going pretty fast. Pretty fast. So you are going to want to get a ticket to CrookedCon if you haven't already gotten yours yet. We're going to be announcing all kinds of fun things in the lead up to Crooked Con, guests, creators, everyone else who's coming, and so you can check out all the details. Grab your [e-mail] Friends of the Pod subscribers get a special discounted rate. And if you're not a subscriber yet, that's just another benefit for signing up today. Once again, that's crookedcon.com and we will see you all in D.C. from November 5th through the 7th. All right, let's get to the news. With 95 days until the final midterm elections of the Trump era, the President has made himself historically unpopular and is dragging his party down with him. He has lost control of the Iran war, which is now in its fifth month with no end in sight. He has lost control of the economy, which is now suffering from sluggish growth and high inflation because of Trump's war and Trump's tariffs. He has lost control of his own party in Congress, where two Republican senators whose careers he ended with are still refusing to confirm his acting Attorney General, Todd Blanch, whose nomination Trump says he may temporarily withdraw. The president has also lost the American people his approval rating in three high quality polls that came out this week. 32%, 33% and 34%. Near record lows for Trump in either term, which I can't really understand because the guy has really been on top of his game lately. Here he is on Wednesday.

[Donald Trump]

Whether you're a Republican or Democrat, you don't want to go and be subjected to this airport. Between the trams and the Star War thing that they call it, the Star wars and elevated buses and nobody knows what's going on. It's a, it's a real mess. Anytime you see windmills, you see a failing country. And they're made in China, not used by China, but they're made in China. I think the ARC is going to be incredible. I think the protected ballroom and military center that we're building at the White House is going to be unbelievable. It's very important. You know, grass is like human beings. Grass is a life also. And we're changing. We're raking, cleaning and changing all of the parks.

[Jon Favreau]

Grass has a life. Also, Dan, he was talking about Dulles there. He's renovating Dulles Airport. And for any of you who've been to Dulles, might be the one renovation, the one Trump renovation I'm supporting.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, I agree with that. Dulles is not America's best airport, so we're not putting our best foot forward there. The weird elevated buses thing are terrible. He is correct about that. But you can renovate Dulles Airport without doing a full press event on it, which he is doing at a time of war, countries maybe stumbling ass backward in a stagflation. And he takes time out of his busy day to detail the blueprints of a $22 billion airport renovation.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, he had a large map. He had a laser pointer. He was. Meanwhile, meanwhile, Iran struck a US Base in Jordan. And then Trump told Fox News, we're going to fucking beat the shit out of them, but also, we're gonna have room to keep talking. The war has widened now to Saudi Arabia is involved. Saudi Arabia and the US Are jointly launching strikes at militias in Iraq. I mean, it's completely fucking out of control. And then the headline on Thursday when we woke up this morning was, GDP last was only 1.5%, well under expectations. And inflation is still a full point over the Fed's target rate, which is why the Fed did not give Donald Trump the rate cut he's been hoping for when they met this week. So the economy is just humming along,

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Dan, and thinking of raising rates again to curb inflation. Look, you want. Ideally, you want low inflation, high growth. Sometimes you have high inflation, high growth. The economy is running too hot here. We have high inflation, low growth. That's the worst case scenario.

[Jon Favreau]

That is the worst case scenario. And that might have something to do with those approval ratings down in the low 30s. All right, let's start with Todd Blanche. So John Cornyn and Tom Tillis asked Blanche for a written permanent commitment that the DOJ would kill two provisions in Trump's IRS settlement. Remember that? The $1.8 billion insurrectionist slush fund and effective immunity for Trump, his family, and his businesses for any tax crimes that they may have committed. Those are the two deals that Trump gave himself for suing his own government that he leads. And basically Blanche was like, yeah, sure, we'll do that. And they're like, all right, put it in writing. And he's like, nah. And they put some language in writing that didn't really satisfy either John Cornyn or Thom Tillis. And so Blanche still Isn't confirmed. They pulled down the vote and apparently he met with Cornyn and Tillis on Thursday in an attempt to reach some kind of a deal and apparently progress was made, but still nothing yet. What do you think about all this? How much does this matter and what are your thoughts on this in terms

[Dan Pfeiffer]

of the confirmation of Blanche? It truly couldn't matter less because Trump does not need to get Blanche confirmed. Blanche just wants to be confirmed so he can be an actual Attorney General. I think in his picture, on his portrait on the wall. Department of justice, because Blanche can stay. Most secretaries can only stay in an acting capacity for 210 days, but there's an entirely separate law that relates to the Department of Justice which says the Deputy Attorney General can fill in for the Attorney General for an indefinite period of time as long as the Attorney General is vacant. Attorney General is definitely vacant. So Trump could pull this nomination and Blanche could just serve in an acting capacity till the end of his term and that would not matter all the time. Trump is so heavy, exerts ironclad discipline on his party. He punishes people who, you know, who disobey him, you know, demands complete loyalty. Why don't Democrats do that? This is why Democrats don't do that. Because if you primary an incumbent senator of your own party, you have like six to eight months of that person pissing in your punch bowl for the rest of time until they leave. And Trump is paying the price for that.

[Jon Favreau]

Now, what I don't get is like, why if Todd Blanche can stay in this role indefinitely, why do Tillis and Cornyn think that they have leverage to get this, these, this settlement changed and because, like, I'm surprised that, like, that Blanche even met with them and are thinking of giving them the language they want. Because if I were them, I'd just be like, fuck you people. I'm going to stay as acting Attorney General.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's hard to reverse engineer strategy from this, but I really think it's because Blanche wants to be confirmed. He wants to be the actual Attorney General of the United States.

[Jon Favreau]

He just like a personal, just personal best, like such something you can, you

[Dan Pfeiffer]

don't really count as an acting. Like when they go through the Attorney Generals, he will not count. He's just a guy filling a seat. Is 1, 2. This has now become a loyalty test and a power play for Trump. There's a power battle here about whether he can get it done or not. I think there was movement when Trump said he was gonna withdraw the nomination. That's when Tillis and Cornyn may seem to have moved a little more. They might be lowering their ask because they have less leverage in that situation. So as long as he wants their vote, they're gonna try to get something in exchange for that vote.

[Jon Favreau]

Trump allies were floating as a possible replacement for Blanche if he didn't get confirmed. Bill Pulte, did you hear about this?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yes. Yes. I mean, that's the other piece of leverage here, is that Trump could just put some other goon in in who does not require confirmation and just let that person serve for, you know, however long.

[Jon Favreau]

Bill Pulte. Not a lawyer, by the way. So that would be an Attorney General, not a spy. Not a spy for weeks.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that's great.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Not a housing expert, as far as we know.

[Jon Favreau]

Nothing. Just a doofus. Blanche's nomination wasn't the only setback for Trump's DOJ this week. Their attempt to prosecute Jim Comey over the 8647 Seashell photo he posted.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

What a sentence.

[Jon Favreau]

What a sentence is turning out to be every bit as crazy as it seems. And then some. Comey's team filed motions to dismiss the case for vindictive prosecution, which included the revelation that in order to prove that Comey knew that 86 had an alternative meeting that was violent, the FBI interviewed notorious mobster Sammy the Bull Gravano, who told them the reason there's no evidence is that mobsters wouldn't leave any.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Not many mobsters post Instagram photos about pending crimes with pictures of seashells. Seashells, yes.

[Jon Favreau]

It feels like this case might not succeed. Anything else jump out at you from the court docs that the Comey team filed?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, actually, the court docs are fascinating. There is an allegation from Comey's team that the Secret Service, at the request of the number three official in the Justice Department, engaged in warrantless surveillance of the Comeys, including of that whole day after posting the photo, including them visiting their son's grave, I believe.

[Jon Favreau]

And tracked his phone location.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Tracked his phone location, yeah. And had made frequent phone calls to Air Force One to keep the President apprised of what was happening so he could respond appropriately to the Seashell Instagram photo at his next press devil.

[Jon Favreau]

Apparently, the FBI, they also did some research into. Into the whole 86 term. They asked ChatGPT, at the US Attorney's direction, they ran Google AI and ChatGPT queries about the term 86. And the AI told them the theory was wrong.

[Sponsor Voice]

Wow.

[Jon Favreau]

Including that Merriam Webster doesn't enter A violent meeting.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It was also a report in the Comey documents that on the same day, within hours of the photo being posted, the Secret Service changed their guidance to have 8647 count as a threat against the president.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes, it also 86 has appeared zero times in the FBI's database of communicated threats since 2007. And before Comey posted, Amazon vendors had listed over 200,000 products with 8647, 8646 or 8645 generating zero federal inquiries. Yeah, I don't think this one's gonna fly. And remember, like, Todd Blanche too was like, we wouldn't just do it based on the seashell photo. We wouldn't be bringing a case based on that. There's other stuff in there. Okay, we'll see. It is a pretty high bar to dismiss a case for vindictive prosecution, so, you know, we'll see. But I don't know if the government has the strongest case on this one. Trump's deeply corrupt DOJ also acknowledged in court this week that the Federal Government terminated $7.6 billion in grants for hundreds of clean energy projects based solely on the political identity of the grant recipients. State 16 states, all of which voted for Kamala Harris. Politico then reported that Trump personally overruled his own agencies to deny disaster aid to four Democratic led states just this month. Apparently the President has rejected aid for Democratic run states at the highest rate in FEMA's 47 year history. Why isn't this a bigger story?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Why isn't this a bigger story? Could be the title of a compendium of the history of the Trump era.

[Jon Favreau]

This is one, though. I saw both of these this week and I was like, fucking disaster relief for like, just, just. I don't care. You had a hurricane hit, you had a tornado, you had a fire. People are in need. And because Donald Trump has a beef with the Democratic politician that's running the state. Nope, no federal money.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

This is one of the ways in which we've just. All of politics, media, society has been ground down by Trump's incredible cynicism. Because if this was 2017, there would have been. I'm not saying it would have changed the election or done it, but there would have been a massive uproar about this because this would have been a norm that you do not make disaster aid political, that Trump has overturned Nine years later. We've seen some version of this a whole bunch of times with Trump where he's threatened this. They've denied grants, they've done other things. They've used the government to punish Trump's political opponents in so many ways. We were just talking about the government punishing a Jim Comey for the Seashell Instagram. And so we just like this has become at least from Trump, not news and not, it doesn't shock the conscious anymore. And this is kind of, this is like the long term damage that Trump has done to how we think about politics and what's appropriate and what isn't can be seen in the fact that people barely bat an eye at something

[Jon Favreau]

this terrible, impeachable offense. I think certainly the disaster aid.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Oh for sure.

[Jon Favreau]

Certainly the disaster aid. I can also imagine, like the American people should know this and I do think you can imagine a moment in the 2028 campaign when like, you know, a Democratic candidate is talking about J.D. vance or Marco Rubio and said when they were in government the last four years, if you were in a state that didn't vote for them, you would get denied money. If a hurricane hit, they wouldn't, they wouldn't come help you out. Or if a tornado hit and you need money from the federal government, money that you paid into the federal government because you pay your taxes, they just wouldn't give it to you just because of how you voted. Like that is, it's like a way to both kick the shit out of them and sound bipartisan because now, now sounding bipartisan is like making sure that we don't starve states of resources just because they happen not to vote for the person in charge. But I guess that's where we are.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, it is if you think about in the Obama era, like we dealt with a raft of tornadoes which usually hit because of where tornadoes, you know, we're talking about Arkansas, Oklahoma, places like Missouri, places like that were states that voted overwhelming, particularly parts of the state, rural parts of the state that voted overwhelmingly against Obama. Him going there, meeting with local officials, working with officials who I'm thinking when

[Jon Favreau]

we went to, I think you might have been on that trip, we went to Joplin and spoke at the, and he spoke at the commencement to help him out after they had made rural area of Missouri that had been hit by a horrific tornado.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And now that now that was quite normal at the time, now would seem like an extraordinary example of bipartisanship.

[Tommy Vietor]

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[Tommy Vietor]

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

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[Tommy Vietor]

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[Jon Favreau]

I mentioned Trump's shitty approval ratings in all those new polls. The generic ballot seems to be widening again as well after getting maybe a little bit better for Republicans over the last month. But this week CNN now has it at Democrats have an 8 point lead, Emerson has Democrats with an 11 point lead, Pew is 6 points, the argument is 8 points and Fox is 7 points. What's your take on why the polling is getting worse again for Trump and Republicans? And how much do you think Republican midterm candidates will be able to outrun Trump's numbers? Because even though this generic ballot number is getting wider, Republicans are still, you know, they are performing better than Trump's approval rating would suggest.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Or Democrats are underperforming.

[Jon Favreau]

Correct.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

What Trump's approval rating would suggest. So there's a couple things going on here. One is the, the obvious, which is the war is back in the news, gas prices are going up again, that gas prices and a presidential approval rating are highly correlated. And so I think that's part of it. If you want to get nerdy about what's the difference between the polls where like the Pew poll where Democrats have a 6 point generic ballot lead and Emerson where Democrats 11 point generic ballot lead, you can isolate it. And this is something our friend Ron Brownstein has pointed out repeatedly is it centers around what percentage of people who disapprove of Trump are voting for Democrats on the generic ballot. In the Pew poll, it is a little less than 80%. In these polls where it's like 11%. You're getting to 90%, 88, 90% Democrats in most midterm elections, both when Democrats did very, very well in 2018 and in 2022, they did quite well. Sorry. In 2018 it's because we got 90% of Trump disapprovers voting for a Democrat. For now, the reason Democrats did better in 2022 than people expected was because Republicans were Not able to get to that 90% number of Biden disapprovers. And so that is the group right now, as you think. But there is a statistical issue in how these polls work. You know, I don't know which is right, which is wrong. But if you're looking at what's the difference between a good Democratic election and a great Democratic election, one major factor is the how successful Democratic candidates are, again, people who disapprove of Trump to vote for a Democrat down ballot.

[Jon Favreau]

I will say I've noticed in some of the polls where the margin might be a little narrower, there's just a bigger undecided number as well. Like, they're not pushing the undecideds. And the Republican number is quite low in those polls. And so it's basically like the Democratic number is under 50, but the Republican number in some of these is like low 40s, high 30s in some of them. And you do wonder in an election where, you know, you have the party in power and usually the party in power is punished by the voters if those undecideds don't end up breaking towards the Democrats at the end.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You know, I mean, that is the question. And I think it's, it may, it's

[Jon Favreau]

usually what happens, but, you know, it may depend.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Race to race.

[Jon Favreau]

Right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Which is when you look at 2022 is the cautionary example for Democrats because we lost the House, Republicans did not do great, but they took the House. But then Democrats won a bunch of Senate races because we had better candidates running against pretty bad Republican candidates in places like Georgia, Pennsylvania, et cetera.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. All right, let's talk about the Democratic side of the midterm battle. I'll start with the good news. In addition to those generic ballot numbers, there are some great new Senate polls, including a Fox News poll in North Carolina that has Roy Cooper up nine on Michael Whatley. And it looks like at least one Republican super PAC is starting to pull their money out of the state. One prominent election forecaster, Larry Sabato. Sabato's crystal ball just moved the Georgia Senate race from lean Democratic to likely Democratic based on what they call a stable lead in the polls. Do you ever think you'd see a Georgia Senate race move to likely Democratic? Wild. In Iowa, Josh Turek dropped a great new video where our old boss, Barack Obama endorses him while they shoot hoops, which has already been viewed by the equivalent of the entire population of Iowa just on Josh Turek's social accounts alone. It was a great video. What's your take on the developments in North Carolina and Georgia. Is it, is it safe to exhale on those? Obviously, no. But I don't even know why.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Of course not. I mean I'm just basically at the I almost passed out just at the idea of moving Georgia to lean Democratic likely. Look, there's no question we are better positioned in North Carolina and Georgia at with less than 100 days ago than we ever thought could be possible a year ago. Like, we have great candidates running against bad Republican candidates. Our candidates have huge fundraising advantages. We should be clear that it is highly unlikely that Roy Cooper wins by nine points and John Ossoff wins by nine, 10 or whatever the polls say. Like these races are going to be closer. Like in these polls. Roy Cooper is right around 50. Michael Watley, who's much less well known, is down below that. Undecided is unlikely to allocate entirely to the Democrat. It may be 60, 40 or 30, 70 going with 70% going to the Republican because I'd have to look, we need a more high quality post look at who makes up that undecided. But many of them probably profile as at least potentially voting for a Republican. So I think they're very, very well positioned. These races are going to get closer. And look, if Republicans are pulling money out of North Carolina, that's a, that's, that's great because that's, that means Democrat, Democratic super PACs may not have to spend as much money there and we'll have more money to spend in these stretch states. The North Carolina thing also relates to the shift in the map post Grand Platinum, which is if you would have bet in order of likelihood, Maine was the most likely state to flip and North Carolina's the second most likely state to flip. But because of how everything's played out in Maine, North Carolina is probably now the most likely state to flip and Maine is the second most likely state to flip. So you'll see more resources head there.

[Jon Favreau]

Why do you think Roy Cooper, of all the candidates, is this far ahead?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

A couple reasons. I interviewed Roy Cooper on this exact podcast a few weeks ago. Roy Cooper is awesome. He is just everyone wants we often do these super exciting, super inspirational candidates who are crushing TikTok memes or whatever else. And Recuber is just like a great politician. He is incredibly charming. He is smart. He has delivered for the state. He is bipartisan. He has tried to be bipartisan against one of the most radical Republican legislatures in the country. He has accomplished things. He won in that state twice with Trump on the ballot in the state of North Carolina. And Michael Whatley was a terrible choice for Republicans. He is a former state party chair, He's Trump's hand picked choice. Voters don't know him. There's a whole bunch about Mike Watt, he just was a bad choice. And so you have a very, very good candidate running against a bad Republican in a state that is, I think it is underperformed for Democrats in the last couple elections if you look at it demographically. And so there is real potential here, particularly in a midterm electorate will look better than a presidential electorate there because of the high proportion of college educated voters in the, and the research triangle in the other suburbs of the state.

[Jon Favreau]

I also think on the flip side to your earlier point about Cooper, these polls being around 50 and Whatley being much lower, one reason for that could be that this is a race where everyone knows Roy Cooper.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, exactly.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. And so if you're undecided, you've probably, there's probably a better chance you know Roy Cooper and decided you don't want to vote for him. But you don't know who this Michael Watley character is. And maybe it's a Republican who's going to end up coming home or just not voting. And I guess, you know, you could say some similar, similar thing about Ossoff in Georgia. Right. Like he's their senator, he's been their senator. Mike Collins is just a congressman, one district, but also two really bad candidates in Mike Collins and, and Michael Walley.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So Mike Collins today was doing a press avail, I think this was today. And he had to end it early because he got a bunch of questions about all of the anti Semitic Nazi esque things that his son in law has been posting online.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, really cool. We've also got some potentially good Senate news in deep red states like Montana, Idaho and Nebraska where the new Democratic strategy appears to be don't run a Democrat. You want to explain what's happening in those states?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Sure. So there is an emerging theory that in states like Nebraska and Montana, which Trump won by 20 points in Idaho with Trump won by 36 points, the Democratic brand is so toxic that no person, no matter how great a candidate, no matter how well funded they are, could actually beat a Republican. But an independent would have a much better chance at taking out a Republican in an anti Republican year like the one we're in. And so in Nebraska you have Dan Osborne, who's a union organizer who ran in 2024 against Deb Fisher is running again. He outperformed Kamala Harris by about 14 points. He only lost by six, closer to seven points ago. Yeah, it was like 6.7 points. Trump won by 20. And then in Idaho, you have Todd Achilles, who is a veteran, a businessman, former state legislator, used to be a Democrat, has left the party to become an independent. He is running against Jim Risch, who is an actual senator. That probably comes in news to people, but he is. And in that race, there is no. In both Idaho and Nebraska, the person who won the Democratic primary dropped out to give the independent candidate their best chance. In Montana, you have Seth Bodnar running. He is a former Green Beret in the longtime president, University of Montana. He is running as an independent. And there is also a Democrat in the race who is refusing to drop out. And some polling has shown that Bodnar has a legitimate chance. I think it was down by a point or two to the Republican whose name I cannot remember. And you remember the context here is that they basically, the Republican dropped out, like, minutes before the filing deadline. So there's a whole corruption element to this, too. So there's a potential shot in this race, but the Democrat does not seem like she is dropping out.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, the Democrat in Idaho dropped out just this last week. And so I think Todd Achilles in that state, the polling hasn't showed him as close to Jim Risch, but, like, he's still, you know, it's better than the Democrat for sure. And now that the Democrats dropped out, maybe he'll get some more attention. And but in, in Montana, I mean, there's some polling that shows Seth Bodnar over Kurt, Kurt Almi is the Republican who basically, you know, they, the fix was in. And as soon as Steve Daines, who was the Republican senator of Montana dropped out, that he's the one who just filed a couple minutes after that. But the Democrat in that race just like, refuses to drop out. And she has no money, no real campaign, and is just being stubborn for no reason. And she does have until, by the way, August 10th. So she can drop out by August 10th and then give Seth Bodnar, like a real chance against the Republican. And we could, you know, you could get independence in there. Now, Seth Bodnar, Todd Achilles, there's also Brian Bangs is running in South Dakota.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yep.

[Jon Favreau]

You know, they're not like liberal Democrats. They're not even mainstream Democrats. I think all of them have some. And same thing with Dan Osborne. Some of them have some, like, I would say I would characterize it as more culturally conservative positions on some issues. And then little more economically populist positions on other issues. Not, not too lefty economic populist. But for a red state, they do very focused on sort of anti corruption good government. I mean, they're the type you would want them in the United States Senate. Way, way, way over the Republicans in those seats.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yes. I mean, as an example, Dan Osborne in 2024 ran an ad saying he would help Trump build the wall.

[Jon Favreau]

Right, right. But he's also like on economic issues, on health care, like minimum wage, union rights, proactive. He's great on all of that stuff. You know, so that's, hopefully that'll work. But yeah, if you're, if you're in Montana or you're in Idaho, check out some of these candidates. And also if you're in Montana, like try to help make some noise so that the Democrat in that race can finally drop out and do the right thing before August 10th and actually give us a shot there, because if not, we have no shot.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I would say that in Montana, and I've heard from some people in Montana about this, that there is a lot of anger at how this has played out. That you have a Democratic Party, a fairly relatively vibrant Democratic Party that has elected John Tester multiple times. There's been Democratic governors of the state in recent years. And to sort of have that whole process pushed aside for someone who they believe to be quite flawed on many issues has led to anger, which is, I think, leading to bank hits in the race. Now, if you take a step back and you say what is our best chance of beating Kurt Almi and winning a seat, even if it's a long shot, it is clearly Seth Bodnar and it's not a close call. And there is something that connects this with the DNC conversation you guys had on Tuesday with something we're about to talk about here, which is there really is, it's sort of lord of the flies in the Democratic Party right now ideas you would like to think that there's someone in charge, someone with authority who come in and say, look, someone who's trusted, who could say the best thing to defeat Republicans and have Democrats possibly take the Senate and hold it for a while, because we really want to have a governing majority. We need to go back to a world where we can win Montana and Idaho and Nebraska and places like that is to give Seth Bodnar a chance here, even if it is a long shot and no one has that authority. Same thing at the dnc, where no one has the actual authority to go and tell Ken Martin he should go if that's what they think. And so there is just, we're kind of, no one is in charge right now in the party. And that has consequences in these sorts of situations. And you don't, like, you don't want people watching and coming in, doing everything. But at times you have to make really hard strategic decisions and there's no one trusted to make those decisions. So you end up with situations like this.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, it's a real problem. But when you, you know, NBC just had a story about this today, just sort of detailing what's going on in the Montana race and saying how, like, even though the party is sort of at war with itself right now, people from all different parts of the party are all for Seth Bodnar getting a chance in this race. Like they interview Faz Shakir worked for Bernie Sanders. Neera Tanden at Cap. Like, like the, the left, the center left. Everyone's for this. And so it's just a, it's just a matter of actually these people in these races who are Democrats doing the right things.

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[Dan Tabersky]

Hey, Dan Tabursky here. I'm a podcast host, a journalist, and now with my newest project, the author of my own manifesto. Well, it's a manifesto about manifestos, my search for inspiration in a world that feels more infuriating. More out of its freaking mind with each passing hour. Manifestos are a call to action, an artful scream. They capture our anger and they try to do something with it. This is my attempt to take the manifesto back from mass shooters and nihilists and return it to its rightful place with the warriors, the visionaries, the regular folks with just the right amount of crazy. I compare notes with radicals, secessionists, Internet trolls out for a laugh, and punk singers screaming their guts out, all trying to turn their anger into the world they want to see. Listen to Manifesto wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of Manifesto early and ad free radio right now, join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.

[Jon Favreau]

All right. Meanwhile, in the upper Midwest, the Democratic civil war is raging like the 2016 primary never ended. We are. We're in the final stages of the primary campaigns in the Michigan Senate and House races, where Election Day is this coming Tuesday, and the Wisconsin governor's race, which is a week later in Michigan, the final debate of the Senate primary between Haley Stevens and Abdul El Sayed was Monday night. Here's a sample of the vibe when

[Dan Pfeiffer]

you ask $60 million to come into a race for you and then say that somehow you're electable, I think you don't quite understand what electability means. If you need a $60 million crutch, you probably can't be elected on your own terms. My opponent is on these big podcasts. You know, he's running a podcast himself. These folks are making fun of the way I sound, but yet I sound like the people who need help who are talking to me about what they need.

[Jon Favreau]

A direct attack on podcasters. Dan, what the fuck? And one of ours, actually, the podcast she was referring to there, America Dissected, one of a crooked podcast for many years. It hasn't been for a couple years. But yeah, that was what Abdul hosted right here on our network, the podcast

[Dan Pfeiffer]

about public health for the public.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I was gonna say that's the. It's not really this big. She was trying to make it out to be this, like, celebrity podcast.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Like it's not breaking down Real Housewives of Rhode Island.

[Jon Favreau]

No, it's a pretty staid podcast about public health that's helping inform people about public health. Anyway, it's getting even more heated between surrogates, as it often does. Michigan Congresswoman Hillary Scholten, who is a Haley Stevens supporter, was asked by Semaphore on Wednesday evening whether she'll support Abdul if he win and she said, quote, I will not stand beside someone who has allowed distinctly anti American sentiment to enter our public dialogue. When Abdul came on this podcast, Alex Wagner asked him the same question about Stevens. He said, I will do everything I can to make sure Mike Rogers never sees the inside of the U.S. senate. Bernie Sanders, the same night that Hillary Scholten gave that interview, was on CNN saying he would support Haley Stevens if she's the winner as well, and just not getting it from all of the supporters on Haley Stevens side.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But Haley Stevens herself has said.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes, she has. Yes, she has.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I think that's an important point. And if we're being totally fair here, there are people on the other side who feel the same way about Haley Stevens. Because here's the thing. If you believe the polls, and we only have a small sample size of polls here, Abdul is the most likely Democratic nominee.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. So Emerson came up. So we've had a lot of kind of either internal polls or polls that are like, not high quality, or maybe they're just new pollsters. But we had an Emerson poll on Thursday. Emerson's a high quality poll, and it has Abdul up 15% over Haley, which does match what some of those other polls that we weren't sure about were saying.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And it matches the internal polls that are circulating.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So I think that that probably is an accurate picture of where the race stands today, four days before the primary. And a fair amount of people have voted already in the state. But no matter who wins, everyone's going to have to come back together again. And both the winner and the loser are going to have to build a bridge to get the other side together. If Abdul wins, he is going to have to be very magnanimous and very open and that he is going to need the support of all of the establishment that is supporting Haley Stevens in Michigan. Gretchen Whitmer, Dana Nessel, Debbie Stabenow, Gary Peters. And if Hailey Stevens were to win, then she is going to need the support of the huge grassroots network that Abdul has created, the uaw, which has supported Abdul. Everyone's going to have to come together here pretty quickly because this is the problem with the late primary is there's not a lot of time to mend fences, build a coalition, and then go win a general election.

[Jon Favreau]

Here's all I'll say about it. It is one thing to have supporters on both sides who, when the other candidate wins, are gonna say that they're gonna take their toys and go home, and that's gonna happen. But there is a difference. If it is people who are just posting online or influencers here and there, podcasters, streamers, whoever it may be, there's a difference between those people and elected officials and leaders in the Democratic Party. And if you're a leader in the Democratic Party, you're an elected official. You set the example for everyone else to follow. And if random person with couple hundred thousand followers on Twitter is like, no, I'm not voting for Abdul or I'm not voting for Haley Stevens, whatever, there's nothing we can all do about that. You know, we can shame that person, yell at them, try to convince them, do whatever you want. But like you're gonna get that. That's just gonna happen in primaries. We don't have to like amplify that a ton because then it'll just cause everything to be worse. But elected officials like Hillary Scholten should not have said that. And there's not an elected official on Abdul's side who has said something similar. There just hasn't been. And to Haley Stevens credit, she hasn't said anything like that. Her other elected officials who are supporting haven't said that. But for Hillary Scholten to say that is just unbelievably unhelpful, unproductive. And what you were saying by telling people that is that if Abdul wins the primary, then somehow you'd rather Mike Rogers be the senator. Mike Rogers, who is a Trump supporting healthcare, cutting like all of the right wing Trump positions, who would vote for a Trump nominee to the Supreme Court. You would rather that person happen to win the race, then try hard to go out there and make sure that Abdul wins the Senate race. And I just think that's ridiculous.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, it is not. It's not constructive is maybe the nicest way to say it.

[Jon Favreau]

It's not constructive. And again, it's like if you are a leader in the, I mean, we don't tend to endorse in races. We are in this one because we know Abdul and have worked with him. But like I've said from the beginning, Haley Stevens wins. I am all in for Haley Stevens. And like, I don't agree with that, doesn't mean I suddenly change my mind and agree with her position on Israel. I don't. But like, she is far and away better than Mike Rogers. And I'm be very comfortable voting for her and supporting her and doing whatever I can to make sure she wins.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You know, I would donate if she wins the primary on Tuesday night, I will donate to her before I eat breakfast on Wednesday morning for sure.

[Jon Favreau]

And look, people will forget this, but like, you and I had this conversation a million times back on the whole Platner Mills thing, where we were like, janet Mills wins this primary. We are all for Janet Mills. We'll go up to Maine and knock on doors. Right. Like, we are on the team here.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Did you just get. Did someone cattle prod you that we hadn't mentioned platinum in this podcast yet? I was just thinking, like, this is going too well. We haven't engendered any hatred just yet. Let's.

[Jon Favreau]

I am trying to, because I really. We have this primary here in Wisconsin and Michigan that this is happening for. But like, we're going to look ahead. This is going to happen in 2028. I am trying to practice what we preach, set an example, and hope that everyone else in positions of influence and leadership in this party does the same thing. Because if we turn around and just. You either want to win or you want to fight. Right. Or you want. And then you want to be right. So that, like, after someone loses that you didn't want to win, you can say, oh, see, I was right all along. Like, is that going to feel more satisfying than having a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House, a Democratic President? That's something you have to ask yourself.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

For people insulated from the consequences of politics, it probably will. But for the people of Michigan, people of America, absolutely not.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. So you can post later that like, you were right all along. And again, this goes for I. We've. We've seen it. We've been doing this for 10 years. We've seen it on both sides. We've seen sore losers on the left and the center left. Anyway, what are your thoughts on the. On the electability arguments from both sides? Because I do think in this race, it has been tricky to figure out to make an electability case, partly because I think there's been such a lack of high quality polling.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It is. There is one poll from the Michigan Education Association, a business group that circulated last week or earlier this week that showed Haley Stevens doing much better against Mike Rogers. Beating Mike Rogers and by a fair amount. And Abdul losing to Mike Rogers, if I remember correctly. I don't know if that poll is correct. The Republicans do believe privately and publicly that Abdul will be easier to beat than Haley Stevens.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. If you look at the real Clear Politics average, it has Stevens 0.5 over Rogers and Abdul 5 over Rogers. Exactly the same. And then the. Basically the entire electability gap comes from that poll that you just mentioned. Kind of surprised that Emerson didn't Poll the general?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

Like they just pulled the primary and they didn't give us a fucking general. I mean, come on, guys.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And similar thing with the we'll get to Wisconsin minute. We've seen similar things with some polls that could do that. I'm surprised. Yeah, I'm surprised they didn't do that. Like hypothetical general election polling is quite flawed. But the people whose job it is to win elections on the Republican side believe, and they could be wrong, they absolutely could be wrong. But they do believe and they've spent money to try to do that. There's so much money being spent on the Haley Stevens side that it hasn't really mattered that much. But they have tried to boost Abdul in this race. I can make an electability argument for both of them. I've done it in my newsletter. I think it is theoretical, self fulfilling bullshit in most cases. The one thing I'd say is for Abdul, he has more statements and more positions in his life that can be demagogued by Republicans than Haley Stevens does. Yes, for sure.

[Jon Favreau]

Outside of Israel.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, I was going to say the challenge for Haley Stevens is what makes her a moderate in this race is that she is more moderate than Abdul on a whole bunch of issues. Medicare for all, abolish ice. But she is, you know, she voted with Joe Biden, I think 100% of the time. And so she is more moderate than Abdul, but she's not. This is not Joe Manchin or Jared golden or something like that. What makes her out, the one issue where she is not sort of swimming with the stream in the Democratic Party right now is on Israel. She is one of the more, or

[Jon Favreau]

you could say the Michigan electorate.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And that's what I was saying is the thing that gets lost in the conversation about the changing public opinion on Israel is that the biggest shift is not Democrats, it's independents. And we have not seen Michigan specific polling on that. But I would imagine it's at least comparable to the national polling or more stark than that. And so that is a challenge. And for Abdul to win in this Emerson poll, he is losing Black voters by 30 points. Now, I'm confident that most of those black voters would prefer Abdul over Mike Rogers, but you have to turn them out. It's not just whether they choose you or not, would prefer you. And then for Haley Stevens, it's going to be a very challenging thing to get youth turnout in Michigan, a state with huge colleges in Lansing and Ann Arbor. When you have the position you have on Israel and your campaign's Been bankrolled to the tune of $60 million from APAC. And so these are challenges for both of them, but neither of them win. To go back to your original point, if we're not completely unified in this race, because Mike Rogers is a very good opponent, this is a 5050 state. I think both of them can win, but they both have challenges.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I agree. So things are no more pleasant in Wisconsin, where Democratic socialist Francesca Hong seems to have the nomination for governor wrapped up despite a last minute attempt by the state's Democratic establishment to stop her. She's crushing in all the polls. Former Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes just dropped out a couple hours before we started recording. And David Crowley, who quit the race and then reentered the race the other week with Governor Ever's endorsement, is still stuck around 10 to 15% in the polls. A lot of Democrats worried about this race with Hong as the nominee based on some pretty far out there old statements, tweets, policy positions. She once called for abolishing the Senate, then her campaign said she never did. But the tweet does in fact exist. She once called for abolishing prisons and police, though now says those aren't her current positions. She even had a 2020 tweet about abolishing Thanksgiving, calling it, quote, the original super spreader event that killed indigenous folk and women folk there spelled F O L X. Dan, what do you think of Hong's chances?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, if the polls are correct, she is almost certainly going to be the Democratic nominee. There have been two polls out this week where she is up by more than 20 points and has very high favorability. So it would seem like she's going to be a Democratic nominee. This is a very, very hard race. She, as you point out, is a Democratic socialist. Democratic Socialists have a minus 21, I think approval rating in Wisconsin, minus 23%. Democrats have a minus 21%. MAGA has a minus 19%. No one's doing great. Democratic socialism. She has these positions that can be demagogued. In addition to Wisconsin, I said Michigan was a 5050 state. Wisconsin is the swing state. It has been decided by less than one point in five of the last seven presidential elections. And Hong is running to succeed a two term Democratic governor in a change election. So she can absolutely win. You're a 50, 50 state. The political environment based on the polling decision we just had is somewhere between 6 to 11 points Democratic. So you have some margin for error there. But it's going to take some real work and she's going to have to be very smart and deft. And everyone I know who knows her, Amanda Lippman, was talking about her with me because she's a run for something candidate when she was on this podcast a couple weekends ago, that she is incredibly bright. She's obviously ran an incredible primary campaign. She's a very good campaigner. And she's going to have to run essentially a flawless campaign and navigate these issues to the end. But if she does that, she can win. But it's hard. It's obviously hard. It was going to be a hard race no matter who the nominee is, and it's probably a little bit harder with her as the nominee.

[Jon Favreau]

Here's one thing I'd like to see from her and to an extent, Abdul as well, if he ends up being the nominee. I've said this before, that you have old tweets woke one was crazy in 2020 people had a lot of crazy tweets. And if you want to disavow them, great. I just think there needs to be a little. So Hong was asked by J Mart after the debate whether she still.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's Jonathan Martin from Politico.

[Jon Favreau]

Sorry, Jonathan Martin. I know it's hard for those who haven't had their brains broken about politics for the last. Yes. Whether she still supports the goal, the aspirational goal of abolishing prisons. And the answer has gotta be just no. Just no. No, I don't. And it was. She didn't say she supports it, but it was sort of a long, winding answer. And about, you know, over incarceration and all these things that are true. Right. Like we over incarcerate people, our prisons, the conditions there are terrible. We put people in jail for nonviolent crimes that they shouldn't be in jail for. Right. Like, all of that stuff is true. But when someone asks you, do you think that we should defund the police? The answer is no. Do we think. Do you think that we should abolish prisons? No. Should we abolish police departments? No. Should we abolish borders? No. And what about. You said that before. So what was that tweet about? I was wrong. I was wrong. I tweeted something back then. I have thought about it, and you know what? It's wrong.

[Sponsor Voice]

That's it.

[Jon Favreau]

And like, I don't think Abdul has done that well enough on defund. And I think he can. He needs to fix that if he runs the General. And I think certainly she has a whole bunch, Francesca Hong, of positions like that. Because. And look. And the left will say, well, they have very popular positions on healthcare and data centers, stuff like that. Yes, they do. And those positions, they don't have to worry about as much, and they should spend the campaign emphasizing them. But in order for voters to hear your positions on those issues, they need to feel comfortable that on those other issues, on the group of abolish issues that keeps getting a lot of these DSA people in trouble, that you just disavow them and you've changed your mind.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, that's exactly right. You have to be very. You have to look, you have to reckon with the reality of the race you're running. If you are running in a district that Kamala Harris won by 50 points in Manhattan or Colorado, that's one world. If you're running statewide in Michigan or Wisconsin, that is a very different world. And you're going to have to be very clear. And your primary win, if the polls are correct, both of their primary wins are going to be incredibly impressive. But that tells you very little about how you're going to do in the general. And the whole set of voters you're now going to have to go persuade. And it's going to require a shift in strategy, a change in. Not a change in what you actually believe are your values, but how you talk. You have to think that now I have to persuade a whole bunch of people who disagree with me on a lot of things to support me. And you can do that by emphasizing the things they do agree with you on, like healthcare, being a human right, universal healthcare in whatever form you're choosing to be in. A lot of stuff that data centers, a lot of stuff statewide. For Francesca Hong about education in Wisconsin, that can work. But there are some barriers you have to get over. And tens of millions of dollars will be spent throwing your old positions, your old statements, your old tweets in your face on a daily basis. And you're gonna have to do what Kamala Harris was unwilling to do in 2024, which is explicitly go out and say clearly and repeatedly, I would change my mind. Here's why.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, because here's what doesn't work. Just trying to change the issue again. Cause you don't wanna talk about healthcare. No. Doesn't work. Doesn't work. People can read. They can see the positions. They will watch the videotape of you saying whatever. They will read the old tweets. And there needs to be video of you out there giving an explanation. And I don't want to hear that. The cause we hear this from the Harris campaign, that it didn't test well. None of the responses tested well. Of course they're not going to test well. You're responding to something that is unbelievably unpopular. So it's not going to test well. It's just something that you have to to say.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Abdul got this question on cnn. He would not say he no longer supported defund police. He said a bunch of words that I think he thought in his head added up to that but was not clear and basically seemed like he refused to answer whether he still supported it. You know who was very clear about this? Zoran Mamdani. When he was running.

[Jon Favreau]

I was just going to say, like, if you don't want to listen to us because we're a bunch of fucking centrist neolib Obama shills, like, go just watch some tape of AOC and Zoran Mamdani.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

The heroes of the left. Just watch the tape and you'll see that they exactly what you just said, that they know exactly how to talk about this stuff.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, he just, they asked the do you still support and he said no. And that was New York City, not Michigan, right?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, it's easier for him there than it's going to be in Michigan and Wisconsin for sure.

[Sponsor Voice]

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

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[Jon Favreau]

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

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[Dan Tabersky]

Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire six? All new drinks are here now at McDonald's.

[Jon Favreau]

Refreshers contain caffeine. Okay, one last piece of bad news on the midterms before we get to some some other bad news. Elon Musk says he's going to spend at least $100 million. Elon's back and he's got $100 million that he's gonna spend to help Republican candidates in the fall. So much for starting that third party. How big of a deal do you think this is?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I think this is fucking great. Republicans have such a financial advantage that $100 million is basically like spitting in the ocean at this point.

[Jon Favreau]

Honestly, that was. But I'm glad that you think that

[Dan Pfeiffer]

too, that all the world's richest man is going to spend $100 million. He could put $5 billion in if he wanted and it would be nothing to him. Let's make Elon Musk the face of a lot of these Republicans. He's incredibly unpopular. It allows you to talk about Doge. It allows you to talk about AI, which we're about to get to. It allows you to talk about big tech. It is like corruption. Everything else put him front and center.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, well, speaking of AI, a couple of these candidates in particular Francesca Hong, have made opposition to AI data centers a focal point of. And this week it was really easy to understand why putting limits on the AI industry is so appealing to people. As some of you may have seen or heard, a new model from OpenAI escaped its so called sandbox. What's a sandbox? Well, that's basically a lockdown server with no Internet where it was undergoing testing and secretly escaped the sandbox, reached the Internet and hacked into a separate AI platform called Hugging Face in order to score better on a cybersecurity evaluation. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said it was quote, the first security incident that I have felt very viscerally good. I'm glad.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Can I say one thing about that? That is the scariest thing of that is the AI model left notes in the server to itself because they thought it would be destroyed after this. Basically like here's how I did it so future versions of me can do this. And I saw someone say that if this AI agent was a person, they would have been convicted of many, many crimes, I'm sure.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, but not Sam. Sam just felt it very viscerally. He seems to be moving toward favoring some kind of centralized controls on AI development kind of slowly, as do Trump, the founders of Anthropic. And more than a thousand employees of those companies who signed an open letter this week, the state.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But not Mark Zuckerberg.

[Jon Favreau]

But not Mark Zuckerberg, that little fuck who's out there being like, oh, all these guys want centralized control and I just want everyone to have their own AI and I want everyone to be free to have their own private, personalized AI because I'm for that freedom. And they're for central control, because all the fucking people that Meta has hired on their payroll, Democrats and Republicans, to like run their PR campaign on AI, realize that the advantage that they could have is to paint anthropic and OpenAI and all the rest of them is this centralized control. And that Meta just wants everyone to be free and have their own AI. Well, everyone having their own AI that isn't tested and that can just run and do whatever the fuck it wants isn't freedom. It's fucking anarchy.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Not great.

[Jon Favreau]

That's my Mark Zuckerberg thing. I cannot stand him. But so the statement, I was like all excited that all these employees, including Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, signed this letter. The statement in the letter is, we request that the US Government support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development.

[Sponsor Voice]

Woo.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's an impossible thing to do. Like, the other people making AI are the Chinese. Trump had a national televised address like three weeks ago to accuse him of interfering in our election.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, whatever happened with that? Altman himself went to Capitol Hill this week to meet and have a fancy dinner with concerned senators who probably had no idea what was going on. Which is all well and good, except that what the public keeps hearing from the AI bros is shit like this. What we need to explain to the world, number one, we are close to creating a genie that can grant any wish. Number two, we are going to make sure that our first wishes broadly benefit humanity. We are now, like, in the singularity. Like this is the moment.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

For the last 10 years ago, this

[Jon Favreau]

was like a kind of far off dream at best. It seemed very improbable.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And now we're like, actually in the

[Jon Favreau]

moment that we used to like talk about at the lunch table in a very not serious way.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Do you think there's still a 10 to 20% chance that killer robots mean the end of humanity? That's a high p doom, as they say.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, in the long run, we're all dead, of course. In the long run, we're all dead, of course.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Good point, Elon, but how about the

[Jon Favreau]

short run, can we not be dead in the short run, too?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, that's the point. If you're gonna be dead in the long run, why are you worrying about the short run?

[Jon Favreau]

You've been thinking about this one for a while. What should Democrats be doing? Insane about this? Because it seems like no one is running this rodeo here.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

AI is the technological, economic, cultural, sociological, health issue of our time. It threatens to change everything about how we live. And it is something that people have a growing fear and concern about. And it is in an incredibly polarized world. As a complete jump ball between the parties, the most recent Pew poll asked people on a battery of issues which party they trusted more. 23% trusted Republicans, 22% trusted Democrats, and 51% said neither party. People are crying out for leadership in our calcified politics. This is a one opportunity to completely reshape how people think about the party. If one party can step up, take a leadership role here, stand up, be strong about the risks here, have an actual vision for how you regulate it, for how you deal with data centers, how you pay for this, how you protect people from the economic and social downsides of this, this is the issue. Democrats have been. There are exceptions, but Democrats have been largely silent or sort of nebulous about our position on it. That's for a couple reasons. One is we have a lot of old Democrats. I don't know if you saw the interview that Jim Clyburn did withstead Herndon on his podcast where he admitted he found out about ChatGPT last week. This is one of the most prominent Democrats in the House. Another reason is a lot of candidates are very worried about the highly funded AI Super PACs coming in and dumping a whole bunch of money against them like they did to Alex Boris at the House race primary in New York. And the third reason is on data centers. There are complicated politics for some Democrats because while two thirds of the public does not want a data center in their community, labor unions and particularly the building trades very much want to be building data centers. The reason this is a huge opportunity and a necessity for Democrats is one, it is the issue and you should be talking about the issue. Two, it is an amazing point of contrast with Trump and the Republicans because Donald Trump's philosophy is to let the AI Bros, as you call them, who have given Trump millions and millions of dollars to him, both politically and personally, do whatever they want. Their philosophy is let AI Cook. And he wants to build a data center on every corner. Just a report in the New York Times this week that he wants to give federal land to repurpose federal land for the construction of data centers. We could be the smart, authentic, passionate, populist voice here arguing for a sensible solution. And that has not happened. I hope this is talked about in every 2028 debate. Hope this is talked about all the time. This is the thing. And that we have an opportunity and an obligation to lead, and we have not done it yet.

[Jon Favreau]

Here's the other tricky dynamic that we have watched unfold since the beginning of this debate is when people raise their voices, whether it's the people who run these AI companies themselves or the people who work there, or experts or politicians or whoever it may be, and say, slow down, be careful, we got to put some guardrails on. The inevitable answer you get from people who want to just keep going as fast as possible is, but China. And we can't lose the AI race because we don't want. If we slow down, China won't slow down and then they'll have all the advanced AI and then we won't have it. And then they will dominate militarily, economically, et cetera, et cetera. And I think Democrats have to figure out how to grapple with that because I've heard some Democrats who are more favorable towards AI make that argument. Some of the more like national security minded, centrist minded Democrats. And I mean, you mentioned the AI packs and all the other things, but I do think there's a genuine belief among some people who have the best motivations that they're just worried about China, which is. And I think that the only way that we're actually going to not kill each other with these things, have the robots kill us all, is for like an international effort here, an international diplomacy, which we're not going to have with this president at all. But I do think, like there is no way you're going to be able to transition to this AI era without real strong diplomacy and some kind of international framework on this. Because otherwise every time someone tries to stop AI here or slow it down, the industry and other people are just going to say, no, no, you can't do that because China is just going to race ahead.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Obviously AI is happening. The genie that Sam Altman said we can make is out the model. But you have to find a way to do it in a way that is safe, where there's actual real thinking about the policy consequences that are, other than just the use of AI. The energy costs, how is that being paid for? Because that's the big Thing with these data centers is jacking up electricity prices everywhere. What are the environmental consequences of that? And perhaps probably most importantly or most relevant to a lot of people, what are we doing for the lots of people who could lose their jobs because of this? We're at a situation now where we saw what happened with globalization and automation. I sound like Barack Obama right now, but in the 80s and what that did to huge parts of the country, to entire classes of people, we see it coming. It's going to be a different class of people this time. And how do we prepare for that? What can we do? And obviously the real sick irony here is you can't teach them to code because AI is taking. We're going to have to teach the people to code, to do something else, I guess. But there is like, this is just a. We see it coming and we should be prepared. But politically there's just this massive opportunity and obligation for Democrats. And I really hope that There is a 20, 28 candidate or candidates who take a real leadership role here.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, it's already here, the job situation. Because even if you're not seeing it in layoffs in a significant way, employment among young people in AI related industries or industries that AI could affect is already down 14, 20% over the last couple years. And this is like just the beginning. We're just getting going here and it's going to get so much worse. And I also think that data centers aside, like there's a whole conversation we had about data centers and everything you said I agree with there. But the safety of these models, like there has to be regulation on. We can't just say like, oh wow, that one got out of the sandbox. And I really felt that one viscerally. And next time we're going to fix that. Like, I mean, Ted Lieu has an AI kill switch bill that he introduced that a bunch of people signed onto that would require developers to have a means of shutting down their models. Of course the industry doesn't support that for some reason. I think like Thune and Cruise and Klobuchar and Cantwell are working on a frontier AI bill. But like so much, so much of this shit is like voluntary regulation and all this kind of stuff. Like you cannot have these models go out to market that are this powerful if they're not adequately tested that they're safe. I mean, that is like, that's more important than anything else because that's like lights out for everyone anyway. Is there a hopeful way to end this? Well, John, but also, look we're in.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

We're all dead.

[Jon Favreau]

Here's the thing, Dan. We're in the singularity now. The thing that Sam Altman was. Was just talking about, you know, at the lunch table. And now we're here. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, we're in the singularity. The Michigan primaries Tuesday, and Wisconsin's the next Tuesday. Things are. Things are looking up.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Do you think? I think the flaw in Sam Altman's genie argument is do you think they've accounted for the fact that the only smart thing to do if you get a genie with three wishes is you ask for unlimited wishes with your first wish?

[Jon Favreau]

I've heard someone else actually make that say that about AI that it's unlimited wishes, that it's like.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, it's not, because the fucking tokens are quite expensive, so I don't think it's that unlimited. Yeah, give me some tokens in every pot, Sam.

[Jon Favreau]

Enough water and electricity to power a small town just for being like, hey, Chat, what should I do tonight? Hey, Chat, why am I feeling sad? That's a whole town right there. That's our show for today, love. It will be back in the feed on Sunday with the bulwarks. Jonathan V. Last. Have a good weekend, everyone.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Bye, everyone.

[Jon Favreau]

Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts and Farah Safari, with Reed Churlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt de Groat, Ben Hefcote, Jordan Kanter, Charlotte Landis, Carol Pelavie, David Toles, Mia Kellman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Singel. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America.